Thursday, September 19, 2002

I dragged Muse, kicking and screaming, out of hiding tonight. I'm still working on getting the last 200 or so words done, but I've made it this close, which looked impossible somewhere around midnight.

Really, I have a trick for nights like this, and I should have kicked it in far earlier, rather than staring bleakly at some poor story, and trying to figure out how to get 3000 words out of it.

I pull out all of my unfinished pieces. In this case, that's one short story and three novels. Then I see how much work I need to do. Normally, that would only be 1000 words, but since I'm doing the 'one million word madness,' I had to do 750 words on each one. You know, 750 words does not look nearly as daunting as 3000.

I do this for a couple days, and at some point one of those stories will really come alive for me again, and I'll run with it. It may even turn out that most of the material I write at this time gets cut, though I don't think it will in this case. I got two very crucial scenes moving by not putting so much worry into it, and added some really nice little touches here and there in Dacey's Dream. Only one more full chapter left to add into that book before the final draft, and that chapter is a short one.

So, 200 more words, and then I'm going to bed. Part of my problem is a recurring medical problem that is really wearing me down right now, but I hope to get past that soon. That will help as well.

Okay, post this, do the last 200 words, and get some sleep...

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