Another pretty good night.  I finished one chapter and got five pages into chapter 27.  I think 27 might be a longer chapter than normal. The last chapter or two has taken on a 'summary' feel.  I don't like that.  There will be a summary but not until the epilogue, maybe I'm projecting that 'ending' feel' here, where it doesn't belong. 
  Or maybe I just need to put the chapter break here, add more detail and immediacy to chapter 27 and add an additional chapter; that might be the better course of action.
  Those are a couple of reasons I stopped 'early' last night (at 9:30 instead of 10).  I wanted to think about what was happening and what is going to happen first.  This is the point in the story where Jael realizes she loves Jacob back.  I'm not quite sure how to write that.  I predict many re-writes and polishing in chapter 26, 27 and 28.    I don't want to go for theatricality and operatic melodrama here.  It should just be a 'oh hey, how about that' moment for Jael.  But I almost think when she tells Jacob she loves him, it should come from Jacob's POV.  It's going to him him hard, in a good way.
  I'm still trying to decide when is the right time and place.  I think this is it  (chapter 27,28).  In any case, it's a climatic scene, though not literally (that comes later...I need to stop). 
  Today is the day of my self-imposed deadline.  I didn't get done, but I got close.  I think tonight, working on this scene is a pretty good place to mark the milestone.  I imagine I'll have the book done, in first draft form, by next week.  But tomorrow I'll do all that summary and more.

  A pretty productive night last night.  I finished chapter 25 and got into chapter 26. 
  Chapter 25 was a big one, Jacob killing for the first time and Jael being forced to stand and watch.  Or, apparently just stand and watch.  What she actually does alters her relationship with Jacob irrecoverably....which is good.  I sort of question doing a big fight scene like that from Jael's point of view but there were only a few alternatives since Jael's conversation with her suitor/captor was important as well.  Jacob would have no way of hearing that conversation while in a fight for his life against two grown men.  Also, Jacob sort of went berserk and doesn't remember too much of the fight, just the impression of motion, impact, the raw emotion and the aftermath.  So unless I wanted to alternate POV every few paragraphs, I think it had to be all from Jael's POV.  I think it works.
  Chapter 26 is dealing what what happened in 25, it's slower, more talkly and relationship-based.  I'm about a third of the way throught that. With a little luck I'll have that done and 27 as well.  Not too many chapters left, two big confrontations, two big relationship scenes and two scenes of scheming.  After that, we're at the top.
  So close to the end, in many ways.  It sucks not hitting my deadline but I got close.  But, more about that on Thursday.  Focus on the writing for now, one day at a time.

...otherwise I'd be shot, soon.

Well, more news, some good, some bad, some mixed.

  The good news:  I'm on chapter 25.  I am close enough to the end to be able to estimate the book at 35 chapters.  That means about 70 pages left in the novel.  I have sketched out what needs to be accomplished in the remaining chapters, now the only thing to do is finish it.
  Which brings me to the bad:  I can't see how I'm going to hit my June 30 deadline.  I'd need to get at least twenty pages done over the next three days.  I can't tell you how disappointed in myself I am.  We'll save the angst and pity party for July 1st  :)  At least by then I will have a clear idea of how close I got and what went wrong.  Or if I aimed too high.
  The mixed: I went to the Locus awards this weekend and attended a writer's workshop put on by Connie Willis and Gregory Frost.  I do consider it time well spent (the awards ceremony in particular was a hoot) but that was two full days of writing more or less lost.  (though I did manage to do a chapter each on Friday and Saturday.  Sunday....well...let's just say I'll be unplugging the phone next time I get into a writing deadline like this)

  The workshop was on the 'Periodic Table of Literary Elements'.  We only covered a few areas: Plot, Irony, Secondary Characters, POV and Distance.  But I did learn some things I wish I'd known when starting Smooth Running and my second novel.  But that's what re-writes are for.   I came away pretty encouraged.  I do feel I'm on the right track with what I'm doing and how I'm doing it.  The hard part may not actually be the writing for me, but the selling of my work.  But that's a musing for another post.

  Progress is being made, out of the woods now, figuratively if not literally.  (Or is that the other way around?)  Jacob and Jael are out of the forest and hills and done with their shortcut.  Balt is about to leave and Jacob is happy about that, for now.  I think he's going to seriously miss Balt once he's gone and no longer a romantic rival.  I think Jael is going to miss him as well but be relieved that the 'love triangle' pressure is off.  Naturally, things are about to go from uncomfortable to really, really bad. :)
  Jacob just told Jael that he loved her in Chapter 20, which went about as well as you might expect...if you're a cynic.  But I think that's what has to happen.  I think Jacob needs to tell her how he feels and get slapped down but that plants a seed.  Especially once she sees that it's not the bond and it's not puppy love (or calf love as I put it in the story), she knows how he feels.  So that lets her try to figure out how she feels.
  But all that is in the future, right now, Jacob and Jael as saying good bye to Balt.  Now this is the last scene with Jacob and a father figure, a lot of stuff is going on and I'm trying to pick my words to begin...and I smell it.  Fresh chocolate chip cookies.  I know, I should have ignored but I went downstairs and totally lost the moment.  By the time I got back to the Throne of Writing (tm), the moment was gone.  Balt is literally hanging there with his mouth open, waiting for me to fill it with words.  Another test failed.
  Ah well, at least I know where to pick up.  Now I just have to decide what's important for Balt to tell him.  And, of course, if Jacob is going to listen to him or not.

