I'm not actually done for the day, but I've noticed that Miss Gonzo Cutter has crawled out from under her rock and is butchering my manuscript at present. This morning, my word count looked something like this:



Now, after Miss Gonzo Cutter had her way with a chapter 22, it's looking like this:



It went from 24,530 cut up to 27,030, the most cutting I've done in a single day, including days where I just cut entire pages (which I'm not doing right now). Miss Gonzo Cutter is very irritated with Ms. Sensitive Artist's propensity for rambling and stating the obvious, or worse yet talking about things that don't have any bearing on what's going on at the moment. She's also infuriated that the protagonist keeps talking about what her heart is doing and feels like stabbing Ms. Sensitive Artist in the heart if she sees one more reference to it. It's a good thing that Ms. Sensitive Artist is on sabbatical at present.

And yes, that is Ms. Gonzo Cutter's portrait in the user pic for this post....

Started part 3 yesterday. Progress in continuing along nicely. Still can't seem to hit that magic 77%, so it's looking more like my end total will be about 270k, which puts me at a little less than a third of the way through.

Worked over the weekend, but didn't get quite as much done as I'd hoped to. Jeff's home this week, which means he comes to my office with housecleaning questions while I'm trying to work. I'm really late getting started today, which makes me grumbly (I also slept through the alarm this morning and the kids were nearly late for school.)



Back to work now.

I didn't post progress yesterday due to spending about two hours reading up on the wtf moment that Harlequin pulled the other day by turning themselves into a vanity press (which they still won't acknowledge, insisting it's self-publishing, or maybe they just don't the know the difference and that's why they stepped into such a big pile and can't figure out where the stink's coming from). In a nutshell, Harlequin pranced out a new venture called Harlequin Horizons where writers could pay to publish their books, prices starting at about $600, and for more money, manuscripts would be edited and other junk, and Harlequin or Author Solutions got 50% of your profits. Oh and if you had a spare 20k sitting around, they'd make you a book trailer. Ummm, yeah.... Anyway, what really made is slimy was that Harlequin then turned around and assured its authors that these vanity published books wouldn't be marketed as Harlequin books while speaking out the other side of them mouth and using all sorts of language on their website that would lead anyone to believe that publishing with HH would make them a Harlequin author. And just to be even more slimy and spider-like, they decided to link to this vanity publishing venture on the submission guideline pages of all their imprints and were reworking their basic rejection template to mention HH as an option now that the author has been rejected. So basically funneling their slushpile of aspiring writers to the vanity publisher so they could make money off them. Needless to say, the shit hit the fan after that. RWA removed all Harlequin imprints from their roster of publishers they provide free services to at conferences and books published by Harlequin are no longer eligible for the RWA's awards, like the RITAs. MWA posted a WTF are you doing?!? letter, demanding answers and threatening to withdraw them from their list of eligible publishers, which would also affect Harlequin books' inclusion in the Edgars. Harlequin came crawling back, indignant about the writers organizations not embracing their "new publishing model" but said they would change the name to not include Harlequin, to avoid confusion. But then SFWA polished up its balls and showed them off, declaring that they would not only take them off the list of eligible publishers, but they won't be allowed back until Harlequin discontinues the imprint, and told them that merely changing the name was a nice try, but we're not dumb enough to fall for that. Rah rah rah for the writers organizations! Anyway, if you're interested in see this thing unfold from beginning to end (when it finally comes), this post and the comment thread over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books is a good one to read (though you might want to skip over the Nora Roberts/Zoe Winters back and forth, for it quickly devolves into something embarrassing for both parties and doesn't contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way).

And so, the progress. I decided I wasn't doing the meters in a meaningful way, at least not for me, so I'm changing it up, to see what my percentage head to head is instead of based on my target:



So I've cut approximately 32%, which is actually a tad short of what I need to be cutting to meet my target word count of 267k, which estimates to 33% less than the previous draft. Being off by 1% isn't too bad, but I'm still going to endeavor to make it up.

Sent a short story off to market today, to F&SF. After checking my records, I see that I haven't sent them anything in 2 years and two months. I knew it had been a long time, but I had no idea that it had been that long. Not that I expect to do any better than before, but I do like this story a lot and it had only seen one other market before I put it away for most of the year, trying to decide whether I wanted to tear it apart and rebuild as several different stories. This morning I decided I didn't and so sent it out. Yeah me! This only my 5th submission this last year, so obviously I've been way too busy with the novel and will have to correct that once I get this last draft done.

