Nikki M. Pill

Words written: 1,045

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.

Elizabeth Bear talks about post-novel ennui — I think I get post-story and post-event ennui in a big way. I’m still a bit foggy. I read another Holly lesson today, dithered about some transition points, and played with the cats. I think I figured out how to get Jacy past the initial conversation. The bartender still has no personality. I require him to be something of a lech but not overtly so.

Met Eric last night and we talked shop for a few hours, which usually helps me recharge a little. He has a very pragmatic way of breaking massive projects into manageable chunks, and generally making the entire process less daunting.