Stress Balls

NaNo Count - 15,602 words.

I'm still ahead of the game, and enjoying the words I'm getting. A lot of it is running verbose (yea, I know: you're shocked by that!) and will need some serious editing but that's what NaNo is about right? Words on the page!

Stress levels are kicking into high gear in my tiny little world right now. The wife is sick of living in just one room of our home while the construction is going on and wants it done ASAP. Of course, yesterday my contractor just disappeared without letting me know he wasn't coming and hasn't returned my calls yet so she's sooooooo happy right now! (which of course means: I'm sooooooo happy right now!) The boy and I are heading out camping this weekend and I'm loaded up with things I need to get done before we leave tomorrow. Of course, the fact that I'm going away to "play in the woods" while the house is torn apart is thrilling the wife to no end. (Did I mention: I'm sooooo happpy right now?) Add to that my NaNo writing schedule and it adds up to one giant ball of stress and arguing at home. I do believe the wife is not pleased with me at the moment. (Her not speaking to me for the last 24 hours might be a clue, don't ya' think?) Ah well, such are the joys of married life.

I stopped in over at Forward Motion to do a Crit for one of the ladies in my Circle (Mel, specifically. Hi, Mel!) and I was thrilled at the work she'd done. She took her opening chapters and completely re-worked them following comments from Lee and I. I believe she took to heart all the things Lee had brought back from her writer's conference and really made it work for her. It was some wonderful stuff she put up. It makes me think there may be hope for my long-winded ass yet!

I need to put that same level of re-work into my current novels. The stories are good (I think) and the writing is sound but I need to look at it from a commercial standpoint. I need to make sure I'm hooking the reader early and leading them forward in the story with the right amount of mystery and wonder. Lee and Mel have both pointed out that I have a tendency to get lost in the descriptions of my worlds, and open with setting instead of action. It's funny, because early on I thought I did way too much action, with no description, and sort of pushed myself into writing this way. Seems I may have flown right past the mid-ground and landed at the far end of the spectrum on that. The answer? Edit, edit, edit!

So, I did go out to lunch last week with the old friend from high school. (wife was not thrilled at me going out to lunch with another woman but she was cool and let it go.) It was a lot of fun. We spent most of the time talking about our kids and what had happened to each of us after we lost contact. it was funny how many similarities there were in our lives. Seems we both left home at very young ages -and not long after we'd lost touch- and spent a goodly number of years out-of-control before settling down into some semblance of normalcy. Now, we're both pushing 40 and spend most of our time trying not to screw up our children the way our parents screwed us up. (Yes, I realize the boy wil be screwed up despite my best efforts. We all are in one fashion or another, but I'm talking about degrees of insanity here!) It was nice to see her again. She's even stopped by here and left me a comment on the blog!

Ah well, too much to do to keep chatting. I am knee-deep in a HUGE software upgrade and roll-out at work so I gotta get back to it. BTW: I'm leaving early for the camping trip tomorrow, so I may not be posting again until the return of that "most-heinous-day-from-the deepest-pits-of-hell" which begins each week.

Later!