Total words: 39,936

Pages: 153

Reason for stopping:   Collecting the laundry and getting on with the day

Darling du Jour:       She looked pointedly at my corset. “No one else hates that you’re a girl,” she said. “C’mon, let’s finish getting ready. If Tish is still talking we’ll play Count the Histrionics.”

Fail du Jour: Believing my own fanfiction

Tyop du Jour: “Do you mean like more than once per dya day?” she asked.

Mean Things:  He turns red and stutters. It’s adorable.

Jury-rigging:    Prologue? Interlude? Chapter One? Not sure.

Inspiration du Jour:       My TFF Julia

Misc: I had a few more ideas after finishing the first draft, so I added a few elements. Now I need to print out the draft and start on the edits and notes. Revisions ahoy!

Of course, there’s a lot still to do. But I typed the last words of the novel. The first draft is officially done.

Words written: 2,465

Total words: 36,497.  Enjoy your celebratory beer while you can, O Little Writing Meter Bean. We’re still short 23K words or so before this is officially a novel.

Pages: 148

Reason for stopping:   Fini!

Darling du Jour:  “[Spoiler redacted], I really like you,” I began.

He winced. “Ouch,” he whispered. 

Fail du Jour: No dance practice this morning, and I have a gig tomorrow — yikes! I will have to have some coffee and practice tonight. I was going to just write for an hour, but I was so excited about seeing the finish line, I powered through. So that’s only sort of a fail.

Mean Things:  She had to make the Terrible Choice.

Jury-rigging:    Emotional roulette — they’re reacting to feelings I haven’t mentioned yet. In the Magic of Editing, I’ll need to tweak the immediate reactions and then draw the pathways.

Inspiration du Jour:  Elizabeth Bear

Celebratory music as I type this post: “Halleluja” by Nick Cave

Total words: 36497

Pages: 138

Reason for stopping: Finished the climax, and the carpet cleaners can show up any time after 9. I gotta get this place in order!

Darling du Jour:  I shuddered. Had. “Lisa,” I whispered.

Fail du Jour: Steve had to feed the cats this morning. I was so wrapped up in the scene that 50 minutes past Pill Time (rather than the usual 15) poor Milo was starting to really complain.

Mean Things: She says she believes him.

Jury-rigging:   I’m pretty sure I got the muscles around the carotid right. Pretty sure. Also, I tabled Lynne’s Helpful Text Message for the next book, where it can lead to Something Truly Awful rather than just Extra Suspense that Doesn’t Pan Out.

Inspiration du Jour:  Siri

Misc:  Wonderful flow day. I tweaked what I’d written yesterday to make a scene less awkward, and the words just poured through the keyboard. Also, I freaking LOVE Siri. As I drove to and from work yesterday, I kept having to turn off my audiobooks (Sorry, Jim Butcher — still love ya!) because I was distracted with ideas for The Tease… so I would pull out my iPhone and ask Siri to record my voice memos. Yay for being able to record your ideas and still drive safely. Tomorrow: denoument or bust!

Total words: 34,781

Pages: 132

Reason for stopping:   Writing went well today… so well that I got hungry and really have to motor if I’m going to get in a decent amount of dance practice time.

Darling du Jour:  He knows he doesn’t need to be. 

Fail du Jour: Still don’t know where to put the text message.

Mean Things:  He juggles, and she still can’t turn the brain off.

Jury-rigging:   She sleeps til 12:30 so I have time for the interrogation.

Inspiration du Jour:   August Hoerr

Misc: She has just realized the Awful Truth. I am so close to wrapping this draft up!

Total words: 34,000

Pages: 129

Reason for stopping:   Hit an even 34,000. Was debating finishing Draft 1 today, but I already totally played hooky yesterday, plus losing an entire week of productivity due to LaptopFail on 4-29. Even though I had almost everything backed up, it’s very challenging to get a new computer, get everything restored from backup, discover the stuff that didn’t back up properly, etc.

Anyway. I’m at the very beginning of the Scene That Will Become the Climax, and it’s the first easy writing I’ve had in WEEKS, so I’m pretty stoked.

Darling du Jour:  The surreal tension between exhaustion and anxiety thrummed through my body, as though I were wide awake underwater.

Fail du Jour: #schedulefail

Mean Things:  A very awkward moment by the linen closet.

Jury-rigging:    I made the bacon crispy instead of burning it. I think most guys would forget about the bacon in that situation.

Inspiration du Jour:  My husband.

