IM gaming night went well.  But, wow, that was a lot of typing.  My back and wrists let me know that maybe taking a break now and then is a good idea. 
  Today, we're back into writing again.  In regards to Tiyana's comment below, I've been breaking up my long chapters.  With very few exceptions, I'm trying to break all my chapters at around 3k words.  There are positives and negatives to shorter chapters.  I've mused about this before, but let's revisit it.

Short Chapters

  Short chapters give you more opportunities for 'chapter hooks'.  These are cliffhanger ending to chapters or other writer's tricks that keep the reader turning the pages.  One of my goals is to be good enough at that to make someone read one of my books from beginning to end without getting out of their chair.  I always loved books that did that to me. 
  Short chapters also allow for POV or setting changes in a natural way that is not confusing or jarring to the reader.  I have Jacob and Jael alternating POVs so a shorter chapter can help me show more of what is inside each character's head in regards to a conflict or situation.
  Shorter chapters make for a faster-paced book.  This helps propel the plot forward.  Pick up a thriller by, oh, Neil Flynn, Brad Thor or James Patterson.  Almost every chapter is short, some as short as three printed pages.  But that may not be the best model for fantasy novels at least. 

Long Chapters

  Long chapters are immersible.  You can spend a long time in one person's POV and in one location, really allowing you to flesh out the character and setting. I like that element about long chapters and I think it lends itself well to fantasy and to sci fi novels with intriguing settings.
  Long chapter may bore some readers.  I'm sure all of us have been reading some novel and we start looking for a good stopping point, leafing ahead to the chapter break.  Any time your reader is thinking about quitting reading, then we aren't doing our job well enough.  Long chapters CAN fall victim to plot or pacing issues.  It doesn't need to, you can keep cramming conflicts and exciting events into a long chapter.  You do risk reader fatigue with long chapters.  That's been my experience this past year, at least.
  Finally, there are some logistic challenges with long chapters.  If an editor or agent asks to see your first three chapters and you're sending him 60 manuscript pages as a result, there's a chance they may not read all 60 pages, unless you're really good at keeping the reader hooked.

So, there you have it.  If you want you need long chapters in your novel, make sure the plot is advancing. Make sure that the readers stay hooked. Make sure 'something is happening'.

  It is written, 'pride cometh before the fall'. 
  One of the reasons I started this blog was to hold myself accountable
  So I may have been a little overconfident yesterday.  I forgot how frelling long some of these chapters are.  I had to break up my nice brune fight and switch POVs to Jael.  That meant a lot of rewriting.  Ah well, it should fix pacing problems.  It also lets me get inside Jael's head immediately so it's clear she instantly, intensely dislikes Balt.
  I also need to come clean on my attempt at writing 8 hours a day.  It hasn't happened.  Its more like 6 hours a day.  Not bad but it could be a lot better.
  My new goal, to get this fourth draft done by Feb 21st.  I'm going to get up earlier, work harder and get this draft done.  I pretty much know what I need to do.  Now I just need to do it.

  I think I'm over one of the big humps now.  I wrote Jacob and Jael up to the brune attack and from here it should be pretty smooth sailing up to meeting Balt and the battle against the brune pack.  I'll need to read those chapters over and make sure they fit smoothly into this draft but I should be able to jump ahead and think about what else needs trimming between meeting Balt and the battle at the castle.  I know Jael's chapters may need to be re-written so her feelings for Jacob and Balt are more conflicted and confusing for her but on the whole, I'm optimistic about today.  So much so, that this after noon, I'm going to do some writing for my IM gaming night.
  And, can I just say, managing a critique group is a lot of work.  Oy.  Still, if it helps people, I guess I don't mind the extra time.  Speaking of, I have a critique to do and then I'm off into the land of the Dragon Riders.

  Oy.  Feedback for the early chapter at the Grange came back from one of my critique groups.  My word, what a huge load of nit-picking.  I'm guessing either he doesn't like the story, he's holding my critique of his work against me or he's just f-ed in the head.  I know stuff like this shouldn't bother me but I still wasted time yesterday trying to get that out of my head.  I think I'll just skip reading and critiquing his stuff.  It's not worth the drama and very little of his feedback was useful.
  Still, if the preponderance of the feedback on the Grange chapter is that it needs to be re-written, I can do that.  It feels like I'm rewriting the whole bloody book as it is.  Ah well.  The plot changes and pacing improvements more or less dictated that I'd have to re-write the book.  Time to stop whining about it and just do it.  I think that's the most important thing about critique group feedback.  It shouldn't get in the way of your writing.  You can learn things from other writers (great writers steal after all) by critiquing their work and doing the things they do well.  And other pairs of eyes are useful for spotting inconsistencies and typos.  But they can't write your story for you.  Some of them will try to.  I'm trying to ignore them.  Writing my stuff the way I envision it is how I'm going to get better
  Writing is a learning process.  I learned a lot writing Smooth Running and it works as a story, I think.  (if I can just get Baen to agree or disagree I'll be able to get that published or revised and sent out again).  I learned more doing Angel Odyssey.  I imagine my third book will be even better.
  Ok, back to the keyboard. Time to make that klackety klack sound.

