I’ve been having trouble writing lately–oh, sure, I’ll do 300-500 words here and there and to be completely honest, that’s fine. Really, what’s wrong with that? Nothing. But I miss being able to sit down and hammer out 2000 words in a sitting. Maybe it’s how busy everything is lately–I’m dealing with my weird, weird health (I went to the hospital a few weeks ago and though I haven’t had to go back I am definitely not back to “normal”), my foot (I can walk! But it hurts and I’m going to need physical therapy that I don’t have insurance for), my job (more exhausting than it ought to be due to the aforementioned two issues). I’m really hoping that if I just keep pecking away at it the magic will come back to me.

Or I could fill out a survey on my blog, right?

1. Are you a “pantser” or a “plotter?” 
Okay, I actually had to look that up. I like to call myself a “road-tripper.” I know where I’m going. I know where I want to end up eventually. Do I care when I get there? It might be nice to arrive before I’m falling over asleep, so I can settle comfortably in a motel room and rest for the night, but can I take a few detours, stop at a few tourist traps? Sure. In other words, I plot only the biggest points and let the characters take me there at their own pace.

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A few nights ago, during a discussion about the 20,000-words-per-month goal, we brought up the subject of the need to edit, instead of write.

At my normal pace–and by that I mean not rushed, not blocked, but constant, reasonably inspired writing–I do about 1000 words an hour, at which page 20 hours of editing would be the equivalent amount to do for the goal. It was commented, however, that that is a lot of time to spend editing, crossing words out, etc, especially since in most cases it takes only a fraction of the time it takes to write a chapter to edit one.

So, what would a reasonable goal be? To edit 10,000 words of material, regardless of time input? 20,000? Or perhaps simply 10 hours of editing? What do you think?

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I’ve been slaving away at the site for the past week to redo the layout (I am never quite satisfied with a layout, but I think this one is pretty clean; hopefully I’ll stick with it for awhile).

I’m behind on new writing goals, but this happens every year–after Nanowrimo, I say I’ll do better, and then the holiday season gets in the way. I’m going to do my best to do that this January, and hope I don’t end up severely ill this January as well.

I’ve been working a little on Circle of Many Faces, and I have another new work in progress, as well–an idea that won’t stop tugging at my brain; I had to start writing it down. I still have to think of a title, or at least a working title.

Crossing my fingers for a good 2008… here’s to the new year!

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I made a new layout for the site, as the old one was a little plain. This one isn’t too fancy, but it’s less plain and it’s cute. I also added an About Me section and a Works-in-Progress section, the latter of which contains excerpts from my two main projects.

I’ve recently done some good plotting on Circle of Many Faces; I think I’m ready to get going and churn out some chapters for it. After the New Year, there will be crit, and a lot of it, and I need to be ready

Progress on Rainbow Covey is going far more smoothly than is has in the past, and this makes me happy. I love it when I finally get to the point where I know what happens. (What? Get there before I start writing? That never works.)

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Total for the Day: 8680

Words Total: 31,184

Okay, this is killing me.

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Testing the livejournal cross-poster. I hope this works!

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“Her muscles were taught…”

Because they went to muscle school, of course. Hooray for proofreading!

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Now that I’ve mostly got the blog running the way I want it to, I can replace the first post with something more appropriate. Of course, I find myself with little to say, as I still need to set up some more things on my sidebar for works-in-progress and things like that. I’d also like to set up some extra site pages, but I’m still having trouble looping them through WordPress in a manner I’d like, so those get to wait until I figure out how. (Not that I haven’t found one way to do it–I just want to do it differently.) Also will work on putting the posts through to LiveJournal, but again–later.

Anyhow, if you’re reading this right now, you’re probably a friend or acquaintance of mine, which is cool. If not, hi, I’m Eliza, and I want to be a writer. I like to make things up, so about everything I write falls into the SF genre, leaning towards fantasy and sometimes horror. I have more raw ideas than I know what to do with, but few have made it into being full-fledged ideas with coherent plots and things like that.

This is my blog to talk about the craft, my stories and their mechanics, and possibly the process of publication (keeping my fingers crossed–figuratively speaking, of course, as it’d be hard to type otherwise). Welcome.

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