Content will return… I promise.

I’ve been writing, and writing a lot; editing, revising, and rewriting. I am working again on NKNK while Biohazards — now named THUNDERBIRD is out on query.

Alas, it being the heavy-workoad period at my dayjob also means my free time is pinched, and finding time to post is made just that little bit harder.

Like I said — back, soon. Watch this space.

So where have I been? Writing, writing, writing. I’ve been writing until the words burned into my brain and spilled out of my ears, but the net result was a completed Draft Two of the Biohazard work-in-progress.

Draft Two of Biohazard — which now has an official title, at least insofar as I know what I’ll be calling it when I start querying agents — needs a bit of spit and polish, because there are typos…

Typos!

How embarrassing.

I finished this draft just before July 1st and forwarded a copy to my crit partner and to one other person who has no idea about the book whatsoever. I have heard back from one crit partner, who blazed through it in a rather short period of time, called me evil over the ending, and pointed out a few things that I can easily fix.

But now that I’m done, and waiting to hear back from the other two (well, three) people who have a copy of this draft, I don’t know what to do with myself.

Well, that’s not exactly true, but between being out of town last weekend, and being up to my eyebrows in Stuff^TM this weekend, it’s probably safer if I don’t start something right now, because I hate being interrupted — it drives me batty stopping something when I’m on a roll, or in the middle of something, so imagine how it’s like to not be able to stay awake until I’ve finished writing a book that just wants to spill out. Once the weekend’s over, though, I have things I want to do:

1. Update the website to be completely WordPress-based, not just the blog, to make it easier for me to update and add new pages;
2. Write the synopses for Biohazard 2 and Biohazard 3, which also have titles, but I’m not sharing them yet;
3. Go back to The Book^TM, the Maiden Voyage book that made it to the end of the harbour before listing badly to one side, as if it’d been nicked by a stealth torpedo. I intend on taking it apart and rebuilding it, to fix whatever holes there are, so that this time no one will want to say “no” to it.

Those are my three Things To Do this month, and it goes without saying that I’ll be polishing up Biohazard 1 and to put together the query letter to send out.

And at some point, I’ll actually enjoy the summer.

If the sweltering heat doesn’t get to me first.

Been a while since I’ve had new content on either Livejournal or on my website. I really must rectify that.

In the news:

1. I’ve finished Draft Two of the current work in progress with the many-changing working titles (cWIP for short) and it is now in the hands of my two crit partners.
2. I acquired an iPad, and I love it to bits. I’ll go into this in more detail in another post.
3. There’s a WordPress iPad app, and I’ll be testing it soon. That might mean more posting overall, since I bring the iPad with me about 50% of the time when I leave the house, and all my on-the-computer time at home is usually spent writing Book-Stuff, or procrastinating on Book-Stuff.
4. Life is good.

How’s everyone?

I have dragged Biohazards out of the pits of Draft Zero and emerged with a First Draft.

It’ll go through a bit of manuscript formatting before I send it out to a couple of people for the first reading round.

It needs a lot of spit and polish, and some 5K fewer words (maybe more), but if nothing else I’m really happy with it.

Why?

Because when I wrote those last six words at the very end, I thought, my crit partners are going to KILL me.

And when they throw the book at me, that’ll be how I know it’s halfway decent.

So I’m just shy of 97,000 words in Biohazard and I’m calling it a Zero Draft. I didn’t exactly finish it, though.

It’s more of a “I’m calling it Quits” than “Finally I can type The End” sort of Zero Draft, and it’s because:

1. I know how it ends.
2. No, seriously, I know how it ends.

The actual act of writing the ending is difficult, though, because I’ve hit The Wall. It’s the “I have to fix all the other things before I can write a satisfactory ending” Wall.

It’s the same sort of Wall I keep hitting when I write a Zero Draft, and it happens even if I have an outline. It happens more often when I don’t have an outline, and I have to go back and rewrite more often.

Rewriting is a pain in the [censored]. I don’t hate rewriting. I just prefer to get it right the first time. Or as close to “right” as I can get it. I also hate outlines, because the story never sticks to the outline past a certain point, so I have to continually re-outline. Which is better than rewriting.

Which is, unfortunately, what I have to do now before I can write the ending. On the plus side, I have pages and pages of notes of things that need rewriting. On the downside, I know exactly what needs fixing.

*sigh*

Nothing’s worse than having the end in sight — or at least within 10K — and knowing that, once I type “The End”¹, I have to go back and cut giant chunks² to make room for what should be there.

This last week — and every day until I’m done — I’ll be an irritated jumping bean. You just try to fix something at work that insists on staying broken³ when all you’ve got on the brain is The Book. All I want to do is write it. Finish it.

Then go back and put in the bits that need to be in there.

The plan was — finish Biohazards no matter what problems I hit along the way, put it aside for a couple of weeks, rewrite the first 50 pages of NKNK (and get those to my crit partners), then go through Biohazards to rewrite and revise. But I have Biohazards on the brain, so I’ll be pushing NKNK until that’s done.

Steampunk is very in as a genre right now. It’s gone from a little facet of culture and really permeated society. Books, movies, art, fashion…

And tattoos! Check out this post on Weburbanist. I rather like the artwork on the shoulder tat, gearwork bird, way down on the bottom of the page.

Biohazards

Original, projected word count: 90,000

Current word count: 70,000-ish

Cramming 40,000 more words into 20,000: Priceless

*headdesk**headdesk**headdesk**headdesk*

I bet if I go back through my journal and count the number of times I write, “Yeah, I know I haven’t posted recently, and I’ll do better, I promise, but don’t worry I’m still around and reading other people’s posts and keeping up with my RSS feeds”, I’ll be embarrassed. Because I hate sounding like a broken record.

What I should be doing is writing down the topic ideas I get during the day in a notebook, then I can pick and choose one to write about for a blog post. What I actually do is think, “Hey, that would be a good idea for a blog post”, then promptly forget about it and go back to work.

It doesn’t help that I don’t have a notebook to write in, and if I do, it’s rarely on me. So, yeah, useless.

And since my brain is in full-on writing mode, all my ideas are about the book. Tying up plot lines. Making sure all the big items are there. Having “Oh that would work!” moments that lead to “Oh crap I have to go back and rewrite that part.”

(I don’t actually go back to rewrite. Just make notes to myself for when I get to whipping the book into shape once it’s done.)

So that’s the excuse this time around for not doing blog posts.

The goal I’ve set for myself is to finish Draft Zero of Biohazards by the end of March. Given my current word count, regularly reaching the minimum daily word count, and having just completed a hard chapter to write, getting that Draft Zero done should be within the realm of possibility.

Now let’s hope I didn’t just jinx myself by saying that…

Queenoftheskies posted a link to this contest on her blog (thanks!), and not only am I participating, I am spreading the word.

The “Dear Lucky Agent” contest has three great prizes, where first place is a 20-page critique by the agent judge and a one year subscription to Writer’s Digest. Second and Third places are the same as the first place, except instead of 20 pages, the critique is the first 10 pages.

In order to enter, you:
1. Must have a completed novel-length urban fantasy or paranormal romance
2. Must be willing to submit the first 150-200 words (by email)

No purchase necessary! But first, help spread the word of the contest as described in the contest rules.

If you’re entering, good luck! The deadline is March 14, 2010.