Revising the revision.

I've been yanking words for one section and shoving them into another and I think I've now dealt with the huge indigestible glob of backstory that was choking me. In the process I've lost about 500 words, but I have added lots of new ones. Not enough to make up for all the deleted ones, but never mind. I need to print the whole thing out and sit quietly with it to read it through from start to finish now. Lord knows what I've done to my timelines with all this. If I can get that done over the weekend I'll be lucky, but it's what I'm aiming for. My beta readers are lined up and ready to start as soon as I finish messing with the ms. I better get this done before they all grow old!

MIA

Now this is strange. During the week I put a new post on here. I swear I posted it. I even check it to see that it was okay. But it's not here now.

And that's not all. The comments I made on other peoples blogs are missing too.

Am I suggering from delusions? Did my posts get eaten by the Internet termites? Have aliens secretly abducted me and placed false memories in my swiss-cheese brain? I have no idea but those are all strong contenders for what happened.

It wouldn't be so bad if I had a copy of the post that's MIA. I'm anal about backing things up, which is why I STRONGLY enourage you to go to Mozy's website and sign up for their backup service. 2 GB for free is a bargain in anyone's book. I use the paid version because of the huge amount of stuff I keep on my laptop that I just can't be without in the event of a disk crash or other emergency. But in this case, like a complete twit, I deleted the document BEFORE the backup took place. So it's lost to the world for all time.

How sad.

WIPs

Tevan's turning out to be quite a character. He isn't fully fleshed out yet, nor will he be for quite a while, but I know a bit about him now. I know the name of the narrator too. Varda. The plot is developing nicely. I have an inkling where it will end, and in between there are plenty of twists and turns. They're in for an uncomfortable ride. I'm not going to give away too much here until the story starts to take shape.

I've also been working on the revision of ASF. I'm nearly done with Chapter 17, but I still have several areas earlier on that need attention. I'm going to work on those in the next couple of days... If Varda and Tevan will leave me alone for a bit!

The muse works in mysterious ways

The spouse and I went to the garden center this afternoon, to get a few plants for the deer. I know they'll eat most of them, but for now the flower bed I've just finished planting looks really nice. That's beside the point. We were waiting at a stop light and I happened to glance to the side. In the far right-hand lane I saw part of the name on a tradesman's van.

Tevan, it said.

And before I could turn back again, this character pops up in my head and introduces himself. And then another joins him and between them they are starting to write what may turn out to be a short story for the Writers of the Future thingy... or it may turn into something longer. The second character is female and feisty as heck. I think I'm going to write this her first person POV. It'll be fun, because she doesn't really like Tevan very much. But they are a team. And he can't do without her, because she's able to redirect the flashback magic. Don't ask... I don't know what it is either. Not yet. So I have two characters, a vague idea that they use magic to defend their country ( I didn't mention that did I?) and the magic is dangerous in itself. I know a tiny bit about their culture and at the moment I have no plot. It'll be an interesting ride.

The muse surely does work in mysterious ways.

Blogging

I reluctantly started blogging five months ago, on November 18th to be exact. My reason for not wanting to join the hoards of people communicating this way was simple. I make my living around computers, I write on a computer (mostly) and when I'm not doing either of those things I want to be as far away from technology as possible in this overly-wired age.

And I didn't have anything to say.

But now, not only do I blog... albeit not as frequenly as I should... but I also a run website for my fellow Word Counters. And I love it. I'm learning new skills, none of which are in the least bit useful in my day-job, and I'm getting a huge kick out of seeing other writers make progess on their works-in-progess (or process if you prefer). And it's all thanks to the wonderful world of blogging.

And I still don't have anything to say.

short and sweet-ish

Words. They're coming along slowly but they are coming. I'm nearly done revising Chapter 15, so only have two more to go. I need to get it done. Motivation isn't the problem any more, it's finding enough hours in the day to get it all done. I've pretty much had to give up checking on the rest of the Buddies blogs. Sorry about that everyone, but I'm sure you're all writing reams of good stuff both on your WIPs and blogs. Maybe next week will be less fraught. Who knows?

I'm not sure if everyone... or even anyone... is receiving my weekly email update about the Word Count Buddies website . Check your trash or junk mail folders if you aren't seeing it. If you didn't receive it drop a line to wordcountbuddies@yahoo.com and I'll add you to the list. This is what I sent our earlier today --


I hope your all having a very productive weekend... and writing your words too :-)

I've added a couple of new things to the website. Your total-to-date counts are now displayed, and for those who haven't been adding their word counts on http://www.wordcountbuddies.byethost33.com ( and you know who you are!!) you'll see a big fat 0 next to your name. If you post your word count for this weekend... no fudging please... and let me know what your actual running total is since you joined us I'll add that figure to the display. It updates automatically every time you add your daily count.

I have also put up a copy of the rules. My thanks to Ing for expanding on the original sketchy outline that I suggested on his blog. I've changed a couple of your words, Ing, but the vast majority of the work remains as you have it posted.

I'd like to get the Word Count Warrior of the Week done next. And if you will PLEASE send me a few words of bio info I'll put the About us page together. Theadra noticed that the link wasn't working. The reason why it doesn't is that I don't have any info to post. I don't want to post just my own as it then looks like this is my website. I prefer to think of it as a collaboration. So email me a little about yourselves and your goals I can get that working next weekend too.

I'm still here

I know it's hard to believe, but I am still here. I'm working on a client's site for the next five weeks. It does disrupt my plans when this happens so suddenly but hey -- it's work. I'm not complaining... well not much anyway. The problem with living in hotels is their upload speed leaves a lot to be desired, so making improvements to Word Count Buddies website will have to wait until the weekend. I have a couple of things that I think will be nice additions.

ASF edits are progressing slowly. I want to finish the chapter I'm working on tonight. When I work out my word count it's disheartening. I'm cutting far more than I'm adding. But the cuts are necessary and good. I don't go hunting for every phrase that I've added. If I can find them easily then I count them so although my numbers look horrible I have done more. Not a lot more, but even so.

I don't want to start on a new project until I have this one put to bed or I'll never finish it. And I'm looking forward to getting to know my new characters. The words will flow much better when I can get going on it.