Words written: 554

Total words: 32,146

Pages: 120

Fail du Jour: For the novel length I need, I really should be at 50K words, which means means I’m missing roughly 18K words of development, description, and subplot from the rest of the text. I did say skeletal, didn’t I?

Tyop du Jour: “why she chsed kissed [spoiler redacted]”

Mean Things:  They found evidence in his coat pocket.

Jury-rigging:    Santiago has a box of Kleenex for her, and important news. He’s very kind.

Inspiration du Jour:   Man Man and Jon Kabat Zinn

Total words:  31,592

Pages: 120

Fail du Jour: Spent 18 minutes pacing the apartment and made my husband a hot cocoa while struggling to figure out why she would stop the car.

Tyop du Jour: waited a fifteen minutes

Mean Things:  He kisses someone else.

Jury-rigging:    I gloss over a lot of rehearsal. In some ways, the book is realistic, because you have to rehears a LOT before you hit the stage — and there’s a lot of action around rehearsal. I also need more things to distinguish Kevin and Jeremy from each other. They talk the same.

Inspiration du Jour:   August Hoerr

Misc: It feels great to be past the halfway point, and great to crank out more than 1K words in a day… except this book feels like a bad rehearsal too! Oh, Awful First Draft. Why can’t you just pour out like the first two novels did?

Well. Because they were crap and I didn’t have the filters I do now. Still, so much of my creative work this month is just pulling teeth! I suppose that’s par for the course at semester’s end, especially when that semester involved three dance intensive weekends. I’m hoping that the 95 issues of The Walking Dead I’ve read since Sunday are going to help replenish the well.

Total words: 30,547

Pages: 88 of 115

Reason for stopping:   Practice! So. Many. Gigs.

Mean things: She wakes up feeling slightly panicked.

Jury-rigging:    I barely hint at where it’s going, and then they wake up together. What is this, an episode of Bones?

Inspiration du Jour:  Nick Cave.

Misc: I have a guilt complex about devoting time to a relationship subplot. The Boyfriend will be important in future books, and he’s a nice interlude from all the grisly scenes. There’s some decent character development here, and having someone for an emotional connection ups the stakes. A character with nothing to lose isn’t very invested in the story. Still — it feels like I’m not moving the story forward when they’re on their dates, and I’m getting twitchy about it.

Easy there, Nikki. You can’t murder someone in every scene.

Total words: 30,123

Pages: 85 of 114

Fail du Jour: We’re still a little in cliche-land. I like the New Boyfriend, but it’s a challenge not to let this get all cliched.

Mean Things:  None. He’s a good guy.

Jury-rigging:   Notes about what they had for dinner and what he’ll tell her tomorrow

Inspiration du Jour:  J.A. Konrath. When I struggle to keep going, I remember his obnoxious encouragement, and keep myself moving.

Mammalian assistance: Grimmy had an existential crisis in the bathroom and cried piteously until I came to pet him. Milo is curiously absent this morning.

I had one of my usual getting-into-the-groove-slowly writing days — that always seems to happen when I have a few days off. I usually write sporadically (if at all) around the end of the term. Fortunately my classes are winding down, and instead of having four at once, I’m currently in two. I’m mostly done with the final project in Research, and over the hurdle for the last one in Interviewing, so the end is within sight.

I have not, however, been eating responsibly. Bad writer! Yes, you write with your mind and creativity and passion and all that — but also, the body. When I have achy joints and low energy from not eating properly, writing feels bad in my body. I need to be better to myself.

However, I had a glorious day off yesterday. I did some yoga, and had a nice long bath with a Lush bath bomb that Absinthe describes as a “face full of jasmine.”  Purrrr. Then last night, made dinner for my honey — grilled steak, roasted broccoli, and smashed potatoes. We watched Game of Thrones and The Borgias together.

Well. He watched them. I fell asleep halfway through each episode. However, the good thing about waking up at 2:30 am is that you can catch up on the TV you slept through without cutting into writing time.

And what does this have to do with my novel? Very little. Wake up, Nikki.

Words written: 632

Total words: 29, 331

Pages: 83 of 111

Fail du Jour: Today was a list-of-impressions-and-things day rather than a writing-descriptions day.

Tyop du Jour: working though through something so weird

Mean Things: She’s inspired to kiss him but worried about knocking things over, and then the doorbell rings.

Jury-rigging:    The police officer calls to say it wasn’t him.

Inspiration du Jour:  Fitz and Absinthe.