  I had a fairly productive night last night.  I finished two chapters and got three pages into a third.  I needed to pause and decide what information needs to come in this, second-to-last chapter with Balt.  Right now Jael and Balt are debating gods and worship.  There's a lot of important world-building information I'm trying to pass on.  I suppose the right thing to do is get everything down that I can and then go back and polish it later but I don't want it to feel too raw.  I like my first drafts to be readable.
  I was rather surprised the way Jael and Balt's 'should we or shouldn't we' conversation went.  Things heated up fairly quickly and rather explicitly (though not nearly to romance-novel levels).  The chapter ended sort of ambigiously as well, leaving even me to wonder if Jael and Balt got a little busy on the side.  Weird feeling, like my characters shut the door on me.
  In the end, in fact in couple chapters, Balt will be leaving and Jacob will be forced to face one of his biggest trials.  So in one sense Jael's relations with Balt can't be anything but a fling, but I found it interesting how tempted she was.  There is a lonely core to her that I'm going to try to bring out and polish in subsequent drafts.
  Still charging ahead with one week left to go.  Will I make it?  Will I get the first draft done by next Wednesday at midnight?  I don't know, if I manage it, it'll be close, down to the wire.  But if I keep having productive nights like last night, I might just make it.

Not a lot of work done last night, to put it mildly, thanks to the narcotic effect of red meat.  Mmmm, meat.  But I did correct a couple of conversations.  Each conversation in the book is intended to pass along some piece of world building information, some plot information or at least develop the characters a little more.  However, my conversations don't always go as planned.
  I get inside each character's head and let them speak. Sometimes, frustratingly so, they don't say the one thing the scene needs to have said.  Sometimes it just doesn't fit naturally in the give and take of conversation between two people.  Then I have to go back, like last night, and enter in the missing line or lines so I can pay off on it later or so forth.
  But sometimes, my subconscious is right, I think.  One major conversation that didn't happen was between Jacob and Jael.  There had been a lot of talk about wishes earlier.  People wanting Jael to grant them a wish or egging Jacob on, asking him what he was going to wish for.  It's popular lore in Jacob's culture that Oskmey can grant wishes.  Which is true, though there is a twist: granting the wish also removes their gift of mortality; basically they can grant one wish and then they die.  But despite thinking about what he might wish for, Jacob never brought it up.  Several time Jael thinks he's going to and she'd bracing herself for it and...nothing.  He never asks. That was frustrating me until I asked myself why Jacob never brought it up.  It turns out, he has a good reason.
  Jacob never asks her for a wish because he doesn't want to be like everyone else.  Everyone, pretty much, wants Jael or want's something from her.  Not that Jacob's a saint.  He's a boy he REALLY want to tap that ass, so to speak but he doesn't want to be like everyone else.  He wants Jael to be happy and safe.  THAT conversation, I'm going to make sure they have.  Because I like that about Jacob.  He does have a great heart.  It's only sad that in the real world, Jacob's all around the world get ignored for agressive asshole who know what they want and will lie, flatter do whatever it takes to get it.  That's why I'm writing this novel.  In this one, the nice kid wins in the end.  Though, not without some tears.

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;}   Well, a pretty productive weekend.  I finished chapter 18 last night and passed 75,000 words.  At this rate the book is going to be epic fantasy in more ways than one.  It reads fairly quickly, though.  Most chapters are coming out at between 5-7 pages.
  And now for the fussing.  I'm not sure I'm going to hit June 30.  I think, THINK I'm at the halfway point now.  I'm not giving up on the goal but there are some complications.
  Complication #1 is a birthday dinner for my buddy, Seann.  Totally ok and understandable complication. 
  Complication #2 is I got accepted into Connie Willis and Greg Frost’s writing workshop this weekend.  The workshop is on the ‘Periodic Table of Literary Elements of Science Fiction’.  I was on the waitlist all the way back in March and luckily for me, someone dropped out.   So, no way I can miss that.  Related, the Locus awards are Saturday, I signed up for that and the award dinner months ago.

  I may be able to squeeze in some writing late Friday, Saturday and Sunday but basically that’s four days of diminished or no productivity.  It’s June 21st today, so…

  Will I get done on time?  I honestly don’t know.  I’m going to keep charging ahead.  I’ve learned a bit about managing distractions, though I still have work to do in that area.  But I’m encouraged by how smoothly the words are flowing out.  So, we’ll see.

