The weekend was pretty much a mix of work ...

( click for pics )

At the workshop last week, Deb Coates (charmingbillie) and I were talking about the differences between fantasy-refracted interior lives and more real-lifey real lives. I had no trouble describing my refracted life but found myself struggling for a concise way to describe my real life. Deb, however, pretty much nailed it: "You post pictures of coffee on the Internet."

From Flotsam Novel Progress

This, I hope, is the draft my agent sends out to market and makes me boogillions of dollars. It's got pichurs and everything!

From Flotsam Novel Progress

I'm rather nutty for Christmas, but usually I wait until after Thanksgiving to get my yule on. Not so much this year. A spree was committed on wrapping paper, gift tags, cards, shiny-ball garland, outdoor lights, and I am ready to trim up the town with goowho gums and bizilbix and wums. I've also been making small batches of eggnog (because as a diabetic, big batches of eggnog are not so jolly).

And so as to not dis Thanksgiving, today I ordered a nine-pound honey-baked ham. (Some of which will go into Christmas dinner.)

And so as to not dis days that aren't big, festive holidays, yesterday I made carne adovada (turned out a little soupy and tame), and today I made a batch of Frankensoup from various scraps and leftovers. I think the Frankensoup might make for a good udon dish.

I've also seen the striking cover of my book, which I'll share when I'm told I can share it. And I'm doing the usual writing thing.

Finally, a get-well shout to Tobias Buckell. Hoping for a productive but brief hospital stay, Toby.

From Flotsam Novel Progress

Man, it sure doesn't feel like November. I was all set to make some big batches of soup, but who wants to do that when it's 80 degrees? Weather.com keeps postponing the cool weather they'd promised. Someday I'd like to experience four real seasons. At least real autumn and real spring. Possibly real winter. You can keep summer.

My agent just sent me revision notes for my middle-grade book, and I was going to read through the whole manuscript before tackling rewrites, but that was too excruciating, so I'm just diving in and typing away. Among other things, she wants my smartass hero to be even more of a smartass. Fortunately, I've got plenty of smartassitude left to give, so that part of it is going to be fun for me.

From Flotsam Novel Progress

Breakfast burrito on the beach, gym workout, and finished second draft of the middle-grade (or is it YA?) book, now packaged and ready to head out for my agent's assessment. Currently watching NBA draft, and later I'll drag my tired body to kung fu. Then, tomorrow, back to work.

Doing a second-draft read-through. Migraine's made it a bit slow-going, but there's also been pizza and beach today, so I'm not complaining. Not too much, anyway.



High tide made walking along the cliffs impractical, but I didn't mind standing and watching the waves roll in.

I would like to apologize to my novel for saying I hated it yesterday. I'm afraid I was exaggerating. As I told a friend, I don't hate it, but we've been spending an intense amount of time together and I think it'd be good for both of us to have a little "me" time away from one another. I'm this close to having completed a revision pass, so we'll have that time very soon. I would also like to thank commenters for their encouragement. Y'all know what it's like.

The fun thing with rewrites is, you get to hate your book all over again.



Okay, actually, I kinda like my book, but I'm sorta tired of working on it.

I'm still loving Scrivener. In fact, I can't really contemplate writing an entire novel in Word ever again. Even so, Scrivener can't solve all my problems for me, as ( illustrated below the cut ).

I haven't been doing anywhere close to as much writing in coffee joints as I used to, but I did today and thought I'd post the pic, as it illustrates another step in the process: second draft. I've been tearing through it rather quickly, but I just got to the part where the book gets all kinda not so good, so I expect the pace to slow down a bit. Still, I'd like to get it done soon, because my July looks like it's going to get a little crazy with travel, maybe moving to another apartment, and things.



***

No kung fu tonight, so I hit the gym again. I did some completely not fun weights, and then practiced hand attacks against the heavy bag. My wrist alignment sucks. Sigh.

It's been a very nice, bum-around sort of weekend. Yesterday morning the weather was too perfect, so we strolled along the bay and out to the beach and had a relaxing breakfast at Seaside Cantina. Great place to watch waves and people.

