Sorry if you guys get a double @ from me! Tumblr decided to post this into one of my communities the first time.
Your guess is as good as mine.
Thank you for the tag @oh-no-another-idea, tagging forward to @meharker, @memento-morri-writes, @dyrewrites, @josephinegerardywriter, @world-of-fire-and-flight-admin, and anyone else who wants to play, please consider this an open tag.
My last (3) line(s) on the Darkling (Re)Draft Three was...
(Yes I'm cheating, sue me lol <3)
[...] now that he'd shown her what was hidden beneath, Lizzy could still see the hints of it. In the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, and in the soft, curved slope of his shoulders.
"Is it not enough that I simply want to?" Connorbar asked, but she found herself shaking her head.
November 5th is Guy Fawkes Night here in the UK. And I let myself sleep in, so I didn't get up until midday, and I had to do a load of washing up, in bits, while resting my foot. Because of course, our dishwasher broke down after I did roast bloody turkey.
So it's currently, as of typing this, 6pm and I've written nothing. It's a lazy day though, so mum and I are ordering takeaway for dinner, and hopefully that'll give me the rest of the evening to get some words in...
It did not. Because after dinner, the cat was ill twice. *facepalm* Furballs, so nothing serious but still, mum can't sort it, she's fine with dogs but not cats, so that's my job and...
Yeah. I FINALLY started writing at 10pm
On one hand, starting at 10pm does mean I had enough time left to get my four sprints in...
On the other hand, my speed stalled just a bit. IF you can call 3.2k stalling. It's still substantially more than the 2.5k I've set as my daily target, but it's also the lowest wordcount I've had all month so... mixed feels, comforted with my earned garlic bread.
Interestingly, as I was rewriting draft 2 into draft 3 I hit a point where I was about 2/3rds of the way through an Andric POV chapter, and suddenly thought, "Actually, this is a good stopping point..."
I had another 800-850 words of the chapter left to rewrite, but when I looked at it, putting that in the next chapter, which is Lizzy's POV, gave me a chance to show a bit more of Olwen's character, and to foreshadow Booker's mild precognitive ability, and to show some more relationship development with Andric and her.
Also, it brings up the next chapter's word count, which doesn't hurt. It was a little on the lower end of my bracket.
So all in all I'm not mad about the shift, it was just a surprising one, and not one I'd planned for.
Excerpt;
"You okay?" he whispered against her hair, and she shrugged.
"I hate that you're hurt," she confessed, and felt his breathing stutter.
"I know."
She didn't know what to say to that. She knew Andric had accepted, and she wasn't going to ask him not to. It left them right where they were standing, and then Booker's voice broke through their bubble.
"Everything okay now?" he asked, voice falsely bright, and Lizz lifted her face from Andric's chest.
"Yes… I think so?" Lizzy said, voice questioning the anxious look on her best friend's face as he stood with his hands shoved into his pockets, Olwen just behind him with a scowl on her usually friendly features.
"Oh good," Booker chirped, "because I'm getting a fairly strong precognitive sensation that Olwen's going to make me pay for that trick once she gets us in a ring of our own. I just wanted to make sure my intervention was worthwhile."
Lizzy looked at Olwen again, only to realise the scowl she'd thought the woman was sending Booker, was in fact the pain-filled remnants of whatever telepathic static he'd shoved into her head.
As for November 6th, I've just hit a patch that I wrote more recently. It's a scene between Booker and Lizzy that will reveal to anyone who doesn't get their hands on the preorder bonus, just exactly what's going through his head in this book.
But since it was written more recently, I already knew there would be less editing/rephrasing required.
What I didn't anticipate was that my first two sprints for November 6th have been over 1k each again...
Sprint 1; 1,137
Sprint 2; 1,151
Since I seem to be doing REALLY well today, and I've probably got one more sprint to complete this scene, I've taken a bit of a pause for dinner.
But after this scene, the next chapter is, in contrast, going to slow me down substantially.
It's a chapter that I haven't actually written yet.
During one of my "How do I get over this writing block?" sessions, I realised I needed a specific scene to highlight Olwen Pryce's character, and to foreshadow some things for the end of the book. So I have some "bits" written, I have some outline, I have some notes about what needs to be shown, and what needs to be foreshadowed, but the chapter itself still needs to get an initial draft down.
I'm hoping to just keep rolling with the sprints this evening, and get as much as I can done before midnight... which will hopefully mean my inevitably smaller word count tomorrow won't set me too far back on my total monthly goal.
So, I finished Nov 6th with 4 sprints, the last two were in the mid-900's words, so I did well, but I ran out of time before midnight to make much more progress 'today'.
Still, I'm not mad at a 4k day, and almost 25k total word count on day six ^_^
I'm hoping I have enough words in the bank, so to speak, to make up for this slow patch I'm about to go through with the first-drafting of the next chapter...
Tagging forward with no pressure; @dyrewrites, @oh-no-another-idea, @bookishdiplodocus, @ashen-crest, and anyone else who wants to play, consider this an open tag ^_^
It feels like forever since I've had something to share, but I've been working on the 3rd draft of Darkling this last week so I have a Darkling Snippet to share!
Booker is being, hmmm, a bit of an arse during the first 3rd of Darkling, and unfortunately for everyone, Lizzy's never had an abundance of patience!
It makes for some explosive arguements...
Darkling Excerpt/Spoilers beneath the cut!
One last slow exhale, and Lizzy forced herself to turn away from the room, just in case Booker was feeling brave enough to try coming after her, but she only managed one step down the hall before she stumbled to a stop.
Andric was leaning against the wall by his room, head turned to face her, and his storm-grey eyes scanning, watching, observing.
The rest of his features were free of emotion; A carefully constructed mask. Lizzy knew it was, because she could see his hands clenched into fists, trapped between the wall and the small of his back.
For just a moment, with her mind a mess of emotions from her argument, Lizzy didn't know why Andric was standing there. Didn't know why he was holding himself so tightly in check, and watching her so carefully… and then she remembered how sensitive his hearing was and winched.
She sighed, eyes slipping closed as her anger was slowly overridden by hurt and her shoulders slumped beneath that weight. She heard Andric shift, but when he didn't appear at her side she forced herself to look at him again, only to see he'd turned just enough to prop the door to his room open with one foot.
It was a tiny tilt of his head, and an open door. A silent offer to take shelter somewhere Booker wouldn't dare look for her, once his guilt overtook him.
The offer was tempting, but she hesitated.
