I forgot where I left off on Thursday (pre-retreat), though I only had a few hundred words, but today I'm sitting at 3214 words completed since then. Almost 1900 of them were today. My brain is tired. My book is nearly done. I'd have never gotten here without Sven, or at least not so soon. I clearly need deadlines and pressure. How depressing.
I picked a picture of a grindstone for this post because that's what today is: back to the grindstone. After a weekend of fun and games, I must return my mind to a working state. I'm Sweating with Sven, after all. I don't even know my Th-Sun word totals, but they aren't much. I'd be surprised if I broke 600. (I'll figure it out later today.)
I took the laptop to TN, and I even used it a few times. I did spend about an hour and a half writing in the two days I was there. Not enough to brag about, really.
And I did solve, I think, a plot issue while lying facedown on the massage table and breathing in lavender while a tiny woman with really strong hands kneaded my back. 🙂
The coup de grace of the entire retreat was the Murder Mystery Party on Saturday night. Everyone did a fabulous job, though the coordinator did the best job of all in arranging everything. The costumes were elaborate, the hijinks hilarious, and the mystery was good. I have pictures that I'll upload eventually. 🙂
My mind is rested, but also weird. I dreamed last night that my husband decided to write a horror story, had 50 pages done, and somehow got a passel of agents interested (because I was trying to get them interested in me and one saw his stuff instead, LOL).
After a major bidding war, my husband (the non-writer), got offered a $5.6 million advance on the strength of 50 pages. Everyone asked me if I was jealous, but I said hell no I wasn't jealous, just envious, and besides, I'd get the benefits of the money anyway. (I ain't stupid.) 😉
When I told the hubby my dream this morning, he started plotting. I told him that all I knew about his story was that it had a werewolf in it. He thought that wasn't very interesting and had been done before. I told him it's the twist you put on a story that makes it unique.
Hubby, being a smarty pants, has decided to pen GayoWolf, about a decorator who goes to Sweden for furniture and gets attacked by a werewolf. The man ain't right. I'm afraid my dream was just a dream after all. No multi-million dollar advance in the Harris future, it seems. 🙁
Has your mind ever come up with weird dreams after a period of relaxation? I don't know where that came from, believe me. Partly, I'm sure it's a fear that I'm not a good writer and that I won't succeed. Partly, my mind was keeping the success close to home in giving it to my husband. And the werewolf had to be a manifestation of my frustration with the paranormal market (and the approach of Halloween).
But most importantly, do you think GayoWolf has a chance? 😉
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I'm off for a fabulous weekend of talking, eating, and drinking with my fellow Heart of Dixie chapter members. We've rented an inn in the Tennessee mountains and today we descend en masse to take over the place.
Tonight is fun and games, tomorrow I get a table massage, and tomorrow night is our 1920s themed Murder Mystery Dinner party. I'm playing a gambler, which isn't nearly as exciting as being a flapper, but that's okay. I'm a terrible actress no matter which way you cut it. 🙂
Lessee, Wednesday, I wrote 1377 words. Yesterday, not so good. Too much washing and packing to do. 🙁 I only got 497 words done. I'm not sure how today, or this weekend, will pan out. I'm taking the laptop, but just look at that picture. Do you really think I'm going to get anything done? 🙂
See y'all on Monday!
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If you still lament the exit of Miss Snark from the cyber world, maybe Jessica Faust over at Bookends LLC can soothe your wounded soul. Jessica is doing a perfecting your pitch critique that just started today. Unlike Miss Snark, she won't do 500 of them, but they are a great learning opportunity, especially when you see how downright pedestrian some entries can be. If you have a great story, but you don't know how to convey that in a pitch, how the heck will you ever get anybody to look at your work?
Edited to add: There are more query/pitch links here today on Diana Peterfreund's excellent blog. She even has a link to a site where paranormal authors are posting the queries that worked for them in getting their agent or selling their book. The actual queries, with comments by the author about why he or she wrote the query the way they did. Hmm, must be query season…. 🙂
I didn't anticipate writing over the weekend, because it's difficult to do so when the hubby is home (simply because I don't want to ignore the man who goes to a job every day and lets me stay home to pursue this dream of mine), but I did write on Sunday because he wanted to play with the computer.
Sun = 926
Mon = 1435
Tue = 863
So I've written 3224 words in three days (haven't done today's words yet)**. I think I'm on target (though my goal was 1285 a day) because this feels right for the story. I'm finally coming to the end of this thing, and I would not have done that if I hadn't been Sweating with Sven, I guarantee it. 🙂
This weekend will present challenges because I'm off to my Heart of Dixie chapter retreat in Tennessee. I'm taking the laptop, and I'll try my darndest to work, but who can resist the lure of friends, fun, and margaritas? 🙂
**It's Linda Howard's fault I haven't started today's writing yet. Yesterday, I received Mackenzie's Legacy from Amazon (featuring Mackenzie's Mountain and Mackenzie's Mission). Yes, I'm like the only romance reader on the planet who hadn't read Mackenzie's Mountain, or any of the Mackenzie stories, yet. This morning, when hubby left for work, I decided to crawl back in bed with the book — just to get a nice start on the morning since it was raining and chilly and I didn't want to get out of bed yet. Big mistake. I didn't finish, though I wanted to (less than 100 pages to go of Mountain), but I had to finally drag myself out of bed and to the computer or I'd have spent the whole darn day reading. Wonderful story, great characters. And, as my CP would say, not an explosion or dead body in sight. Just great storytelling. We need more of this kind of story!
