Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Woohoo! I'm finally DONE with the remastering work for A Division of Souls (that is until I do one last reread, heh), so now I can shift all my creative focus back on Theadia! I'm looking forward to starting in on it again, especially now that I have a clearer head and a few really good ideas on how to rework it into the style I want. I've given myself until late 2026 to finish it, so I've got a year and change to make it happen. I'm pretty sure I can do it, considering these days the first drafts of my novels take maybe a few months at most. [It's still kind of weird to say that. Each book in the original trilogy took about a year, while In My Blue World took three months.] 

Whether or not this one will expand into a duology or just be a very long single volume, we shall see...

So the last vacation week of 2010 ends today. I admit I've been quite the slacker this week, doing very little in terms of writing, though I've kept busy with other things such as errands, shopping, and attending multiple cultural events (John Adams' El Nino at the Symphony, Verdi's Aida at the Opera House, a visit to the Jewish Art Museum, the Nutcracker at the Opera House, and the SF Zoo yesterday). So I may not have been creatively busy over the past week, but we kept ourselves busy with fun things to do. Isn't that what vacations are supposed to be about anyway? It was a nice respite, and I'm bummed it didn't last longer!

Admittedly, my writing has in fact been weighing on my mind off and on throughout the week, so it's not as if I'd been avoiding it or ignoring it. In typical writerly fashion, I did go through a few bouts of questioning if I really should be continuing this crazy dream of mine...these bouts of course were fueled by frustration that I'm not getting anywhere, that I'm not "feeling it", or just that I'm plagued with the same self-doubt everyone else gets at certain stages, in which I'm convinced that I'm just hopelessly average and will never have a decent enough story that will sell (and I'm well past the "they just don't get me" phase, thankyewverymuch). These emotions are only intensified when I see posts from other writers who post high word counts, and I'm still sitting here around the 500 mark--if that. Well, to be honest, and as you've all probably noticed by now, I've always had a really bad habit of getting all wound up in this frustration and self-doubt, releasing it in some self-effacing fashion--mostly here on LJ--then once that's been purged, feeling like an idiot for thinking such things and moving on. Yeah, I know a lot of you have read these posts in the past and may be getting sick of reading these. It's an ongoing process, going through all of this, so I commend you for your patience. I'm dancing as fast as I can.

( Which brings me to an lj-cut )

So...that's what's been on my mind all week, as far as writing is concerned. I'm just as sick to death about avoiding this hurdle as you are hearing about it, so I think it's high time I just jumped over the damn thing already.

Sunday emmalyon and I went to Barnes and Noble, where I ended up buying the newest edition of Writer's Market Deluxe Edition--one of the best annual market listings for writers. The deluxe edition includes a year's subscription to the WM site which includes updates, industry news, and other nifty things.

Thing is, it cost me nearly fifty dollars, so I told Emm that in order to justify buying this edition (rather than the regular $30 edition which is just the book), I need to finish a story, revise it, and submit it to a publisher before the new edition comes out next year.

I'd like to make Gabriel and Cassandra the story, but if I can get something else as well, perhaps a short story or something, that would be great. Like I said, I have a year.

This should be interesting. :)