Last night, I got no writing done. There was a really long business meeting with the other writers and publishers in town (and several who came in from out of town) to confab about some new developments in the industry. Loads of fun, very intense, got to see some friends I don’t get to see much, but when I got home at midnight I was completely exhausted, so I crashed before I got my writing shift done.
Storms kept me inside today. Glorious winter storms. Hard rain beating on the windows, wind blowing hard enough to make the house creak. Yesterday, it was still summer, with cold winds kicking up in the late evening. Today, it’s definitely winter. The climate hear shifts gears like a fifteen year old on a new clutch.
I spent most of the day wearing Trixie out, since she normally gets a few hours a day on the beach, running several miles chasing the ball, the seals, the sea gulls, and generally enjoying the hell of being a dog. For inside activities, we alternate between fetch, some very ferocious games of tug, and working on her more advanced obedience stuff. She’s finally starting to hold “stay” for several minutes at a time, even in the face of distractions such as BALL! and LAMB SCRAPS!! and PEOPLE JUMPING AROUND!!!
Once she wore down, I got to settle into some business stuff, which ate a few hours, then into working on the podcast, which is almost done. I got the full cut and mix done, but my ears were too tired to give it a good QC pass, which they always need before going out into the world. So, tomorrow night, you’ll have a new episode 🙂
When my ears were worn down, I hopped over to writing, determined not to lose another day. I spent the shift filling in some of the other storylines in Part 1 of the book, bringing Jade and Doug and Brittany and Muriel into things. Man, I’ve missed these characters!
Most of this work was integrating partial scenes I’ve already written, finding the connective tissue, and laying down the groove for the characters coping with their roles in unmaking and remaking their world. As such, I made only modest progress, and I’ve got another day or two of this kind of writing before I plunge headlong into Part 2, but it’s both necessary and deeply satisfying work to do.
By the time I shut down to write this post and head to bed, I was up 876 words. Here’s the current state-of-play:
62,765 / 120000 words
By the way, you’ve still got four days to grab the Exteme Science Fiction book bundle with Hadrian’s Flight and Suave Rob’s Double-X Derring-Do, along with a collection of great stories by Mike Resnick exploring all the weird space sports that he’s been able to think of over the course of his magnificent career. Don’t miss it!
jdsawyer
After a childhood in academia, J. Daniel Sawyer declared his independence by dropping out of high school and setting off on a series of adventures in the bowels of the film industry, the venture capital culture of silicon valley, surfing safaris, bohemians, burners, historians, theologians, adventurers, climbers, drug dealers, gangbangers, and inventors before his past finally caught up to him.
Trapped in a world bookended by one wall falling in Berlin and other walls going up around suburbia and along national borders throughout the world, he rediscovered his deep love of history and, with it, and obsession with predicting the future as it grew aggressively out of the past.
To date, this obsession has yielded over thirty books and innumerable short stories, the occasional short film, nearly a dozen podcasts stretching over a decade and a half, and a career creating novels and audiobooks exploring the world through the lens of his own peculiar madness, in the depths of his own private forest in a rural exile, where he uses the quiet to write, walk on the beach, and manage a production company that brings innovative stories to the ears of audiences across the world.
For news and free stories, sign up for his occasional newsletter. Or find his contact info, podcasts, and more on his home page at http://www.jdsawyer.net
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