I had all kinds of things I thought I'd mention today on the blog--at least I did yesterday--but this morning, my mind is blank. I can mention that I ran to Fed Ex and the WIP is out of my hands and on its way to NYC. Of course, I made the mistake of reading the last few chapters and I found a couple of pages that I wasn't happy with. And of course, it was too late to fix them before my editor sees them. Gah!

So I got back to work from dropping the mss off and I had time left on my lunch so I joined Net Flix. I hardly ever watch movies and I haven't in years. The last movie I saw in the theater was Titanic and that was out in 1997. =8-O My goal is to try to watch a movie a week. Me Time. It might be a little ambitious. I have a really hard time focusing on anything except my writing for a couple of hours straight. First in my queue is Sin City. This is the movie that I almost went to see in the theater, but I was waylaid by the scrapbook store. :-)

I had all kinds of wonderful plans for my afternoon yesterday. I was going to take pictures of my deck for y'all because who wouldn't be dying to see those? ;-) I was going to do productive things that didn't involve writing. Instead, I ended up vegging out in front of the television. :-( I watched a lot of local news, then the Boston/Mets match up. Boston has some dedicated baseball fans. It was fun to see how they appreciate their team and their players. It's not quite the same in MN.

Today, well, maybe today I'll get those pictures taken. Maybe I'll do something besides collapse. Maybe, but it's questionable. I've already overslept this morning. :-(

The WIP is done, printed, wrapped in a Fed Ex envelope and ready to be mailed on my lunch time from the day job! Yea!




I can't believe it's done! I'm two for two on my June deadlines! Whoo hoo!!!!

Maybe now I can get some sleep. I think I've been brain dead for the past month. Maybe longer. Of course, I didn't sleep last night. I was too wound up after I packaged it up so I'm functioning right now on about 2 hours of sleep. And of course, I'm working with a new editor so I'll be sweating what she thinks of the story. Did I mention it here about this WIP ending up darker than I expected? I can worry about that too.

The question now is what do I do with myself now that the book is done? I seriously need some rest before I dive into anything else, so I'm not starting a new project right away. I suppose I could do all the house stuff I'd put off while I was writing. Oh, and I can take pictures of my new deck. I have my camera charged and ready to go.

Speaking of the deck, they did not come out yesterday to pour concrete. They're supposed to be out this morning, which works better since my construction supervisor (AKA my dad) had a lunch yesterday when the guys were supposed to pour.

Anyway, we can all hope I find coherency in the next week or so. I miss it.

I didn't get as much done yesterday as I'd hoped, so I'm really pushed for time today. I spent a lot longer fixing a couple pivotal scenes than I thought I'd have to and didn't get to the foreshadowing that has to be placed earlier in the book for the ending to work. I wish I had another couple of days to polish and tweak, but it needs to go Fed Ex tomorrow in order to make the deadline.

Today they're coming to pour the cement for the deck footings. I hope this means they're putting in the final supports in as well. Right now, I just have temporary supports up and that means no wandering out on the deck just yet. The weather has been perfect here for coffee al fresco too. Oh, well. After I mail this book off and the deck is actually safe to go out on, then I can wander out there. :-)

There hasn't been much else going on aside from trying to finish up this book, so using the theory that less is more, I'm going to end this post and get to work.

I still have some more tweaking to do, and depending on the scene, some of the tweaks are pretty major, but I think I have the heavy work done on the WIP. Yea!

The plan for the day is to finish the rest of the additions/foreshadowing stuff. Then tomorrow, I can read through, polish and cut. I'll also have to look for the words I have a tendency to use over and over. When did "all," "just" and "still" become such problems for me? At least it's easy to do a search since I combined the whole story into one big document.

I wrote a new scene last night to wrap up some of the loose ends. It'll go nearly at the end. I think I'm going to push what was the final scene in chapter 24 into its own chapter.

In Eternal Nights news, I received a couple more great reviews! I haven't had time to add them to the website yet, and I probably won't until after the WIP is finished, but Romantic Times said:

Loosely connected to her first novel, Ravyn's Flight, O'Shea's terrific futuristic thriller packs in large quantities of action and multiple storylines. Besides the protagonists dealing with both current danger and past-life experiences, concurrent storylines involving secondary characters add depth and flesh out the story. A real winner!

And ParaNormal Romance Reviews said:

I read this book in a single day because I simpl[y] couldn't put it down. Patti O'Shea is a unique voice in the genre, and a force to be reckoned with.

How cool is that?

Now I need to get to work. Lots to do!

Three more days to revise the WIP then it goes out the door.

Yesterday I made it up to the beginning of the final fight. You know, the part that needs the most work out of anything in the entire book. Guess what I'll be doing today. ;-) The fight is actually two scenes that straddle a couple of chapters. First scene is in Ryne's POV and the second in Deke's. My goal for the day is to get this fight fixed.

In other revising news, I cut a fairly big section out of a scene because it slowed the momentum and didn't seem to fit. I thought about putting it in somewhere else, but I decided I really didn't need it, so it's gone permanently. It had one of my favorite lines in the entire book. :-( I'd share it here, but it wouldn't be interesting without the explanation of why I like the line so much, and if I explained that, it would give huge spoilers away on the book.

The deck is up on my house! Yea! I'll take pictures as soon as I have some time. Probably after the WIP is mailed to NYC. I'll have to stain the railings--more work--but that's also an after-the-book project. Okay, everything is an after-the-book project. :-)

My feed is apparently down because Bloglines says so. Since a bunch of other Blogspot blogs are down too, I figure Blogger doesn't need me to tell them--even if it hasn't been working since Friday evening.

