In keeping with the theme that has pervaded through this year's nanowrimo experience, I am approaching the end of the story in a way I have never done before.  

Normally at this point I rush forward, delirious, caught up in the wonder of the thing--I suspect, in subsequent drafting/revision, this still may happen.  However, right now I can't be bothered.  I write for thirty minutes, leave characters hanging in the middle of grief and on the cusp of sacrifice, and I blithely pick up my knitting and think about how pleased I am with the sock and reduce my world to a ribbing pattern (knit two; purl two.  Knit two; purl two).  I got up this morning knowing that today was the last day, and I didn't descend into the manuscript, ready to ride it; I spent the morning with Dan, talking and trading massages.  (He was very interested in saving $70, but we found the entire experience to be such a lovely date and all-around great experience that we're thinking of making it a monthly appointment.)  Then I coaxed him adding lunch to it as well.  As a result, today I've only written 800 some words.  I'll get the last few thousand out here . . . eventually.

I think some of it is being, frankly, stunned.  Never, never, never have I produced this level of story--not writing, story--with such little conscious effort and so completely and so long in such a compact amount of time.  I think I feel disconnected from it because more than ever, this time I surrendered to the vehicle.  I feel like I very much subjugated myself to the story, in a way I have never done.  The funny thing is, in the past I have wanted to, but it was that I wanted the story to give me confidence, that I wanted it to reassure me that it was actually something worth saying, that it was going to validate me, that when I showed it to people I wouldn't have to fear rejection.  This time I wasn't so much confident as I was accepting; it would be what it would be.  I admit I'm nervous about some of the "fix it later," because there's a lot of fixing, but I am very impressed by the way the story just showed up.  

I used to wrinkle my nose at writers who blithely talked about following their muses or insisted they couldn't change a part of a story because "that isn't what it wants," things that sounded, to me, like laziness.  I think there is a lot of that out there, still; however, I've become a lot more careful in even my silent damnations, because more and more I've come to learn that to a degree, it's true, particularly for me.  Oh, there's a lot here that doesn't quite work, and much contradiction, and a lot of holes.  But the spine is in place, with a surety it has never been put in place before.  I understand what this story is about far better than I understand THE WITCH'S APPRENTICE, not because TWA is a bad story, but because I'm still self-conditioned to think of that story as my personal cross, the mountain I made out of so many things.  And the funny thing is, there are all these deliberate echoes of that story in this one; it is, actually, a stated part of the story, that it's an echo of the first one.  

The thing I learn more and more all the time is that when I write, I am talking to myself.  For THE WITCH'S APPRENTICE I went into the dark and wept and screamed and clawed the walls, and all that sound and blood and scratching birthed whatever TWA is.  And so I wondered what TEMPLE BOY would be, because I'm not angry, and I'm not bleeding, and I'm not scratching.  I didn't write this one sweating and sobbing and wanting to vomit.  I just wrote it, disoriented, bemused, confused, and occasionally enchanted.  It feels at this moment like a strange present I have made for myself, one I don't yet know quite what it is or how it truly goes together, but it feels like a strange and beautiful gift all the same.

So that has been my nanowrimo, and it's not yet over.  Maybe I'm lingering over the party?  Maybe I'm afraid of that last ribbon?  Oh, a little.  I wonder if it's going to address my frustration with the publication bit of it in these last few scenes.  Because that's where the angst is now, in this realization that the stories will never quite be what they can be until they are shared, tested, put up to the mirror of public consumption and on a grand scale.  And I'm frustrated with how difficult and nonsensical that process is. Well, maybe Aurel has some insight on that for me.  That would be nice.

I will say that I am now eager to pick up the other long-short I was writing, and to write more shorts.  I'm looking forward to revising SMALL TOWN BOY, and I think I have a better idea of how to do it.  I do, actually, feel pretty quietly confident.  And, thanks to this nanowrimo round, comfortably humbled.

I am not validating my count until it's all done.  I don't want that WINNER! bar bleating at me until I actually am.  Though, I do want that Dagoba lavender & blueberry chocolate bar, and the stack (STACK!) of Michael Chabon novels from the library.

