Yesterday I sat down and wrote 237 words on my Godred story. I know it is not much, just a drop in the bucket, but they were pretty good words, so I am pleased.

Sometimes John and I feel like we are not being as productive as we could be, but I had to give John his props for staying up late on Wednesday to finish some grading. It is a long work day for him, then he came home and graded. He turned the tables on me and complimented me for my blog-writing and said I should try writing for a magazine. I don't know why it touched me the way it did that he said that--it's not like he never compliments me *g*--but it made me feel energized to write, somehow. The little grey cells have really been jumping since then, so I am sitting down to put more words on the page before I lose them.

Ciao!

Just a quick post to say that I've been working on my Godred story. Sometimes I feel like Sisyphus, pushing the same old boulder up the hill, but then sometimes, like today, I feel like I'm actually getting somewhere. It is still not completely right, but I am satisfied enough with it (for now) that I don't foresee myself going back and starting over (again) any time soon.

I have been working on the intro for so long that I can't think of what comes next. I don't think I've worked that out yet. *pokes characters back into brain* "Into the stewpot with you, my lovelies, and don't come out until you know what you are supposed to do next!"

Is that my que?

I'm still here, too. I've been sneaking a peek to see if anything new has been going on, but sadly I have zip to post. I guess it's the guilt factor that's got me hiding.

I've been distracted and not writing. And I don't like it. Work has gotten crazy and there doesn't seem to be enough time in the day to get everything done. I have gone days and days without doing anything for myself.

But I've got 4 days before I have to sit behind a desk (someone else's) again. Maybe I can make some magic...Keep your fingers crossed.

Most of my writing over the last few days has been of the whiny journal variety, so I won't get into it here. I have put a little work into my other blogs today, and I wrote just the *tiniest* amount on my Cinderella story yesterday, but I thought I should at least check in over here to say that I'm still breathing.

Wow, that was lame, but I seem to be good at lame recently.

I'm adding the blog of the Knight Agency to Kee's blogroll below. Romance seems to be big on their list.

I was just reading an article by Elizabeth Bear on revising her novels over at Storytellers Unplugged, and I thought you might appreciate this part, Kee:

"This is the part where it stops being about art or inspiration or even a Puritan work ethic, and becomes about nothing more than sheer bloodymindedness."

She's asking for a post, is she? Well, let's give'r a post.

I have been slacking. But only in my writing, well not really. In writing, I'm a little stuck. Outside of that, I have been busting my butt. Like in getting the little buggers new bedroom set up. Like in working my arms down to nubs cause I'm the only one around that knows how to wield a paint brush or a screwdriver.

So I's tired. And can't think. After one day of being too tired to keep up with the review, I couldn't take it and sat down to at least get something on paper. I wanted to try to do the synopsis.

Which might only be a little less painful than that mammogram. Which I get tomorrow so I really don't know how painful it is, but ya know.

I get the concept of the synopsis, and why it's important, but really. Who thought this stuff up. It's like death to the life of the story. Cause I can't go into all the cool character stuff that I worked so hard on to make it FEEL right. From what I've read, the synopsis is like a book report. As in "What happens in this story to make me want to read it?". Great. Plot stuff. Which is fine. I got plot. I got so much plot, my plot runneth over.

And if I write this synopsis, then the agent's gonna be able to tell if my story falls apart before I say "THE END." Got it. Understand it. Hate it.

Cause why? Cause whiles I tries to get the plot out, I keep getting sidetracked with all the other cool stuff that I just can't hack away. SO I write a little, go back try to hack out the unneeded. Write. Hack. Re-Write. Throw it away. Start over. Hack. And finally end up at stuck.

Then read the blog where someone's looking for a post.

Well, Kee? I thought we might get an update soon... No pressure, though.

I survived my 2 classes with Hannah in tow this morning, so I might actually have the energy to work on Godred some more. I was thinking about it while I was not sleeping last night, so maybe there is something there to actually work on.

It seems that my brain wasn't fully in gear when I cranked out the last bit of Godred. I finally hit on all the things I wanted to *happen* in the opening scene, but I wrote it in 3rd person, and it came out totally flat. *wah!*

So today I sat down and rewrote it in 1st person, and it is finally getting closer to being *right*. To me, at least. I didn't take the time to count words, but I had 84 lines, handwritten.

I have to do some homework for class tomorrow, so I can't push onward for now, but tomorrow after class--look out!

I started the day with a little bookkeeping. I flipped through my two notebooks, one full-sized and one half-sized, and counted up my word-count for last week.

Cinderella story: 173 new words, 77 words of notes
the story known as "Vale": 87 keepable words, 141 rough-draft words
Godred: 398 keepable (woo!) words

For a total of 876 words. Not too bad, considering I also proofread a 27-page article (not double-spaced) last week. I had realized, of course, that I was putting words on the page, but not how many.

Onward and upward!