Novella Diary, Claw, Day Sixteen to Twenty

Posting the weekend as a block, since it’s largely dominated by…well, not not-writing, but primarily working on things that were not the novella.

Day Sixteen

Session 16.1 (7:40 AM – 8:04 AM)
Word Count: 567

Wrote a new intro to chapter two. Now I’m going through the existing bits of the chapter to pull them into line with the new storyline. This won’t count as new writing unless I do a significant chunk of new words, rather than sculpting old ones into a new shape.

Day Seventeen and Eighteen

One of the curses of my day-job is the tendency for things-you-do-for-fun and things-you-do-for-work starting to blur together. Technically I wasn’t heading down to the Literati festival on the Gold Coast as a day-job thing, but given the number of genre writers in attendance who were guests at GenreCon and the number of writer-types floating around, it quickly became a weekend of catching up with people and talking shop.

As curses go, it’s a pretty good one. Kind of…pleasant.

But it plays havoc with the writing schedule. I went down to the Gold Coast Friday morning, dropping the inimitable Angela Slatter at Elanora library so she could teach her masterclass. This gave me a chance to hang out with my parents for a stretch (and watch some recent episodes of Doctor Who), but Saturday was a full day of going to panels, nattering over coffee, and dropping people down at the Gold Coast airport.

I got home moderately early, but I also got home exhausted (I’m an introvert; I can function in a crowd, kind of, but too many new people wears me out and I feel the need to nap). I did write things – I had an article due for QWC which I needed to get ready for Monday – but there wasn’t enough gas left in the tank for the novella.

Day Nineteen

Another busy day of writing – prepping the next full-day class for Year of the Author Platform – that didn’t leave enough energy/inclination for working on the novella at the end.

I am now revising my schedule and assuming that end-of-June is looking like the far more likely end-date for Claw.

I’m also learning that I should never use the phrase “May is a relatively free month” ever again.