The end of the beginning

Posted on | 9 months, 3 weeks ago, mid-afternoon | 1 Comment

Here’s recent progress on my 19th century D.C. spy caper about a powerful Difference Engine that will end the Civil War – now with warhawk conspiracies, clockwork assassins, two presidents with more in common than they know, two spies with less in common than they think, a conflicted U.S. Marshal, and Bonus! not-at-all mad scientist who can save the world if someone will just give him a chance:


    Project: Fiddlehead
    Deadline: September 15, 2012 (LOOK WHO ISN’T PANICKING)
    New words written: 7865 (ye gods this is awful)
    Present total word count: 21,510 words



    Things accomplished in fiction: All the players are in place, conspiracies are established, allies aren’t always friends – and the reverse.

    Things accomplished in real life: Finished up travel, sent all houseguests home, and then invited a four-footed one to come stay on a permanent basis. BUT NOW, NO FOR SERIOUS – STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT – I am on the daily writing pony (his name is Fred) and you can expect decent metrics henceforth, because baby, it is death-march time.

    In My Defense: I am very, very happy with what I have so far. I’ve spent the last couple of work-days revisiting the first few chapters and making sure everything works – fixing what doesn’t, re-jiggering a few characters, and sorting out what people’s actual motivations are, as opposed to their apparent ones. The last couple of projects I’ve gotten underway … I didn’t do this to a sufficient degree, and my drafts suffered for them. This time, I really do feel like I’m building the novel on a solid-ass bedrock of Plot That Makes Sense.

    Other: I bet you thought Plot That Makes Sense was like, step one or something. HA. That is step If I Get Around To it, also known as, step My Editor Will Kill Me If I Don’t Fix This Before She Sees It.

    Bride of Other: As for the cat and dog, slowly but surely they are making peace. Or collaborating on my demise. Hard to tell. If you want more regular dog updates and pictures – by which I mean, if you want to get absolutely sick of dog updates and pictures – keep an eye on my Twitter account.

    Son of Other: Look, I tried to restrain myself from posting a puppy video but I think we all know what my self-control is like these days, so here you go.

Category: misc

Comments

One Response to “The end of the beginning”

  1. Richard Cartwright
    July 29th, 2012 @ 4:36 pm

    In honor of your writing metrics I will refrain from talking about how cool the Market was today. I won’t say a word about the neat displays and produce at good prices and the joy of my wife and I moving in an accessible place after a morning of wheelchair Olympics just to go to Mass and eat in a cool restaurant. But I won’t. :) Also, since Grayson seems to be smarter than a lot of people, I don’t suppose he could do the typing?

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