So, another round of writing, then a bit more of the sock.

 This is my reward.

 This shit really stinks.  But I'm very, very close to done.  And it's very good.  Except for the shitty writing.  But that I can fix later.

95,263.  There's probably about another 3k, MAYBE 5, but not much more.  And then it's all, all done.  Except for the 98% that needs to be revised.

I'm gonna go watch House.

 I just did another 30 minute session.  Another coming at 8.

It's like there's this great story there, and it's going to be amazing, later.  But right now it's like I'm writing it with pig shit on the side of a barn.  There isn't punctuation.  Sometimes I don't capitalize.  The writing SUCKS.  I mean, it is barely any of it salvageable.  Garbage end to end.  The content, when you can sort for it, is amazing.  It's still driving and doing what it wants.  But it's like I'm coming along drunk.  I feel like I've been stretched too far.  The story is fine.  But me, I suck.  I suck so, so bad.

But I want an end.  I mean, the rest of it is largely shit, too, so why should the end be better?  I can already see how in December January I can sort through the events and make it make more sense, get the whiteboard on and the postits and sort it out, and  . . . .

Or I could go drown myself because I'm SO DAMN TIRED.

I feel like I felt at the point where I was when I had to write everything to The Magnetic Fields during the last days of TWA draft one.  Except there I was mentally and emotionally spent, and now I'm just blitzed out.  I'm the puppet who just wants to nap.  There's this incredible stuff coming out, but I'm so, "whatever, give me a remote."  

I would resent this and say I'm going to stop and pick it up later, but I am LITERALLY less than six thousand words from the end.  Or so.  I mean, JESUS.  I wrote twice that for words on Saturday. Which is of course part of the reason I'm so tired.

Essential to this, I can tell, is going to be the music.  I have a series of plalylists I rotate through, but Ronan Hardiman is saving my soul. particularly his Anthem album.

I swear to God, when this is over, though, I am playing nothing but Kylie for a week.  Which will wake up Sam and his story.

*headdesk.*

Oh, god, in ten minutes I have to do it again.

 Okay.  That's a bit better.  And now I understand.

Issue #1:  There are NOT 100,000 words in this draft.  
Issue #2: I was out of order--which is fine, but I was pushing too hard for an order that was wrong.  My bad.  Sorry, book.
Issue #3: I have never, never, never written this fast.  It is good and bad. And I'm getting used to it, but not very well.  

I do like this all-in-one-shot thing, and there will be further reflections come Dec. 1.  However, for now I really need to put this to bed.  So, for the rest of the draft, here are the rules:

1.  SET THE TIMER.  30 minutes.  Then a break.
2.  RESUME KNITTING.  You write better when you knit, Heidi.  You know this.
3.  Let it be stupid.  I know, it's the end and that you have a Thing for it.  But let it be clumsy and dumb.  You're tired.  it's not going to be great. Just roll.
4.  Think of the rewards.

Speaking of which: this is what I get when I'm done.

1.  Five days to do whatever I want.  This will invariably include things like tidying the house and baking, but that's okay.  
2.  READ EVERYTHING MICHAEL CHABON EVER WROTE.
3.  Read Pratchett.
4.  I don't know.  But I'll think of something.

93,000.  There will be one more session today, and that's it.  A bit more internet, and then it's hats for me.  And a scarf.  Clicking needles, however you want to slice it. 

 We are gonna have 85 by midnight.  We might have 90.

We are gonna have 100k tomorrow.  We are gonna have a really fucked up, amazing, tripped-out draft by Tuesday.

Yeah, baby yeah, baby yeah.

 Actually, I was a big weepy mess the past hour, but I'm still pumped.  Fairy dust from my fingertips, I'm telling you.  Still moderately drecky, but there is a book here.  And dude, it is COOL.  And very touching.  

I'm going to shower, put up a little plastic (brr!  COLD HERE!), knock out another two or three thousand words, do a few errands, maybe run to Indianola, rope the moon, birth a nation . . . . 

Well, today, feels like it.  Aurel.  AUREL.  You are the man.  You and Charles.  My boys.

