Category Archives: ON SPEC

Back To Fiction
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29

I’ve had to take a bunch of days off, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

However, when I’ve been up to it, I’ve been working. On Rebel Tales, on NovelWritingSchool.com, and also on fiction.

I was doing pretty well with TalysMana, but my daughter has some scheduling problems right now, so we’re having to put that on hold until she gets her schedule worked out.

Meanwhile, I’m putting together some shortish serial fiction for Rebel Tales. The current piece is Help Wanted, introducing a new heroine in a new SF world. I also want to write some Cadence Drake shorts for Rebel Tales. And I’m considering what I could do in the way of Tonk short stories for Rebel Tales Fantasy–probably not Talyn, probably not Hawkspar.

You can watch the progress on the progress bars to the right.

ADDED LATER: Got 581 words on Help Wanted tonight.

The novel is back on track
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I’m in my second week of getting words on TalysMana every night.

I’ve been tentative about saying anything here: the whole fiction-writing process felt so fragile after the unplanned five-month hiatus—family emergency, moving, family emergency, vertigo-and-migraines.

I’m just starting to feel mostly normal most of the time, and though I’ve been able to pick up where I’d left off with stories in the past, I’d never been away from one so long without doing any other fiction.

But I’ve been making steady progress, and just wanted to breathe my sigh of relief here.

That surprise I promised? TWO surprises.
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That surprise I promised?

There are actually two, though I spent all night working to get everything up and running on both. (And for those who got the e-mail first and discovered you couldn’t post anything, please pretend you didn’t notice that I clearly should not be setting up anything complicated at 3 AM.)

The Rebel Tales community opens today. (And if this is old news to you, my reply is, “But now I’ve fixed the bugs!”)

And the TalysMana Be A Character Contest is finally back on track. You can vote for the character you most want to see in the book, but you only have a week to do it, because I want to get back to writing the story.

“Write A Book With Me” Is Moving
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First, a note. The Write A Book With Me entries are going to be going to the TalysMana weblog after this entry. If you’re playing or following Write A Book With Me, be sure to bookmark the TalysMana weblog now.

Pocket Full Of Words will be going back to the essays, commentary on writing, and other things that I previously had here which have been neglected lately.

For tonight, though…

What Kind Of Day Has It Been

Tonight, Kettan discovered exactly what went wrong in Rengarde. Her actions in the What Is had consequences she didn’t predict…but she hasn’t yet discovered why. That’s tomorrow.

Got 843 words.

If you’re playing, how are your words coming?

The NEW TalysMana Artifact (and Upcoming Contest)
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Yesterday Becky posted her first rough concept sketch for what the Fendle Warrior’s Heart would look like. I meant to come in here last night and post the link, but after writing 4000+ words of lesson, I was just too fried.

Today, though, I wanted to let you know her sketch is up. It’s SO much cooler than anything I was imagining.

And she’s open to comments at this point in the design process, too.

INCIDENTALLY…

I’m going to have a little contest for folks who are reading TalysMana. Becky and I are still working out the details on her end, but from my end, one reader is going to get to be in the book. (Probably to end up dying in some dramatic way…but still.)

If you’ve been dying to die heroically in a novel, make sure you’re signed up to receive the TalysMana chapters. Only story readers will be eligible for the contest, and details will be going out in one of the TalysMana e-mails soon.

A nice little cliffhanger
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12

Since ecto ate my post TWICE now, I’m going to keep this short.

Got a spiffy cliffhanger for TalysMana tonight, wrapped the scene, posted it, and some folks may even receive it yet tonight. Most of you who are up to date will get the latest installment on Friday. For everyone else, it’ll be along in due time.

Will Grey (now playing the part previously played by Bill Hawthorne) is paying off for me. He came through for me tonight, he’s showing me more of who he is, and I like him.

And Kettan made me laugh.

I got some subtle tension into the scene, too. That’s where I’ll be picking up when I start in tomorrow night…with the little thing that went wrong.

If you’re playing WABWM, I hope your story is coming along for you.

Making More Sense of the Story
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I focused on character development in TalysMana tonight, since I was actually giving Will Grey his first real time onstage.

Kettan ended up with a few good moments, too. I’m still not to the big bang for the scene, when Will finds out what Kettan’s been up to.

But he’s going to be smart getting there…and that part of the scene, which I’ll hit tomorrow night, will be a lot of fun.

It’s important to keep asking yourself, “Why would he do that?” about any character while you’re writing him. Your characters with make a lot more sense to the reader and your story if you keep that one question in mind every time you get ready to have a character do something. Saved Kettan from a moment of deep stupitude by asking that just before she was ready to answer a question Will asked her.

For tonight, I got 517 words I like. I’ll take that.

Am a couple thousand words now into Lesson 13 of How To Revise Your Novel. Am dealing with all the issues of revising and tracking conflict that come up as you’re in the process of hacking your first draft to pieces.

This is one of those area’s that can be tricky to work through, and require a lot of effort to get right.

I want to make sure I cover all the possible problems AND the solutions.

It’s an interesting writing night.

How are your words coming?

Pitch-And-Toss Writing
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I threw out 364 words I wrote last week, and wrote 738 new words on TalysMana tonight.

The clue I got while posting my last TalysMana post last week, where I suddenly realized that the story would be more interesting if Bill were present when the next big thing happened, led me to toss everything I’d done on Lightcross, Shadowcross, and redo it.

It paid off. I actually like what I got on the scene—and writing it filled out a couple of neat details of Bill’s personality that made him a smart protagonist, and fit in with who I’d already said he is. And added some good conflict.

Tomorrow I have to see what Kettan does with the situation. But I’m excited to write that.

How are your words coming along?

Lightcross, Shadowcross
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29

Got 364 words on TalysMana tonight. I’m back in Kettan’s point of view, and she’s with Bill (the detective from the Broward County Sheriff’s Department), and in a couple of minutes she’s going to have to figure out a way to politely shoo him out of her apartment, because…well, that’s tomorrow night.

Tonight, though, she was simply wrapping up her sketch of her Kendles under his admiring gaze.

And I find myself wondering…what if she didn’t shoo Bill out of her place? What if he was there when the next big thing happened?

That might be cool. Something to think about for tomorrow.

Finished up Lesson 12 of How To Revise Your Novel . By the time I got to the end of it, I was cringing for my students. I had forgotten how huge the character revision process is. It’s amazing how much of the whole process disappears once you’ve internalized it to the point that it’s second nature. Writing out the steps, I once again remembered what life was like before I internalized the steps.

Ouch.

It was a good writing day.

How about you?