Back in the game!

Wednesday worked out pretty well given that when I woke up I didn’t have a clue as to what I needed to do chapter-wise today. I’d lost track of the rotation, so I had to shift my thinking and start in with a character I really didn’t have anything I needed to write about at this point. Then I remembered some ideas I’d had while down in Tucson and rolled them together along with another concept that was overdue, and that became a chapter. Even better, that chapter spun immediately into the second chapter for the day.

So, I got two chapters done for 5215 words on At The Queen’s Command.

After that I did some more work on a side project and started a story associated with it. I wanted to get story bits down because I had a voice and wanted to put that stuff down to preserve it. I don’t know yet what the story will truly be, but the introductory work doesn’t require the ending. Any bits I need to bind the story tightly together will come out of the end, so I’ll be making notes and fixing things later.

I don’t often work on two fiction projects at the same time. I don’t want to sap momentum from one and the possibility of voice contamination is always there. You want each character to have their own voice, but in any work there will be similarities. The chances that one voice will leak into the other story runs pretty high. This is also why I don’t tend to read other works in whatever genre it is I’m writing, since it’s pretty easy to borrow a sense from another writer, especially if their work impresses you. I save that sort of reading for the “off season” between books.

I was really happy with how easily these two chapters wrote themselves today. I introduced new characters, which can be a chancy thing. Because they can be somewhat unformed, and you’re tossing them into the mix with fully established characters, it would be easy for them to sink without a trace. If you try to make them too different, they can be jarring. Finding a balance is tricky, but the two women I introduced today played well with others.

November Word Count: Hard: 51,164 Soft: 12,486

With the dozen days left in November, I need to be averaging just under 4100 words per day to hit my goal. That’s roughly 1.6 chapters a day. Realistically I need to punch through as many two-chapter days as I can because I’m betting on Thanksgiving I only crank one out. But, if I get two done in a day, do I do a third, or do I add more to the side project? That will be a temptation.

Side projects, for some reason, always want to steal time from the main project. It’s like having a mistress (or so I’ve been told)—all sexy and new, flirting with you. And that can be fun, until your main project falls apart because of neglect.

So, as with any other work, it’s “make a note, fix it later.” The novel comes first.