 There is a point in my writing process that is unmistakable.  It's not even so much the process as the point in the story, and it is, for lack of any better term, "the last bend," the final curve, the shift that marks the epic, amazing snowball all the way to the end.  A writer friend I know calls this "finish fever."  For me it is less of my fever and more of the story's.  It wakes me up at weird hours and basically says, "Woman, just put your fingers on the keyboard and get the hell out of my way."  It's a very exciting time, and there's no mistaking it.  

I'm just a little gobsmacked, because I didn't realize there was actually a story here.

Well, that's not true.  I figured out last night that there was one.  And I have to tell you, Divine Ms. C, you're always going to be thought fondly of in regards to this story, because I figured it out while we sat there in that coffee shop we almost couldn't find and then at Perkins sharing an appetizer plate.  I know what the story is actually about, and it was a surprise.  I know the end even better than I thought I knew it, and I'm already misty sad over it, but in a good way, too.  

But here's the lesson for me, then--it apparently truly does not matter about plot.  It really can be grossly out of order and contradictory.  All I have to do is get to this part, and it's all over.  I'll be finishing this story very soon.  Fifteen thousand word days are nothing at this point.  It just wants out, and here we go.  It's also starting to be less like communion wafers and more like rich yeasty dough.  But it is going to finish--there will be an end.  That is, I will have a first draft, not even a truck draft, just a OMGSTUFFPAPERPIXELSSHITSTORYAAAAAAUGH!!!!! sort of thing, and then I will go bake cookies and turn into John Nash with the whiteboard again, and then I'll start the revisions, and probably around Feburary or March I'll have something I can share.

Holy shit.

I'm also apparently only going to sleep enough for my body to recover a baseline, and then my brain will start nudging it, repeating songs at it, sparking scene ideas and saying, "Hey, you awake?  Hey?  Hey?  Computer?  Tea?  You want tea, yeah?"

I do like this part.  It's the bit where I feel fifty feet tall, made of stars, and worlds spew forth from my fingertips as I turn like Stevie Nicks.  While laughing.

73,433.  So, I'm guessing the final tally will be just a wee bit over 100k.

Herewego.

 But the words are coming, so I don't care.  

Well, okay, I care.  It must be the new thing, post holy-shit-last-fall-what-the-fuck, whatever that whole thing did to my writing psyche, that I feel moderately dazed while I write, that it feels insane and all over.  But honestly, there is NO PLOT HERE.  Nada.  None.  It's nothing but nonsense, and so much of it is UTTER DRECK.  If Charles smiles one goddamn more time, I'm going to choke him.  I mean, the flan scene was great, but this is just weird.  

But they're sitting on a star, wondering who made them.  So it's hard to be too pissed off.

Also, talk about cast of four billion.  Holy hell.  Some of these people have to fold into one another.  Somehow.  

The music du jour, however, is Enigma.  Big props to youngdaniel  for saying, "Hey, you knew they had a new album this fall, right?"  because I didn't, and it is fabulous, and I have it now.  I have had an Enigma renaissance, in fact.  Aurel, though, has his own mix.  It's very epic and optimistic and full of hope, with little dark edges.  Right now I am in the middle of this huge sequence where it's he and Charles, talking and talking and talking.  And riding golden dragons to the stars.  (Dan, it was too good not to use.  But no lotus yet.)

It drives me nuts how the story contradicts itself, though.  One minute somebody knows something, then they don't, and then . . . I don't know. Crack.  This book is on meth, crack, speed, and it guzzles whiskey, too. With champagne chasers.

I just don't know.  It's so weird.  It feels like absolute nonsense, end to end.  And yet I keep showing up and birthing another set of three thousand words.

Okay, then.

 Apparently I am back to NaNoWriMo.  This is what happened this afternoon.




I did wonder.  Especially after I saw that James McEvoy photo.  And now Charles and Aurel are walking out across the desert, and Aurel is creating shoes and clothing out of the sand.

The Curio page helped, too.  More on that later.

Damn, that is the fastest from-the-ashes turnaround I have ever had.  Usually when they shut the door, they SHUT THE DOOR.  Aurel, you have my attention.