Now:



Then:



I'm on chapter 14 now, about halfway through.

Not that I have much that's eligible, but since others are posting their lists for reference, I figured I might as well post mine.

"Night Bird Soaring", GUD August 2008 (this one just barely slipped in under the new rules and I'm only mentioning it because it did garner one Nebula recommendation last year.)
"The Place That Makes You Happiest", Paradox #13 Spring 2009
"Ancient Artifacts", Tales of Moreauvia Vol 1, No2

I also discovered a review for "Ancient Artifacts" and it's by far the best review I've ever gotten. It just tickles me! Eneit of LJ wrote:

Ancient Artifacts by TL Morganfield, with its world war two setting and extremely empathetic main character, defies my ability to analyse; I could only react to this incredibly powerful story. It sent chills down my spine, as the author skilfully wove my greatest phobia, and favourite folklore and legends, with subtle subplots, and layering all too human emotions against the careless, even brutal, whims of Gods. This story returned to me frequently weeks after I first read it.

I've really gotten away from posting here and instead have been keeping track of my progress over at FB, but now that I've decided that I wasn't getting enough done fast enough because of my game-playing time over there, I think I should move my progress over to here. I'm taking a complete hiatus from FB gaming while I work on finishing the final edit of this novel, for I made the blown up statement that I could get this done by mid-December for critique, and at my current pace, that was a no-go. So my only gaming distraction now is Beatles Rockband, which at least is mildly creative compared to other games and less violent, so I don't feel too bad chilling with it for an hour a day while I unwind from a day of writing.

I started my final edit back on October 28th and am looking to cut about 80k from the total. How did I get this number? Well, I finished the retype on chapter one and found I was able to easily cut 1300 words just from rewording and cutting the fat. So if I cut that much from each of the 62 chapters, that gives me 80,600 words, which when taken from my initial count of 348k gives me a target total of about 267k. Unfortunately that doesn't split quite in half for books; the first book would estimate in at about 156k while second one would be about 111k, which looks pretty lopsided. But at this point I'm not going to worry about it, nor am I going to attempt to beef up the second half to match. I'd rather be told to add more by an editor than be told it's too long and get rejected. I will work on slimming down the first half as much as I can.

So as of right now, I'm on chapter 13 and my word count looks something like this:



as compared to my old count:



Looks like I'm actually cutting a little more than 1300 per chapter, which is good.

Yes, I started retyping the novel today. Actually, first I made a map of the Valley of Mexico, which took about three hours, with finding a reference, tracing, scanning into paint, outlining in black (and altering the map since the one I traced was of a later time period than my novel and some parts of the lake seem to have changed in 500 years, naturally), and labeling the major cities featured in the book. I'd love to have maps of my three major cities, but I'm afraid my map-making skills just aren't up to that, considering this was a very simplistic map I made today and it took forever to finish. I didn't start working on the actual retype until after 2pm, but managed to get 15 pages done, cutting three from the original. And it snowed all day. The kids get a snow day tomorrow and hopefully can keep each other occupied for most of the day without me having to break up too many squabbles. Hoping to finish retyping chapter 1 tomorrow with a nice chunk of it cut completely.

I love retyping. I know it sounds like a whole lot of work, but I find it much easier to actively rewrite and reconsider everything I've already written when I retype rather than just reread. I cut a lot rereading, but I'm cutting even more retyping, and that's exactly what I need.

Found three contributor's copies of Tales of Moreauvia #2 in my mailbox this afternoon. I'd given up months ago on ever seeing this story come out, but I like it when I'm pleasantly surprised. The story is called "Ancient Artifacts", which is a WWII story featuring my favorite Aztec god. It's not part of my major Aztec mythology series, but rather it's in the same universe as "The Divine Conquest of Mexico" (though it's a bit a misnomer to say that these two aren't part of the same universe as "The Hearts of Men",  "The Jade Bones" and "Love, Blood and Octli", for they were really early attempts at working out that universe. I just ended up changing too much in later stories for them to be considered a part of it.).

On a related note, I managed to get in on the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading at MileHiCon, so that's cool too. If no one shows up for my longer reading tomorrow, then I'll be reading from "The Hearts of Men", but if by chance I do get a small crowd gathered to listen, I'll be reading from "The Jade Bones" at the RFR on Saturday.

My friend and fellow Clarion Westie Dario Ciriello is editing a series of novella anthologies for his new micropublisher Panverse Publishing, and his first one is now available to buy. The print anthology, called Panverse One, contains novellas from Alan Smale, Uncle River, Andrew Tisbert, Reggie Lutz, and Jason K. Chapman. Previews of all 5 novellas are available on the Panverse website.



