A Tithe of Blood

Work progresses on my novel, which has undergone another title change.  It’s now A Tithe of Blood.

I’ve written 19,000 words in the past three weeks.

That’s not quite 1,000 words a day, writing every day.  I’m pleased with that, particularly considering it was over the Christmas holidays.

The exciting thing is that as the story progresses, where it is headed becomes clearer and clearer and the major characters are stepping up and telling me more and more about themselves and how they will interact with each other.

I’m a seat-of-the-pants writer, for me discovery of the details has always been one of the best parts of writing fiction.  I can keep those details organized in my head for a short story, but I learned in the first two novels that i wrote — Lifting Up Veronica and August Company — that that sort of thing can be overwhelming in a longer work.

So I did an outline before I began this project, made a lot of notes, too, because as an SF novel, I can’t fall back onto the real world to remember all the little things.

You shouldn’t get the wrong idea.  I don’t have a two-inch-thick stack of index cards or a binder thick with pages.  My outline is 386 words, set up in seven paragraphs.  You know; this will happen here and that will happen there. But for me it is a spotlight brightening the darkness ahead.

Who could have thought that building something with a prepared blueprint could be so much fun.

The pace may pick up, it may slow down (I’ve got a lot of retrofitting to do as new ideas occur), but I am convinced I will have a first draft (probably closer to 75,000 words that the 65,000 I first projected) completed by the first of June 2010.

And I hope to be able to take it to the University of Kansas next July to workshop in Kij Johnson’s Novel Workshop that is a part of Jim Gunn’s annual SF Writers Workshop.

The downside of this whole spiel is that I haven’t written a single word on a short story since the first week in December.

I want to finish the novel, but I don’t want to give up on shorts, so I’m going to strike a balance for 2010.  My goal is going to be 5,000 words a week, with three days devoted to A Tithe of Blood and two days spent on short stories.

If I can maintain that pace, by the end of June, when it’s time to head for Kansas, I will have completed the novel AND have 50,000 words written toward short stories.  That’s nine to twelve stories.  We’ll see how it goes.

Groucho Marx wasn’t always right

My membership application to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America was approved today.

This is a milestone for me, right up there with my Writers of the Future win for Coward’s Steel and Analog accepting Flotsam. Those were two of the three qualifying short stories that I needed for membership, BTW.

The third was At Both Ends, at Flash Fiction Online, which was my first professional-rate sale. My heartfelt thanks to Jake Freivald, editor at FFO, for that one.

And for those of you who aren’t familiar with the Groucho reference, he once said that he wouldn’t want to belong to any organization that would have him as a member.

This once, I can’t agree.

At Flash Fiction Chronicles

I’ve got a column over at Gay Degani’s Flash Fiction Chronicles today.  It’s about the ups and downs of exploring human reactions to stimuli.

Stop by and check it out, if you have a chance.

An update

I haven’t posted for awhile about what I’m working on. So here’s an update on what I’ve done since October 6.

• finished first draft of Without Leave, a 3,500-word story about a warrior who has had his fill of battle.
• finished first draft of The Night Bus Doesn’t Stop at Tuesday Anymore, a 1,000-word flash about a sleepy fellow on a time-traveling bus.
• finished first draft of Distant Voices, a 2,500-word tale about a painter who hears voices that may not be just in his head.
• completed an outline for my SF novel, which I am now calling Ties of Blood. I added a subplot that involves a traveling circus and got a really clear picture of who my antagonist is and the details of what he wants.
• wrote another 12, 500 words toward the end of Ties of Blood.
• rewrote Upon Whom the Pale Moon Gleams, after getting a really remarkable critique from Tom Crosshill. I’m calling the rewrite The Fluting Man. God, I love good critiques. Tom gets right to the heart of the story, as does Kelly Green and Gay Degani. The three of them are fast becoming my preferred first readers

I’m going to let the three first drafts and the rewrite sit and cool for a week or so, and then I’ll brush their hair and scrub their faces. Get them ready to send out into the world.

At Every Day Poets

My sixth piece of silliness, Bear Necessities, is up at Every Day Poets today.

Some days I am in despair at the depths to which I will plummet when I get it in my head to rhyme words.  Other days, all I can do is giggle.

Check out the adventures of teddy-loving munchkin,  Sarah Blaine,  if you have the chance.  Let me know what you think.