 I am not quitting nanowrimo, and I am not at all considering the month over.  I am, however, now radically changing the game.  I'm going to continue to keep everything in one Scrivener document for now so I can easily continue tallying total word count, but I am ending the wild, weird party of this draft.  I am officially beginning version 2.0.

There isn't any plot to this one--none.  There were a few forays into it, but it hasn't stuck.  There was a great deal of character exploration, and I think, largely, that was what this was.  This is the first time in ten years, too, that I've attempted to write straight through in one new draft, and this is with the cheat of established characters.  I have a lot of really good stuff.  It has been very, very good work.  And now it's time to close that folder and open a new one and start it over, this time with plot.

The only real question now is how much to actually plot.  A little, I think.  These characters are all more than a little drunk.  Clearly I need to tell them as much sex of whatever kind they like is perfectly permissible, but we're going to have to herd towards something.  And we need an antagonist here.  On the page.  Seriously.  

Of course, now I might not be able to write today--it may be All Query now, which is just fine.  That, and/or cleaning.  And organizing.  Something to turn the Virgo brain on, that I know.  The Scorpio has had her run.  I think she needs some time with a cigarette and a fifth while the Great Librarian comes out and does her wonder work.

You know, this feels very good now that I've decided it.  I feel very free, and happy, and almost giddy.  I like where the drunken, whoring Scorpio took us.  She really opened up some fascinating doors.  But now she's just finger painting in the living room, and it's time to stop.  I think the universe thought so, too.  All morning I could not get to the computer, no matter what I tried.  When I finally got all set up, the phone rang, and I almost ignored it, but I always check to make sure it's not Anna's school saying she cracked her head open, and my heart stopped as it WAS in fact, Anna's school.  Her head was not cracked open, but her pants were split.  It's been like that all day.

But now that I've said, you know, 60,000 words and seventeen days is enough for me, it's like everything has shifted.  Nobody is calling.  Nothing is blowing up.  I'm a bit sad about not whizzing through to the end, but you know, I have never done that in any single month of writing.  The past two years I just kept writing, all stuff I completely rewrote later.  It is the way I write, so why am I surprised.  I'm not, really.  What I do like is the calmness with which this has all happened.  Also, the efficiency!  If this is what I did in two months in 2006 and four in 2007--if I did in fact manage to lay out the Heidi's Fantastic Technicolor First Draft in seventeen days, then I am not upset at all.  

Bit nostalgic, though.  Bit nostalgic.

So there it is.

This week I hit 50k, and this week I fell way behind.

My goal is to finish this book in November or come as close as I can.  This week I won nanowrimo, but I lost the very fragile sense of the story that I had when I went under on some virus/bacterial combo thing that I am still fighting, now with the help of antibiotics.  My throat is no longer making me claw at the walls to distract from the pain, but my head is full and I'm dizzy and tired, and I have to tell you, writing is real work.  I don't want to do it.  I want to knit my grandmother's hat.  I want to play with Anna.  I want to bake things.  I don't want to go to this book, because it doesn't make sense.

I went to the Ames write-in tonight feeling rather internally sulky, not wanting to go because I didn't see the point.  I would love to tell you that I went and suddenly it all flowed and I could see the end, and the rainbows came, and the gays married and we all had cokes around the tree of love.  Not so.  I did, though, write quite a bit, and I regained my word count.

This story is something to do with women.  It is a lot to do with religion.  It is quite obviously something about sex, since the books default is apparently, "Who can boink now?  Who should boink again?"  It is in desperate need of an antagonist.  It has several candidates, but they don't show up.  But it's something to do with women.  Women who fight.

I think part of it came down the other day when I had NPR on.  I forget the show.  All I know is they were interviewing someone about a show that was going to be on PBS about women fighting in Iraq, and some WOMAN veteran came on and said, no, women shouldn't be in combat, too many bad things will happen, and rattled off all this stuff, most of it hinging on "if they're captured they'll be raped."

