Climbing Plot Mountain

Numbers and I do not get along. I can, and have, worked the same damned algebra problem and ended up with different answers, and been certain each time I had worked the problem correctly. Usually, however, I can count on my brain's innate skill with patterns to keep the digit-swapping to a minimum when it's words rather than numerals.

Today, I typed a new one: navitagion.

Apparently that's a virus that makes you suddenly pack a bag and jump on board ship. *g*

***

It's been a good couple of days' word gathering, with nearly 2K new words to show for my effort (and not effort of the staring at the screen for hours variety, either; this is the pre-Christmas season, and every minute seems to be scheduled). I can tell I'm starting to get to the point where existing text is fitting into the new material--the grafting is becoming easier.

I'm also at page 346. Wow.

***

No research. I am, however, reading for fun - I finished an early Tony Hillerman-Jim Chee/Lt. Leaphorn mystery, Coyote Waits over the weekend and am now approaching the end of the new Lynn Flewelling-Seregil and Alec book, Shadows Return. Long awaited, this one. When I am not busy shedding books in preparation for moving, I will have to buy the ones that go before just so I can re-read them all in quick sequence. (I hear they're being reissued - yay!)

I also will soon have a whole new box of books to read, though most of them I've already read. I won an auction over at the helpvera community that includes three or four Nina Kiriki Hoffman novels, two of which are some of my absolute favorites. (The Thread that Binds the Bones and The Silent Strength of Stones) Plus some books I've been meaning to read, and will now be Mine!

What was that about shedding books? *g*

1961 new words yesterday, which will sbustitute for the scene I'm cutting (sap--ew) and then some. The subconscious remembered what plot was. Hallelujah!

Best news yet: I found a way to incorporate a ponor. The scenery grows all around me. The Sapree canyons came alive as I wrote them, and the hills of central Vellutira are becoming more real with every word. One of these days, given the chance, I want to see this landscape I'm paraphrasing. (Did you know there's a grant to allow (SFF?) authors to do just that? I think it was fjm who mentioned it on her blog recently. Now there's a grant I want to win!)

Research in the last couple of days was mostly looking for photos of the karst landscapes of the Balkan peninsula. I found some lovely images of Dubrovnik, which, while that city doesn't quite match up to Clarent, will still enrich my descriptions of the Vellutiran capital and ensure it resembles neither Guaymarien nor the Sapree cities. I'm still using a gorgeous image of a flooded ponor and the hills and trees around it as a visual mnemonic when I'm on my laptop at home; you can bet that little fold in the hills will appear somewhere in Break.

It's been a while since I had appreciable progress to report, but I finally got through the scene that had been blocking me, to the tune of about 2200 new words, most of them coming late last night. I may actually have gotten through the worst of the scenes that needed to be added, too.

There's still a chunk of time unaccounted for coming up that I hope I can get over in some fashion other than "and they basically did nothing new for two weeks while the clock ticked." I dislike those sorts of entries. I'm holding out for a further flash of creativity to bridge the gap instead. *g*

***

There's a karst formation on the coast of Scotland--Geodha Smoo--which will be making a simulacrum appearance in Break. Fascinating stuff, this karst geology. Underground rivers turn out to be great places to disappear a body, unless they turn up at the bottom of the waterfall where the river cascades down to the coast. (/tongue in cheek)

Take a gander. This place is fascinating: http://www.durness.org/Smoo%20cave.htm

(don't want to scare it off, but it's raining here.)

(::very quiet cheer::)

***

Let's see. Not much in the way of wordage to add to the WIP - am stuck trying to figure out how to increase tension following the last major added scene and waiting for my subconscious to cough up the answer - but I did get some research done (more karst stuff) and pulled together a calendar of events up to the point where we currently are. There are events in the future which require a certain amount of time to be possible, and I don't want to blow that timing.

***

Not that you can read this, but here's a huge ball of good thoughts for my friends in OH, who took Ike in the shorts over the weekend and few of whom have power back yet. I hope you have what you need, if perhaps not what you want.

1425 last night after much thrashing around to set up this next scene. I've been heavily into avoidance activities while my subconscious worked out what had to happen on the screen--this week, I'm making throw pillows for the couch. I've made phone calls I've been putting off, I ran errands, I got my eyes checked. Took the dog to the park. Limed, fertilized, and re-seeded the little lawn in the back yard. And then I decided I needed to just write the damned scene and get it over with. Perfection isn't necessary; it has to be on the screen/page before it can be polished.

I swear, I have to rediscover this truth at least three times a year.

***

Somewhere, in the notebooks containing the early, handwritten versions of the Canum stories, there's a list of the names of a certain group of people. I could really use that list right about now. Maybe it's time to relocate all of those notebooks down here to the workroom.

No, that's more displacement. Argh!

***

After I got my words last night, I let myself do some of the research I'd pushed aside in order to get them written. Cave systems in karst is a topic I'm very interested in at the moment. I stopped by a library earlier in the week to see what sort of info I could find, but the reference librarian was unable to offer much assistance. It's not so much the geology and hydrology of karst that interests me; what I really want to understand is the effect that geology and hydrology has on the landscape and environment it's set within--not so much the caves themselves, then. Because I'm finding it hard to put into words the particular thing I need to know about, I can't blame the librarian for being unable to help me.

Maybe what I need is to locate a geologist/hydrologist who understands karst and pick their brain. *g*

***

I'm currently involved with an online class on the Age of Sail--not displacement this time but rather research for Satisfaction, whenever I finally pick it back up. (On the other hand, spending hours working on the optional homework assignment is, uh, avoidance. Um.) I forget sometimes how much fun it is to read about sailing and imagine the movement of beautiful boats through the sea.

***

I'm also currently working my way through Maass's Writing the Breakout Novel, not as a bible or blueprint but more as a check of what these past years of exposure to high-octane writers' brains has taught me. I have some very bright friends, I'm happy and proud to say. I haven't read anything thus far in the Maass book that hasn't been said in some variation by someone I know rather better than Maass.

***

See? I've been busy. That's why I haven't gotten many words lately. Look at all the stuff I've been doing....

Yeah.

Back to work.

Today we finally rolled over and past the first turning point and into the second act, and I got to write two brand new scenes for a total of 1500 words by MS Word's count or approximately five and a half pages SMF (standard manuscript format).

Wow. It feels so good to write new material again.

I'm sure the rest of the Dreaded Middle of this book won't go as easily as today's words did, but I'm glad to have had the experience.

***

The interesting thing about worldbuilding on the fly is that, sometimes, the thing you add just for the hell of it, just for color, turns out to be an important element in the story. I love when that happens.

Well, I didn't get the scene completed yesterday, but it's an extremely complex knot to try and weave together and I did get 650 new words on the page. Good progress, then.

The weather is promising rain for the first time in a very, very long while. Cross your fingers we get at least a little of it, okay?

Onward.

***

ETA: scene's finished, with only two lines remaining to be worked out once my brain gets clever enough to come up with the proper insult, with a total new word count of 1410.