I think that's it for today. I need to get moving because the earlier I finish the fight, the better. I still have a lot of work I want to get done.

Revision work continues. I made some really good progress yesterday, but I'll probably have to go back and rework part of this one scene again. I can't get it to come out the way I want it, but I figured I'd keep going and come back to it again later. I also have the worst fight scene I've ever written ahead of me and that will probably take a full day's worth of work all on its own. Then there's the scene I think I'm going to add toward the end, so lots of work left to do.

Last night, after I was done revising for the day, I updated my website. Check out the review quotes for Eternal Nights at Patti O'Shea.com

The guy who's supposed to build the deck said he'd be here today (not Saturday), and even thought it's after 9:30, he's still not here. Good grief.

And in the good grief category, I look out my bedroom window yesterday and there's hedge clippings in the back of my yard. Can you believe my neighbors tossed their crap in my yard??? What a pair of jerks. These are the same neighbors who said they didn't want to see any parties at my house. Who the hell are these people? They're not living next to an empty lot anymore so they better adjust and get over it.

For the geeks, WordPerfect has a macro to save the file to the A drive at the same time it's saved to the C drive. This is a really cool feature except that I do not have an A drive. Do any computers still come with a floppy? My jump drive plugs into the USB ports and gets a drive letter based on which port I use so I rewrote the macro. Now it saves to my G drive and my C drive simultaneously. I've never worked a whole lot with macros or writing scripts, but this was painless since I took what they did and fixed it. :-)

I think that's it for today. I need to get to work.

I received an email with a wonderful quote this week.

"How does one become a butterfly?" she asked.

"You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."

~Tina Paulus~

This immediately made me think of writing, although clearly it applies to anything in life that we want to do. It all becomes a question of how badly do you want to do it. Change isn't easy for most people. It's much more comfortable to stay a caterpillar than it is to go through the difficult--and painful--metamorphosis to butterfly.

The reason it made me think of writing is because it takes a lot of dedication to actively seek publication. To make ourselves sit at the keyboard for hours and hours each week in order to get our stories down, to finish one, revise it, polish it, submit it and start the next story requires incredible passion and desire to write. It's so much easier to be a caterpillar.

And the desire to share stories with the world has to remain a passion even after that first sale. If I thought I was dedicated when I wrote Ravyn's Flight and the unpublished second book, I was wrong. In the nearly three years since then, I've learned what dedication really is.

You see, I want to be a butterfly. I want to share my stories and my heroes and heroines with the world. I want people to be touched in some small way by my characters and find them memorable. I want it badly enough to stay inside and work on the laptop even though Minnesota summers are so short and I'd rather be outside. I want it badly enough to push myself into mental and physical exhaustion to make my deadlines.

But I've learned something else. I need to remain balanced. My life can't be all writing and nothing except writing. I used to have all kinds of other interests--I need to rediscover some of them. Like scrapbooking or watching movies. I can't even remember what else I liked to do, but maybe I can discover new stuff. :-)

So that's my new quest--finding balance. After this current project is turned in and I have things finally unpacked and setup in my house, I'm going to explore. Archiver's, a store dedicated to scrapbooking, has some really cool one-day workshops. I'm going to sign up for some. I also want to find a class called Drawing for the Artisically Challenged. :-) I have a huge desire to sketch, but little ability. I decided that doesn't matter. I don't have to be good at art, I just have to have fun!

Before I sold RF, I did a one day workshop to build my own drum. I loved it! I can't make more because I have no place to put them and I really don't need more than one, but there must be other classes like that out there too. I'm going to see if I can't find some of them.

Of course, there's always the chance that I might find it easier to stay a caterpillar in this regard. I'm shy--very shy--interacting with strangers is difficult for me. And I can't take that much time away from writing because I have another book due at the beginning of January. I'm going to try, though. I'm going to try.

Your Quirk Factor: 59%

You're a pretty quirky person, but you're just normal enough to hide it. Congratulations - you've fooled other people into thinking you're just like them!

How Quirky Are You?

I have less than a week now until I have to bundle off the WIP and send it to NYC. Counting today, six working days left.

I have eight chapters left to revise on my heavy run through, then I'd like to run through the entire book again and polish. I've got some days off from work next week, and a lot of work to do, but everything is looking good right now. If I can fix the worst fight scene I've ever written. I'm not looking forward to that at all.

Yesterday was another day free of Dad projects. Yea! And I haven't heard a deck report, but I'm assuming they're going to dig the footings and put it in this weekend which should keep my dad busy while I'm pounding away at the WIP.

Watch. As soon as my deck is finished and my book is turned in, the temperatures and humidity in MN will shoot into the extremely icky range and then I won't want to sit out and enjoy it.

Short post for the day. Sorry. I'm just thrilled I woke up semi-on time today. :-)

Late post today. I overslept so badly that I only had time to shower and run out the door. No coffee. No internet. Not a good start.

I arrived home from work yesterday with great trepidation. After the past few days and my dad's projects at my house, I didn't know what I'd find. Fortunately, he had a lodge meeting yesterday and was unable to undertake any big jobs. Whew! I think he needs more lodge meetings! He should be excited, though, because they delivered the lumber for my deck yesterday, so sometime this week, they'll have to dig the footings because it's supposed to be put together this weekend.