I keep thinking about that interview, and that comment.  I think about the women talking about what they've endured in Iraq, and women talking about what they endure from their male serviceperson counterparts.  I think, too, about all the protests that keep going on (and YAY to them all) over Proposition 8 and all the anti-gay amendments that went down last week or whatever week that was.  It's all rolling around in my head as I write, and it keeps coming out in hand to hand battles between women of three different races and countries, and men, gay and straight, who keep having sex with each other.  And women who keep eyeballing each other, looking like they are next.  

I don't know what this means.  

What I know, though, is that tonight at Panera bread all of a sudden I opened a new file and started writing, at light speed, what felt like a creation myth, but this time from the perspective of a different culture in the story, and boy do they not like women.  It was weird and visceral and very interesting.  What I know is that I find I can just keep writing on this, and it's babble and nonsense, but I swear there's something quietly working beneath it.  Some thread is weaving its way quietly, hiding behind the looking and smiling and frowning and the finger farts over words that are practically typed backwards and the run-ons and the cliches.  Something is happening.  I'm laughing, sort of, because I'm recognizing it as the something that always happens, but usually as I panic and start it over again, go back to the beginning, again.  This time I just keep writing, no panic, lots of eyebrow lifting and saying, "Hmm," but I don't start over.  I just keep writing.

If this works, if I get to the end and a story just sort of lifts up through the vines of weirdness and obscurity--if this method turns out to be a real one, the way to find my story in the middle of the mess--well, this could be quite fine.  Because I could so take a month and puke out a raw draft and then spend six making it make sense.  I could do that without any trouble whatsoever.  Well---trouble, yes.  But I could maintain that.

Of course, this might not work.  I might be projecting.  But then, I wonder, is that all it really is?  There is nothing.  There is chaos.  There is nonsense.  And then, by sheer will and a little bit of pixie dust, suddenly, it is a story.

Don't know.  What I do know, however, is that tomorrow morning I am going to wake up and write nothing but antagonist.  Ten thousand words of antagonist.

And I know that right now I"m going to get in jammies, brush my teeth, wash my face, and then get into bed and knit my grandmother a beret.  Because she asked me to.  

Tomorrow I skate with seven year olds.  And I"m kind of excited about it.

Good night.

Monday my fantastic, wonderful, dear-to-my-heart in-laws came over and completely saved our asses by helping us with the yard work and cleaning out the garage.  If you have seen our house and our street (highly, highly infested with trees, to the point where we are practically a forest), you have an idea of the amount of leaves we were dealing with.  Part of the problem is that the maple behind our house drops leaves very late: it gave them up last Tuesday, and it immediately began raining once they were down.  So Monday Tom and Nina came on Dan's day off and we bagged about twenty plus bags of leaves, cleared the furniture from the deck, did some minor clearing of the eaves, and--be still my heart--SORTED THE GARAGE.  We have a two-fer, but in the summer one side gets full of random crap we just don't know where to put.  I sorted this out, and Tom and Nina helped us load it in the storage space above the garage, and now the truck--which they sold us for a dollar last year--can now fit in beside the car.  Nina, every time I walk in there I think fondly of you as I gaze adoringly at the clean floor.

However, I was battling a cold all weekend, and though I thought I was on the waning end of it Monday, all that work outside in the cold pushed me over the edge, and as a result yesterday was a complete wash.  I spent most of it in bed, and the only thing I did of consequence was finish the set up of Anna's birthday present: an aquarium.  (Tom and Nina provided a lot of that, too.  Yes.  I have the best in-laws IN THE WORLD.  They came with more local pork and beef for my freezer, too.)  There was absolutely no writing done yesterday.  None.

So today I intend to, if not close the final 5k on "winning," to get much closer.  (I'm currently at 45k.)  I have decidedly lost my rhythm on it, and I admit I don't know what to do with it.  I also have to glance again at that first scene I want to post on Friday for a critique, and I'm nervous about it because the end of that scene is weird, and the scene itself is long.  But I suppose that's why I'm posting it.  And then there is the query draft, and the synopsis.

And the laundry . . . .

So that's me.  I'm not posting the Olbermann piece on Prop 8, because at this point I think the entire planet has seen it, but, just in case, I will link. 

