Fast Draft

Fast Draft, I LOVE IT!!

And I hate it, but mostly I love it. I started trying the Fast Draft way of turning out a maunscript after seeing info about it on Romance Divas (which btw is a great resource). I am now finishing day six and thought I would dump my totals here for future inspiration.

The goal of Fast Draft is to complete 20 pages of rough manuscript on every day for 2 weeks for a whopping total of 280 pages! So her eis how I've done so far...

Day #1 (9/22) R
Finished 20 pages! Total: 20 I'm off to a bangin' good start. Yippy... 280 pages, here I come!! I did copy/paste a little from my original notes to slip into the right spots. No reason to rewrite what already works well.

Day #2 (9/23) F
Finished 20 pages! Total: 40 Still ontrack but it's getting harder to stay at it as the night creeps in and I have less material to copy/paste from.

Day #3(9/24) Sat
Finished 11 pages... Total:51 (3 pages of a rough draft of The Promise) I got off track today. I helped watch newborn puppies at my parent's house. Unfortunately, my muse stayed home. So when I got home I tried to write it all then and didn't do so well. And speaking of do or rather Dew as in Diet Mountain Dew... My muse won't work unless I have that in great supply. He's such a lush...

Day #4(9/25 Sun

Finished 30 pages! Total: 80!!! I bough dew and made headway by leaps and bounds!

Day #5(9/26)M
Finished 15 pages... Total: 95 Back at work and having a hard time balancing it all. It probably didn't help that I went to work exhausted and came home even worse off. I wanted to go straight to bed but instead banged away at the computer.

Day #6 (9/27)T
Finished 5 pages... Total: 100 This puts me a full 20 pages behind and I don't know if I will be able to reach my goals during a work week. I will keep trying but I will also have to be realisic. I am going to finish out the wee trying for 20 but if I keep falling short, I may adopt a 10 page goal for weekdays. If I do, I will add a week making it 3 weeks to get the rough draft down. The positive of this is that in 6 days I have written 100 pages! That really is a good speed for me. It's not that I write slow, but that I usually bounce and FD forces me to stay on the same ms for 2 weeks.

Day #7 (9/28) W

Finished 20 pages! Total: 120 pages!! Yah! I'm back on track, sort of. Technically I'm a whole day behind, but I did finish my 20 pages for today and maybe, if I get lucky, I can catch back up over the weekend. I reformated to standard new courier 12 and 1 inch margins. That gained me 9 pages. But I am claiming the other eleven. With work, shopping, taking care of the dogs, my parent's anniversary, and my sister-in-law's birthday... I feel very lucky to get that much done.

Day #8 (9/29) R

I finished 2 pages. Total: 122 pages. I have stalled out a bit probably because of time limits. The muse is still there but he's not always "ready to go" at the 5 minutes I have to type. Oh well, I'll keep at it and maybe I'll be able to play catch up over the weekend.

Day #9 (9/30) F

0 pages. Total: 122 Very rough day for FD. I didn't get a single page written in Destiny of the Wolf. I did get a little done in Season of Blood, taking it from 7200 to 8100 words. (almsot 4 pages of edits and additions) It is almost ready to submit to the Halloween Challenge at Midnight Passions. That said, *sigh*, that doesn't count toward FD. So back at it, still behind but still happy that I got this far.

Day #10 (10/1) Sat

Finished 4 pages. Total: 126

Day #11 (10/2) Sun

Finished 8 pages. Total: 134! I'm still way off track but doing a little better.

Day #12 (10/3) M
Day #13 (10/4) T
Day #14 (10/5) W

Surprise! She's a he!

Catalyna, my darling little kitten now needs a new name.

What you thought this would be about what? Well, you're wrong and so was I. I adopted a tiny kitten about a month ago and after many health problems due to being motherless, she finally started doing well. So now I have a 3 month old black manx kitten who answers to Catalyna.

A little about the name... Catalyna is also a blood demon (demoness) from my stories, though she hasn't demanded her own yet. Also have two almaost adult cats named Mychael and Nicholys, also blood demons. Nic is black and Mych is a soft orange tabby. So when the new kittens came along I picked another blood demon name. As a tiny kitten Catalyna appeared to be a girl kitty. It can be hard to tell with a wiggling, scared tiny ball of fur that spits and claws. But I was pretty sure so I gave her the name.

So today while giving her some medicine she rolled over and low and behold... extra bits. So now she needs a he name. I kind of like the idea of a blood demon name and I do have 3 boy demons left to choose from.

Including...
Kybaxian, (Bax), Forbidden Blood, Blood Spawn
Boryn, Season of Blood
Gaybriel

I don't really think any of these fit little bit. After some thought I will have to think of some new options. Actually he brings to mind a different character, Slash (Blood Quest, cameo in Season of Blood, and he wants his own book too... which will probably be titled Slash and Burn). Slash is deffinitely not a blood demon. He is... well maybe I don't want to tell yet. *snicker*

S
writing and working to "Never Again" by Nickelback

Music and the Muse

So here I am sitting an my Mom's computer and thinking... why can't I use this time to write? The answer is something that will seem strange to any who don't write but is quite understandable the rest who are often a slave to their muse's whims. My muse is at times, though fortunately rarely, a temperamental shit.

Being the good daughter I try to be, I offered to watch a newborn litter of pups for mom Mom, so she could get some sleep. I got here around 10:30 or so with plans to watch the babies and type away the time on ma's computer. After all it should make much difference whose computer I'm using, right?

Wrong. It must make all the difference or at least something does. It is now about 1:45 and I haven't written a single word, despite much staring at the screen.

So what is keeping my muse from his typical overbearing ways? I thought a few things that might be the cause.

1) being out of my place: Could this be the problem? Am I limited to where I can write? No, I don't think so. I have at times picked up a scrap of paper and written out a scene or two in some of the oddest place. This seems to be randomly inspired moments but not all that uncommon. But on the other hand I don't seem to be able to write much here at my parent's home... hmm, wonder if there is some deep phychological reason... maybe but I really doubt that I am that deep.

2) distraction: Am I too distracted to work here? Oh yeah, I am very sure this could apply. The tv blares. People actually come in *gasp* without knocking. The phone rings here. How strange is that? On a side note I actually chatted for about 10 minutes with the last telemarketer that called me at home. Oh, and to top it all off her dogs bark different from mine.

3) metaphysical: Okay I'm not even completely sure what all this excuse includes... The only thing that springs to mind is that I seem to have an affinity to water. LOL I am an aquarius! Seriously, when I am having a hard time with an idea in writing or sometimes even dealing with problems in the real world, sometimes it helps me to listen to moving water, or hang out my my koi pond or even just take a long soak in the tub.

4) Music. My muse is very musically inclined. I know this becuase when he came into my life he chose a new kind of music for me and only works when I allow those tunes to play. His particular preference is alternative or hard rock played very loud. Certain characters have developed just from listening to specific songs.

I believe that my muse, temperamental as he may be is affected by all these things. All together making it hopeless to persist in my writing efforts here and now. So to make sure that I am doing something useful, I am adding this entry to the blog... well, it may not be much but at leaast is it writing.

Shannon