I am excited about the deck! It's going to be so nice after it's built to go out in the morning--probably weekends only--and have coffee out there. Or to sit outside in the afternoons when I get home from work and read. This is all after the WIP is mailed to NYC, of course, but I'm really looking forward to this. Plus, it'll give me access to the backyard without having to walk around the house to get there.

I hit the rougher stuff on the WIP now and I didn't get as much accomplished last night as I was getting done earlier. I knew this would happen, though, so I'm not surprised or disappointed. It didn't help that my insomnia has been wild this week and I keep falling asleep sitting up. :-( Sigh. Hopefully, the extra hour I had this morning will help tonight. :-/

The weird thing is that I have this song going through my head and it's one I haven't heard in a really long time. It makes me wonder if I picked it up while I was sleeping and my alarm was going off. Subliminal? Subconscious? I'd love to know if the radio station played it this morning.

Maia talked to me some more last night while I was trying to fall asleep. She's Ryne's sister. For visitors who don't know, Ryne is the heroine of the WIP and Maia will be the heroine of the next book. I didn't get too much information, but it was helpful stuff for getting a handle on her. Now if only Creed would start talking! That's Maia's hero. I'm not pushing it right now, though, just letting the information come in as it wants to. The focus is on Ryne and Deke right now. I'm taking a few days off from work next week to power through more revisions and actually have some sleep!

Yesterday I get home from work and discover my dad has put down 8 bags of rock in the area between my house and my sidewalk. He needs more, though, because that area is huge and he needs me to drive him to Home Depot right this instant! I have an SUV which means more capacity than his car. All I'm thinking is I have revision work to do and the mss has to be printed in 8 days. Gah! But he wouldn't wait. So I am given no choice except to haul him over there to buy 20 more bags.

I'm not sure why the outside of my house has suddenly become this hot, hot, hot project for him. I'm not sure why he can't wait until the day after I mail in my WIP. I've explained to him over and over and over again that I have a lot of work to do and I can't spend an hour here and an hour there running all over the place. He doesn't get it.

After we get back from our foray, he starts putting down the rock. I felt really weird about him and my mom doing all that work while I was inside working on my revisions, but there was no way that I could afford to spend another couple of hours landscaping. :-( If they could have waited another two weeks... Sigh.

So what is up with my dad? Why this sudden burning desire to do things outside my house NOW? There is no putting him off. I tried that. It's like he's on a mission. And I'm left scratching my head, thinking why now and not the first week in July when I can get away from the keyboard?

I guess I should be thankful I didn't get home from work to find a trench in my backyard!

Despite my father who seems to believe I can finish my WIP in about five minutes, I managed to make it through three more chapters yesterday evening. Now, though, I'm through the relatively easy chapters and I'm into the stuff that's going to need more work.
Please don't let my dad start another project. :-/

Anyone who thought I was kidding yesterday about needing to finish my book so I could supervise my father was wrong. Here's what he's got in mind now. Help. Sigh.

He happened to be at my house on Friday when it was raining so hard and he saw the water ponding in the backyard. I mentioned this a little in Saturday's post. The ponding was about 2/3rds of the way to the fence in back so it's not like the house is in danger or anything. Well, my dad has decided the only way to prevent that from happening is to dig a trench. Yes, I said a trench.

If he could give me a good, solid reason for this, maybe I wouldn't be so reluctant, but I haven't heard anything compelling yet. We get these kinds of long, hard rains maybe once every few years so it's not as if this ponding is ever going to be a regular problem. I'm not sure why he's so set on this idea.

Here's where it gets better. He talked to one of the neighbors and this man agreed, my dad should dig a trench and put a grate over it. Whimper.

I saw my first preview for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie last night. It opens July 7th. It'll be interesting to hear what people think of it. I really liked the first one a lot and I'm hoping this sequel is as good.

And I made it through three more chapters last night. I meant to go to bed early because I fell asleep again sitting up, but I didn't make it and then the insomnia was back anyways. I'm contemplating taking a couple more days off from work. I have to think about it though. They're supposed to deliver the material for my deck this week and I don't know what day the footers are supposed to go in or when they're going to come out and build it. If it's on a day I'm home and trying to work, that might not be too productive for me.

(You would think this deck would keep my dad busy and out of trouble, wouldn't you?)

It happens every book and I'm not sure why. I print the story, I read through it, I mark it up and I completely forget how to revise. It's some weird amnesia because somehow on my other books I managed to find a way to fix things. And of course, it happened to me on this book too. I sat down on Saturday and I realized I don't know how to revise.

After the panic subsides, I decide to tackle it chapter by chapter starting from the beginning. It's logical. And somewhere along the way, it all comes back to me.

That was my weekend. I finished revising 7 chapters, which I didn't think was too bad considering I had to learn how all over again. Of course, these are the chapters that didn't need all that much work. About page 200, things are going to get much more labor intensive so I need to pick up the pace.

In the My Dad is so Funny Category: He bought an extender for my rain gutter because where the down spout was spitting out rain was no good. It was eroding the dirt under my driveway. He bought brown. Why? I have no clue. My house is tan, my trim is white. I saw it and the first thing I asked was, that's the only color they have? It wasn't. It came in white as well. He's not happy about the need to exchange it and clearly it's my fault that he chose brown. "I wish you would come with me," he said. I'm not quite sure why he needs me there. To tell him my house isn't brown? I kind of thought he knew that. ;-)

I sigh. I can't tell you how many times I've had to explain to him that I have deadlines over the past few months. So I said, Dad, I wish I could go with you too, but I can't right now. This is a total lie because I have no interest in picking out gutter extensions, but it made him happy, so it served its purpose. He stopped complaining. :-)

Then came installation. He's examining the spout and I'm standing there watching him. Whoo hoo. The excitement just never stops. It's a good thing I was there, though. He needed the extender to attach higher and he was going to CUT OFF MY SPOUT! Staying admirably calm at the thought of him wrecking my gutters, I suggested that he pull off the elbow spout that attached to the down spout rather than cutting it off. Amazing how well that worked. It got the thing he bought to the correct height and there was even a screw hole in the spout thing that matched the extender he bought.

