I’m being bold and saying this is like old times.\u00a0 Not in the total wordage possible in a day, but in the way the story is unrolling before me, complete with sensory detail, character backgrounds, every scene offering attachment points for PlotStuff.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It will run into trouble, somewhere in the next 30,000-40,000 words, if it runs true to form of nearly all my books…but right now it’s chuckling along like a stream with a healthy flow of spring-water.\u00a0 (Of course, having said this, and having “overwritten” today enough that my right hand is really sore, I may wake up tomorrow with the bottom of the well back to, if anything, damp rock.\u00a0 But it doesn’t feel in danger of that right now.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So what can I tell you?\u00a0\u00a0 Little, still.\u00a0\u00a0 There’s the whole of Cold Welcome<\/em> still between this and you.\u00a0\u00a0 I can say mysteries, intrigue, plots, villainy, fugitives, more villainy,\u00a0 disguises that work and those that don’t, bureaucratic complications that are not villainy, just normal paperpushers’ insistence on Doing Things the Right Way and the perils of failing to report changes in status, etc, etc, etc.\u00a0 Our Side are sometimes a step ahead of the game and sometimes two steps behind.\u00a0\u00a0 There’s a pompous supermarket manager who may (or may not) be suborned by villains (don’t know yet),\u00a0 old quarrels come to life,\u00a0 betrayals and loyalty, forgiveness and undying enmity.\u00a0 And so on.\u00a0 And a prison I hope none of us ever ends up in.<\/p>\n This book, compared to the writing of the last one, perfectly shows the results of writer health and stress.\u00a0\u00a0 That one gave me trouble all the way through, like driving a car with a flat tire down a muddy, deeply rutted road that also had boulders stuck in it here and there.\u00a0\u00a0 I wasn’t well, didn’t realize I wasn’t well, was getting worse without being fully aware of that because I was so engaged with fighting the !**! book along with one eye on the calendar and clock.\u00a0\u00a0 This one, since I waited until I was at least minimally fit to write fiction, and have continued to work on the health issues, especially sleep and diet, has been like driving a rather old, but cared-for car down a smooth road between rows of shady trees.\u00a0 It can’t go sixty.\u00a0 But it can go thirty every day for a couple of hours, and over a week’s time that’s a reasonable amount.\u00a0 Re-reading the reasonable amount, it will need normal reworking but nothing as drastic as the previous book.<\/p>\n The book wants to be written.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m writing it without half-killing myself.\u00a0 This is a good partnership.<\/p>\n So for those of you who contemplate writing things as a career: be aware that you are the source of your work.\u00a0 You are the craftsperson and the crafter’s tools, and if you treat yourself badly, without care–if you think your healthy younger self can just work and work and work without maintenance–there’s a big, thick, wall of solid stone waiting down the road. all the way across and impossible to get around, and it WILL stop you.\u00a0\u00a0 Don’t wait until then to realize that the decades pass and adjustments must be made.\u00a0 Early and often and they’re smaller.\u00a0 Hit the wall and you have to do it all at once.<\/p>\n Oh–you want numbers?\u00a0 As of this moment, 135 pages and 26,534 words.\u00a0 And my hands hurt, so that’s it for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m being bold and saying this is like old times.\u00a0 Not in the total wordage possible in a day, but in the way the story is unrolling before me, complete with sensory detail, character backgrounds, every scene offering attachment points for PlotStuff.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It will run into trouble, somewhere in the next 30,000-40,000 words, if it Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,10,5],"tags":[7,21],"class_list":["post-193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-progress","category-the-writing-life","category-vatta","tag-the-writing-life","tag-vatta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}