Getting back to work

There are now three days on my Excel sheet that show less than 3k a day for the writing totals. They came during the trip to Kansas, but even so I did write more than 1k a day, so I'm not upset. And I got away from home and saw fun stuff, visited with some old friends and had a great time. Except for being horribly ill most of one day, it was a great trip.

Getting back has been a slightly different problem. I woke up today more than fired up to get back to real work... but the mind hasn't quite made the full transition back to work mode. I have written over 1500 words so far, and I even caught a couple problems as I worked, so I know I'm not completely without hope... but it has seemed kind of haphazard so far.

Part of my problem may related to having started a new novel yesterday on my birthday, and A Plague of Rats might be drawing my attention away from the last 15k or so of Hope in Hell. Looking at that, though, I realize that at 3k a day I could have Hope done in five days. Even if I drop it down to 2500 and do about 500 a day on the new novel, it will still be done soon.

That makes me feel much better. It also inspires me to get back to work on it, of course. The sooner I'm done with Hope in Hell, the sooner I can turn my full attention to A Plague of Rats, which is shaping up to be an interesting bit of work. Russ and I discussed a great deal about it on the trip back from Kansas last night, and I'm looking forward to putting my main character through hell.

We're such horrible people, aren't we? (grin)

But in this case, the character (no, he does not have a name yet), is going to bring a good amount of the trouble down on himself by starting out the book as a somewhat pretentious guy who should have kept his mouth shut rather than getting into a shouting match with someone who had the power to make his life hell on a good many different levels. He is, as is pointed out to him, going to learn a thing or two about humility.

It's going to be fun!

I also have to remind myself that even I don't 'live' entirely on writing. Sure, that's what most of my life revolves around, and it should... but just on the creative side (we won't talk about house work and such), photography and digital art plainly take some of that creative energy as well. The photography also gets me out of the house and away from the computer -- also a good thing, of course. Unfortunately, my collection is in such absolute chaos and I'm still trying various ways to get it organized. I'm starting to think a portable hard drive, with nothing but pictures on it, might be a good start. It would give me plenty of room to sort things. I just don't think it would be enough to do them all.

Best not to think about that right now.

While I've written bits and pieces of this little note, I've also gone back and worked on the stories, and tried to get the lighting right on a Daz picture. Each time I changed the lighting, I had to let the picture render, which takes a while. So while it went through that work, I wrote a little more.

I now have only 481 words left to make my 3k for the day. I've done a little over 500 on Plague and about 1500 on Hope. Excellent! It's only about 6 pm, and I should have this writing done before I make dinner.

Well, except that Russ and I went out for a while and now it's ten and I still haven't done the last 470 words. I am worn out, too! I need to get those last few hundred words done -- especially since this doesn't count, being a blog post. And I need to get the 2YN class material ready to post.

I spent some time talking to Russ about the new novel, too, which always helped again. I'm still out there with so many things yet to define. I know that part of the magic system is based around rune stones that represent different aspects of the world, and there could be thousands of such symbols for a master of the art. Knowing each rune, what it represents, and how to use that aspect is a difficult art to learn, even for those few who have the affinity for magic.

Okay. Time to go get some real work done.