Writing up the pitch took a full two hours. Now, though, I have 3000 words of HAWKSPAR awaiting, and I’m excited. Rik and a motley crew of misfits set sail today on a rescue mission that no sane man would touch. That’s the first thousand words.
In the two thousand words after that, the Acolyte Hawkspar becomes the Oracle Hawkspar, poor woman. She’s facing her worst nightmare, and about to discover she didn’t imagine the half of it.
Did 1077 words of vigorous selling on the book I want to do for the pseudonymous project. I’m hoping that my passion for the story will sell it. I think it would be a great book, even though the editor was not enthused when I tossed in the one-word subject.
If I don’t get to do it, I’ll live — but I think it would be a magnificent book.
Shut down completely. The idea of six thousand words today just poleaxed me. At this point, I’ve gotten a couple hundred, and I’m sick to my stomach, and depressed, and stalled.
The writing is simply a writing thing. The depression, however, is a family thing. Ran across pictures on the web of my two nephews, neither of whom I’ve ever met. I am estranged from my family — lost my brother on Thanksgiving Day, 1994, when he made it clear he didn’t believe me about my father and never would, lost the rest of my family sometime before that, when I explained to my mother that I knew my kid was telling me the truth about being molested by his father because I knew I’d been telling the truth when I asked her for help with mine. And she told me that’s how she "knew" my kid was lying — because she knew I was. That was also in 1994. When I talk about the train wreck in my life, that’s the one I’m talking about. My kids and I went through some very bad places that year. I won’t go into detail — what happened to me is something I could have worked out with my father if he’d only admitted it. What happened to my two kids is something their father should have been executed for. He was convicted of felony child abuse and a handful of other crimes, and that was plea-bargained down from much bigger stuff.
There are days now when I don’t think about my parents, my brother or sister, my once-huge extended family that is now scattered or gone. I don’t hate my parents or my brother anymore for what they did to me. But for what they did by walking out of my kids’ lives and taking every relative we ever had with them, and every bit of support that we should have been able to count on. Yeah. I still hate them for that.
But there is pain in knowing that people you loved more than anything for most of your life are going to die without you ever seeing them again. That you have family you’ve never met and will never meet. Most days you carry it and you go on. Some days it blindsides you, and you sit in front of your fucking monitor trying to catch your breath, blinking back tears.
This is apparently going to be one of those days, and the timing sucks.
Done. Going to bed. Will be back at six or so in the morning to do this again.
Compressing it down to one page sharpened it up considerably, helped me weed out things that were secondary, and gave the story a good punch. Am sending it off to my agent now.
I went through the RED GLASS BOX proposal last night and marked the beats that I want to leave in. Today, my job is to cut 1700 words down to 300 and make sure those three hundred give an accurate representation of what I want to do with the book. And have soul.
That’s the tricky part. Since I already have the whole storyline plotted out now, I’m giving myself one hour to do this.
We’re going to contract on pseudonymous book one. But the deadline has changed. It is now MAY 30. Instead of July 31.
Just got 60+ days whacked out of my schedule.
So now I have to look for 60 unused days in the first part of my year.
REVISION MARKS FOR THE PLAN
*//–>Marks indicate places where the schedule has changed. These marks are melodramatic, but I’m in that mood right now.//
Look for number changes with (old number) new number.
*****************
THE NEW New PLAN
*****************
*//–>First, eliminate ALL DAYS OFF between now and MAY 31. Miss one day of writing, and I’m screwed.//
================================
Finish HAWKSPAR and have it in on APRIL (25) 17.
================================
HAWKSPAR PLAN
200,000 words at completion
200 words per page
1000 pages at completion
3000 words per day
67 working days to end of first draft
*//–>DELETE 5 RETHINK DAYS// (10) 5 work days for re-thinking, redirecting
*//–>DELETE 3 REVISION DAYS// (30) 27 days for one-pass revision plus type-in
(107) 99 work days to completion
Actual completion day April (25) 17. No buffer days.
==============================
Finish pseudonymous novel (JULY 31) MAY 30.
==============================
PSEUDONYMOUS NOVEL PLAN
65,000 words
200 words per page
325 pages at completion
*//–>ADD 95 WORDS PER DAY TO WORD COUNT (3000) 3095 words a day
*//–>DELETE 1 DAY FROM FIRST DRAFT// (22) 21 working days to end of first draft
*//–> DELETE 5 RETHINK DAYS// (10) 5 working days for re-thinking, re-directing
*//–> DELETE TWO REVISION DAYS// (20) 18 days for one-pass revision
(52) 44 work days to completion
Completion date if no buffer days used: JUNE 16.
