Process Notes

Once more into the breach, dear friends…

PETERMBALL Works in Progress , ,

We’re fighting the doldrums here in the word-mines this week, trying to bully my work ethic into something resembling its normal state after house-guests, cons and the furious rush of getting a new book into existence. Such lapses are not unexpected, but they are unacceptable, and so I’ve deployed the Spokesbear into his advisory position and sat down with my giant to-do list of doom to work out what needs to be done for the rest of September.

And so, September gets declared a win if I achieve the following:

– Write the first 25,000 words of Claw, the third Miriam Aster Novella (This is the only non-negotiable thing on my list at the moment, since it has a deadline of November 15th and I want plenty of time to whip it into shape)
– Revise the first 25,000 words of Black Candy (I tried to get this finished this book before worldcon, but redrafting led me to realise I’d skipped the first act of the story so I wrote that from scratch instead).
– Finish and Submit three new stories (at this point, it’s likely to be: Pickets, Memories and Tethers; the Untitled Egyptian Mummy Story; and The Gallows Magus and the Queen of the Winter Seas)
– Write the first chapter of the untitled project I’m working on with Ben Francisco.
– Finish the crit of a friends novel chapters I’ve been meaning to do for two months now.
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Current Writing Metrics
Consecutive Days Writing (500+ words): 1
New Short Stories Sent Into the Wild: 9/30
Rejections in 2010: 19/100
Claw Word Count (Finish Date: 15th November)

16 Days ’til Worldcon

PETERMBALL Works in Progress ,

And rejection 16 for the year arrived in my inbox this morning, which means there’s an outside chance that I may hit 20 rejections before the end of August.  I like those numbers, . They mean things are starting to pick a bit on the writing front, especially since eleven of this year’s rejections have arrived in the last three months.

And, honestly, I was going to do a longer post on rejection and laziness and how nice it is to have the regular stream of people saying “no, not for us,” amid the occasional “yes, we like, we’ll take it”, but I’ve already wasted my hour of blogging time thinking of the right way to say it. Suffice to say that I love my rejections – they make me want to get back on the computer and belt out a new story – and now I have to go and write a bunch of words on the novel *without deleting old words as I go*. This has been a challenge of late.
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Current Writing Metrics
Consecutive Days Writing (500+ words): 8
New Short Stories Sent Into the Wild: 9/30
Rejections in 2010: 16/100
Black Candy Word Count (Finish Date: 31st August)

Writing Space

PETERMBALL Works in Progress ,

And so I have hit the point where I need to tackle that debacle that is my writing desk, which has been looking like this since I got back from my cat-sitting adventure:

The irony of this is that I rarely spend much time writing at said desk, even when it is cleared off. I can chug along quite happily for weeks, writing in bed and on the couch and at the computer set up on the computer desk. Cleaning off the desk is a mindset thing more than anything else – having the dedicated space where I can retreat where’s there’s no internet or television or, well, sleeping to be done is a large part of doing more than the bare minimum of writing.
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Current Writing Metrics
Consecutive Days Writing (500+ words): 4
New Short Stories Sent Into the Wild: 9/30
Rejections in 2010: 15/100
Black Candy Word Count (Finish Date: 31st August)