I better hurry up and finish revising my book so I can supervise him more closely. Gah! I'm just glad this was a weekend project and not something he decided to do while I was at work.

I've been trying to find a picture of Ryne's bedroom this morning and I never dreamed it would be so hard! I tried HGTV's website, but nothing there really fit her, although I did find one bedroom that might kind of work. Ryne isn't neutral, but neither is her bedroom ultra-bold. This place is her haven. It has to be relaxing, not fussy, but not cold or boring either. She's not any kind of green on the walls or anything sterile. Neither is her bedroom bold red and icily modern. And she's not dark or heavy when it comes to color or furniture. It's been a bitch because nothing I've seen so far is exactly right. I wish I could find sites that had thousands of 360 degree pictures of rooms. Right now I'm doing a Google Image search and it's not fun.

I did, however, find a design quiz at HGTV that was right on the money for me. The results weren't any big surprise, although the questions were not what I expected when I took the quiz!

If it's new, it's you. No overstuffed chairs or anything that could be described as froufrou! You're drawn to clean lines and a minimalist palette (think black, white, neutrals and a few bold colors that "pop" against that background--like orange, red or turquoise). You like your patterns graphic and your buildings industrial. The older furnishings you enjoy are mid-century modern or stark Asian or African pieces without any embellishments.

According to the results, these styles fit you best: Modern, contemporary, Asian.

If y'all have seen pictures of my great room in my New House Pictures, you'll know that's exactly what I did there. Everything is a neutral. Walls are off white, countertops are gray with a pattern in it, wood is stained a light honey-gold color and then I have the accent walls. A brilliant blue that pops. I don't have the rooms pulled together yet, but I have a bright pink vase that's about 2 feet high in the corner against the blue wall. I plan to put a bright orange silk sunflower in there. I was kind of amazed how dead-on this quiz was about my style. :-)

Worked on revisions yesterday, but it was hard getting my head back into this story after being away from it for several weeks. I kept fighting the need to get up and wander. I'm hoping my brain finds it easier to settle in today.

I almost forgot to blog this morning. Actually, it wasn't that I forgot, it's more like I thought I'd already done it and then realized that I hadn't.

The reason why I almost forgot was my quest for shampoo. My stylist got me hooked on Alterna hair care products and then the salon stopped selling them. That means a trip online to find them. The first time I ordered from a seller on Amazon, one who ended up getting really bad ratings although I didn't have a problem with them. Of course, I also ordered a fortune in product so maybe they were extra careful with me. Now I'm almost out of shampoo and this seller is no longer on Amazon. Which I guess is just as well since they had such lousy reviews.

The quest for a new seller begins, but I wanted one that was carrying all the stuff I wanted to order and there wasn't one. Sigh. The problem is that I don't want to buy the 12 oz size, I want the big 32 oz size because I hate having to order constantly. Next I searched for what I wanted online and turned up a ton of sellers, none of which I could be sure of since they're unknown to me. I even tried eBay, but the shipping costs were ridiculous! $10 plus $2 insurance and the cost was $1 cheaper than retail. I don't think so.

I finally found a salon in Peru, IL that carried everything I wanted in the size I wanted it in, plus had free shipping. Couldn't find a review on them either, but I took the chance because I have relatives who live in Peru and I figured if worse came to worse, I could ask them to swing by the salon and get my money back or my product. I also--for good or for ill--tend to put more stock in the integrity of small businesses in the Midwest. We'll see what happens in the next week or ten days.

I officially moved the pictures of Kimi and Nic from my Characters To Be Written/Working On page to my Characters Done page! Yea! I know it's silly, but it's kind of a tradition for me now and signifies that a book is done. Of course, there'll be revisions, but the big work is done. Now if I could just move Ryne and Deke. ;-)

Speaking of Ryne and Deke, the second half of the WIP is as uneven as I feared. The transitions are very rough and that's going to require work. There are also paragraphs that come out of nowhere. I know what they're about (luckily I remember), but no reader will be able to follow my train of thought. I guess this kind of ties into transitions as well, but I don't consider it that way because the problem is that there is NO transition. :-) I'm almost done reading now--just another 50 pages--and I'll start working on revisions. First half shouldn't be too bad, second half is going to be a bitch. I've got a lot of work to do.

Rained like mad here yesterday, we even had hail. I had a small lake in my backyard and those helicopter seeds from the tree in my yard plugged up part of my gutter even though I have that grate on top of them. My dad wanted to go out on a ladder in the rain. Sigh. I talked him out of that. He was over working on my cabinet for the computer room. He got a lot done too.

I have to get moving since the Quest for Shampoo ended up taking much longer than I'd planned.

I'm about at the halfway mark on my read through of the WIP. So far, it's not too bad. There's a scene where I want to punch up the emotion and fix the fight part and a couple of paragraphs in one chapter that need to come earlier, but overall, nothing too difficult to fix. So far. I know there are at least two plot holes in the second half waiting for me.

