Haven't updated in a few days

Project: Unnamed Christmas story
Market: Storm Moon Press, "22 Days of Yule" open anthology call
Deadline: October 15, 2012
Required length:15-20K
Previous wordcount: 3157
Present total wordcount: 7918
Mean things: Cook won't let Rockingham have a mince pie
Fun things: This content may not be suitable for minors
Stimulants: Filking! And a two-hour drive with Led Zeppelin for company
Reason for stopping: Over 2K words today

I'm behind on wordcount and I know it. Well, maybe not. But I do feel that deadline. I was chunking away at it the past few days, doggedly advancing from morning room to great hall, and getting distracted by the continued delay in retrieving my car from the shop. First there was another part they had to order, then they lost a very particular bolt, then it was all ready but they couldn't get me a driver to pick me up until the next morning. Upshot was, the car that was promised for Monday? I got it back Thursday.

Then I went to [Bad username or site: kingsgrave 's for a filk party, and stayed overnight. I brought my laptop. I arrived before the party got going, and managed to do some edits, but I didn't really make a lot of new words. Then the party was wonderful, and I got to sing Banshee, and I got to try out my Raggle Taggle Hush mashup, and it worked really well, with her friend Matt playing bodhran, and Karen with a maraca. Eventually the party broke up, and I was one of the overnight guests, and had an air mattress in the study, along with [livejournal.com profile] slipjig @ livejournal.com] on a different air mattress.

He did warn me he snored.

I did sleep. But between the light and the snoring I was awake before 7AM.

So I grabbed the laptop and started making words.

I did about 600 words before breakfast. Then I got two cups of coffee in me and wrote some more while Catt and Adam rehearsed some songs and hit just under 1K before I left. Then, on the way home, I didn't get any more PLOT words while I was driving, but hoo BOY did I get me some sex scenes.

Individual pairs-sequential rather than threesome this time. And, a thing I like, showing off sex that doesn't center penetration. Because there is more to sex than just that! And a lot of emotional context, and with recaps of the beginnings of each relationship built in. And, survey says, hot.

Yeah, I've got a few friends besides mswyrr who like to read the sex scenes. I figure why not. And they were all HIGHLY complimentary about this set.

So now my job is to move along with the financial plot and the fun set pieces like the snowball fight and some mistletoe kisses. And wrap it up nicely with the legal agreement and a happy New Year.

In under eight days.

Here I go!

Unfuck Your Wordcount

Project: Unnamed Christmas story

Market: Storm Moon Press, "22 Days of Yule" open anthology call

Deadline: October 15, 2012

Required length:15-20K

Previous wordcount: 7918
New words written today: 1568 that are actual narrative

Present total wordcount: 10048 if you include the outline I put in

Mean things: Rockingham's Grandmama is a right bitch sometimes

Fun things: Rockingham's Grandmama is a right bitch sometimes

Stimulants: The smug glow of responsibility that comes from not neglecting laundry or dishes, and far too much tea

Reason for stopping: Brain's kinda done, and I owe lainathiel a LOT of commentary 

Most people, I am given to understand, write their outline before they write the story.

I have yet to be able to do so.

I know my characters, and I know my setting, and I generally have an idea of what needs to happen in the story as a CONCEPT, but it's certainly not scene-by-scene at that point.

If I try to write an outline at that point, I wind up concluding that I have hopeless writer's block.

What seems to work is if I wind up the characters and put them through their paces on an ordinary day, around when I think the Plot Thing will happen. And I start inching towards it, one painful 20-minute sprint after another. Or 100-word written?kitten! chunks, sometimes. But my current method is just Unfucking My Wordcount in 20/10s.

Usually, at some point when I'm vamping around like that, waiting for the plot to come 'round on the git-tar, as Arlo Guthrie would say, my id will kick in and insist on supplying me with a sex scene. Or two. In rather a lot of detail. And if I don't write it down, I get NOTHING else done.

So then I go back to inching towards the plot, now knowing that there is Plot scheduled between wherever I am then and the Sex Scene. Which is a nice incentive, because I very much want to hook the sex scene into its sequential place in the narrative.

jAnd I keep doing that, and eventually I catch the plot and start reeling it in, and the pace picks up, and all of a sudden I know What Happens Next. For all values of Next. So, when I reach a nice stopping point in my dialogue-and-narrative words for the day, I stick a whole lot of short sentences and sentence fragments in list form after where I stopped. With fully-written sex scenes interrupting them.

And that's my outline.

In the novel, it wasn't just sex scenes that I was hooking in, but Emotionally Dramatic Moments as well. My brain likes writing from the emotional centers outward.

And I didn't get the novel outline all at once like that, either. But I got SECTIONS of it like that, with bits I had to drag out in timed chunks until the Outline thing happened again.

This is a very weird process, I think.

But it gets me Story.

Booze, glorious booze

 To celebrate the Arrival of the Outline, and having ten thousand words in the document file, I'm having a drink.

I'm officially calling it Something Like A Brandy Alexander.

It has

1 1/2 oz brandy (I didn't have very good brandy, but you work with what you got)
1/2 oz amaretto (the good stuff)
1/2 oz creme de cacao (I had dark, not white, and I don't think it matters)

Put all this on one of the cute roly-poly Mad Men cocktail tumblers (that I lucked into at a garage sale for $1 each) and fill to the bottom of the silver band with half-and-half.

I think the Brandy Alexanders that matociquala  serves at Thanksgiving have Frangelico in them instead. And maybe actual light cream. And definitely nutmeg grated over the top, but I couldn't be arsed to get the nutmeg and the Microplane out.

But it is Something Like A Brandy Alexander, and it's very tasty.