I spent more time yesterday thinking about characters. Not about how they're the ones in control, but on how different they are from one another in small things. For example, Cai said "crap" all the time. I'm guessing she picked up the habit from Jake, but that she couldn't quite bring herself to say "shit" like he does and so cleaned it up a little. I don't think Mika says "crap" even one time.
Then there's Jake and Conor. Jake swore--a lot. All the time and had to struggle not to use the harder language around Cai. Conor doesn't swear too much, but when he's mad enough, he will drop the F word without any concern over Mika's presence. I've actually had to clean up his language for the book in a couple of places in TACV. I figure that my publisher is only going to let me use the F word and one other word once, or if I'm lucky, twice, and there's one spot I really want it used, so I've taken it out of the other two or three places.
The other thing I spent a little time thinking about yesterday was if I was going to hear snide comments about writing two Asian heroines in a row. That's not quite the way it really worked. After I finished TPOT, I wrote two other proposals and revised a third one and none of these three stories had a heroine of Asian descent. It just so happened that the fourth proposal I worked on--the one with the half Japanese heroine--is the one that sold next. I finally decided that I'm not going to worry about it now. I've got enough other stuff to worry over. And if I have characters who come in and are of different ethnicities, I see no reason not to write them that way. It's part of who they are.
You're probably wondering why I spent so much time thinking about stuff like this when I should have been writing. When you're staring at a blank page, there's lots of time to think. :-( Despite taking the day off from work, I got nothing down until about 6:30 at night. In the next 3 hours, I wrote about 8 pages, but it was that nocturnal thing again. For a while, I was lamenting wasting vacation time when nothing got done, then I decided if I'd been up since 4am and had worked all day, there would have been no way to write 8 pages before my brain turned off, so the vacation hours weren't wasted.
I did some more thinking about the scene I'm working on while I was lying in bed. (Yes, definitely a day for thinking. ;-) I need to make a couple of changes to the end of the page where I left off and I figured out that Mika is having an emotional as well as physical reaction, so I need to add that.
My plan is to finish this book today (not counting epilogue and prologue) even if it kills me. And considering how hard the writing came for so long yesterday, it just might. ;-)
On another note, my Boomtown Rats' CDs arrived yesterday. I listened to "The Fine Art of Surfacing" after I finished writing for the day. I totally love that CD. I'm going to have to bring it in the car when I go to work on Monday so I can listen on my ride home. I don't like noise in the mornings--of any kind--and will not be playing it while I drive on snow impacted roads to work. (Yes, my misery continues. It's supposed to start snowing tonight and snow all day on Sunday.)
MN Weather Report: 15 degrees. Wind Chill: 4 degrees.
