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Okay, so we’re finally over three hundred pages in. Great, yea!, whoopee! Of course for almost the last two hundred of that three hundred pages we’ve been off the outline. That means that nearly two hundred pages of this book is already new stuff. Not stuff I’ve budgeted for time wise, but extra goodies that needed to happen before we could get moving back onto the outline. I’d estimated that the outline would be about five hundred to six hundred pages, now add two hundred extra on. Eight hundred pages. That is a long damn book. It’s also thrown my time table off, of course. I’ve been trying to organize us like an office, but books aren’t like widgets, or tables, or cars. You don’t set out the plans for a car and end up with an extra steering wheel because you needed it to make the car go. You don’t end up making the table legs 50% longer, because the table just doesn’t work without. A book is like nothing else I’m aware of. The two hundred unplanned pages are good pages, necessary pages, and remind me all over again why we hadn’t been seeing much of Richard or Ronnie in awhile. It takes pages to let Richard and Anita argue, or do anything else. It takes pages to have Ronnie and Anita have girl talk, long over due, I might add. It takes pages for Damian’s back-story, which we’ve gotten a lot more of this book than I’d planned, but I’ve learned not to argue with my subconscious on how much to put in this book, because every time I put my foot down, and say no, we don’t need it, I end up having to put it back in before the book can be finished. My subconscious often knows more of what is going on than I do.
Nathaniel has made himself a major player this book. Which surpirsed both Anita and me. Looking back I realize that it shouldn’t have, because what has Anita been forcing him to do for books and books? Be more independent, think for yourself, don’t be so submissive. What she and I forgot was that independent people can argue with us, and make demands on time, plot, and energy. He’s doing exactly what Anita wanted him to do, just not at all in the way she wanted him to do it.
I’m finally back in my outline, and have been for a chapter. We got Bert on stage and he and Anita still have that nice bickering chemistry. No one is really as fun to fight with as Bert. We also finally get a brief mention of Bert’s girlfriend, Lanna. She’s an interior designer who has painted the offices a nice homey, warm, browns, oranges, deep yellows. So that the clients will feel more loved. Anita has informed her that it’s not her job to love her clients, and never to touch her office again. Lana has been alive on paper, in notes, for several years. I knew she exisisted about two or three books ago, but this is the first time she’s even gotten a mention. Funny how that works.
I’m still listening to Christmas music. No matter how many pages I’m doing a day, I know until the Christmas music gets retired I’m not really over the hump. Oh, well.
(The puppy just peed in the floor. Did I mention we have a new dog? His name is Pippin, Pip, and he’s wonderful, but he’s not housebroken yet, and he has taken a postive shine to my office floor. I had three dogs, why did I want four? Insanity, temporary insanity, is all I can plead. Jon has come to fetch the puppy and run him downstairs and outside, while I clean up the mess. Ah, the glamourous life of a writer.)
A book is like a fire, at least for me. There comes a point when it gets white hot, and if you feed it fuel it will stay and grow. But if you neglect it, it begins to die down from lack of fuel. Fuel for me and my books is pages. I’ve tried to organize us like an office where regular business gets done, but the book itself is not business as usual. The rest, yes, we can delegate and organize, but the book, the book needs attention. I’ve reached that point where at least a few pages must come out every day or the fire begins to die. I used to think I was a work aholohic, but I’m not, not really. I’d much rather be visiting with my daughter, or my husband, or my dogs (well sort of my dogs, when they’re not peeing on the floor), but I also do not want to go back to crippling along at two or four pages a day. I am blessed that when I’m in the groove, the zone, the whatever, that over ten pages a day is average. Most writers can’t keep that kind of schedule up, and at the beginning of the book neither can I, but somewhere in the middle of the book. Middle has only a little to do with actually page middle, it’s more the middle of the plot. For an Anita book we’ve got to have had at least one murder scene, and some sort of interaction with whichever monster is going to take precedence in the book. Not always, but those are good indicators. So I’m in the middle, sort of, and it’s at that blazing heat. But that heat means even one day off and I’ve lost it. The fire dies to ashes and it’s like starting over almost. It feels wonderful when the book is like this. It flows and I can do in two hours what usually takes me eight, or more. But the pages need to come no matter how you feel physically, or what’s happening in your life, like new puppies, or homework. So I’m off to do the first scene between Anita and some of Animators Inc. ‘s clients. I’ve got another tenetative scene with another group of clients, but I’m beginning to get the feeling that it’ll have to wait for another book. One client meeting, references to the rest but not on stage, then drop Nathaniel at work. Did I mention he’s sitting out in the waiting room while Anita sees clients? I didn’t, oh, sorry. He is. He’s staying close just in case, because Micah spent all night babysitting a new werewolf and trying to make sure said werewolf didn’t shift and eat his girlfriend and her child. Why is Nathaniel near by just in case what, or why? Hmm. Should I share? Should I be sadistic and just leave it at hints? Hmmm. Let’s just say that Anita is learning to control the arduer better, but if something goes horribly wrong at work, we don’t want to be left without choices. The plan is we’ll actually get through the day without a problem, but Anita doesn’t know that, and neither do I, not for sure. But that’s the plan.
Drop Nathaniel off at Guilty Pleasures, and off to raise the dead for Anita. Probably another murder tonight, but again, not a hundred percent sure. Tonight, or tomorrow night at the latest. The book is talking to me. It’s time to go make pages. Bye for now.