As I was writing, I was worrying that the tone wasn't consistent in the book, but I found that was surprisingly cohesive--at least to this point. I'm really hoping that the rest of the story continues to hold together well.

The plan for today is to finish reading the rest of the WIP so that I can spend the whole weekend just revising and not reading.

In other news, we finally got the hot water fixed at work!

I've got the Weather Channel on (what can I say? I'm from MN.) and they're showing a commercial that includes footage of the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie with Johnny Depp. Does anyone know when that's coming out? I'd like to go to a movie after I finish the WIP--I haven't been to the theater since Titanic--and this might be the movie that compels me to break my streak.

I went to bed early last night and I slept--I feel much more human now. I had to give up watching the Cubs game (they're hardly ever on WGN anymore so that was a hardship since it's not like I'll necessarily have another opportunity to see them soon.), but I decided sleep was more important than watching the Cubs lose. Which they did. Sigh. All three of my teams really are awful this year and it can make it painful to watch a game now.

We still have no hot water at work. I can't even believe it, but they are--finally--patching the potholes in the parking lot. Or maybe I should call them craters since they're huge.

Oh! I got stuck in the staff meeting that would not end yesterday. OMG. More than 1.5 hours. Gah! And it was mostly boring stuff from the dog and pony show upper management put on for the mid-level managers. My boss's boss's boss showed up too and sat in on the meeting, so that helped prolong it, I think. I deserve a medal for enduring that marathon.

So I ran over to Fed Ex yesterday and the novella is gone! I love being able to say that even though I know I still have a lot of work left to do to get the WIP out the door too. I just hope I don't see revisions on that thing for at least a month. Fingers crossed!

The novella is revised, printed and ready to be Fed Exed today on lunch. Yea! One deadline met, one to go.

I had yesterday off from work, but despite sleeping in, I still kept dozing off as I tried to write. Um, something tells me I've been pushing my sleep deficit way beyond what my body can handle. If I was writing, I guess I'd understand, but it's the damn insomnia once I try to go to sleep that's the problem. Happened again last night.

Sorry. Anyway printed out the novella, wrote it to disk and forgot to do a cover letter. I'll do that at work today then seal everything up. I also printed out the WIP--all 450 pages of that. Looked like a monster compared to the novella. Have I mentioned I love my laser printer? It's so fast! I started printing after 7pm and I was done by around 8pm and that's with the little tweaky things I did to the 8 chapters I already had marked up on the WIP.

I tried out WordPerfect X3 after the first draft of the novella was written, and so far, I am mostly loving it! I did a document map with select points at start of each chapter and scene. It was so fab to just click on the little markers and go right to that point. I've tried to use this feature in Word before, but it was such a hassle that I gave it right up and went back to my beloved WP (and I am as familiar with Word as I am with WP because of the day job). WP, however, makes document maps as easy as they make everything else. I seriously can't believe anyone uses Word to write. That program can be a royal PITA. Anyway, I need to learn a little more about document maps because I'm sure there are better ways to do some of the things I want to do. One change between X3 and 9 which I do not like is the Quick Correct isn't as smart anymore. For example, if I set it up to always capitalize "Nic" in 9, it would do it even if I typed "Nic's." X3 will not capitalize on the possessive so that means I had to set up a quick correct for that too.

I read through the novella twice yesterday, and overall, I'm happy with the way it turned out. The thing that surprised me most was how clean the first 60 pages were, then I realized that I really was revising as I went, not moving forward until I was happy with how the chapter turned out, so that's probably why those pages needed such little work. The last 25 pages, though, aren't too bad either. I still think the fight scene needs to be punched up a little, but it's not hideous (like it was) and I want to see if I can strengthen the ending of the story and the ending of the epilogue some more. Right now, though, I don't anticipate an ugly day even though I did take time off from work. Fingers crossed that I'm not having exhaustion induced delusions.

So the plan for today: Finish the novella, print it, package it up to mail tomorrow, then print out all 450+ pages of the WIP. I need to get back to work on that ASAP and I have to do a read through and make notes so I know what needs work. Besides the lame fight scenes. :-) Getting this novella more or less done, and having it not turn out horrible, has really lifted some of the pressure off me. I actually slept last night!

While I was sitting in my chair, feet up on the ottoman, reading yesterday, my curtains in the great room fell. Sigh. I was trying to use these plastic things that get wedged between the window frame and the wall instead of drilling holes, but apparently, I am going to need to use permanent hardware. There was just no reason for this thing to collapse the way it did. I tried to put the curtains back up, but the rod was too long and I scratched up my wall so I'm going to ask my dad to help me today. It scared the hell out of me when that rod hit the floor. I think I jumped about a foot. :-) And this is the non-writing highlight of my day. Yes, it is sad.

I'd happy dog dance.

I finished the first draft of the novella last night around 8:15. It was a long day. I started by fixing (I hope) the fight scene in chapter 7. It ended up crossing into chapter 8, which is a good thing, but I'm still worried that it's too short and not very suspenseful. I'm sure the end of chapter 8 needs work too. The epilogue ended up being not quite as short as I'd planned and I'm not sure about the ending there either.

I printed the whole thing out and will read through it today. I realized too, that in order for me to have the thing printed out, packaged and ready to mail on Wednesday, that I have to be done revising it by Tuesday night. Gah! That gives me TWO DAYS! And if you hear an edge of hysteria in my post, that's because there is. :-) Guess I'll be taking tomorrow off from work and putting in some monster hours on this.