Returned home after wading in the surf and caught a showing of Iron Man. I don't think I liked it quite as much as some people, but I really enjoyed Robert Downey, Jr.'s performance, and the suit was totally neat. Sometimes superhero movies turn into CGI cartoons in the last half hour, but there were enough shots of Tony Stark's face behind the helmet that I never felt I'd lost contact with the character and shifted into a different movie.

Stopped at the market on the way home from the movie for sandwich fixings, came home and quickly assembled a picnic, and then headed out to sit on the sand by the bay and munch. I even snuck a beer out there, which you're not supposed to do anymore on account of the hundreds of drunken knuckleheads who rioted last Labor Day. I quietly drank my beer and did not riot.

I've already gotten some feedback on the novel from very-first readers, who caught some stupid things I thought I could get away with, some dumb decisions I made with pacing, and various and sundry. Trying to fix some of that today.

Now, however, I am sleepy.

Many thanks to everyone who commented with nice things about the almost-finished draft of my YA novel, Flotsam. I spent the last two days going through it, doing the meatball surgery that will get it to the Army hospital in Tokyo. Now, it goes off to the Blue Heaven workshop in June. I think I'm going to give my brain a day or two to rest, and then I start work on a proposal for my next book. But right now, I drink beer.

Why am I wearing a hat, you ask? I think the better question is, why aren't you?

I'm making pretty good progress going through my book. About a hundred more pages to go.

Came across a telling typo:

Slug-like creatures slithered at my feet among truck tires and safety cones, fish skeletons, gelatinous blogs, undigested leftovers.

I do not have a complete draft of my YA novel, but I have typed the first word of the first scene (the) and the last word of the last scene (laughed), and all the words in between. The reason why this doesn't constitute a first draft for me is because if I sent it out in the world in this shape, even to trusted first readers, it would die. The lungs are hanging on by mere threads. The heart is sewn onto the elbow.

So, what's required now is what they used to call meatball surgery on M*A*S*H. It's not polish and perfection. It's more stuff like, if the heroes employ a mummy in the climax to save the day, I have to actually go back and write in a mummy for them to employ.

This is a dangerous time for me. The language is clunky, the characters inconsistent, some of the plot business completely nonsensical, and not being able to fix all these things before people read the draft can push me pretty far out on the ledge of shame and despair. But I don't have time to fix all these things. I only have time to shove the heart into the chest cavity and hit it with my fist and scream, "Live, damn you, live!" Alan Alda-style.

There are houses I like better, but this one has a more scalable cliff than the others, so I think I might steal it.



I'm not a huge fan of the architectural style (I favor the Craftsman), but the location is nice.



***

Just 500 words today. The ending is starting to take rough shape in my head. One thing's for certain: It will involve the kelp guys.

I haven't been posting many pics of writing from the coffee joint because I've seriously curtailed my coffee joint visits. I have this crazy, nutty dream of writing for a living someday, and though I'm nowhere near that point, it seems like it'd be smart to make sure writing isn't actually costing me money. So far this year, I'm still in the black.

In my next book, my characters will face dilemmas no more dire than wondering what to order for dinner. Because I have no freaking clue how I'm going to get my characters out of their situation in the current book.

I'm just not that clever.

I am writing the worst book in the world. I've read all the books in the world, and mine is the worst.

My book is so bad that I wouldn't even give it the satisfaction of being worked on this morning. Instead, I spent my morning writing session goofing off. Farting around. I rode my bike to the beach. I took a long walk. I drank coffee, and my coffee was nowhere near the vicinity of my computer, which is where my book is right now, busy being bad.

I took some pics as I walked, because I find the act of taking pics inspiring, even if the pictures themselves are not. I saw a sea serpent, a giant pelican wearing a vest, a pier that shook like a seismic eff-up every time the waves struck, and also a sweet old dog and Rotten Livers and the Trashbot 28.

See, book? I don't need you to have fun.

(Please don't be mad at me tomorrow, book.)

What I did instead of writing

Not having had a good writing weekend, I desperately required a productive morning. It was reasonably productive, thanks to the mojo of my trusty "A T.Rex Named Sue" coffee mug.



I said the day that my new Threadless Loch Ness Impostor t-shirt arrived would be the happiest day of my life. It just arrived, and I have to say, I'm pretty happy.



Lastly, this octopus mosaic in Pacific Beach has been making me happy for months.



Anything making you happy?