Author: Jonathon

Finished for the day.  Yippee.  You know how last blog I talked about getting into a rhythm?  How I thought I’d finally gotten my rhythm for this book?  So I could try for an eight page a day minimum?  Well, I think today proves that I’ve found my speed for this book.
Twenty-four pages today.  Yea! 
You know how I said, if you thought that eight was a lot of pages, that you didn’t even want to know what my maximum page count for most books was?  Well, twenty is it.  I know, I know, twenty?  It is a lot.  But most books, once I hit it even for a day, I’ll hit it more often than miss it.   The only caveat to that is sometimes I hit for a day, then I’m beat the next day and don’t even make eight pages.  I never know if I’ve hit my stride until I try.  Today, I wrote until the muse had left me, that was twenty-four pages later, in two sessions.  I’m done, and physically beat, even my mind is tired.  But the book is alive in my head.  I know exactly what I’m writing tomorrow.  I’m looking forward to it, instead of dreading it.  That is usually a very good sign that I’ve hit my rhythm for a book.
This doesn’t mean there will be no slow days, or days when I’d rather be gardening, or visiting the zoo, or anything but writing.  But it means that there will be more days when I’m eager to get to my desk, then days when I dread it.  Keep your fingers crossed that I hit eight pages tomorrow.  Because if I do, then I’m okay.  If I don’t, well, damn.  
Exhausted, but happy.   Bye for now. 

Okay, today was the first day back to exercise since I hurt my leg.  My leg is not happy, but I did it.  Yea!.  I did six pages on STROKE OF MIDNIGHT this morning.  Yea, again!  I owe myself a minimum of two more pages this afternoon.  Eight is my usual min for a book, but at the very beginning of a book I don’t press, because sometimes at the beginning you end up wandering around a little, getting your feet under you.  I feel like my feet are finally on firm enough ground to put my minimum out there and make it day after day. 
For all of you thinking that eight is a lot of pages for a minimum, well, you don’t want to know what my maximum is for a book schedule.  There are plenty of writers out there that do two pages a day, and count themselves lucky to get it.  Four pages a day is a lot for most writers.  The average seems to be between two and five for professional writers.  Those who do it everyday like a job.  You do have those that work in bursts.  You know, twenty pages one day, two pages the next.  I may have a day or two like that in any given book, but those that write every book in bursts with days in between with nothing . . . I just don’t understand how that works.  It would drive me mad.  For me a book gets into a rhythm, and that rhythm becomes a number of pages per day.  But hey, whatever works for you.
Gotta go catch lunch, then back to work for the pages I owe myself. 

I think I’m finally happy with the first chapter of A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT.  I’ve got lots of pages for later in the book, but the first chapter just kept elluding me.  I mean, it was close, but not quite there.  Now I’m happy with it, except for the very last line.  I’m very big on first lines and last lines, especially of first chapters.  The first line makes people start reading, but it’s the last line of early chapters that keeps them turning pages. 
 
I just got my first sip of the first cup of tea of the day.  Ambrosia. 
 
I used to put off making the first chapter shine until I finished most, or all of the book, but lately I haven’t had that luxury.  Lately, my editors want pieces of the next book to put in the back of the paperback of other books.  Or, we end up with a novelette like we did with INCUBUS DREAMS in the anthology, CRAVINGS.  A slightly revised version of the first hundred pages of INCUBUS DREAMS  is in CRAVINGS.    Revised to take out references to people that aren’t in the first hundred pages much, that sort of thing.  But it was an interesting experience to have the front end of a book in editing when the back part of the same book wasn’t finished.  Awkward, at least that’s how it felt.
 
I agreed to it.  And I don’t regret doing it, but more and more the beginning of a book is wanted in New York before the entire book is finished.  It has made me look differently at the first chapter.  I can’t help but read it over and ask myself, is it really close enough to finished, close enough to being the right opening, for me to ship it off.  It has slowed me down in this book.  Because normally I write something, then move on, and rewrite the first chapter to something resembling perfection later.  But later, just keeps getting sooner.  It’s made me more cautious, and cautious is not fast, caustious is slow.  Now that I’m about to nail the last sentence to the first chapter, I hope, fervently, that I will pick up speed.  A lot of speed. 
 
Gotta go.  Talk to you later. 
 
 

Hey everybody.  I actually left the cane upstairs by the bed today.  I kept it by me, but didn’t really use it Sunday, so today I go solo.  It had been so long since I’d been on a cane that I’d forgotten how much it makes the rest of the body (that isn’t injured) get out of alignment.  So that after a very short time other things begin to ache. 
 
I still remember after I broke my leg in college how funny it was to try and walk normally after I got off crutches.  And just as Anita’s left arm is always getting hurt, it’s my right leg.  It’s been broken, burned, torn a muscle, and now pulled.  Though it had certainly done that before, just not this badly. 
 
