Diana's Writing Blog

Had another blizzard this weekend. I felt bad for all the Winter Carnival people out trying to enjoy the sculptures.

I stayed inside and watched season 1 of Veronica Mars all weekend. I own season 1 and 2, and it’s a surprisingly re-watchable show. The writing’s good, and the multiple story lines are interesting. Plus there are several flavors of teh hottness to enjoy.

Also, ended up watching a few episodes of Band of Brothers that was randomly on the History channel, mostly because Neal McDonough’s in it and I <3 him. It turned out to be really interesting in an “I want to watch the entire series, but not enough to buy it” kind of way. Wish I had Netflix…

In other news, could every website I ever gave my email to stop sending me messages about V-Day? No, Tiger Direct, Firebox.com, Torrid, and Amazon.com, I’m NOT stuck for Valentine’s Day gifts, and if I was, I wouldn’t ask YOU! Jeebus!

Anyway, despite my Veronica Mars watching, I managed to actually keep to my writing\editing goals during the weekend. And I finished early today:

So, my editing is sailing right along. I’ve got 13 chapters in the Seamstress book. At one chapter a day, I’ll be done by next weekend. I’ll have to jump back and do the final edit on Peacekeeper, though, since it’s still too early to try and grapple with Unicorn Prince.

Writing on the other hand is still a struggle. I’m jumping around a bit, writing the chunks I’ve already got planned out. The only problem with doing all the fun easy parts first is that I’ll eventually have to go back and write the stuff I’m putting off, so writing gets harder and harder. Ah, well. Such his life.

So, on the up side I finished my quota really early today. Mostly because I got an 800 word start on it last night. On the down side, this one’s looking like it’s going to be too short. It feels like I’m moving way too quickly toward the final conflict and resolution.

Of course, my last book was way too long, so maybe this one will come in right near 50,000 words. Doubtful, though, since it’s at about 14,000 now and feels like it’s wrapping up. Novella anyone?

Well, I suppose it’s easier to go back and add more conflict and plot twists than it is to try and cut something from the plot. Anyway, today’s progress:

I’ve been having to get up half an hour earlier because the office manager is gone this week and I have to cover the phones here at the office. So, I’m kind of dragging towards the weekend where I will sleep for about 20 hours, finish editing my novel Peacekeeper and hopefully start editing its sequel, Seamstress. Also, I will write 4,000 words in my current novel, Haven. Is it proper grammatical structure to italicize books that aren’t in print yet? Oh well.

Anyway, here’s yesterday’s progress:

Okay, so I bought myself an editing book and a non-fiction book as a reward for finishing Unicorn Prince. And I picked up Hairspray because I needed another thing to qualify for free shipping and I really wanted that movie anyway. So, yeah, I ended up spending $20 more than I meant to.

When I finish this next book (hopefully at the end of Feb!), I’m going to have to limit myself to one gift or it’s going to be too expensive to finish any more novels. Speaking of finishing this new novel by March 1, here’s my progress so far:

Okay, don’t want to lose my momentum here, so I pulled another story idea out of the file. Seriously, there’s a file. A big one. This one’s set on Earth at least, but it involves a demon, so it’s still in that fantasy vein I seem to tend towards.

In other news, I still haven’t ordered the books I promised myself as a reward for finishing my novel. It’s Feb. 1, so I officially have money to spend again. I may end up getting a DVD, too. Can’t go too crazy, or it’ll get to be too expensive to finish a story.

Anyway, here’s my progress for the day: