Writing

Chugging right along. I haven't written as much in Red Rocks as I had hoped to by now, but it's still coming right along. About 27,000 words. I revised another 60 pages of Human Dignity last night. I would've finished going through Part One, but someone decided it would be fun to repeatedly bang a sledgehammer against my sinuses. So I went to bed a little early. And Velorin worldbuilding is progressing rather well. I increased my language vocabulary, came up with some planetary mechanics (see yesterday's post), and started writing the backstory of my prime baddie. She's a fun one.

I've realized through these three projects that I'm very much an organic writer. (Gah, I hate how the word "organic" has been tossed around without any real idea as to what it means.) But, near as I can tell, being an organic writer means that you don't do a whole lot of planning. You just kind of start writing an idea and see where it takes you. I do plan, outline, research, and sketch a little before I start writing something, but it's very basic compared to what most people do. For example, I have the basic plot of Red Rocks sketched somewhere in the notebook devoted to this project. But I have no real idea how I'm going to get there. My characters have been doing a great job of keeping me in the loop as I write. But they're not telling me everything. Especially those damn heroes. The villains can't help themselves and blab motivations and plot twists that the rest of the group would berate them for if they ever found out somebody was spilling the beans. I would love to be in on my characters' secret meetings. Where they all get together and decide who's going to do what, who loves who, who hates who, who really just wants to be left alone, and so on. But they find a nice quiet corner of my brain (didn't know I had one), set up a wall of blankets, pin on a poorly written sign (secrut metin: no writurs), and make someone stand guard in case I stumble onto what they're doing. The guard's really good, too. He usually distracts me by saying, "Kellie, look at that fascinating new story idea over there!" And off I go. I wonder if my muse is in on this too. Or if she's just as pissed at my characters and sneaks into their meetings complaining about all the extra work they're making her do.

This organic writer business is going to be a problem. I was hoping to write a proposal of Strings of Betrayal for a possible submission to Luna by mid-September (end of the year at the latest - do you like how I just flexed that personal deadline?). But writing a proposal requires that I know a lot more about a project than I usually do before I start writing. Like, I don't know, how the book's going to end, what the characters are going to do. I really need to have a chat with my muse and characters. Some things have got to change.