On Writing - 1 -

Stephen King says you need to write at least 2,000 words a day. Does that count if you have a major sinus headache/head cold and can't really see straight?

I didn't write anything last night and it felt weird. Tonight is a Nyquil kind of night so I think I'll just go home after work, mange on some soup and saltines, and churn out 2,000 words. If I can see the words straight. The past two days have been early-to-bed ones.

I like my story though. It's more--mysterious for me, if that makes sense, on several different levels. The story is much simpler than The Time Swallow, and my characters are much less familiar to me. Depending on the story, the complications, even the character, I may spend days and days just diddling along with their backgrounds, with the setting's history, with the backstory, knowing when and where things need to unfold, what information needs to be revealed. But for this--whether it was the sudden lightbulb moment, the need to keep pressing forward since I have this irrational idea that everything fun and exciting ends at the age of 30, the want to shape my life after my Fellowship ends--I've just gone straight in, head first, into the deep end of the pool. My characters are developing on their own as my pen hits the paper. The backstory is there, but, unlike The Time Swallow, I didn't go back to it for months and months questioning aspects, rewriting parts of it, wondering how I should spread out the various revelations.

I think that's a good thing.

Oh. I don't even have a title yet.

But as someone who is highly visual...I have no character designs, no setting imagery, nothing! The only thing I have is the ship layout and the statistics for it. Not saying that I sat there and doodled out every last inch of the places in TTS, but...this writing process is almost like a dream, where you just keep moving forward, and the world suddenly reveals itself.

I'll have one image and go from there; when I turn the corner it's a brand new place. And I just let the pen describe it all.

We'll see where this goes, and how the themes will play out, and how the history will reveal itself. It really is like driving with the headlights on this time; it is a completely different process for me versus my first manuscript. And I love it all the same.