Siana Blackwood: because the pants fit

[SianaBlackwood]

March day 2... Editing makes me sleepy. Dad told me I skipped across everything way too fast in The Frozen Tear and it could probably span a 7 book series. He also wants a train robbery in there somewhere. Should have started editing that instead of Fangs. The start of Fangs is boring (^ editing makes me sleepy). I want coffee. If I say 'psychic stalker' I'm talking about the guy everyone else would say is a muse. My teacher said I need some really harsh friends who will smack me across the head for writing crap. One of my classmates is a Wrimo. Has anyone even read Fangs?

*deep breath in... out*

Okay, I'll go edit now.

[Louisa]

I've read the Frozen Tear Not Fangs yet Have a looooooot to read, and don't have computer most of ht time

[SianaBlackwood]

Grr. Editing ate my soul. Did nothing today.

[Louisa]

Aww. That's not fun

[SianaBlackwood]

Dumped the editing in favour of writing for the weekend

The result was 10k on Dispersion. I like weekends.

Of course, now I'm behind on EdMo and will have to do (shudder) extra editing to catch up. I only managed 585 on Blade's Edge, too. Just when I thought for sure March would be better than February. Oh, well...

[Louisa]

yeah for 10k! Now edit!

[SianaBlackwood]

Finally stuffed Fangs into yWriter. I've discovered that my job would have been a whole lot easier if I used 3 stars (* * *) instead of just skipping a line whenever I go on to a new scene. Apart from that, editing seems to be all about getting lists of everything. You have lists of characters, lists of places, lists of scenes, lists of high-level changes, lists of lists...

Then when you've got all the lists you go through and rewrite all the bits that contradict something that's on a list. Then you proofread it, smile for a few minutes, make a backup and then dance around the house/internet/street/wherever before dumping the whole thing in a folder somewhere and going on with something else.

Editing = not my favourite. It sucks out creative energy without providing any excitement. On the other hand, I finally get to fix that bit at the start of Fangs that's been bugging me since the day after I wrote it.

But instead of editing I could be finding out how insane Leora is going to go, or seeing if Michael is going to change Aster's name to Aislynn or if he's just going to keep calling her Dream Girl...

I really like Aislynn for a name. Plus it means 'dream girl'. Michael would love it.

Anyway, today I'm going to do all three. If I hit my daily quotas on all three projects, I'm going to get myself a giant Snickers from the snack machine.

[Louisa]

GOGOGOGO! You can do it!
And editing is not fun glad all I do for editing, really, is spell check

[SianaBlackwood]

Got the editing and Blade's Edge goals done, but not quite far enough through Dispersion to earn a Snickers. I'm trying again today.

Goals
Fangs (editing) = 1hr 40 mins
Blade's Edge = 1k words
Dispersion = 2k words

[Louisa]

GOGOGOGO! I know you can do it!

[SianaBlackwood]

Well, wednesday was epic failure, but I had the day off on thursday so I spend most of it writing and got 7,748 words spread between Dispersion and Blade's Edge. It was fun.

This is my favourite bit from Blade's Edge yesterday. Just before this Michael, Aster and Brianna were having lunch together and Michael suddenly found Aster eating lettuce to be totally irresistible and ran for it before he embarrassed himself too much...

Brianna stepped into the hallway outside their suite in time to see Michael, his back against the wall, hit his head against the wall with what looked like painful force.
"Trying to knock some sense into yourself?" Brianna asked, leaning against the wall beside him. "Is it working?"
"No," Michael admitted. "Brianna, that girl drives me wild."
"Yeah, I've noticed." Brianna sighed. "I know I've been teasing you about it, but it's pretty obvious that you're not sleeping together," she said. "Did she turn you down or are you just having trouble working your courage up to try it with a girl?"
"Brianna, we're not going to have this conversation," Michael said. "Ever," he added.
"Mikey, you admitted that slept with my mother. You don't get to decide what conversations we have."
"That..."
"Was before I was born?" Brianna asked. "Yeah, that's kind of obvious."
"I was going to say 'has nothing to do with it'," Michael said.
"Well... Okay, Mikey, look at it this way. Talking to someone is better than breaking the back of your head, right?"
Michael was silent.
"All right, then. Talking back is the only way to stop me from talking constantly. Now, I don't know if you want me to be your sister or your kid, but the job description is pretty much the same right now."
"You're going to tease me until I run away?" Michael suggested.
"No, I'm going to help you."
Michael turned his head to look at Brianna in confusion.
Brianna shrugged. "I'd prefer 'Mikey's got a girlfriend' over "Mikey's behaving like a stupid teenage boy over his Dream Girl again'," she said. "Okay, tonight is a good time to make your move. You've got the nice hotel, the absence of Celia's crew, me disappearing to play on the net with some old friends... It's the perfect night for the execution of a well-planned seduction."
"A what?"
Brianna sighed and shook her head. "Well, it's kind of like a date," she said. "You know what those are, don't you?"
"Sure - little fruits that grow on palms and then get dried and..."
"Do you want me to hit you?" Brianna asked. "A date is where you and the girl of your dreams have a meal together and pretend you're interested in talking about each other and then sneak off to make out somewhere. You're usually supposed to wear nice clothes, too." Brianna shook her head again. "Wow, she's really got your brains scrambled, Mikey."
That made Michael smile reluctantly. "Yeah, I know," he said.

[Louisa]

I like it! When can I read it?

[SianaBlackwood]

Well, I'm trying to finish it by the end of the month...

[Louisa]

GOGOGOGOGOGOGO! I wanna read it!

[SianaBlackwood]

Well, even though I needed to write 9k on Dispersion for MarNo's wacky weekend (and failed) fun, weird things still managed to happen in Blade's Edge. There's this government guy who turned out to be the older brother of Michael's first boyfriend, so now we're up to our ears in "wait a minute, aren't you gay?" comments about poor Mikey. Any minute now he's going to say something to the effect that his sexual preferences are officially off the table, at which point there will be awkward silence while everyone wonders if that really came out the way he wanted...

Michael doesn't deserve a lot of what I do to him. So far today (his time) he's been beaten up by his daughter, had a government official threatening to blow up Celia (their spaceship), been insulted by everyone and almost fallen asleep reading the ship's log...

Meanwhile Aster is on the lower levels of the ship tracking something that can walk through walls and Brianna is trying to hack into the government ship's systems so she can break the lock it's got on Celia's FTL drives.

Edit: plus I've written over 250k for the year!

[Louisa]

Aww, but that sounds like fun!
And doing things to your characters is why they have a book!
And yeah!

[SianaBlackwood]

For some reason all the Blade's Edge characters have taken up saying H-E-double-hockey-sticks...

E.g. "The galaxy is going to H-E-double-hockey-sticks-in-a-handcart, you know."

The mayor on Buffy said it and it just kind of stuck with me...

[Louisa]

I like it Sounds like fun!

[SianaBlackwood]

Every time I read "we're insane writers and we like it that way" I think of this cartoon about a cat that my nieces watch - I think it's called Wubbsy or something.

The opening music goes something like "he's got a wobbly tail and he likes it that way! Wubbsy wubbsy wubsy woo..."

Sorry, jingles stick in my head. Anyway...

Still hate editing. At the moment I'm going along adding in little bits and changing other bits, which isn't so bad.

Blade's Edge is going weirdly well. The person who can walk through walls shot Aster, though. Oh, and Michael changed Aster's name to Aislynn and asked her to marry him. It was... cute, I guess.

Dispersion... Bleh. Not much at all. Need some random psychos.

[Louisa]

Haha sounds like fun And random psychos, really, why would D need that?