My other buddy and fellow WIBby Janice Hardy did the fantastic cover design. The anthology is only $14.95 for 300 pages of fantasy and science fiction, so if you're looking for some quality longer fiction, give Panverse a try.

I'm actually on programming at MileHiCon in a couple weekends. I have a reading on Friday and two panels on Saturday, one about using the past to create the future, the other on monsters. I was on a third, with Nancy Kress and Brandon Sanderson about creating characters, but I had to bail on it because it was at the same time as my reading, and the chicken in me didn't feel quite ready to be a panel with luminaries like Kress and Sanderson (I had this kind of "Holy shit! They put me on a panel with Nancy Kress!" moment followed by "Oh man, I'm totally not going to have anything intelligent to say in this and am going to look like a complete loser in front of real pros".). So if you're planning to be at MileHiCon on Friday, my reading is at 4pm, with David Boop, whom I'm looking forward to meeting. I've seen him at the con quite a few times in the previous years and he seems like a really nice guy.

Something strange came up in Google alerts today. Someone has created a journal (?) over at OurStory.com as one "tlmorganfield". So? Well, in all my days of googling "tlmorganfield", it's never brought up any results that weren't me, so I was startled to find this. I'm a bit suspicious of what the place is though, for I feel like I've seen some of these entries somewhere on LJ before, particularly the newest one, though I can't recall where I saw it. But just let me set the record straight: this person isn't me, I'm not into the Furry scene, nor have I ever watched Veronica Mars and I have no opinions about the show. Though of course anyone who reads this journal with any regularity will recognize right away that our blogging style is very, very different. I am tempted to contact the person, just to see if they're really a "TL" though. :-D

I'll give her a link, just for the hell of it: http://ourstory.com/story.html?v=171708

Not that I've really been gone, but today I realized it's been a long time since I've posted anything here on LJ. I've been busy rereading the novel and making notes for the rewrite (and discovered that I have to completely rewrite the end of sections 3 and all of section 4). There's been much distraction for me of late, with family stuff and some health concerns. For just over a week now I've been suffering daily headaches, which has left me quite exhausted and unable to concentrate on working very long. The doctor's given me medicine for migraines, which seems to help at the onset, but doesn't do much to keep them from coming back. This morning I woke with a headache again, but it's gone away on it's own now and hopefully will stay away the rest of the day. I prefer to not take any medicine if I can help it, especially since the medicine makes me drowsy.

Over the weekend I bought the Wii Fit Plus, hoping to get myself a bit more energized and healthier. The Wii believes I should be about 140 pounds, which I've never been close to, not even when I was pregnant, though I'd like to try to get up into the 120's if I can. With my metabolism, muscle is the only way I'll ever get there.

On a positive note, one of the time-wasting games I play over at Facebook has been completely screwed up by the developers, rendering it quite boring, so I've been wasting far less time playing it rather than writing. All the better, I say.

Now I'm off to do my 30 minutes of exercise with the Wii then get to reading. Have a good day, everyone!

I spent most of today putting together the full novel into one document, so I can read it and make little comments in the margins. In the process, I found I had a copy of a chapter that was incomplete on my computer and had to go searching the other computers in the house for it (I knew I'd finished the chapter, but for some reason it never made it off my Mini into my main files.). I read through some of it as I was fixing formatting, and found some parts I thought were really awesome, and some that were...well, it's a good thing this isn't my final draft :-D.

I started reading tonight and decided to keep track of my general impressions of the quality as I went from scene to scene. When my initial reactions to the first couple of scenes to be a bit lukewarm and I wasn't really sure why, I decided it would be useful to look at what I'm doing with each scene in more depth. Today I read a post by fellow LHer gsemones about what he looks for in his own short fiction, the things he considers important, and I thought it quite neat and useful for myself. So I took some of those elements he post about, the ones I consider most important for my own work, and laid them out as a guide for looking at each scene. Here's what I came up with:

Plot: does the scene forward the main plot in some meaningful fashion? Does it contribute to understanding character motivation? Could it be taken out and it wouldn't affect the story?

Characterization: how well are the characters defined? Are they consistent from scene to scene, or, if they are inconsistent, does the plot movement support the inconsistency? Are any of the characters too similar, or too undefined? Do any of the characters bore you?

