A Snowy Day (or three)

I refuse to call winter storms by their media-generated names. Winter storms are as common around Minnesota as rainfall in Washington state, warranting no notoriety. That said, if they are impressive enough, I may remember them fondly based on other events...

There was the massive blizzard of January in 1972 or 1975, when we had to sleep in our neighbors' basement because our electricity was out and they had a fireplace. I was 4 or 7, and that house's furry residents were the models for the black labs in SPOTD. Despite my deep fears of those dogs, I don't remember them being a problem.

There was the Halloween blizzard of 1991, forever connected in my mind with the Twins winning the World Series and me moving into my first house. I happily carried boxes through knee-high drifts, glad to be out of the stinky rental that made me cry.

And there were the blizzards that interrupted performances of The Sound of Music (in high school) and Cinderella (this past spring). Snow + the smell of decaying theaters. Good times.

Today's snow is less than memorable as a weather event. Some flurries off and on. Probably some wind later to swirl it around and make driving hazardous. But warm temps overall (30-32ish) and nowhere to be other than at home mean that, for the most part, this weather "event" is mostly an excuse to sit by the fire and read and revise Lio and Lamb in anticipation of my alpha reader's critique.

Here's the printed text.

My writing habit is to revise online as I write, which slows me down but works best for sustaining an ongoing sense of accomplishment. Then when I pick up the writing the next day, I revise my previous day's work again before moving on.

With SPOTD, I printed out, reread, and revised the entire text (all three books) over the course of a few weeks, sitting in the sun on my deck in the summer. After I broke the series into three books, I further revised and edited each volume multiple times. And as I self-published, I repeated the task several more times with the set text.

I haven't reread much of Lio and Lamb, with the exception of going back once in a while to refrech my memory of a minor character's name or small plot point. I'm uncertain how it will go. I AM certain I will remember this snowfall in connection to the reading.

Here we go...

Nanowrimo 2018

I had no intentions of "winning" Nanowrimo 2018, but I did have a goal. I wanted to write at least 300 words a day each day of November.

Here are the results:

I did it!

I wrote every single day in November -- even book club night, which is my Achilles heel -- for a total of 15,748 words. That's an average of 524 words per day.

My regular writing start time was usually after 9:00 pm, sometimes much later. I often felt an internal push to keep going until midnight so I could post the most words possible before the day's end. After a while, jumping into my story was part of my nightly ritual rather than a "job."

Best of all, the story progressed significantly, and I can sort of see where it is going next.

I have to admit, December has not been as productive. Let's call it a "Nanowrimo" hangover. On the bright side, I've been getting 1-2 hours more sleep per night this month.

It's delightful.

Supporting the Worldbuilders Fundraiser

I've been telling everyone I meet a particular story lately. It's a story that makes me smile. But it also gives me shivers.

It goes like this.

One of my favorite authors, Patrick Rothfuss, started Worldbuilders in 2008. Since then, the organization has raised over $7.4 million for charities such as Heifer International, Mercy Corps, GlobalGiving, and First Book. 

I've donated during the fall/winter fundraiser in the past, throwing my "$10 per chance to win" into the prize pool but never winning anything. Two years ago, I bid on an auction item, which was for a friend of Pat (I don't remember which one) to critique my current writing project. At the time, I had spent a few years developing my created world and about a year writing the middle volume of an imagined trilogy. 

After I made my initial bid, I realized that I wasn't ready to win. My story was too green. I watched someone else win the critique, knowing that I would be ready to bid seriously in 2017 as long as I wrote as much as I could over the next year.

Although I made significant progress on the middle story, I didn't finish it. In fact, I digressed heavily by jumping my focus to the first book in the series. I decided not to bid in 2017.

Now it is 2018, and I have almost 80,000 words of each story written. For reference, I imagine each of them will be 100,000 to 120,000 words when finished. I also have a half dozen very specific questions I would like to ask an expert reader about my characters, point-of-view choices, and the plot's direction. 

When the fundraiser rolled around a few weeks ago, I felt ready to bid. I pored over the offerings at the Worldbuilders auction site, and I decided Pat's agent, Matt Bialer, was the person I wanted to talk to most about what I have and where I go next with the story.

So I bid.

And I won. 

Matt Bialer will be critiquing the first 20,000 words of Lio and Lamb!

I kind of can't believe it. 

Even better, my winning bid will be donated to support the good work of the charity. I encourage all readers to check it out and do likewise.

Happy Christmas to all!

PS I don't need any presents -- I got mine :)