In Between Days

In short, I hate them. The plan I had was to let my NaNo project, Nothing Short of Heaven, sit for a few days before I had another look at it, but my brain keeps wanting to go back to Slate and Melanie. Maybe they aren't done with me yet? What I do know is that I have fallen into the habit (okay, deliberately cultivated would be more accurate) of making new words in the morning hours and not having this to work on puts me in a huge funk.

Which in a normal world would mean time to work on the next historical. Only I don't know what that one is yet. As I am one of those people who has to have multiple stuff in various stages, the new-new spot is in need of filling and not having it filled drives me bonkers. There is a vague, extremely rough idea, which leaves me splashing about in the primordial ooze. Nobody has names yet, I have no idea where or when this book is set and it's entirely possible that I will need to ravage the other ms that is on life support to give parts for this one.

I will grumble. I will flail. I will need to gently but firmly be pointed back towards my other story "kids" that still need my attention. I will need to be reminded that I have submissions that have been requested and need to put those big kids on the bus because they are ready to go out into the world. I will need to resist the urge to pick up the sleeping toddler of my NaNo story because if I wake them before they are rested, we will both end up cranky and fussy. I will use this blog as my methadone to keep my fingers moving on the keys and making words in the morning. I will grumble to other writer friends who will walk with me through these in between days as I walk with them through theirs. I will have friends and family press books into my hand because nothing in means nothing out.

The time will come, when I least expect it, of one of these vague outlines of characters will introduce themselves with a name and I'll figure out their era. (A lot of them make me work for it, figuring out when they live from information they work into their babbling, and I have at least once had to hunt down the era going solely by the heroine's hat.) Then things will fall into place and I will be back in blorch stage, racing to get absolutely everything in my head into a file.

But today is in between, at least for the morning. After lunch, it's editing and polishing, and that is far more defined. Until then, Ben Folds, everybody....