Dialog: is the dialog believable given the time-setting of the story? Is it too modern? Is it too stilted? Are you using historically appropriate terminology and sayings? Is it inconsistent with the character's age or educational background? Is the dialog between two characters appropriate for their genders/social standing/familial relationship?

Setting: is the setting well-defined? Is it clear within the scene where the people are, or does the scene suffer from "white space"? Do the characters interact with their environment, make it part of the action, or are they just there?

Emotional payoff: does the scene work to evoke an emotional response from the reader? If so, what's that desired emotion? Does the scene evoke emotions in the narrator? If not, have you slipped out of proper POV, creating distance?

POV/voice consistency: is the narrator's voice consistent from scene to scene? Is she seeing/knowing anything she shouldn't given the chosen POV? Does the narrator ever "disappear" in a scene even though she's present?

I'm hoping that analyzing all this stuff will not only help me identify weaknesses (I've already spotted a lack of setting details in my first three scenes, for example), but also help me identify where I can condense and cut. I imagine this will take a long time to do, but I think in the long run it might mean less rewriting before the final draft.

Just typed the words "The End". The beasty is now in first draft form, plopping down on my desk at a whopping 352k words, 1582 pages with 62 chapters. I'm exhausted after the massive writing marathon these last three days trying to get this done, writing about 13k words. I need a nap :-).

My plan right now is to let it sit for a week then do a full read-through, making notes for the rewrite. My goal with draft 2 is to cut at least 35k off the word count, though I'm aiming a bit higher, at 60k.

It's a good thing the weekend's here, because I need it! I think I shall talk Jeff into taking me out to dinner tonight to celebrate.

I've been working quite diligently at the novel the last two days and have done nearly 7k on it. I'm currently working on the big final conflict, which I'm hoping to finish today, then it's just a matter of wrapping things up after that, which shouldn't take more than a chapter (I originally thought it would take two chapters, but I'm integrating some stuff into the final confrontation with Big Bad and so that helps.

Last night I had one of the strangest dreams: I met Harlon Ellison at a convention and he'd read some of my One World stories and really liked them and we carried on a nice discussion about them. It must have been something I ate last night. :-D But my big question is: what is this "new" story of mine that he mentioned and what's it about? Alas, I don't remember.

losing work is a good thing. I'm trying to rewrite what I wrote last Wednesday, and suddenly it completely wandered off what I'd done previously and I found all sorts of neat thematic things to tie together all manner of things (including making a very nice thematic tie to my forthcoming RoF story "The Hearts of Men"), and none of this had been in what I'd lost. Very pleased, and am beginning to suspect that there's nothing that's truly "bad luck", but rather that these tiny disasters happen for good reasons, to move me forward in new directions.

My computer is finally back to its good old self again. Fixed the back up problem--namely uninstall the crap software--, defragged my hard drive, uninstalled a bunch of old programs I don't use anymore, vanquished the duplicate files, and ran a full system virus scan, and now my computer is running like a champ. It was taking about a full minute for Firefox to load up before all this, now it's down to about 5-10 seconds. I'm still having issues with my CPU getting too hot, so I'm going to look into putting an extra fan in my case. But in general, everything is running much better, and I feel much better now that my files are safe. So now I can get back to writing. :-)

Against me getting any writing done, anyway. I mentioned last week having lost some work to a Blue Screen of Death, so I went out and bought an external hard drive to back up all my important files on. The first one I bought crashed my computer 5 times while just trying to install the flippin' software, so I took it back and got a different brand (I ended up with a My Book, which I find works just fine). Then it took most of the weekend to copy the files over, which I found puzzling, but since it was using the usb, I figured that was the reason. It spend another day setting up autosync, and I was even more puzzled that it found still more files to back up!?! It finished up this morning finally and so I sat down to do some writing.

Only to find that the software had made duplicate copies of all my files I'd told it to back up, on my main hard drive rather than on the external. Which means about 3k of mp3s have been duplicated and everything in my My Documents folder. So now I'm going through and deleting all the duplicate files and found the software setting that did this (and yelled at it and turned it off). So instead of writing, I'm deleting files, and I'm not happy about it. I'm in full grump mode.

ETA: actually, the software has so thoroughly pissed me off that I'm deleting everything it did, because it's all bunged up, and I'm uninstalling the software, and I'm going to back up my stuff the old fashion way, with copy and paste through Windows. As much as Windows annoys me, I know this will be mega easier than wading through all the bullshit this Memeo software has put me through, and I know if I leave it on there to continue doing my backups, it will just frick up again.