My tweets

• Sat, 16:56: I have cracked 4000 words in the Clockwork Necromancer story, and it is rushing toward the climax. In the middle of Pinch 2 right now.

Clockwork Necromancer has an END at the bottom.

And, I reiterate: I am a terrible, terrible person. A little over 5100 words, so that's a good start. Now that it's roughed in, I can do all that worldbuilding that I handwaved the first time around.

I'll let it sit and percolate for awhile. For now, I'm going to do my biking, start my laundry, and stare at the Bitten Alex outline, which I still need to finish.

I've decided that, for this particular "NaNo Project," I'm just going to write five stories and call it good. I have three in the can now, Bitten Alex on tap, and another adventure for my spaceship crew in my brain hopper. That one has a hook but no plot.

So far, my writing year is going pretty well, after a somewhat rocky start.

I'm "crazy," apparently.

Because a common belief held by many writers I know, that "I don't control these characters, they just keep me around to write shit down," is worthy of a rubber room, or something.

Now, I realize that it's actually my subconscious going "LOL NO" when I try to make a character do something he wouldn't. My grip on reality is not so tenuous that I believe that they are real people yet. That being said, if they're not at least nominally real people in my own head, then how can I make the reader believe they're real people, and worthy of caring about?

Also, I have the sneaking suspicion that if I try to analyze this process too hard, it will go away and stop working. Therefore, I'm not going to do that, because short-circuiting something that's effective for me would be dumb. I like to think (on my good days) that I'm not dumb.