And with that, it is now time to work, because at 2PM I am taking a giddy near-seven year-old to buy two goldfish.

 My current word count is forty-thousand something.  Forty-two, or three, or something.  It's big.  It's--wait for it--"almost done."

HA.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

I do not know what this book is, but I do know that it will not be completed in seven thousand more words.  Not even in seventeen.  Seventy, maybe.  Probably.  But, yes, on day nine I am within one good hard day's work of "winning NaNoWriMo."  Oh, yes, the word count is very lovely, and I am grateful for it.  It has been quite a ride--and all this during the week where I did not really have a lot of time.  Rather than this begging the question of what could I accomplish WITH a lot of time, the answer is, less than you think, at least under normal circumstances.  I tend to get fussy and worrisome when I have a lot of time.  I tend to notice things like lack of plot and characters who do not make any sense, or the fact that POVs just pop up like jack-in-the-boxes and then start telling a story with no pretext whatsoever in the draft.  When I have time, this alarms me.  When I don't have time, those things just sort of happen and I keep on writing because I don't dare lose momentum.

This has been the case in the past week, and the result has been an insane, drunken, oversexed story which is apparently determined to be birthed through my left nostril, backwards and sideways.  You don't believe me?  Exhibit A:  Last night I was writing a three-way in the middle of Panera Bread at a write-in, and with characters I had not quite expected to do this.  And because it was a write-in, I picked up and put it down as the buzzer sounded, and sometimes wrote deep emotional moments to the discordant sound of bagel slicers and KAREN YOUR ORDER IS READY KAREN and the feeling of turning into a human popsicle as the door kept opening and air conditioning (WHY?!) blasted through the air vents.  It didn't occur to me until later that maybe that was all a bit surreal.

Established characters come out of the gate swinging, then get into bed with people that make my jaw drop.  New characters shuffle their feet like old men in bedroom slippers, then suddenly bloom and open like flowers at the damndest moments.  Plotlines are opening up like arteries, which is good, but I'm not yet sure if they are really arteries or so many discordant bits of tubing.  Every now and again I look at this thing and think, "This is utter madness.  I am writing drunken babble, and it will never, never congeal."  That's about when something locks into place, and I gasp in amazement only to watch it sink under the radar again.

THE WITCH'S APPRENTICE kept me underwater; this one is keeping me drunk at the back of the bus.  Sometimes I think it's just testing me, to see if I really will let it do anything it wants without censoring.  Sometimes it lets me drive, and sometimes it runs me over.  Mostly I think it is just doing weird things and I am hoping we all meet at Disneyland when we're done.  I think there may be a very deep theme, probably creationist and revisionist religion like TWA.  There is some gender stuff, too, but it's hard to catch.  Mostly people are having a lot of interesting sex, I have to tell you.  Was not in my plan.

What is happening, though, is that I am thinking that if this works out like I hope, if I can actually write this entire first draft in Novemeber, which I am starting to think I can, then the next thing I am doing is finishing the cute little delivery boy story, then attacking SMALL TOWN BOY through the grim winter, and then just attacking anything and everything until I get tired or things sell or the world ends.  Because this is not bad.  If this works like I think it will, I have seriously been being in my own way.  LIke, SERIOUSLY.

Because once again, this stuff is either brilliant or ridiculous, and sometimes I think it is both.  Oh, some of the writing is absolutely awful, and some of it is pretty good, and most of it I don't even bother trying to tell.  What I know is that Alys has a lot to say, but she is not interested in having me get in her way.  What I know is that Aurel is one of the most important archetypes I have written--I can see so many shades of him in other characters, but this is his moment, this one, and I don't want to step on it.  What I know is that this story is exotic and sensual and that it will pace out in lotus-like layers, eventually.  Right now I just have to keep dancing.  With a bottle in my hand.

Once I hit 50k some things will change; according to NaNoWriMo I will have won by their rules, so I will start implementing a few of mine.  For starters, the stuff I wrote longhand back in July will then be fair game to insert, if it still fits.  I won't rewrite anything until there is an end, but if I get an end on and still have time, which I am hoping, I will go back and start shaping.

