Bleed (aka the novella formerly known as Cold Cases)

Deathmarch, Day Ten

PETERMBALL Works in Progress , ,

And lo, what a difference a few days makes.

Today I have run out of steam on the deathmarch. My eyes hurt, my brain hurts, I’m altogether skittish about going near the keyboard. The very act of writing a blogpost seems daunting, since it’s the thing between me and getting back to work. If I don’t blog, I don’t march. If I don’t march, I don’t have to face the fact that the next stage of rewriting is upon us. If that happens, I don’t have to solve the next plot-problem.

This death march is all about solving plot problems, figuring out how to make the novella work on a really basic level. It’s not one of my strong points. It makes me stubborn. I hate having to figure out what needs to be done next. The only upside is that I’ve finally realised that this is what I’m doing when I find myself flailing about, so I can at least recognise my hesitance as “I’m stuck, and something needs fixing.”

So now I go to figure that out.

Novella Deathmarch, Day Four

PETERMBALL Works in Progress ,

Today the novella did good things. Less of the Death side of the equation and more of the March. The sub-conscious writing muscles have remembered how to work and the story starts chugging along under its own steam. I can look of the current draft and see the shape of the book it’s going to be when it’s done, which is something I hadn’t managed prior to starting the deathmarch. The voice started settling down. I remembered how to take stuff out of a rewrite, especially when it belongs in another scene. All is well with the world.

The real measure that the Deathmarch is working, though, comes when I can look forward to the next writing project without immediately running off to work on it instead. When I’m avoiding a project, I’m all about the distraction. Today I’m all about the focus, and hopefully I can start transitioning to normal sleeping patterns instead of maintaining the manic manic working-to-five-in-the-morning approach that defined the first three days. Not that I’m against working ’til five in the morning, but the rewrites tend to make camp in my brain and keep me awake for a few hours after that. I’m starting to miss sleep, just a little.

Still, Deathmarch FTW. It’s nice to remember how this writing thing goes.

Chaos, Chili-Carrot Cake, & The Twelve Day Deathmarch

PETERMBALL Works in Progress , , , ,

On Friday I sat in the middle of messy apartment, contemplating the messy state of affairs, thinking a series of messy thoughts. And after a while I thought, well, enough of that then, it’s kind of a drag, and instituted a plan to cut through the chaos and get stuff done. I spent Saturday and today cleaning rooms, ordering bookshelves, and taking care of long-neglected tasks. Not enough that I’ve instituted order across the flat, but enough to give me a foothold. That was phase one.

Phase two requires me to finish the rewrites on Cold Cases*. I have twelve days. That’s a chapter’s worth of rewrites per day, about two-and-half to three thousand words. If I succeed, I will allow myself to have a guilt-free weekend of not-writing in May**. I’ve prepared for this task by making a weeks worth of meals in advance, stocking up on coffee, and dancing around the house to Goldfrapp***.

To aid me in this task****, I also baked a cake. Specifically, a chilli-carrot cake. It looks something like this:

Not an elegant looking cake, I’ll grant you that, but tasty. Tasty wins out over elegance in my world, especially since I’m the one who’ll be eating it. It also brings the sum total of cakes I know how to cook up to two (the other being a variant on Sri-Lankan Love Cake served with ginger cream, which I can no longer make because I no longer own a food processor and refuse to crush cashews by hand).

Since I twittered about it’s making and some people asked about it, I give you the recipe for the snack du-jour of this twelve-day rewriting death march.

Chili Carrot Cake

Stage One Ingredients
3/4 cup of vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 cups finely grated carrot (or something close to it; I generally use two largish carrots and figure that’ll be close enough)

Stage Two Ingredients
2 cups of flour (probably should be sifted, but I can rarely be arsed)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon of salt
2 or 3 teaspoons of minced chili (this makes for a mildly spiced carrot cake; I’m tempted to go a little stronger next time)
1 or 2 teaspoons of minced ginger

Method
– Bung all the stage one ingredients in a bowl and beat them like they owe you money.
– Add all the stage two ingredients. Mix until the whole thing looks like cake batter.
– Pour into a cake tin
– Put the cake tin in an oven pre-heated to 180 c for about an hour

I tend to cut bread-sized slices off mine and butter them before serving, but I suppose you could dust it with caster sugar or something if you were so inclined (which is what was recommended for the recipe I adapted this from, but that cake used cinnamon and nutmeg where the chili goes, so your mileage may vary). My only real note to all that is this: if you’re going to hand-grate carrot, remembering that it’s a pain to clean off the grater afterwards.

* Also known as the project that’s causing me the most guilt because it’s not yet done.
**Well, probably not since I never allow myself a guilt-free weekend of not-writing, but I’ll try.
*** Dancing badly, but dancing.
**** Finishing Cold Cases, not dancing to Goldfrapp