I found out around July that I had to have the next book in come the end of October—normally it would be due about next June. What with Worldcon in town, Washington state nearly burning down, and Shejicon, I have still managed about 80,000 words, and now have the 30,000-40,000 next words planned.
Been managing to continue the walking, too. Yesterday we did .71 miles out, .71 back, still more done in after the walk than I’d like, but I feel better for it.
Good luck!
The publishers don’t cut you any slack do they. Please don’t sacrifice quality for speed.
Good Luck on the book and the walking.
No, what gets sacrificed is social time, dinner with friends, garden time, and sleep. Books I’ve written under pressure aren’t different, just faster. They have to go together the same way, word by word and scene by scene, and thank goodness Jane’s there to point out the moments of word salad, where I said what I thought, but it wasn’t in English.
Do you find yourself writing in a Pidgin Atevi? Just curious.
I find myself constructing sentences in conversation in atevi mode.
What it’s like on crunch:
6:30 am, thinking about the book, remembering where I left off
7:00 am, out of bed, pour coffee, brush the cat, open the computer, start editing yesterday’s writing intermittent with correspondence, hoping for no bombshells in the e-mails.
7:20, :40, 8:00, :30 more coffee while working.
9:00 am, breakfast, 10 minutes while studying text.
9:10, more coffee, writing until 11:
Break for a walk and lunch.
rest.
1pm more coffee, back to the keyboard, and straight on til supper, bed at 10, thinking about the book, what I need to do tomorrow.
Wash, rinse, repeat, 7 days a week, with moments of brilliance when I can arrange them.
Errm, caffiene is a drug that has significant tolerance and withdrawl effects.
Unless you are going to mid-Americon next summer, maybe we ought to skip a ShejiCon so that you can have a break for Rest & Relaxation at your own pace. If you do decide to go to mid-Americon (74th WorldCon) we can arrange a party during the con rather than having you entertain us. Please let your salads know so we can get any balls rolling that have to overcome inertia.
Agreed 100%. I’ve never yet been able to attend a ShejiCon, but having organized our annual local gaming weekend for the last 20 years (Hanathon), I know how much work goes into even a small gathering. We do not want the head of our ajinate stressed!
Will do. We haven’t even reached the stage of discussion on Midamericon.
I’ve somewhat suspected I’m a bit ADHD, since I drink coffee as a calmative, and have since I was about 12.
Aiee, I wish that worked for me. ADD poster child here, but all coffee does is make my heart race and make me feel light headed (if I start drinking too much, anyway…) :/
I used to be able to mainline the stuff and not feel a thing. -__-
I used to think coffee had little effect on me. I was having a big Mocha with a friend in a restaurant (back when they commonly had espresso machines), and felt a little buzzed. Having had Mochas before in other restaurants with no effect, I doubted the cause and effect. So I had another. Science! After I peeled myself off the ceiling, I had a glass of wine as a counter-irritant. Felt fine, then.
Very eager for the next book (as always!), but glad that your crazy-busy work schedule does have room for brushing the cat, walks, and sleep. My work has busy times around grant deadlines–often thanks to “client-originated scope creep”–but my wonderful spouse provides support, such as bringing home large enough dinners (unasked) so that I will have leftovers for lunch.
If I did not have Jane backing me up on editing, long walks, critical plot suggestions during those walks, checking the timeline, proofing and catching word salad—I would be a reclusive lunatic by this far into the book…
speaking of Jane, has she gotten to update her blog (Harmonies of the Net)? Last I saw was back early in July….I know she’s been busy, and all of the other things that have been going on, including ShejiCon, etc., she’s not been able to update….IIRC, she had an issue with her computer?
We’re so very glad you have each other. Thank you, Jane!
Right now, in between trying to strip carpet from two rooms, she’s converting the office to a paperless office, ie, scanning everything—doing the accounting, doing the yard, backing me up on the book, and trying to figure what to do with her computer, which at times she would like to turn into a paperweight, but we haven’t made a decision on what replacement to get. She hasn’t had time to do anything much: we do game—killing goblins is our relief from the day; but we wear out and crash and do it all again the next day. We can’t keep this pace forever, but at 83,000 words, mostly finished words, we’re getting there on this book…which will be finished somewhere between 100,000 and 120,000 words, and at the end of that time—I don’t know what we’ll do. Celebrate Jane’s birthday, for one. Maybe go see our friends Patty and Mike. Maybe just take the cats and drive over to Ruby’s Inn in Montana and take a day or two off…before winter pond shutdown and cleanup. But we will have done a pretty darned good book, I think.
Road trip!!!
When you’ve finished this book, you deserve more than two days off, you two deserve a real vacation. Maybe a trip to see your brother, and some of Jane’s family, and enjoy the sights along the way? Or maybe you prefer relaxing at home with some short sightseeing/fun trips, like visiting Patty & Mike. Whatever you prefer, please take time to unwind and destress and do nothing for a bit, when you’re done with this extremely short deadline. Expecting you to write the book in just one-third of the usual time soinds like a recipe for burnout to me, and I wouldn’t want that to happen to you or Jane. It’s why I’m not going to badger her about making time to chat with us, knowing how busy she is; and I expect you’ll mention it when she does start posting again.
She gets downhearted when she doesn’t get any posts, so post away on her blog anyway, and she’ll like it.
Alas, too late in the year for us to take long trips—we have the Rocky Mountains and the Cascades to deal with and the roads, even the superhighways, have gates that drop to stop traffic when the blizzards come down—a visit to the south, to Patty and Mike, has no mountain passes—only Ritzville, a unassuming little high spot in I-90, which is notorious for nasty weather. But we know about Ritzville, so we’re appropriately careful.
Back in the early 80’s my Dad and StepMom were going from her house in Lethbridge, AB, to his mobile home in Springfield, OR, (no nuclear plant there, Homer, but there is a paper plant 🙁 ) for Christmas. He hit some ice some ways outside Ritzville and spun off the road. But the towtruck’s hook hit the plastic bottom of his Volkswagen’s radiator and punctured it. The problem was finding a plastic “welder” to fix the hole out there in the middle of nowhere. I t took a couple days to get back on the road. Eventually the radiator had to be replaced.
I’m glad to see Jane is talking to us again.
In my mind’s ear I have been pronouncing ‘CJ’ as ‘siege’. I see that it was more correct than I thought.
I thought it was See-Jay, an easier to pronounce two-syllable name related to ‘Sidi (with the vowel on the end).
In my mind that phrase is also related to seeing the blue-jay taking the cheese off the bread on my brother-in-law’s plate when we were camping, while he was peering through his camera in the opposite direction, trying to get a good shot of that selfsame beautiful bird, so bright with my favorite colours. My sister and I were having lunch at the same picknick table, and I’d never seen such a pretty and daring wild bird so close by, not at all afraid of us.
It should be, but I find myself dropping the ay from Jay.
Blue jays are incredibly bold. I am not sure that it is not stupidity, as they seem to fear no predators, but they will steal from anywhere.
Jays are sneaky, too. We once watched a squirrel “hide” a peanut under the edge of the siding on a neighbor’s porch. It really was just lying there against the wall but the squirrel thought it was a great place to store peanuts. The minute his back was turned a jay swooped in and snatched the peanut. The look on that squirrel’s face! 😀