The query also happens this week.  I did not have time/brain to check it out today, but I will do so tomorrow, and then start asking people to critique it for me.  The synopsis will also be written this week.  The first scene will be reviewed and critiqued this week.  Then back to thirteen I go.  I think once I clear thirteen I might try some publishers for variety.  I don't know.

I am liking this NaNo.  I am weirdly active and doing many things at once and yet winning it in just over a week.  I am meeting local writers and participating in a lot of forums and communities during the experience.  I'm also trying to work on shopping a finished manuscript.  And I am not yet an alcoholic and have not had one cigarette.  If I were exercising through this, too, and eating better (am NOT), I would almost be as cool as Barack Obama.

I am not that cool, which is good.  So I'm going to keep sipping on my Fat Tire, thinking about chocolate, and rubbing my buddah belly while I watch the story belly dance into whatever ending it wants, in whatever pattern it cares to employ.

 You suffer this year if you are hoping for a lot of NaNoWriMo entries, because I have been giving most of my energy to the amazonlj community and to a few other forums.  Balancing that out now because I do like a record of it for myself, and I'm realizing it will not be convenient to try to surf back through all the other places later.

Since I now have four days to cover: I have, in fact, been writing quite a bit.  It's rather like 40% of my brain is actively involved in watching news and reading websites and thinking about the election.  I dream about it, too.  If there is a subconscious/dreamworld attack against Obama, I apparently have his back.  Every night I am either walking around as an amazon bodyguard for him or, as was the case last night, working as a staffer defending him against detractors.  If this is actually a real universe, I would like to suggest to Mr. Obama that he is better keeping me as a warrior.  I am not emotionally cool enough to be a staffer.

But while this is going on, I am writing.  I have as of right now, 33,591 words.  I intend to hit the magic "winning" 50k this weekend, though my true goal is to finish the thing during NaNo.  I think I've said that seven or eight times now, but I lose track of where I saw it, and a lot of it is to deflect the stressed-out "OMG, your word count!" said in the tones which hint that somehow there are finite words and I have taken too many for myself.  I am losing patience for that, but thankfully it is thinning.  I know that a lot of it is that some people feel stood up when I can produce 33K in less than a week, but honestly, anybody who wants to compare themselves to me needs to relax.  If you could peek inside my head, you'd see that voracious word count is self-defense.

It is now, more than ever.  I keep getting glimpses at the theme of this one, and while for awhile I wanted to know because not knowing was stressing me out, I'm getting more and more ready to just trust the Fates weaving this one in the cellar.  There are certain songs that seem to crack it open, and already I'm thinking, ouch.

The four-way punch against marriage equality passed on election day is not helping.  That anger and frustration is not going away.  It becomes more palpable all the time as I concede that I apparently will always write more gay characters than straight, though it's not as if they're keeping "my people" from rights, so I don't know.  But the emotion definitely is affecting my writing.  In TEMPLE BOY it's coming through as deeper theme.  TWA set up the concept of waiting for justice, of enduring heartbreak and making it beautiful, and forging your own happy end, but TEMPLE BOY is, I think, settling on the leftover ache TWA left in people.  A sense of looking at the upcoming mountain and realizing not only is it harder work than you think you can do, but it's hard to do when your heart is bleeding.  This story did not start that way, but I think it's becoming that.

I may have broken it by posting that.  It's a sign of how frightened I am of it that I'm risking it.

I don't think, though, that this will be enough.  I'm already preparing myself for the redo of SMALL TOWN BOY to be next.  That will be slower, as that already has a draft.  But I have a terrible feeling I'm going to have plenty of emotional fuel for some time to come.

Non-nanowrimo news: I continue to not work on the query.  My defense this week has been absolute distraction by the election, but Obama reminding me seven or eight times that he is not President until January was a good reality check, and I think I can more successfully close my eyes this weekend.  It helps that whatever bug dragging me down yesterday seems to have abated by and large, and a little sudafed is going to see me right as rain.  

I admit I am starting to realize with greater clarity that I may be embarking on attempts to be published at the hands-down worst time ever.  How many more jobs are going to be lost by the end of the year?  The odds that I might be submitting to people/houses who might evaporate by January 1 seem higher than ever.