*//–> DELETE ALL BUFFER DAYS// Buffer days: (46) None. (This novel is going to take significant research way outside my usual field. I anticipate needing all of these days.) *//–> TOO BAD. RESEARCH AT BEDTIME.//
*//–>PANT LIKE A CAFFEINATED CHIHUAHUA FOR TWO OR THREE WEEKS. DO NO WORK WHATSOEVER. TRY NOT TO PIDDLE ON THE FLOOR.//
===============================
Skip "C" entirely this year — now is not the time.
===============================
*//–>NO SHIT//
==============================
Finish Next Onyx novel (if contracted) OCT 31.
==============================
ROMANTIC SUSPENSE THRILLER
100,000 words at completion
200 words per page
500 pages at completion
3000 words per day
34 working days to end of first draft
10 work days for re-thinking, redirecting
20 days for one-pass revision plus type-in
64 working days to completion
Completion date if no buffer days used: Oct. 2
Buffer days: 29.
===========================
Consider second pseudonymous novel
for completion around the end of the year.
===========================
PSEUDONYMOUS NOVEL II PLAN
65,000 words
200 words per page
325 pages at completion
3000 words a day
22 working days to end of first draft
10 working days for re-thinking, re-directing
20 days for one-pass revision
51 work days to completion
A smidge over 3000 words for the day, so I hit my goal. I’ll consider printing off a copy of my proposal and looking at that later, but I don’t have to have the finished version until the end of this week at the earliest, and right now, I’m not in the mood to deal with it. The words today were hard.
<SQUEAK>
Rule number one in writing for a living: Things Change. If you want to keep eating, sometimes they change quickly.
Books now comprise 276 working days, up from 251. That’s 88 buffer days, but NONE OF THEM can be front-ended to Hawkspar.
Here’s my new schedule:
=============================
Finish HAWKSPAR and have it in on APRIL 25.
=============================
HAWKSPAR PLAN
200,000 words at completion
200 words per page
1000 pages at completion
3000 words per day
67 working days to end of first draft
10 work days for re-thinking, redirecting
30 days for one-pass revision plus type-in
107 work days to completion
Actual completion day April 25. No buffer days.
========================
Finish pseudonymous novel JULY 31.
========================
PSEUDONYMOUS NOVEL PLAN
65,000 words
200 words per page
325 pages at completion
3000 words a day
22 working days to end of first draft
10 working days for re-thinking, re-directing
20 days for one-pass revision
52 work days to completion
Completion date if no buffer days used: JUNE 16.
Buffer days: 46. (This novel is going to take significant research way outside my usual field. I anticipate needing all of these days.)</li>
===============================
Skip "C" entirely this year — now is not the time.
===============================
Finish Next Onyx novel (if contracted) OCT 31.
ROMANTIC SUSPENSE THRILLER
100,000 words at completion
200 words per page
500 pages at completion
3000 words per day
34 working days to end of first draft
10 work days for re-thinking, redirecting
20 days for one-pass revision plus type-in
64 working days to completion
Completion date if no buffer days used: Oct. 2
Buffer days: 29.
===========================
Consider second pseudonymous novel
for completion around the end of the year.
===========================
PSEUDONYMOUS NOVEL II PLAN
65,000 words
200 words per page
325 pages at completion
3000 words a day
22 working days to end of first draft
10 working days for re-thinking, re-directing
20 days for one-pass revision
51 work days to completion
This includes no buffer days, but at this point, it’s also not contracted yet, and four books away. If I contract for it, I’ll probably see if I can get the due date a week or two into 2006 so I’m not working over Christmas.
One: Three thousand words on HAWKSPAR.
Two: Finish the second draft of the proposal for RED GLASS BOX. Clair won’t be able to look at it until the end of next week, so I have time to refine it, rethink some more, and make sure that it sings.
Three: Finish the article "I Hate Writing Synopses" for the site. I started it last night when I could have been working through Classical Gas, or Moonlight Sonata — my next "big" piece — or any of the graded exercises I’m so cruddy at. Sometimes the brain asks itself a question that is itching to be answered, and the "how DO you explain how to write a synopsis?" question finally needed to be scratched.
I’ve recently had a breakthrough on Classical Gas, incidentally. While I still can’t even hear the theme when I play the two sections spent on the fifth through tenth frets, I’m now at averaging coherent half-speed to three-quarters speed renditions of the rest of the piece. I’m starting to believe I’m going to be able to do this.