It was cold enough that I needed to turn the heat on in the house yesterday. Sigh. I was trying to avoid that, but even socks and a long-sleeve shirt couldn't keep me warm enough. It's supposed to be back around 80 today. Yea! Summer is too short in MN.

The plan yesterday was to finish chapter 7. I thought I'd done it, then I looked at what I had and realized the last 2 pages totally sucked. I cut them. Then I kind of looked at the fight scene as a whole and realized the entire thing was lame--maybe the worst fight scene I've ever written. I've decided it's because I'm mentally exhausted. I've been going at a sprinter's pace through a 40 km run.

I thought about going on ahead to the next chapter and coming back to the fight scene, but decided against it for two reasons. 1. The mental exhaustion isn't going to get any better. 2. I need to know what happens at the end of 7 before I can figure out what happens at the start of 8. It's very frustrating, and of course, I can't afford to take a whole day off to just veg, not right now, even though that's probably what I need most.

Wow, I really have nothing else to say. This is really unusual for me. :-) Guess I'll go do something to help that lame fight scene.

Nearly every morning on my way to work, I pass this man who takes a walk. Usually, he has his dog with him, but not always. He's started to wave to me when I pass him--I guess I'm a regular now--but the thing that I really like about this guy is how he takes care of his dog. Although he should have her on a leash and doesn't, what he does do is stop walking and stand holding on to the dog until I'm past. I like his concern for her.

Yesterday on my way home from work, I saw this big bird flying overhead (I couldn't tell what it was, maybe a duck or a goose?) and a smaller bird was flying with it. At first, I thought they were just flying together, but then I realized the little bird (maybe a crow) was attacking the big bird who was flying evasively to try to elude his pursuer. Sometimes nature isn't a Disney cartoon.

In continuing with my random blog for the day, we haven't had hot water at work for more than two weeks. Some people are saying a month, but with all the vacation time I've taken, I don't know about that. When the machine that prints our paychecks (direct deposit notices) broke, the company sent out an email saying that from now on, we will get our pay stub electronically and that if you wanted a hard copy, you had to write a letter requesting it. A couple of days later, they sent out another letter saying that if you live in a state that allows electronic pay stubs, to not even bother writing the letter because your request for a hard copy will be denied. MN would be one of those states. You gotta love it. Now the joke is that they're not going to bother fixing the boiler for hot water, after all, we don't really need hot water, right?

Continuing with that theme, one of our soap dispensers in the bathroom has been out of soap for weeks, maybe more than a month, and we never get more soap. Hmm. No soap, no hot water--maybe the company is trying to kill us via the spread of germs.

Yes, I am tired and yes, I know that's a pretty lame attempt at humor. I'm leaving it in anyway.

On Thursday, I had the air conditioning going. Friday, when I drove home from work, I had my heater on. It got that cold.

Does anyone remember that comic, Stephen Wright? He just kept making random jokes with no transition between them? That's how I feel this blog post is going this morning.

Finally, for those of you who made it this far and aren't sick of hearing about the writing of the novella yet, I finished a version of chapter 6 that makes me happy enough to move on to the next chapter. It still needs work, but it's okay. Before I quit for the night, I cut everything I'd written in chapter 7 and started over. It was that logistics thing again. Because of the novella being so short, I didn't think I could afford to pick up right after the end of chapter 6 like I was trying to do and then get Nic and Kimi to where they needed to go next. I'm going to start chapter 7 with them almost to the next location that should save pages and keep the story moving.

The goal is to finish chapter 7 today and chapter 8 and the epilogue no later than tomorrow evening. Then, with the first draft done, I can print out and read it as a whole story and see where and what I need to revise. Keep your fingers crossed for me that all goes well. I have to mail this story off no later than Wednesday and sooner is better than later.

Why does the time I spend writing go by so fast and the time I'm at the day job go so slowly? Last night, I was writing--one minute I look at the clock and it's 6pm, the next it's after 9pm. And it literally did feel like only minutes had gone by. Sigh.

Finished the rough version of chapter 6 in the novella yesterday. Today, I'll go through and layer in more emotion with the choreography as well as clean up what's there. This was one of those frustrating scenes where I got a couple of paragraphs down and then couldn't go forward. This time, though, instead of waiting, I went right to the characters. I asked Nic and Kimi if they were both ready to hit the sheets. They were. I asked if I should be in the other POV. Nope. Ran through a couple of other questions before I hit on the right one: Nic, is this how you'd act in bed with Kimi?

His answer was no. I had him hesitating because she's human and he's a demon, and because she's his vishtau mate, he didn't want to risk hurting her. He told me that he's wanted her for 8 months; he's not hesitating. So I cut all but the first paragraph of what I'd already written and started over. That did the trick.

I wish I could write love scenes straight through without always having to go through them a second time to layer in emotion. It seems like the first run always ends up being about 90% choreography and then I have to flesh out everything else on the second run. It's the same with action scenes for me.

I think I forgot to mention that I saw a deer in the yard next door to my house last week while I was writing. I just have sheers over my patio doors, and from where I sit, I see a lot more wildlife outside than I expected in an urban environment. Of course, most of it is birds, which I'm not particularly interested in, but the deer was a surprise.

I finished chapter 5 in the novella yesterday, not just adding in the information I needed that had been cut out of the old version, but also cutting parts of this one somewhat ruthlessly. :-) I'll do more cutting after I finish the complete thing, but this stuff was boring and unnecessary so it went.