I'm also considering submitting straight to houses.  I don't know.  You will notice how bad I have been about submitting to 13 agents.

I have a scene up for critique next Friday, anyway, so in addition to crusing on through TEMPLE BOY I need to re-peek at that one and do the query and synopsis.  I actually do not have a long synopsis.  I seriously need to write one.  

So, the plan for today is give an hour to TWA work, then a half hour to TB, then a half hour of housework and an hour with my daughter.  It is going to be the end of the day very quickly.  However, at 6PM I am going to a write in.  I intend to stay until I pass out or they kick me out.

That is the report.

Less than five minutes left on my "internet break" timer, and then it's back to the novel.  Logged in about 1600 words so far, and feeling good about them.

I don't know when it happened yesterday, but it all sort of knit together.  Very well, I know when it happened: when I went and wrote the opening scene via Charles.  I'm not going to set any bets yet, but this is the first time a first draft of a first scene has some odds of actually remaining the first scene.  And now Madeline and Aurel are struggling through the language barrier that is Etsian and Mantuan while they try to figure out why and how they are stranded in the middle of a desert.  

I had to take a short break to devise a POV break symbol: the one for the last book was the symbol of the androghenie (a group of people in the story); I didn't want to do that again, but I wanted to keep with the theme.  So here's the new one:


And the timer just went, so it's time to go back to the desert.  This guy is going to show up.  His name is Chakide.  It means "weasel."

Yesterday was very much a mixed bag.

There is a version of this behind the curtain which has lots of swearing and weeping and essentially less control than I will ever put on the main version of this or any blog, but the short version is that I wrote like a fiend, and it was actually not very much of it crap, and then I got a rejection from an agent on TWA.  Again.  It was one I didn't have hope for anyway, but it served as a lightning rod for a lot of angst and fear, and I uncovered all sorts of emotions that I didn't like about myself at all, and yet, there they were.  So I have been working through them.  I took steps and signed up for a critique from probably the best and therefore scariest set of people I could find, and I made foray #1 into what I am thinking of as an "honest query."  It was absolutely a disaster, which led to more weeping, but it was work towards moving forward, so, there you go.  I also developed what I am thinking of as My Mad Plan, which is to submit to a publisher--skipping agents entirely--whom I truly adore but whose publishing house probably would not have me, while also still preparing the traditional route.  And, after much thought, I'm going to push myself to keep doing this all through NaNo, and when I get to December, anytime I am actively querying I will make sure I am also very, very actively writing something new that I enjoy.  Because submission, I am learning, will eat your soul, then spit it back out and leer at you as it asks you to do it again.

But, NaNo.

My goal for the day is to reach 22k.  That may be a bit high, which only makes me love it more.  I think I have failed to say that you can follow me here: Navigate on those tabs to see stats, excerpts, and other things.  It does not rotate my writing buddies for some reason and just shows the first few, most of whom are not writing this year, which is a bummer because I want to see everybody's tally climbing higher.  (I also have that link on the sidebar--fairly sure I linked it to my page.)

Today is also, you may have heard THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVER, and despite all my efforts to be cool, I have my heart set and will be despondent if Obama loses.  I am probably going to have to break several mugs, which means I will need to raid the garage sale stuff or go buy some from Goodwill.  But hopefully it will not come to that.  I am still going to write though.  20k for sure.  22 if I can manage it.

Central Iowa's NaNo, by the way, is KICKING TAIL ON THE REST OF THE STATE for collective word count.  I think even if you combine the rest of them into one region we still rule the school.  I still maintain it has something to do with living in STORY COUNTY, but it is also because we are all so very cool.

And this concludes the update for Day Three.

I love him.  I love him, love him, love him, love him.

I wrote him for the first time today.  He opens the story.  He is as Charlesish as ever.  He is wonderful.  He flew out of me like breath from my lungs.

He nearly destroyed the world with a flan, then saved it with a kiss.

I have 17,123 words on day three.

I love Charles. I love, love, love, love Charles.