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Another batch of chocolate chip cookies and Saint Saëns’ Symphony No. 3 (“Organ”) pulled me out of the slump and past the next milestone: 130,000 words. The problems aren’t all solved, but I squeezed out a nearly shut door and went off somewhere with Kieri to look at progress along the river.
At this point, I’m 16,000 words ahead of where I was this time last year–I was much farther ahead before my husband’s latest surgery(about 42,000 words ahead right before the surgery), but I knew that would slow me (hence the mad dash to get ahead.) Last year I didn’t get to 100,000 until August 9, and this year I got there July 8. Why this matters is that accumulating the bulk of the first draft earlier gives me more time to do a sensible (not crazy-making) revision and set up for the next volume.
It’s still necessary to keep going–in fact to push for my “usual” first-draft pace. This fall’s not going to be any less busy than last year; I don’t want to be flat against the wall in December again. If I manage the rest of the year as well as I have this one, I may be insufferably proud of myself when I’m done, in terms of anticipating and adjusting to the various challenges this year has presented. But it’s not over yet.
The take-home lesson, though, for anyone getting into this writing business in a serious way, is that LifeStuff comes hurtling at you sometimes and it helps to know how you, individually, respond to it. It’s not just the discipline of writing anyway–because sometimes you can’t. Your whole being is wrapped up in something else and you have nothing to write with. Waiting to hear how my husband came through surgery…that was not a time I could write. Or that week after surgery, in fact. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to. The earlier slogging away, based on knowing I’d have both a week or two “off” and then a struggle to get back into stride, gave me the leeway to take that time without feeling guilty.
Other times, I haven’t managed as well, because I didn’t know how I’d react to things…and then I had to fight like crazy to make the deadline. This is why knowing how much you can write in a crunch–and then never (NEVER) scheduling yourself so there’s no wiggle-room and it’s all crunch–is so important for a long-term, sustainable career. (Though I think it’s Joe Haldeman who said “I don’t have a career…I have the next book.” And that’s true, too.)
Anyway…the public works that Kieri agreed with his merchant advisor were needed are getting underway at last, and I’m playing with that for the moment. This will contrast nicely with something else that someone else is up to. Technology v. magic kind of thing. (Technology’s been delayed, in our terms, because of the ease of doing some things by magic–both in the past and now. But with the decline of the magelords’ magery, leading up to the Girdish wars, technological change began to take hold. )
Comment by Genko — August 18, 2011 @ 5:13 pm
I remember after my beloved’s surgery I was simply unable to leave her room. I didn’t know that would happen, and I was fortunate to have friends there who went out to get me food — I wouldn’t even have been able to go to the end of the hall or a vending machine, let alone to the hospital cafeteria. They went out and bought me a lovely sandwich and chips or something. Otherwise I would have simply gone hungry for the day until I knew she would be okay. She did the same for me after my surgery — in fact, she stayed all night after I had an odd reaction to morphine.
It’s true that these are things you often don’t know until you’re in the situation, and that experience can tell you that you have to make some sort of allowances for. So good for you for figuring out how to juggle LifeStuff with this writing stuff.
I wonder whether one of the questions that may come up will have to do with the decline (but not disappearance — witness Dorrin) of magery and how technology will fit with and change the overall world view. Come to think of it, that’s a contemporary question as well. Every technological advance creates change that we have to grapple with and has implications we didn’t expect.
Comment by Chris — August 18, 2011 @ 7:42 pm
“…never (NEVER) scheduling yourself so there’s no wiggle room…”
I’m proud of myself this week because I wrote and said, “Sorry, no way I can promise to do this in two weeks.”
And I am now catching up on all the sleep I lost last week…
Comment by elizabeth — August 18, 2011 @ 10:23 pm
Chris: Good for you! It’s hard to say “I can’t do it…” when you’ve been the go-to person, the safety net for others. But better do that than have a breakdown.
Comment by elizabeth — August 18, 2011 @ 10:34 pm
When I was first watching Paksworld grow in my head (and that was weird & strange…) I knew at once that the amount and variety of magic was warping what technologies grew or didn’t, and how fast or slow that advance was. The cost of magics of different kinds (innate or learned) to both the person using it and the person “hiring” it, as well as its effectiveness, determined whether a technology would grow. If your magical healer can mend a broken bone at the cost of being tired for a few hours afterward…and the number of broken bones the healer must fix is small…this is cheaper (even for the healer) than inventing X-rays and plaster casts or inernal fixations, etc. and various other bits of modern medicine (and even so, it takes the bone–and costs the patient–at ;east 6-8 weeks to heal a broken bone in our time.) If you can light a fire by magery, as the magelords could, or with a spell…why invent matches or a striker? I wouldn’t wear glasses if perfect sight were “natural” to me.
So it’s not until there’s a gap in what magic can do…or a gap in the spread of magic…that technology replaces it. And sometimes technology does a better job and sometimes it does a different job that almost does the same thing.
Comment by Celina — August 19, 2011 @ 7:03 am
That is some intresting questions. Sometimes, when I read fantasy books, I wonder if people actually do inventions. And when they do, how did they create it? And how much do magic replace science? It is very easy to just say a wizard did it… ;p
I hope everything will be well with both you and your husband. *Sends warm and happy thoughts.*
Comment by elizabeth — August 19, 2011 @ 7:36 am
It’s probably individual for each writer, how the writer chooses to handle magic and invention. Some writers may not know anything about the history of inventions or how invention works. I’m fortunate in having had a mother who was an engineer, and a practical problem-solver. I watched her make things–not famous inventions, but little conveniences for her own use–and saw the trial-and-error process that followed “Hmm…bet something like this would work…”