I did not finish chapter 6. Instead, I went to bed and actually got something close to 8 hours of sleep for the first time in I don't know how long. It's amazing how much better I feel today. I love sleep!

Of course, now I'll have to work extra hard today, but I think I'll still come out ahead because I won't be writing disjointed sentences and I might actually be able to write faster than I was yesterday afternoon and evening. It was that torturous drag it out one sentence at a time speed and I know it's because of how tired I was.

And one last thing: Dear ESPN: There are more teams in major league baseball than the Yankees and the Red Sox. Please air some of those games.

This is brought on by the fact that last night ESPN was going to broadcast NYY and BOS, but they were rained out. Not to worry, however, they'll bring us tonight's game because no one can bear to miss this match up. Um, sure, maybe if ESPN didn't show them every single time they played each other, it might be interesting. It's long since lost it's allure.

I don't know whether to say I can't believe it's Wednesday already or to say I can't believe it's only Wednesday. As tired as I am, you'd think it was at least Friday. :-(

But despite exhaustion, I'm still capable of obsessive worry. My latest issues: there's too much sex in the novella and not enough suspense, I cut too much story from it, there's not enough action, and gah! the whole story looks like it's going to take place in one night! Who's going to believe the h/h fall in love that fast? Well, okay, Nic's a demon and he's got the vishtau with Kimi, but who's going to believe Kimi falls that fast?

I nearly finished chapter 5, but I didn't read the chapter notes I made until I was nearly done and then I saw the cool idea I had for getting some information out. Okay, I need to cut and do this and it's only two pages or so, not as bad as the other times I've had to cut and restart. So I do what I wanted to do, and before I finish, I realize I need some of the information that I just cut. I consider a cut and paste strategy, but because of the changes I made, that's not going to work. I wanted to finish this last night, but I ran out of time. My lament? If I only had a couple more hours!

But I didn't. It was already 9pm and I was tired. Sigh. Story of my life.

Goal for tonight is to finish chapter 5 and at least get the first draft down of chapter 6. That's all sex and will require layering so I don't know if I'll have enough time to make the second run through to add emotion. Chapter 7 will be the confrontation/climax with the bad guy, then 8 will be the romantic conclusion/wrap up. I plan to squeeze in a short epilogue and I've kind of seen something I want to use for that. I guess I'll know when I get there if it's right or not.

Probably because I never sleep Sunday nights. Somehow, though, I made it through yesterday on 1 hour of sleep. Gah!

Unfortunately, I didn't get too much writing done. It's hard when you're barely coherent and everything you try to write sounds disjointed. :-/ I did finish chapter 4 in the novella. I planned to close out with some fooling around, only the fooling around is way too close to actual sex and it dilutes the upcoming chapter that I've got in mind. That means today I will go and rein Nic and Kimi back in. I think it was out of character for Kimi, though, anyway and that only my exhaustion kept me from realizing it until hours later.

Anyway, I went to bed really early--for me--and got some decent sleep in. Storms woke me up at some hour of the morning, but while I was aware of them, I was too tired to look at the clock and note the time. I'm sure this will be a huge topic of conversation at work today (Minnesotans love to talk about the weather, which I'm sure you've noticed) and I'll find out then. :-)

And I think that wraps up my day. Pretty boring stuff and I didn't even mention the deep papercut I acquired on my thumb. ;-)

I'm late! Huge surprise if I mention I overslept. And my blogging time was taken up by my post over at 2 B Read. This one is mainly geared for writers, although it might be applicable to life in general since the main thrust is pursuing dreams.

Novella update: I did not finish chapter 4 yesterday. :-( I had to write my post for 2 B Read, so I got a late start, then I took a wrong direction and had to cut and then I couldn't figure out how to end the chapter and then it was after 9pm. Of course, as soon as I logged off and went to bed, I wasn't tired anymore (I am now!), but I got the answer to the end of the chapter which will require some more cutting and rewriting today.

I did, however, pass the halfway mark! Yea! I'm on page 41 out of 80.

As I laid there, not sleeping last night, I worked out some more stuff for the novella, so I think I might have a fairly decent idea where I'm going from here on out. Fingers crossed. I need to get this done ASAP so I can go back to the WIP and start revising.

It's all about writing right now.

Yesterday, I was working on the novella, I was on Chapter 3, and I ground to a screeching halt on page 8 in that chapter. I couldn't figure out why, not at first. I read and read the scene a few times before I located the problem. I took a wrong path on page 4 and didn't notice until I got stuck. That meant I had to delete 4 pages and start over from the point where I went astray. Damn it, I hate when that happens.

I did finish the new and improved version of chapter 3 last night and I'll move on to chapter 4 today. Yea! With a little luck, I won't make another error and I'll be able to write more than one chapter today.

The thing that's totally amazing me is how fast my page count is going. There's hardly time for anything! I cut out some character background issue stuff that I'd planned to explore because there's just not room for it. Actually, there's hardly room for the superficial issue I am using and I'm not sure I'm going to need it. I might go back and remove it on revision if it proves as unnecessary as I'm beginning to suspect it will be.

It's been interesting so far and I'm enjoying the learning experience. My biggest concern at this point is making the relationship and the HEA (happily ever after) seem believable. That's been a problem for me as a reader of novellas, which is partly why I rarely read them anymore, but now I have new appreciation for how difficult this job is! I said it before, but it's true, there's just so little room to let the story unfold.

Anyway, I finished with laundry somewhere around 11pm last night and then I was too wound up to sleep. That didn't stop me from waking up before 8am, though, and I still feel tired now even though I finished my coffee a while ago. Sigh.

