#plowdragons

[oleandercraw]

Really itching to get back to the first draft of the novel I'm working on about a gay dragonrider who plows snow for a living who ends up in a complicated and somewhat erotic relationship with his dragon AND a questionably ethical romantic relationship with the auditor investigating him for fraud.

[oleandercraw]

Decided to get back into the plowdragons wip this morning after a few weeks off to focus on The Wards Will Fall edits and WHY IS THIS SO HARD. My brain just keeps bouncing off the words here.

That said, I'm pretty happy with this morning's words. Not a lot but they're good. Still untangling these first few chapters I drafted that I was unhappy with the pacing. It's all starting to look a lot better.

The remediations apartments were a short walk up the road. The squat and narrow prefabricated buildings perched unceremoniously on the cliffs above the hangar, semi-abandoned except for Kace. That was the way he preferred it nowadays—less people around to ask questions and nose into his business. One of the perks of a civil service dragonrider position was free room and board, though Anacora’s apartments were apparently famed for being some of the worst in Tyremar. Kace couldn’t vouch for that as he hadn’t seen any others. While it was true they were rather musty and in need of some repair, they were still a far cry better than some of the real shit holes he’d lived in. At least the roof didn’t leak.

[oleandercraw]

Going back to previous chapters in plowdragons to slow the pacing a bit and remove a character and instead made dragons Even Creeper, oops

[oleandercraw]

Figuring out this outlining business is slowwwwww. Just sitting in a room asking questions of myself over and over until I run out of questions to ask myself and then trying to backbrain ideas until the next morning.

[oleandercraw]

Writing update:

Got a little more done with motherships, including some cleaning up some scenes and figuring out this one little tangly part that's been bothering me. This one is DIFFICULT. But I'll get there, just chipping away slowly and being ok with it.

Took a bunch more notes on plowdragons over the holiday break. I know who my MC is and have a good idea about the city and setting he lives in, which is cool. Having all the background details lined up is making me more excited to write so fingers crossed the enthusiasm holds. I still think I'm going to try to outline a bit for this one since I really I have no clue what kind of story this really is going to be.

Also having editing thoughts for stormforks but I'm going to keep that on the distant back burner for now since I burned out so bad on it. I don't wanna do anything with that until I'm really ready for it.

Tomorrow I wanna get up early and really focus on writing, but we'll see.

[oleandercraw]

Chipped away at the motherships short story this morning and worked on notes for the plowdragons novel this evening. I'm considering actually outlining plowdragons instead of doing my normal shoot from the hip and figure out what the plot is as I go method, but I think I say this at the start of every novel and then end up pantsing the whole thing anyway.

The difference here for plowdragons is I'm actually taking notes on setting and worldbuildy things so hopefully I'll have a more solid foundation for what to base the story on. I'm hoping this makes drafting smoother because I'll already have some answers when I need them. I'm getting really tired of having to go back and edit a bunch in later and I've gotten agent feedback suggesting my worldbuilding could be more cohesive. Sooo we'll see, and I'm satisfied taking notes for now.

Motherships is going painfully slow but I guess that's expected given the story material and the fact that it's a short, and those are definitely outside my wheelhouse. It's hard to wake up in the morning and get right into trans pregnancy horror especially given all the *waves hands* ongoing situation. At any rate it's getting there, just not as quickly as I'd like.

Anyway, going to continue journaling about my current writing projects here as a motivator. Trying to put my thoughts somewhere that feels more external to try to keep from shutting down and turning into the human equivalent of a rock. (Another theme of motherships! Gotta finish to put it out there)

[oleandercraw]

Getting ideas for the setting for the new plowdragons book and getting excited for working on this next. Really excited for how this is starting to shape up.