I’ve got some notes for an RWA post somewhere, under the piles of paper threatening to bury me. So for now, you’ll get a sweating challange post.

Larissa has a post up here that talks about the Sydney novella we’re currently writing. (check out the comments where HelenKay threatens violence…) And yes, this novella’s been tough - we’ve got the plot (oh, maybe that’s the problem, Larissa?) but for some reason the hero wasn’t working for me. He needs a thing, I kept telling Larissa.

He’s not going to be military, she kept repeating.

Maybe he’s former military - a SEAL, a Delta…something where he can throw a few grenades around?

Picture Larissa just staring at me. Yes, I can tell when she’s giving me that look through email.

But last night, after working on the scene for a while, something just happened, the thing I needed to tie my hero more strongly to the heroine. The thing that pulled stuff together for me. So sometimes it takes writing pages and pages and pages that you’re never going to use in order to get to that one line where you’re like, oh, okay, that’s what you want to do.

It’s an awesome feeling, finding that thing. And then I sent the thing to Larissa who liked it too and came up with a quick, what if, list. We chose the option we thought would work best and began checking to see how we could layer that into the existing chapters. So I think we’re just past the halfway point with less than two weeks to go until it needs to be in but we’re in good shape.

So my numbers for the next two weeks will be…strange. I’ll be working on the novella, probably getting in more or less the new 6 pages per day, but I’ve got a few other things due as well.

For July 19th (which is like, almost right now) I’ve got to finish what’s known as the Art Fact Sheet for my March 2008 Blaze (which will probably not keep the title Linger, even though I love it) - basically, this is what the cover artists look at when they’e creating a cover. So I’ve got to list hero / heroine description (this is where Larissa would probably mention that I often forget those details by the middle of the book, so it’s a good thing she’s not here.) I’ve also got to do a synopsis, list a few scenes that could potentially work for a cover as well. I’ve made good use of the words, SEAL, desert cammy BDUs and dogtags.

I’m also going to work on the Hard To Hold revisions tonight, before the novella wings its way back to me. This book is due back into my editor by August 1st, and I’ve already got about 7 pages of new scene stuff I’d like to incorporate, with more to come. So figure, all in all, 5K worth of new stuff. I’m hoping to finish that by this coming Monday.

So, yesterday’s word count was 6 pages of novella plus 4 handwritten pages. Today, I’ve got nothing yet. Probably won’t have much of a count since it will be revision stuff, as I mentioned above. I’ll get to work on that within the next couple of hours.

And toward the end of the week, I’m going to go lurking to see who I can throw a pop prize at…how is everyone doing? From what I saw over at Alison’s blog, the numbers look awesome!

Steph T.

P.S. An entire bottle of Dr. Pepper exploded like a fountain all over me and the kitchen a few minutes ago and all I could do was step back and laugh. FWIW, I’m not sure you’d want me around in a situation that requires quick thinking…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Seventy Days Challenge, Sydney Croft, Writing Process. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.