I did mostly notes this weekend.  We had the kiddo.  I was too cripped up to do anything much, so I thought I should at least be in the same room with her, and be available.  We played tea party with her Disney talking tea set.  We watched endless Mrs. Bradley Mysteries.  It’s a series from MYSTERY on PBS.  Trinity is very fond of it.  She watched the debue, “Speedy Death”, three times in a row.  I begged for mercy when she wanted a fourth showing.  In between videos she would play upstairs, and over hearing some of it, she was playing murder mystery, or other aspects of the show.  She, as I did as a child, does not simply watch a show.  She redoes it with herself as a new character, or changes things.  I, and Jonathon, did the same thing as a child.  For some of us watching television or movies is not a passive activity. 
 
Sometimes there is something vauable in a movie, or a painting, or anything that you feel compelled to see again and again.  I’ve found in myself that anytime I fight this urge I usually regret it.  There is some weird creative process that is happening that feeds off the music, or the imagery, or the dialogue.  Something that in a few weeks, or months, or even years, will come out the other side of my subconscious in a totally new form.  Trinity has started to have an interest in the historical period of the Mrs. Bradley Mysteries, the 1920s.  She loves the fashion of the day.  It will be interesting to see if years from now, this seed bears fruit.  
 
The series is based on a series of books begun in the 1920s, by Gladys Mitchell.  I believe there are something like sixty books in the series.  I’m not positive of the number, but a lot.  We all like the show enough to try and find the books, and see if they are as charming.
 
Oh, by the way, this is not your typical cozy series.  Mrs. Bradley’s view on marriage, “Marriage is something you should get over with early in life . . . like chicken pox.”  View on the countryside, “Where animals walk around uncooked.”  She’s a lot of fun.
 
I’m going to try and exercise a little today.  We’ll see how it goes.   Bye for now.
  
 

The plumber came and was a perfect gentleman. He apologized and admitted it was his mistake. He seemed mortified at the ruin of the papers. We have a restoration place coming to see what they can salvage from the ten boxes of manuscripts and notes. Oh, well. We’re all alive, if not quite well. As Trinity pointed out no one was hurt, and she was right. The only thing that is truly irreplaceable are people and pets. Life is irreplaceable. Paper is just paper. Even with words on it. Some of this stuff had been sitting around for twenty years. I’ll go on the assumption that I guess I didn’t need any of it after all.

I am listening to the musical, A YEAR WITH FROG AND TOAD. Yes, it is based on that children’s series. I had to put something soothing on. I’ve already put hot water on to boil, because when the chips are down, you make tea. I joke that I must have been British in a past life. I don’t remember being British in a past life.
Why am I upset? The basement is flooded. Remember a few blogs back where I said the plumber stopped us in the middle of the road one morning? Well, the new plumbing sprang a leak. Like shooting water three feet from the wall leak. Sweet Jesus. It was, of course, in the part of the basement where old manuscripts go to be stored. I don’t know how much is ruined, but some of the manuscripts are oringals of the first Anita books, the first Merry books. Some are even unpublished books, unpublished series. That kind of thing. Not to mention years of notebooks from high school and college. So much for posterity getting my literary fingernail clippings.
I am so angry that I cannot help everyone sort through the papers. Not yet. I am so angry that I can’t think clearly enough to look at the mess. All I can think is, that it’s ruined. It’s all ruined. Probably some of it can be saved, but what parts? Four copies of my ex-husband’s high school year books are high and dry. I didn’t even know I had them. But my early manuscripts were mostly ink-jet printers. Shit.
I want to rant and rave, scream and throw things, but I won’t. Throwing things just means you break something that you’ll probably want later. When the plumber comes this afternoon if he just apologizes and fixes it, then it will all be fine. If on the other hand, he tries to get more money out of us, or some such crap, the cynical part of me will wonder if the leak was really all that accidental. Unfair? Maybe, but what else am I to think? They caused the problem and they want more money to fix a problem they caused. Like the car mechanic who fixed the small problem I’d brought my car in for, then when he drove it with me, there was a new and louder rattle. He offered to have me pay to fix that to. I talked to his boss and explained that I wasn’t paying for something they broke that day. They fixed it without complaining after that, but if I’d been less firm, they’d have made me pay for fixing their mistake (deliberate or otherwise). How many other people, read women, did that car place bully into more money? God knows. This was years and years ago, so the place isn’t there anymore.
I will not be bullied. I treat others fairly, professionally, and I expect the same in return. If people are unfair and not professional, well, then, the gloves are off.

