Saturday, November 27, 2010

Let this be a lesson, always back it up!

I wrote over 5,000 words yesterday, more than doubling my typical 2,500 words in one day and accomplishing the 50,000 word count goal for National Novel Writing Month.  No Limits is far from complete, but it'll get there eventually. I was planning on launching right into my cyberpunk short B Cubed but about three hours later, my laptop started acting up. It wouldn't retrieve my user profile, and was running(crawling) very slowly. Though I was dead tired, I staied up and backed up all of my writing files to thumb drive. Good thing too, because by this morning, all that is left is the blue screen of death.

I'm taking that as a sign I need to slow down a little. maybe go outside for a spell, snag some Vitamin D. After I blog, of course. The home computer is ancient in PC terms, about 5 years old and very slow, so don't worry if you don't see too much of me in the coming weeks. Just means that I'm making things explode again.  Ain't technology grand?

Sunday, November 21, 2010

At A Loss

I don't know how it is for other writers, but I have a tendency to hit dry spells. Not necessarily writer's block more like a lack of enthusiasm for my projects, periods of total stifling lung-seizing doubt. The thoughts that go through my head are this is awful. who would want to read this? What the hell could I have been thinking?
Well the easiest answer is that I had to put words on the page. The biggest drawback to being a panster, someone who doesn't plan a novel but just sits down to write, is that you delete great quantities of writing before you get it right.

I thought I had it licked this time, with my Nano novel. I wrote the synopsis ahead of time, got to know my characters, what the valued and what they wanted, what was standing in their way. I was all set, ready to write another great Lusha erotic.

Not gonna happen. Unlike Saranna and Liane who have incredibly awesome drafts of stories they love, I hate mine, really don't even want to waste my time combing through it to see if it's fixable.

I sit here now, at day twenty one of national novel writing month with forty one thousand some odd words of unadulterated crap. It has it's moments, but overall, it sucks. So now comes decision time.

Where do I go from here?

On the one hand, I could quit, just delete everything and focus on something else. The upside of that is having a fresh start, clean slate so to speak. At least theoretically. The stank of failure tends to follow me well after I put away a project. I could kid myself and think, well, I might want to fix it later...

Yeah, right. I've already done that with one project this year, almost 65 K in. Which brings my total of unpublishable productivity to over 100,000 words for 2010. That of course does not include the words I actually did delete in these and other projects, query letters, synopsis and all the other behind the scenes writing that the average reader never views.

The other choice is to plod onward, hope something happens that makes me love this beast again. But that has the potential to turn into a soul sucking kind of depressing, because if the magic doesn't come back, I not only doubt the story, but I might start questioning my ability to write in general. The cancer spreads from an isolated easily removable segment to a career threatening sense of doubt. A writer who doesn't believe in his or her ability has no place in professional publishing.

So what to do? Which risk is bigger? Are there any other options that I'm too entrenched in my own little misery box to see? What would you do?

Monday, November 1, 2010

NaNoWriMo and A Free Read!

Want a taste of what Lusha Lovelace is all about? Read and vote for my short story Space Invasion.


My NaNoWriMo story, No Limits is going well. I'm one chapter in and looking forward to Gen and Rhys time.They've been with me for a little while now, and are ready for some exposure ;-).

Hope everyone else is off to a smashing start!