Today's words: 749 (stopping for lack of time, must dash)
Total words: 13,488

You guys are doing great!

For my part, I'm still making notes towards my rewrite. I wrote the Draft Zero awful quick -- good thing, cuz now it's done -- but I'm going to take my time on the rewrite.

Today's words: 894
Total words: 12,544

Stopping mid-scene mostly because my fingers hurt -- I'm out of practice with this stuff! Feeling very accomplished because I realized chapter 1 was appallingly long; cut it into two chapters, magically jumping me ahead to chapter 4 for the new material. Much better overall now.

Admit to fighting faint desire to chop all the current chapters in half in order to be magically on chapter 7, or in half again, in order to be magically on chapter 13. Etc. and so on. Resolved to be satisfied with actual progress instead of silly illusions of progress instead.

Friday the 13th, June 2003
Today's words: 931
Total words: 19,064

Yes! Yes! Chapter 9 is finished! Final-fucking-ly. It felt so good to get a decent night of writing in again that I got up and danced around when I was done. Whoo!

Work has been really stressful for me too this week, Gwenda. I hate it when it totally zaps you, it's so unfair.

Mary Anne, go you!

Vera, wish I could even pretend this novel would be ready to send out by then, but alas! Thanks anyway!

Today's words: 937
Total words: 11591

Woohoo!

Thanks for the heads-up on the contest, Vera. Maybe next year ...

Go, go, go, Mary Anne!

I think I'm pretty much hopeless until tomorrow.

Work burnout, work burnout, work burnout.

Good work, Mary Anne.

Today's words: 300

Total words: 10,816

Maybe more later, but I figure I better celebrate whatever chunks of writing I get accomplished, given how slow I've been.

Folks,

I just thought of all of you writing YA when I saw this in Speculations:

"The annual Marguerite de Angeli Delacorte Contest [ http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/games/marguerite.html ] is open to US and Canadian writers only. "The award consists of $1,500 in cash and a $7,500 advance against royalties [+] a book contract (on the publisher's standard form) for HC/PB editions." Deadline, 6/30/03.

I do actually think about this book every day -- my brain is just being sucked away by paint fumes (my sister just moved to Chicago and we're painting her apartment). Not to mention that I can barely lift my arms for long enough to type this message.

(At least my excuses for not writing vary from week to week...)

Oops. Missed a day there.

Gearing up, you know. I don't know how many words I'll do today. The day job is very writing intensive this week -- hands cramped up writing intensive -- so I may get a bit behind schedule until the weekend.

House boys good. Unfortunately, Evan is a figment.

I think SycHill is the week after next. And it seems like we've been home so rarely lately anyway, that all our normal rhythms have been thrown out of whack. It'll be good to have a couple of weeks before then sleeping in our own bed, with our dog, etc.

Of course, I'll be going crazy trying to finish the YA and Christopher will be going crazy trying to finish his workshop story. But that's just par for the course. (smile)

When does Chris leave for Sycamore Hill, Gwenda? I'm glad you have George; I have my sister and her baby for company in the house, but neither of those sleep in the bed with me and keep me warm (it's rather chilly here in the Bay Area right now). I was freezing when I went back to bed after taking Tim to the airport for his 7am flight this morning!

Evan sounds nice;-) I've always wanted a houseboy. In college, my roomie and I would let this high school guy who worked with us at the pizza joint come over after work and fetch us beers from the fridge and rub our feet. We'd let him have one beer and send him home. Looking back, I wonder how wise it was to be giving a high school boy beer, but at the time it was a hoot. He loved calling himself our houseboy, too. I'm sure he was bragging, and probably exaggerating, to his friends.

Today, no words. Moping, obsessively cleaning the kitchen, and underwear shopping occupied my hours.

Tomorrow I start going over Draft 0 of the book. The plan is to focus on plot and not worry about the crap-ass prose.

June 8, Day ??

Today's words: 1450
Total words: 42,279

A pretty good day today, and I think I've FINALLY hit the beginning of the ending.

Only about 300 words today, so I'm not really counting it. I got a terrible migraine mid-afternoon which killed my writing for the day, what with the drugs making me feel like Queen Victoria and all.