Hey, guys. Yesterday I looked through these books to satisfy myself on three points in the current book. DICTIONARY OF CELTIC MYTH AND LEGEND by Miranda J. Green; PENDRAGON by Steve Blake and Scott LLoyd; WICCA, a guide for the solitary practitioner, by Scott Cunningham; A WITCHES’ BIBLE by Janet and Stewart Farrar; THE ANCIENT CELTIC FESTIVALS by Clare Walker Leslie and Frank E. Gerace; and THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HISTORIC AND ENDANGERED LIVESTOCK AND POULTRY BREEDS; plus a wonderful sight on the web about Irish Wolf Hounds, www.irishwolfhounds.org/history. This is one of the best organized web sights I’ve ever seen. The amount of research that has gone into and the logic of it’s arrangement is a wonderful surprise after some of the muddy sights I’ve seen. (I don’t do chat rooms, or roam for recreation, but I do some research on the web, if I can then confirm that information from at least two other sources, though if it’s really cool and something more minor in plot, I’ll settle for one confirmation. But the two confirmations must not refer to eachother as their source. You’d be amazed at how many people on the web do that.)
I found out why the Irish Celts ate more pork than beef. The wild ancestor of the domestic cow, the Aurochs, did not make it that far north in that area of the world. But pigs did. So logical, once you’ve done your research. Did I really need to know why pork is more popular in ancient Celt society than beef for the most part, no. But I did need to decide between one kind of visit by a supernatural food animal and another. I thought about sheep, cows, or pigs, but which one? Guess which one I’m using?
I won’t detail the other question I was trying to answer because that will give too much away. Okay, the two questions I was trying to answer, but anyway . . . Gotta go make pages.

Hey guys. It’s official, we’re sick and injured. Jonathon has a virus, and I’ve pulled my gracilis. If you don’t know what muscles that is, look it up. Believe me, if you’ve ever injured it, you won’t soon forget. Gracilis, the name is almost pretty. Oh, well.
Didn’t get a lot of pages done yesterday with the doctor trips and all, but I made some notes, and did some research, and I think most of it will get used today. Okay, most of the research I did yesterday will get used today. The research I did this morning before breakfast will probably not get used today, or perhaps at all. Research is often like that, you cast your net wide, and sometimes you catch something you can eat, and sometimes it’s just pretty, but you’ve got to throw it back. I would say what book I finished research in, but I think it would give people the wrong idea about exactly what direction this Merry book is taking. I just don’t want to fuel the speculation, when I’m almost a hundred percent certain people would take it in a direction that I am not going.
It’s funny about these internet rumors. There seems almost no way for me, or Darla, or Jonathon, to convince people that we didn’t say it, or what we did say, didn’t mean that. People seem so much happier not believing us.
Gotta go make pages. I’m hoping this will be the last day I use the cane. Yeah, that’s right, cane. I do very few things half-way, it’s either full out, or don’t start. Sigh.

Hey, everybody. Saturday was a bust. Jonathon and I were both sick. I’ve managed to pull a muscles in my leg. So the day was shot. But today is a new day, and though neither of us is feeling a hundred percent. In fact, I’m probably going to have to see a doctor about the leg thing. I’m pretty sure it’s just a badly pulled muscle, but I’m not a doctor, so I’ll let someone who is, look at it. Damnit.
Anyway, we’re in the office trying to pull words out of thin air. People ask, how have you written so many books in such a short space of time? Answer, I feel like crap today, but I’m at my desk. I’m working. There are excuses I’ll accept for missing work, but damn few of them. How do you write a book? By putting your butt in a chair and writing more days in a row than you miss. Sorry if this is brief, but I’ve got to save my energy for the book. Talk later.

Okay, everybody always asks, how do you write everyday? How do you do it? I usually write about how it works, but today, I thought I’d write about how it doesn’t work. I have no idea why, but I just don’t want to work today. I’m tired, but it’s mainly that it’s the beginning of the book, and I know how much work lies ahead of me.
This is my seventeenth book, or eighteenth. With that many books under my belt, I still have moments when the idea of filling hundreds of pages with words is overwhelming. Because not just any words will do. It has to be good words. Words that say what needs saying, words that fly and float on the page, not just sit there. A daunting task that.
I’ve switched music to my musical for this book. In an earlier blog I said that I choose main music for days when the writing goes well, then musical for days that it’s not so good, and Christmas music for when the writing is going very badly. Read slow. What I’ve noticed on the days when the words drag themselves out like a tired prisoner crawling through mud, is that the next day when I reread it, it reads fine. My head may go ugly or dissatisfied, but the writing is fine. Good even, there are days when I just can’t see it.
The musical, by the by, is BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, yes, Disney, original Broadway cast album. Why is it that people think because I write what I write that I can’t like Disney stuff? Silly people. My husband and I actually like Disney movies, products and such. In fact I am currently wearing one of the souvenir shirts I got on our last trip to Disney World. I am secure enough in myself to wear a Dumbo tank top. How many other Goths can say that?
Okay, I just turned to Jonathon and asked, “Is that true, do I qualify as a Goth?”
“Not really,” he said, “but it’s closer than anything else.”
True, I thought.
Okay, let’s coin a new term. I’m a DisneyGoth. Which means there are days on end when I wear black, and I love my t-shirts with the scary sayings on them. Then I’ll run into a spat of days where I need something a little brighter. I find that my t-shirt that has the Shakespeare quote for Vampire Theatre makes me happy to wear, and so does my Kaa shirt with it’s slogan of ‘Trust in me’. Why should I limit myself to just part of my personality? Why should anyone?
Gotta go make actual pages. Bye for now.