  Forward Momentum!

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;}   Never check email when writing.  That’s my new rule.  I need rules like that because if I don’t have them, and follow them, things like last night happen.  I got about three pages done in an hour.  A pretty good clip for me but then around 9pm, I did it.  I checked my gmail.   Worse, I read one of the emails.   Worse still, the email was a critique on one of my Smooth Running chapters.  (Yes, I’m still submitting Smooth Running for critiques even though it’s currently on the Baen slush pile.  It’s not like it’ s not going to get yet another revision draft even if Baen loves it.)

  Reading that critique totally took me out of the character’s headspace.  It also made me moody, as critiques often do.  I’m getting better at accepting feedback but I still struggle with it.  In any case, once I read the critique, I was done, done, done.  I don’t think I got another half page done after that.  Which means I got three, four if we’re being very generous, pages done last night.

  Oh, and it’s June 18th.  12 days until deadline.  Cue freak out.

  On the other hand, though it feels short, maybe ending at page four of chapter 15 is the right move.  Balt is introduced and so are some of the conflicts he represents to Jael and Jacob.  There are worse ways to end a chapter.

  I think I’ll keep it, as is and keep charging forward.  We still have a lot of traveling to do, a lot of issues to confront, a lot of bad (and not so bad but antagonistic) guys to confront and overcome before we can scale the peak of the Great Eyrie.

  So, once I’m in the Throne of Writing (tm), email is shut.  No email checking or responding until the next day.  If I don’t do that, I’m toast.

  Decently productive night last night.  I managed to avoid most of my procrastination, maimed a main character and even pushed past my usual chapter 'stop'.  I finished chapter 14 with the brunes, the fight against them and Balt's introduction. and started Chapter 15.  Balt and Jael are already squabbling, but that'll happen if you call an Oskmey 'wench'.  Not to mention Balt being from the sea kingdoms, an invader, or so they think. 
  It should be 'all downhill' for a while, now.  Or so I'm hoping.  I've had so many conversations between Jacob, Jael and Balt in my mind that I almost think these next chapters just need me to direct the hose-pipe of content ready to spray out.  We're getting into the 'meat' of the story, now:  Temptation, faith and/or the deliberate rejection of the gods as well as discussion of the world at large, the gods and the clash of cultures that Jael knows intimately but Jacob is just learning about. 
  Should be a good night tonight.  I just need to keep moving forward, if I miss some conversations, I'll add a note and keep on going.

  I had some delays getting started last night.  I blame Borders.  They sent out a 40% off coupon.  That kind of sign from above shouldn't be ignored.  So I ended up buying Empire in Black and Gold.  I didn't start reading it but the time delay sort of bled over into my writing time.  I need to do better at getting into the Throne of Writing (tm) and just starting to write instead of sitting there getting into the mood to write.  Mind you, once I get into the zone words flow pretty well.
  Case in point, I started chapter 15 last night, so we're officially at the 1/3rd point.  I think.  I'm envisioning about 40 to 45 chapters with epilogue.  Anyway, the chase scene, running from the brunes, went pretty well.  Good expression of emotion, I think.  (Though I won't know for sure until I re-read it for the second draft)  But something odd happened and I had to stop and think.  The two leads were running from the brunes, not sure if they or some unfortunately animal was the target of the monster's hunt.  They cut across the brunes path to make for a granite outcropping; the kind of thing I used to see in the Rockies all the time, basically it's a granite hilltop with all the topsoil gone, just bare rock with some wisps of grass and some stunted trees trying to live in the cracks in the solid rock.
  The problem is, my original intent in introducing Balt (which is where I stopped) was that HE would be the one the brunes were chasing.  He'd come across the main character's and just about two minuetes after that, the brunes would attack.  That's not what's happening.  Right now, Jacob and Jael are on this bare hilltop, backs to a rocky outcropping, catching their breath and hoping the brunes pass them by.  Then, Jacob sees a brune come onto the hill.  Great scene, good tension.  Where's Balt?
  That's what I'm trying to decide.  I MIGHT need to introduce Balt in a 'Big Damn Heroes' moment instead of a 'keep running, keep running' moment, like I planned.  Introductions are a delicate thing.  How I introduce Balt sets the tone for his character.  So I stopped early, after only doing about three pages last night.
  Still pondering.  Do I want Balt to be this ultra-competent badass, a Big Damn Hero?  Or do I want him to be a bit more 'roguish', as he is in my head.  Do I want a comedic beat on his introduction or should I go with the fear and tension I've built up, let it ratchet up higher?
  Honestly, I'm not sure.  I'm going to bull ahead tonight and see what happens.  Need to keep the forward momentum going.  Still, exciting stuff.  I'm liking writing this book!