Did It! Whoohoo! Finished! 90,260 and DONE!!!

Oboyoboyoboy! Leaping and frisking and bouncing. I am done! I had a two hour nap after the last post when I felt about as drug out as if I'd rowed across that lake myself. I needed that nap. I laid down, slept deep, woke up, got up, wrote and pounded for about three hours at a thousand words an hour and FINISHED!!! Wheeeee...

I have another one done.

It feels so weird not to have a sequel. This was not a series novel. I may never pick up those characters or that place again. I will have to redraw the cabin layout, or maybe not. I don't know if this is a type of thing that needs a map - though the Malverne Lake map's pretty enough that if I draw in the little trees and stuff it would be worth sticking in. It's cool. It's all good. Most of all, It's Done and I've got another title in my hands.

What to do with it next is rewrite.

Robert A. Sloan, Thrice on a Blue Moon Completely Done
Ari is bouncing too!! >^..^<

Yawn >^..^<

He's sleeping and I feel like it, he's a lot more comfortable right now because I feel as tired as if I spent the whole day hiking or fighting or something physical. Annoying. But I am in spitting distance of the end, 3,083 from the goal. Means the next chapter is the Last Chapter and sews it up nice and they ride off into the sunset or sit by the lake weeping or however it turns out, wham, end is there, will see it when I do. Half thinking of crashing early tonight on a decent word count. 6,000 plus in a day ain't that bad.

Robert the awake and Ari the sensibly sleeping >^..^<

Back in the groove and 1,700 or so into the scene on the lake, which is starting to tie up all the family psychodrama stuff even if a couple of characters are introducing themselves in it. Works for me. I couldn't have killed the little kids anyway if they never showed up on stage. They're at risk but the story's moving forward and I'm now a quarter of the way through what I've got left. I will make my goal! Maybe even today!

Robert and Ari (who is sleeping next to the desk very comfortably in a drift of snowy beige fur...)

Bleah... meowbleah... nothing like that horrible feeling at scene or chapter start when even though you know what the scene's about, you don't have that first line. I need to put down something for a first line and then it'll all come into place.

Worse, it would work so well for the book if I cut it off 6,000 words early and just ended it on "That was the last time Tina Marshall saw her husband or her son." With a paragraph or so about grief and spookiness and how she never forgot them. Tearjerker. MEOW. I don't want that. They don't want that certainly! I even know what's out there and they've got a shot at it, so I need a first line for the next scene if the climactic conflict actually makes it onstage, which it really should.

I'm puttering. I'm blogging. I'm eating because an empty stomach might be the block. That's not that silly because if I'm hungry sometimes it's hard to concentrate. I just need to get back in the zone and the book will fall off the edge of the Done and I'll be very happy and go onward to rewrite my Vision article...

Robert A. Sloan, Thrice on a Blue Moon and
Aristophenes Mr. Robert's Cat Sloan, who's laying on the desk happily watching out the window without a care in the world... >^..^<

There, I got that figured out. I'm still learning this. Wow. 80,395 is today's final wordcount, er, yesterday's total on Thrice on a Blue Moon and I'm less than 10,000 from the end. I could polish this off in one good day if it happens to fall that way. I made a goal last Sunday to try to finish it this week, not wait till the end of the month.

It's hard to stick to that, when I don't know what the weather's going to be like on the night of the 30th when the main event, the final conclusion happens. The magic started on a full moon and it 'll go to another full moon and it'll go back to a quieter more easily hidden level after that. Their lives will never be the same but the world won't notice what happened. I think that's how this one's working however it happens.

Hope everyone had a good holiday, I'm about to ruin the one my characters are having! hehehe - or not - will just have to see but it's gonna be wild!

Robert and Ari... >^..^<

http://www.selfhelpforwriters.com where there's pictures of Ari

My Index Page at AOL

Forward Motion

Nice that the Blogger site has an automatic login feature, I don't have to remember my password. Even though I do and would, since I expect to be using it a lot.

Got somewhere last night on Thrice and am now sitting at 2,270 words in this chapter banging head on keyboard not knowing what the next scene is. I'm fishing. I really need to move time along for these people because... the climax happens at the Blue Moon, Nov. 30, the last full moon of the month.

Okay. I have some idea what's causing the slowdown. I'm describing weather very much like I've got here in suburban New York because they're not that far north of me and visibility, warm or cold, rain or not et cetera is all very much like reality. They're in America and they will have some version of a weird, writerly, fannish Thanksgiving feast possibly with phone calls or visits from relatives. That's really sort of what's got to happen next.

But I'm also stalling because I need to know what the weather is on the last day - unless I really do take a sharp turn away from reality and give them a clear night to make the Blue Moon visible whether it really is or not.

I'm somewhat doing it in real time. Their story is concurrent with mine and just next door, down the road from the Twilight Zone. That's cool. That's a stretch and it's sort of fun but it puts odd constraints on it and part of me wants to work on the sort of thing I'm completely making up and controlling, having to stay closer to the Facts is tough!

My dinner's on the boil for another half hour yet at least, the meat didn't all fit in the pot and neither did the cabbage so half the meat and half the cabbage are sitting in the fridge in zipper bags waiting for it to get done - though I might put the uncooked stuff on the boil and cook that after I eat as that wouldn't be a real bad idea and make the broth very very rich. I started potatoes in another pot, there wasn't room for them in it either! What a feast! (And what smallish stewpot I've got, really want a bigger one sometime)...

Ari went rocketing around the house earlier today, jumping high and throwing things off the desk till I distracted him with his yellow and purple tennis ball. It's a nice one, a little larger than a ping pong ball but fuzzy and solid enough he can hook it with his claws while fighting it, knock it around, jump up and down on it or pick it up in his mouth. He loves that toy. Maybe I'll get him a couple more of them for Yule. He's such a kitten! Bigger than his mum - he's around 18" now from chest to rear and still growing, with two inch wide fluffy feet and an increasingly shaggy pelt and tail. He's very hairy and very large and soft and he's also remarkably athletic even for a cat.

I'm procrastinating... time to find out what they're eating and what's going to show up for it!

robert and ari

Posting again this time without FTP to see what the difference is. >^..^< Ari is still sleeping on the mousepad. He geeks telepathically in his dreams sometimes.

robert

***

That didn't go through but it saved it. Blog while I work! This is great!

2,270 and I managed to describe some of the lakeshore at twilight late in November, complete with local details like crumbling dry stone fences and oak galls on the oak trees. Only to lead from a suspenseful woods walk into a mysterious effect the mists had on Tina's thoughts as she hiked completely around the lake... and came to terms with it, sort of.

This isn't necessarily good for Duncan or Jeff though, we'll have to see what the darker side of the lake's magic does to them and how evil fights back against what that little woods walk managed.

I'm in a good mood and back to working on Thrice on a Blue Moon. The gaps, delays, days without words don't matter as long as it's a good book and done on its deadline.

Ari slept on my foot for a while, warm and solid and loving...

Robert and Ari

I am going to post from here. My cat who's supposed to be the geek around here is sleeping on the mousepad. Ari is a cybercat and he's my chief technical expert. He didn't show me how to send from desktop so blooey - I post in the old fashioned way without looking at code.

I work in words not code.

Ari knows kitten code: here's a sample.
'dsf;;;lkl;k

That's 'feline hypertext transfer somethingorother we forgot but it's not in english anyway' but somehow other cats understand it...

let's see if this worked!

robert and ari