over the river and through the woods...

Woke up to the first snowfall of the year. Nothing significant, but enough to mess with my head a little bit. It's not that I hate snow, really, but if it's gonna snow and be cold, then it needs to snow enough to let me stay indoors.

I'm a puppy parent again, which is nice. I brought my dog back up with me after over 3 years of my parents keeping her. It's weird. I feel like I'm getting to know her all over again, but she's a trooper. Unconditional love is an amazing thing. So far, she's spent the last couple of days protecting me from the cats and from roommate. Once she gets used to everyone, she'll be a happy happy pup.

Also, I finished my outline for Spark over Thanksgiving *intense happy dance ensues*. I'm soooooooooooooooooooooooooo excited about writing it, but it needs to stew a little more. I've found all kinds of interesting stuff to work in; I think that the detail in this one will be incredibly rich, moreso than anything else I'm working on at the moment just because it's steeped in all these different traditions that I can weave through the narrative. Also, getting to read the Book of Enoch for research purposes will be interesting. There's going to be a lot going on in this, so keeping it to a decent length is going to be difficult. I'll try to edit as I go and streamline, and *hopefully* start in the right spot this time (it's kind of hard to remember that not all stories start at the actual beginning).

I'm working on a more detailed outline for Taming the Ancients as well. I'm going to try to divide my time at work and home for writing (like I said, hotel work is perfect for writers, especially in the slow season). Maybe at work, try to accomplish the more technical aspects--outlines, character bios, plot details, etc.--so I can utilize that for writing while I'm home. After I write my new intro for Duality. Grr argh. So much to do... But I can't imagine doing anything else.

Q4U: How do you guys utilize your writing time? Any tips will be greeeeeeatly appreciated :D

Wha-huh?

When I first started plotting Spark, admittedly I had NO IDEA where it was going. I'm trying to write Taming the Ancients by the seat of my pants, and that's not happening very well either. I think that I'm forced to outline these two, at least. I have no clear-cut ideas about either of them. I vaguely know Point A to Point Z kinds of things, but as far as the actual PLOT, I couldn't tell you. I've had these ideas for months, but they've mostly been ideas, even though TTA is over 10,000 words. So far, Machial is the only character really doing something... Argh.

It's partially my fault. I haven't been communicating with them very well. I'm introducing 2 new characters to the Spark world, and as it turns out, one of them wants to be the MC. Anyone who follows my inane tweets will know that Rose won, but I'm not sure how well that's sitting with Duke right now. Duke wants to be a MC, too. I've debated making their stories into separate books, BUT the storylines intersect quite a bit.

Here are my problems (and I'm sure at least one of you who reads this has run into a similar sitch):

1) Rose is more comfortable in 3rd person/limited/past tense
2) Duke is more comfortable in 1st person/present tense
3) Neither of them wants to switch.

I have been thinking about making Duke's sections a journal (a la Bram Stoker's Dracula, but not as painfully dull) that Rose finds during the investigation. That way, Duke will still have scenes, as she's involved with the investigation herself, and I can maintain the present tense that she seems to enjoy. I'm not comfortable writing an entire novel in present. Even though it worked beautifully for Suzanne Collins and is working well so far for The Windup Girl, I'm not sure I can pull it off. I'm a traditionalist.

I started the Plot Outline Course from Holly Lisle's online courses. Well, I paused to write a blog post... I'll let you know how this works out.

....shouldn't the second novel be easier than the first? Argh.