julian_griffith

Project: Unnamed Christmas story
Market: Storm Moon Press, "22 Days of Yule" open anthology call
Deadline: October 15, 2012
Required length:15-20K
New words written: 1012
Present total wordcount: 1503
Mean things: Lady Sybil doesn't much like her (elder) grandchildren
Fun things: Caroline keeps finding socially acceptable ways to touch him
Stimulants: frequent breaks and tea
Reason for stopping: I hit 1500 words!

Today was not a brilliantly inspired writing day. Yesterday I don't think I got ANY writing done: it was all errands, library and Target and a HUGE grocery run and prescriptions at CVS and of COURSE they only had one of the two ready. I was very clever and got the soup set up and simmering before we left, so when we got back two hours later all I had to do was boil up the pasta that went in it, and dinner was ready. Although I discovered that if I turn the heat lower than usual, past a certain point the carrots won't soften much, even with a longer cooking time.

So anyway today I knew I needed to make words, though the story feels slow getting off its feet. So, after I got a reasonable number of chores done -- dishes, my one load of laundry, and a bit of kitchen cleanup - I sat down to a day of writing 20/10s.

I'm bracketing proper names like crazy. I can sort them out later. And I only ran into one research diversion -- I needed to look up what things babies would be doing at 11-12 weeks. eglantine_br , I want you to know that I'm stealing Percy Shelley's baby rattle with the bells. I have to go back tomorrow and put in Thorne waving it for Stephen, and picking it up and putting it back in his hand and stuff, while Lady Sybil is going on about her Pennington grandchildren and how ill-behaved they are.

I never managed to get over 200 words in a single 20-minute block, but I did get pretty consistently between 150 and 200, and I made words. If I can do 1500 per day, I'll likely finish it with enough time for rewrites before the deadline. jestana has said that her sister, who hasn't read the novel, is willing to look it over, which is important because I need to know if it makes sense on its own, and that's one thing mswyrr won't be as able to do.

I didn't realize how much I'd missed working with mswyrr ! She knows my characters and their backgrounds and where I'm going with the story, and can tell me whether my words are bringing the important stuff out without being either too opaque or too obvious. And when I'm writing in tiny chunks like that, the story always feels AGONIZINGLY slow to me -- I mean, the wedding scene in the novel took four or five hours to write, and it felt while I was writing it as if I were attending the reception in real time, or, worse, sitting through that much unedited wedding video, and today was a lot like that. And when it feels like that, I have NO sense of the pacing as a reader might experience it. She tells me whether it's okay, and that alone is a godsend.

So. Goal tomorrow, 1500 words or more. And I will not try to figure out the difference between a facebook account and a facebook public figure page until I'm DONE with this thing. Meanwhile I have a tumblr (juliangriffith.tumblr.com) and a twitter (JulianxGriffith) and I've set up another Gmail account. Please DO feel free to add me there! I'm trying to keep the tumblr focused on Things Of Historical Interest Relevant To The Novel and not all dedicated to fangirling -- although Downton Abbey fan-stuff has crept in. But Hornblower fan-stuff other than photo reblogs, the bulk of the Doctor Who fan-stuff, and all of the actor-crushy fanstuff I'm trying to keep on punkrockmuffinatrix, so I don't look like a total dweeb.

I didn't get out of my pajamas today -- but my kitchen floor is clean and my laundry is done. I'm calling that a win.

 Cheyenne's website DOESN'T say anything about simultaneous submissions, and they want just a query letter. I emailed them to ask about simultaneous submissions. Haven't heard back yet but it's early Monday.

Storm Moon wants a "marketing plan" in the query letter along with the attached synopsis, partial manuscript, yadda yadda. I emailed them over the weekend to ask if there was a particular format they expected for a marketing plan. I got a very prompt response from them explaining that they just needed an informal paragraph going over what social media you planned to use, and if you were willing to do stuff like blog tours, and how much time you had to devote to such things. Not nearly as intimidating as I thought.

Storm Moon also has some open calls out, including one for winter holiday short stories, 15-20K. WELL HEY. Love Continuance and Increasing ends about a month before Christmas, and the happy triad intends to keep Christmas together. I bet I can write that between now and the October 15 deadline! Spent a couple hours last night developing an arc for it with mswyrr , who is still the Best Beta In The World. It makes the most sense for it to be from Lt. Thorne's POV all the way through. I'll be building it around the question of his belonging to the family -- class tensions, no legal recognition, breaking quite a few laws as well as being scandalous -- and how they resolve that, because resolve it they do! And I can take it through a Georgian Christmas and end with first-footing (they are not Scottish, but friend of the family is and encourages them to incorporate the tradition) and New Year's kisses (I don't know if that's an anachronism, but I bet they can do it anyway)! So that will give me something to write while I'm still researching the sequel.

Speaking of researching, I racked up some serious overdue fines at the library for my current research books, because my car went kablooie (transmission, clutch, GAAAH) and it sort of slipped off my radar to WALK to the library. The car should be ready this week, but I'm walking over today.

Wondering if I should set up a Facebook for this name (I hate Facebook, BUT), maybe an auxiliary tumblr, a separately named Twitter? I have followings under my current names, but I feel like I should have a coherent and consistent presence (God, that sounds pretentious) for the writing stuff. Oh yeah. And I nabbed a Pinterest thing and I'll definitely be setting it up as Julian Griffith because it'll be all the pretty pictures of houses and dresses and landscapes and carriages that I found for inspiration!