12 November 2017

After The Space Between Whens was put to bed, I declared that I was taking a break for a bit. I'd written four books in a year (okay, fine, MAX wrote four books in a year but I helped. A lot.) and my brain needed a break. With the 3 Day looming, it was a good time to take a step back from work, train, and let thinking things happen instead of writing things.

Thinking things tend to happen on long training walks--and, as I have discovered, long bike rides. The best of the Charybdis series, The Flipside of Here, popped into my brain while on a training walk in 2010. I can clearly remember where I was walking, to the exact section of pavement on a bike path here in town, when the opening flashed in front of my eyes. I spent that summer walking and writing in my head, and when the 3 Day was done that sucker poured out of me like water from a hose.

This was my intent, and my hope, for the next book in the Wick After Dark series: I'd walk, I'd ride, and it would form in the back of my brain, then over Thanksgiving weekend while the Spouse Thingy worked and slept, I would start writing. There were a dozen threads to pick from, story ideas that I could weave into something decent; whichever one worked its way forward best, that was the book that would be written.

It was a plan, anyway.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that taking a 100% break was not happening. Writing is a habit carefully cultivated over several decades, something I just don't suddenly stop doing. While I didn't want to work on the actual book until after the 3 Day, I could take notes, get some background stuff down, things upon which I could build.

You see where this is going.

The notes were easier to write as if I were, you know, writing. Complete with snippets of dialog. It was stream of consciousness writing; there was no plot, no real story. Just day to day things in the World of Wick. I wanted to know who would be doing what and when, the minutia of life. Nothing the would make a reader sit down and think, hell yeah, I'm reading the whole thing. Just stuff.

You know, X did Y thing on Tuesday. Q had tea with F on Monday. M might be kind of a tool. W likes cheese.

Well, that's a given.

Somewhere along the way the notes became a several stories unto themselves, and The Story presented itself...and I kept writing. I am now 120,000 words deep with this (42K of The Story, which is being used for NaNoWriMo, because why the hell not?) and I have hit a point where I don't just want to write, I NEED to write.

It wants out of my brain.

It is at the write-for-12-hours-a-day stage. Demanding my attention.

For some reason, he's not helping...

The problem is that we leave on Wednesday. I have things I need to get done around the house before then. Laundry. Packing. At least a little cleaning lest something come alive and swallow DKM's niece while she's here with the cats. I have Things To Do, yet at the same time Wick is pawing at me, demanding that he have a voice.

I am not nearly mature enough to structure my days to accommodate the things that need to be done before we leave and the things my brain is demanding I do.

It might be a good time for the masses to send good thoughts to DKM's niece, because something here just might rise up and eat her...I doubt any cleaning will get done...