It was a beautiful morning here when I went out to get the paper. Made me wish I had the deck on my house so I could take a cup of coffee outside and drink it there.

After I posted my blog entry yesterday and logged off the computer, I couldn't move. I kept telling myself I had to move, I had to get ready for work. That didn't help. I ended up calling in and taking a full day of vacation, then I went back to sleep for 3 hours. I woke up feeling much better.

Better enough to actually write without falling asleep sitting up. =8-O I added a 2 page prologue to the novella in the bad guy's POV. I figured it was the only way I was going to get his information in because there was just no way that Kimi or Nic could know some of this stuff. Then I wrote chapter 2. It wasn't easy and I fought it all the way, but I finished it. I now have 22 pages done out of 80. Of course, I have to reread both these pieces and see if they still work today, but I'm hopeful. Now I just have to figure out what the hell to do in chapter 3. :-(

In other news, I upgraded my version of WordPerfect from 9 to X3 (13) and the new version arrived yesterday. After I was done writing for the day, I loaded it and took a look. It's much different than my old 9, so I won't be using it to write until after I finish my two June deadlines. Then I can play around with it and try to learn it. Plus I have my Quick Correct all set up in the old version to match me. The typos I make over and over, capitalizing all my character names, etc.

I think those are the only things of note that I have to say today. I stayed up a little too late last night, but I still had close to 8 hours of sleep. Now it's just a matter of waking up.

First, the good stuff. I have a great review in for Eternal Nights! I do have a couple of others, but they won't be posted online until August so no links to share. This is from Serena at Fallen Angel Reviews. And EN is a recommended read! Cool! Here's my favorite parts:

Eternal Nights is an absolutely amazing read. I was completely enthralled from the beginning of this book until the end.

Now on to novella hell. Sigh.

I've been taking half days off from work, which means I should be ready to write by 11:30 or so. Yesterday, I fell asleep sitting up--again. Woke up just after 2pm. Great. Now I've wasted vacation time with absolutely nothing to show for it.

I finally start writing and I'm struggling all the way. I must have written and rewritten pages half a dozen times. The problem with the chapter continually hit at page 4/5 and I realized late last night what it is. It's boring! So then I had to figure out why it was boring and I've come to the conclusion that it's because I pick up immediately after the close of chapter one and the only thing particularly interesting in that period of time is Nic's arrival. I thought about it some more and today I'm going to try having Kimi return to her apartment before she summons Nic, because then there won't be all this logistical stuff.

If this doesn't work, I'll just bang my head against the wall until I beat some ideas into me. :-)

Anyway, Day 1 of the novella was 10 pages. Day 2 was 4.5, all of which are being scrapped, although I may cull bits and pieces out for use in the new, revised version. I'd say improved, but that's another fingers crossed issue.

I also got lit into by Nic. He said I had him acting wrong, which is entirely possible because last night was the first time he's ever bothered to talk to me. I told him if he didn't like the way I was writing him, perhaps he'd like to get his butt in here and help me. He did pass along some information, like that he's wanted Kimi since he met her and that he's fighting that and it's affecting him, so I've got my fingers crossed that means he's ready to cooperate.

And I've decided to go with Rasputin rather than Svengali. I think there's a more dangerous edge implied with Rasputin and I've decided that Kimi's smart--there's no reason why she couldn't know who this guy is. Maybe, though, I should ask the two engineering interns at work. They're about the right age.

Do I need to mention my mind was racing when I went to bed last night and I didn't sleep again for a while? I didn't think so. I don't know how I can sleep so well sitting up in a chair when I'm trying to work and so poorly at night when I'm in bed trying to sleep.

Sorry, couldn't resist the country music reference and I'm not good at titling anyway, so when that popped in my head, I thought, why not? :-) I did an interview for the RBL Newsletter. I had some really interesting questions and I hope my answers were at least somewhat interesting as well.

I finished chapter 1 in the novella yesterday! Yea! I must be a masochist because I did the math and I'm 12.5% done. :-) I figured 8 chapters of 10 pages each. BTW, if my math is wrong (And there is a reason why I was a journalism major and not a math major), only correct me if I'm farther ahead than I think I am. If I've got less done... Well, ignorance is bliss.

So anyway, I wrote chapter 1 in the novella and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I'm angsting over the close of the chapter, though, and wondering if I should have ended it earlier than I did. I'll confess I like it as is, but I ended after the suspense is finished and then a reader might not keep reading since the fight is over. On the other hand, Kimi is bringing Nic in and he's the hero, so maybe the reader would want to keep going to meet him. I'm mulling, but I'm just going to keep writing. I figure it can all be fixed later if the need arises.

These were hard-fought pages, BTW, but I refused to give up until I finished the chapter. I'm hoping I can get through chapter 2 today, but while I had a vague clue what I wanted to do with chapter 1, I don't even have that much info about 2. I sat down with my notepad and made notes, and there were 4 chapters I had no ideas to write in. Those would be chapters 2-5. :-)

I think I'm rambling now. Sorry. Very tired. I keep falling asleep sitting up and I really never thought I'd ever be that tired.

Oh! BTW, help! Kimi is 20 and the bad guy tried to use mental compulsion on her. It doesn't work and she says something along the lines of: tough luck, Rasputin. But then I started thinking the reference might be esoteric even for an intelligent 20 year old. Someone suggested Svengali, and that's what I'm using for now, but I wondered if there's a popular reference that someone Kimi's age would use? Does anyone know?