Partial Reprieve

The last few days of the month and the first few days of the next month are always busy for me. Comes with being a bookkeeper. So I was prepared to be too busy to work on HM yesterday or today. But the boss is pushing to get a new product tested and out the door so I only have a small fraction of my usual tasks to do today.

That means that I may be able to get through the end of the rewrite. Which will set me up nicely for new pages over the weekend. I'll be busier than usual on Monday, but that's okay. Today I may make my revised NaNoWriMo goal of finishing the rewrite and straightening out the tangles.

Evans Above and Rambling

I finished Evans Above by Rhys Bowen yesterday. I could not find fault with it. The characters are well-drawn and believable. The setting, rural Wales, is unusual and vivid. It had a good plot and the pacing was what a mystery should be.

It's not exactly a cozy, because the protagonist, Evan Evans, is a town constable. But the laid back setting feels like a cozy. One of the reviewers called it Hamish MacBeth in Wales. I would agree.

This is a series I will continue with. There are about 10 Constable Evans mysteries in the series. She (Rhys Bowen is a pseudonym) also has two other series that I might check out.

It gives me hope for the genre. Nancy Atherton, Monica Ferris, Martha Grimes and now Rhys Bowen are all relatively current writers I enjoy. Although Ferris was on the edge with hers. We'll see how the second in the series goes for her.

I typed another 12 pages yesterday, including a new scene. I also have hope for finishing by the next PPWC. Then I may have to try my hand at pitching. I'm not looking forward to that.

Anti-Cyber Monday

Today is supposed to be the big day for shopping online, aka Cyber Monday. The theory is that people get back to work and use the Internet there to do their shopping. I'm not sure I believe that. Most people who are computer savvy have a connection at home where they don't have to worry about their boss catching them. Or I could be wrong.

For me, today is Anti-Cyber Monday. With the exception of updating this blog, I'm disconnecting from the Internet so I can work on HM. Wish me luck.

A Good Walk

Yesterday morning, before I started cooking for Thanksgiving, I went for a walk around the neighborhood. It was well below freezing, but beautiful. Clear blue skies with Canada Geese flying in formation. Neighbors also out walking, smiling and saying, "Good morning."

As I walked I tried to prewrite on HM. I couldn't. "But what's next?" Then I realized that I'm doing a "next" scene right now. It's time to rewrite the rejiggered first part in order to be able to "next". It was a good feeling. Because it means that I feel like HM is now in the right shape. Working on a new scene would, at best, be distracting from the task at hand. At worst, it would be a wasted effort because it might not fit with the newly reformed front part. I'm not so structured that I don't think I could find a new, and improved, tangent while I retype.

I thought I was in a bad place right now with HM. But not so. It's where it needs to be. It was a very good walk.

Scenes

I spent yesterday afternoon listing scenes for HM then arranging and rearranging. It looks like it won't be as spare as I feared for a while. I have a lot going on Sloan and Shannon and a few things with Caleb and Jenny. Instead of introducing a suspect and then dismissing him or her and introducing the next, I have them all jumbled up now.

Overall a productive weekend without gaining any wordcount. I can live with that. For now.

Working For The Weekend

I printed out HM last night on green paper. I'm trying Jenny's method of different colors of paper for different drafts. It's a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. Tomorrow I will pull it apart, rearrange it and start the retyping process. The plan is to do that quickly enough that I can add some more pages before the end of the month.

We usually get an extra day or two around a holiday. The boss likes to have a skeleton crew in case a customer calls in so we to have to alternate. Deb's asking for Wednesday since her sister will be out of town. That will probably mean I get the Monday after Thanksgiving. Either way is nice and gives me an extra day to write. And with the Monday, I won't be worrying about cleaning for company or precooking anything.

Weekends are nice. Long weekends are wonderful. Extra long weekends are heaven.

Tangles

My new subplots and tightening of the timeline, while positive changes, now have me totally confused about which day is which and who was interviewed when. I was going to start another book, but I just can't bring myself to do that before I finish this one. At least a first draft. Writing in circles doesn't appeal to me either. I think I need to stop, print out what I have and get it in order. I will be retyping it in order to keep track of the plot. Then I can continue.

Depending on how long that takes, I may be done with NaNoWriMo for this year. I am more interested in finishing HM and doing it right than in doing it quickly. Even if quickly would have been nice.

Prompt of the Day

We recently 'fell back' an hour. Write about a time you fell back, either physically or emotionally.

Chugging Along

I am making progress on HM. 25 pages so far. While I'm not going any directions I hadn't planned on, I find myself inserting moments between Sloan and the people around him that give more depth to what their relationships are. One I like in particular is between Sloan and his daughter, Shannon. He's remembering a moment with his wife when Shannon was 2 (she's 12 now). Shannon comes in and sees him with tears in his eyes. It's a nice scene--if I do say so myself.

My one concern is that I am moving the plot along very quickly and may end without reaching the page count I was shooting for. Before I get a lot of comments, I realize that the book will be as long as it needs to be. I tend to write sparsely and have to go back and flesh out. Plus it will need to be checked for continuity problems because of the changes I implemented halfway through, which may end up increasing the word count. But I will have to decide if I want to start the second HM book or maybe start D&D or JB (jewelry book--I hate coming up with titles).

Any suggestions? Any that sounded more or less interesting to you? I would guess that the "industry experts" would say to start the second HM because starting one series is hard enough without throwing a second or third. But is it silly to write the second book in a series when you haven't sold the first? I guess I'll just decide when, and if, I get to that point.

Workshop

I didn't want to spend a whole day at a workshop when I could have been writing. Deb talked me into going, though, and I'm glad I did. Although I am now way behind on NaNo goals.

The presenters hit all the ways writers can add tension to their work. All the pieces of writing can be used. Character, setting, pacing, plot all can be places to add tension. The exercises were fun. I got to try to make a fountain pen scary. I'm not sure I succeeded, but it was fun trying.

I will be thinking about what I learned as I churn out pages of HM. The trick will be to not self-edit as I'm working.

Prompt of the Week

I'm stealing from the Scaring Your Readers Workshop that I attended on Saturday.

Think of something you'd never be scared of. Now write a short story making that innocent object scary.

NaNoWriMo

Last year, I had a lot of success starting HM during NaNoWriMo. I hope to be able to use November to finish HM this year. Of course, reading that, I realize how long it's taken me to write my first novel. I hope the second one is faster.

To really do NaNoWriMo, the writer agrees to write 50,000 words in the month of November. That breaks down to 1,666.6666666666 words a day, or about 6-7 pages. I can type about 5 pages an hour. That means if I write for 2 hours a day, I should be able to finish early. "Should" being the operative word.

I will weigh in a few times a week to see where I am. Fingers crossed.