  It is slow going getting back into harness today.  One of my critique groups met over the weekend and had mostly kind things to say about the Angel Odyssey chapters but other than that, no writing work got done.  I have high hopes for today but there are a dozen chores I feel like I'm neglecting.  Maybe I just need to get up earlier.
  Two things I want to accomplish today, I want to get the questions answered that got 'skipped' due to rascally characters in the last revised chapter and I want to make sure that the 'voice' for Jacob and Jael is memorable and consistent.  Maybe its just insecurity but I feel like the more I polish and revise, the more I lose of world detail and character voice.  I don't know.  I need to forge ahead, finish this draft then go back and add color and details and sense words and THEN do a copy edit and send it out for people to read and give me feedback on the novel as a whole.   Finally, I need to incorporate any changes I agree with from my readers and mail it out in April.
  Oy.  Nose to grindstone.  But first, put chicken in crockpot.

I had a very productive day yesterday.  I finished the Unicorn scene and got Jacob and Jael back on the road.  Mostly new writing, only a few bits saved from the previous draft.

There are a couple problems, though.  There are some questions that Jacob asked that Jael said, "I'll tell you later" that I would like to get into the novel but there doesn't feel like a natural place to answer it without bogging down the plot.
I've had this problem before.  What feels natural for plot flow and pacing doesn't quite work for what real people would do.  If someone told me 'I'll tell you later', then the next time I saw them, I'd ask. But doing that feels like a big info dump and worse, kerlunky.
This needs more thought.

I need to pass the information along to the characters and the reader but also I need to do so in a way that feels natural and that doesn't create big blocks of text or dialog that doesn't move the plot forward.  I don't know.   Maybe I'm stressing about nothing.  I'll take a look at it when I get a chance and see if there's a good place to put it in. Rabble.

It's a good thing I had a productive day yesterday.  Today is IM gaming day and tomorrow I have a job interview.  Oy. Maybe I can write some over the weekend if the wife agrees.

  I had some writing-related nightmares last night.  I think it's finally hit my subconscious that I'm going to have to rewrite large sections of Angel Odyssey to match the change in pacing and plot that I have in mind.  I might be able to salvage some passages, but by and large, most of the book is going to have to be written from scratch.  I think my brain was going 'Nooooooooo' like Darth Vader at the end of that horrible 'Revenge of the Sith' movie.  Cheesy echo and everything.
  I dealt with Isaac yesterday and I got Jacob and Jael to the centaurs.  Then I started to have a little freak out of how much needed to be re-written.  You see, I'm still sticking with my form, alternating Jacob chapters with Jael chapters.  (Foolish consistency being a hobgoblin of mine)  But by the time we got to the centaurs, Jael's 'voice' was still speaking. 
  The first two drafts, it was Jacob's POV that saw the centaurs.  So I couldn't just copy and paste.  I had to rewrite the entire encounter.  Not to mention that I have pretty firm rules about just who can see the unicorn and Jael doesn't qualify. So how can the unicorn evaluate them and attempt to heal Jael if she can't come into Jael's presence?
  I got an idea there. Today, we see if it works.
  I hope so. 
  I'm also stressing about the pacing and chapters and length.  The first draft was a little over 125k words.  The chapters were long, at least in the early part of the book.  Now the chapters are shorter, there are a lot more of them and...I don't think it's any shorter.  It might even be frelling longer.  Oy.  What am I doing?  More sleepless nights and stress in my future, I suspect.
  Anyway, back to writing. 
  Happy Groundhogs Day, everyone.  Enjoy the early spring.

Yep, six hours doing critiques yesterday.  I'm not done, either.  I have got to find a way to trim back on my commitments or I'm never going to get this draft done on time.

Sigh.

Well, the good news is, I get to get back to Angel Odyssey today. I'm going to try hard to put my nose to the grind stone and put in as close to 8 hours as I can.  No internet (apart from research), no email, no youtube.  We'll see how far we get.  I'm noticing that I am re-writing a lot of things from scratch this time around.  It feels faster than trying to trim, edit and match the tone.  It's almost as if the voice of the novel has changed.  That's a strange feeling.  Hopefully this draft is better, I really don't want to be sabotaging what I did before.  Not to mention that will still have to do a 'hook and grace note' pass to add details and then a copy edit draft.  But if I stop to stress about that, I wont get any work done at all.

No deep thoughts today.  I'm going to get back to work!