Katherine Mankiller

*drops pin*

Has anyone heard from the Indian Country anthology? I queried on the 15th.

Yikes.

According to the spreadsheet of doom, it's been nineteen days since I last wrote. I promptly threw out my last scene, too, so the word count is less. (61,687.) Did I mention that we were doing an email migration?

I think I know what I'm going to do for the next scene, but I really need to write. I need to finish this chapter by the 14th so my crit group will have something to crit on the 15th!

The last scene was really heavy-handed. It had a couple of good lines, but I saved the whole scene in my cut file so I could steal my own good lines if I need to. Yes, the cut file is in version control. I'm such a dork.

Um, hi.

Where was I before I got sucked into email migration hell?

Oh, yeah. Wiscon. Why is the con over again?

My reading went really well. In fact, my favorite author read right before me--she read an excerpt from an upcoming book that I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT!!!--and then she gave me a thumbs up after my reading. Surely there has never been a more squee-worthy event in the history of squee!

Then I came home and started working late every night. One night I came home at 11:30pm. Which is better than the 1:30am I did right before the con, but still.

Don't ask how my writing is going. Ugh. *facepalm* I need to get cracking before I run out of things for my crit group to critique.

Argh!

I'm trying to cut "Grandfather Paradox" into something that will fit into five minutes but still make some form of narrative sense. It's hard. Last year I read "The Last Wasicu," and just started at the beginning and kept reading until I got to a good stopping point, but "Grandfather Paradox" is structurally complex and nonchronological.

I suppose I could give up and try to read from "In the Water" (my other forthcoming story) instead, but "Grandfather Paradox" has more violence, while "In the Water" is just kind of quietly creepy. I think I should go for the story with the blood, if I can. Blooooooood.

Ouch.

I just lopped 4555 words off Lizardfic, which dropped me back down below 60,000 words. (59,746.) To quote Spock in "Devil in the Dark," "PAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN!!!!" I have short stories in circulation that are shorter than 4555 words. I may be able to recycle some of them, though. It makes me sad, because there was some stuff I liked there, but it's for the structural good of the story.

I should go write at least 254 words so it doesn't hurt as much.

Bad Outline, No Biscuit

My novel has changed during the course of writing, which is okay. And I've updated the outline to reflect the changes. Sounds okay, right?

Only there's a bit of a problem. My main POV character is away from all the action for several scenes. Ack! There's a list of five to eight scenes in a row where the POV character isn't her.

No, no, no. I can't do that. I need to restructure things so she's involved in the big bang finale. She is at A. She needs to be at B. In the original outline a bunch of stuff happened at B and she headed out to B to [spoiler redacted], but no, she needs to be involved in the stuff at B.

I may be junking a chapter or two. Sigh. Oh well, it's more important to have it be good, right? Of course it is! Pay no attention to my wibbly lip at the thought of my decreased wordcount.

Wiscon Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading--Reader List

The readers will be:

Katherine Mankiller, Theresa Crater, Lori Devoti, Gwynne Garfinkle, Morven Westfield, Sandra Ulbrich, Lyda Morehouse, Susan Hastings, Xakara, Moondancer Drake, Sue Burke.

That's at 1pm in Assembly.