Doing a bit of tweaking before moving on with SanClare Scarlet.  Once the tweaks are done, I’m thinking I’ll go back to La Cause and focus on getting some serious wordage done on it “for reals.”  In the meantime, I think the weather’s getting to me — I like it cool but it keeps vacillating between autumnal and dog-day and it’s wearing me down.

Ye Agent asked a couple of questions on his blog about process.  Here they are with my answers:

What is your favorite part of the writing process?
I don’t have a favorite part. I like pretty much every part of the process. After about the zillioneth round of editing the same thing, I can get pretty sick of it, but otherwise, I do like it all.

What do you do when you know you’ve done something wrong and haven’t yet figured out what the source of that wrongness is?
That depends on the work in progress. If it’s something I’m steeped in (such as the SanClare books), I almost never get that stuck. I go back and reread, and the bit that’s gumming up the flow usually reveals itself. With a newer piece (such as La Cause Sociériste), I generally go back to the plotting and look for the problem there. If I get really hung up (short stories — not my forte), I hand it to my First Readers to diagnose.

What would your answers be?

Back to SanClare Scarlet tonight.  My leapfrog plotting on La Cause is still being mentally revised.  I need to nail down the ending which is vaguely defined at the moment, and I need to sort out which of several candidates will win the fight for Central Plot.  I did find a picture in a magazine this weekend that the moment I saw it, I thought, “That’s Sophie-Katrine!”  And the looks of this model led me to figure out more about Sophie’s mysterious (but not dead and in-the-story somewhat) mother which is helping frame the whole backstory in a new and fun way. 

In the meantime, conflict enters the father/son-esque relationship of two of the main characters in SanClare Scarlet.  People aren’t speaking to each other.  Someone is justifiably angry about secrets kept from him.  And they haven’t even reached the capital yet!

Tonight went much better than the whole entire weekend has gone, wordage-wise.  I’ve been off and feeling overtired and distracted, but after Walker Bros. French Toast Therapy for dinner, I think everything’s going to be all right ;)

I reviewed my progress and read over my outline and realized I’d run through all the plot I’d worked out during my first leapfrog session (thank you, again, Linnea Sinclair), so tonight was spent working out the next hop.

I’m in the middle of chapter six, and this hop should take me to the end of the first third of the book.  I should adjust my counter as this book is much more likely to be about 120K rather than the 90K I’ve been saying on the counter [but the percentage goes up so fast when I’m only aiming at 90K].

Since there is a lot of existing content from my first draft well before I split the story into thirds (of which SanClare Scarlet is the second), reworking it is a bit tricky.  I can’t just follow it through because things have changed and need adjusted.  There’s some stuff that should just go away, no matter how I like it.  And then there’s some stuff that’s going to be even more useful this time around.

It’s funny to read through this very rough draft — there are parts of it where I had a *terrible* time maintaining POV, mostly because I wasn’t paying enough attention to that — I was just throwing all the ideas, words, etc., at the page as fast as I could type.  But it’s funny to read my usual third person limited turn into third person omniscient with no warning.  I point and laugh at myself, clean it up, and move on.

Maybe I should figure out how to do one of those sidebar counters.  But!  Until then — Whoo-hoo! Almost 20%!  This is a rough section that’s going to need some work, so much more slow-going… 

I actually cut a lot out of this existing part and I still made some blazin’ progress.  Some of what I cut includes info that needs to get put in somewhere here very soon in a different configuration, so that might slow me down a little.

Things are going well, but we’re still pretty far away from getting everyone to Court where I can start having all kinds of Fun with Intrigue! On the journey there, however, a legend is building which will complicate matters muchly once Court is reached :)

Made not as much progress as I’d hoped today — intentions thwarted by lunch plans going awry, post-storm/weekend tourist traffic in downtown Chicago, and just… y’know… stuff.  But still.  10%!  Woot.

Yay!  I’ve hit Existing Stuff (that will need rework but is still usable) and made really good progress with bridging stuff (no slogging today!) and am very, very happy!  Next up: Chapter Four!

And now for a treat, I’m off to get ready for the Mae concert at Schubas!  *so excited!*