And with the last of that, the novel went just a fudge over 100k, and it’s DONE!

Cue a happy Snoopy dance!

This leaves only two String Weaver novels to go for revision. Wow. I’m still processing that one. So close to the end of the series! I better start coming up with cover concepts for all the books!

Which brings to mind one thing I’m doing. When I start releasing the rest of the story I’m going to rebrand. New covers, and new descriptions. I’ve learned a lot since I’ve started, and what is out there right now doesn’t precisely tell the genre. I also know a lot more about cover design and font usage. The nice thing is that I’ll be able to create all seven covers at once and make sure they have a series brand. I’m looking forward to doing it and seeing the results.

Mother Hen is continuing her healing. She lost a bunch more hair today when she took a shower, but to me, it looks like the hair loss is stabilizing. No signs yet of hair regrowth (she’s hoping it comes back white), but that will come. Oh, and the scar is healing up nicely. The skin is looking nice and healthy.

“The String Weavers” Book 5

Yesterday’s Revision Session: 1,847
Total for Novel (Out of 95k): 100,082

***

What is the “The Mother Hen String Weaver Project?” I’m glad you asked! Read here to find out.

To help out with Mother Hen’s treatment:

Click Here to use Paypal

Mother Hen’s Go Fund Me page.

Somehow, I accomplished the big revision pass on a novel in only 6 days. Wow! That just boggles my poor little brain. Here is how the days progressed:

2632 (on a moving day, no less!)
12671
22118
20346
30801
9667 (Yesterday)

zooooooooom!

Now I’m having to come off that high to do the nit-pick things. Like go through all the revision notes to make sure I covered everything in the story. Then will come the chapter-by-chapter check for spelling, grammar, and a few other issues.

As for Mother Hen, today has been a difficult day. I think some of the side-effects of upped dosage of steroids are back with s vengeance. So, it’s a day of a lot of hugs and hot tea. Nothing to do about it other than give lots of support and wait until it passes. Obviously, we’re all looking forward to cycling her off them. Hopefully this time it will work.

I think today calls for a little bit of chocolate for both of us!

“The String Weavers” Book 5

Yesterday’s Revision Session: 9,667
Total for Novel (Out of 95k): 98,235

***

What is the “The Mother Hen String Weaver Project?” I’m glad you asked! Read here to find out.

To help out with Mother Hen’s treatment:

Click Here to use Paypal

Mother Hen’s Go Fund Me page.

Another long night last night with helping to encourage someone with their own deadline. I kept at it with my own revision. At one point I looked up and I was well over 20k for the day. Again! I just kept doing one more scene. One more scene before bed… nah, I feel up to another on… just one more….

And ended up with over 30k done!

I’m still amazed at that. This big revision pass is just flying by.

Mother Hen is continuing with her upped steroid level and it’s definitely helped with the headaches. The downside is that the dosage has brought back the hungries with a passion. She just can’t get enough to eat. She’s having to consciously try to control it, but it’s frustrating her. No matter what she eats or how much, the “I’m full” switch in the brain doesn’t get flipped.

We’re all hopeful that after tomorrow she can start to cycle down again. Hopefully this time it will take.

Now to get back to the revision. There’s not much to go on this book!

“The String Weavers” Book 5

Yesterday’s Revision Session: 30,801
Total for Novel (Out of 95k): 88,568

***

What is the “The Mother Hen String Weaver Project?” I’m glad you asked! Read here to find out.

To help out with Mother Hen’s treatment:

Click Here to use Paypal

Mother Hen’s Go Fund Me page.

I’m helping to encourage someone who is on a deadline. While she writes, I revise. In Forward Motion chat we keep each other appraised of our progress, and generally rah each other on. The result? A heck of a lot of forward motion, that’s what!

Mother Hen has had a few headaches the past several days. The symptoms and placement of the headaches are the same as before when she had a little bit of brains swelling. So, we’ve had her go up just a little bit on the steroids to knock it down. She’ll do that for a couple of days, and then we’ll try to cycle her off again. Hopefully this time it will work.

In the meantime, we are trying to get her to walk more. Today I took her outside and we did a couple laps around the RV park. We’ll try to do that again tomorrow, and then slowly increase the number of laps.

All of is, the writing, revising, destroying headaches, and walking, starts with little steps that build up to something big.

I think there is a good theme here.

“The String Weavers” Book 5

Yesterday’s Revision Session: 20,346
Total for Novel (Out of 95k): 57,767

***

What is the “The Mother Hen String Weaver Project?” I’m glad you asked! Read here to find out.

To help out with Mother Hen’s treatment:

Click Here to use Paypal

Mother Hen’s Go Fund Me page.

This is an amazingly good start!

I’ve hit another milestone. As of yesterday, I went over the hoped-for 300,000 words of revision for the year of 2013! This isn’t the way I would have liked to do it (precipitated by Mother Hen’s cancer), but hey, it’s still great progress!

I’m now officially upping the goal for revision words in 2013 to 500,000. With the rest of this book, and two more String Weaver books to go, I should hit it easily by the end of summer.

Now, the 500,000 NEW word goal? Eh, we’ll see what happens there. I’m leaving it alone, but I’m worried I won’t hit this year. What will be will be!

“The String Weavers” Book 5

Yesterday’s Revision Session: 22,118
Total for Novel (Out of 95k): 37,421

***

What is the “The Mother Hen String Weaver Project?” I’m glad you asked! Read here to find out.

To help out with Mother Hen’s treatment:

Click Here to use Paypal

Mother Hen’s Go Fund Me page.

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Book 5 has been a fun one as I’ve been able to return to a group of creatures called the Eebra-Shee. If anyone here has read the “Children of Jad” novelettes, the name will be familiar to you. In this String Weaver book, and in later ones, what the Eebra-Shee are all about becomes clear. They are a hardy and talented group, and it’s great to visit them again. I’m sure they will show up in other stories one day, too.

I thought this book was a little skimpy on description, but in today’s revision session, I’ve found the opposite. I did rather well in the first draft! Further proof that my first drafts are getting better and better the more I ‘practice’ writing. I doubt I’ll ever write pristine first drafts, but it’s nice to see that needed revision time is dropping with most projects as I gain more writing experience.

I used “practice” and “writing experience” on purpose. I of the belief that the writing craft is something that is practiced through new words and time spent actually doing it. And that the more one does it, the more one typically becomes better at it. Just like playing a musical instrument or in a sport.

The “practice” aspect is something I’m a little worried about right now. Revision is not writing new words. Not by a long shot. It’s a much more critical endeavor (even though I believe I’m doing well in being able to approach revision from a primarily creative-brain). I haven’t written new words on a new story since before April first. I don’t want to lose the progress I’ve made.

Hence taking July and using it to pound out new words. Three rough draft outlines are slowly getting whipped into shape.

So, while I revise, I’m starting to get excited at the prospect of writing new words. It’s pushing me to keeping the revision deadline on this book of June 30th.

Onwards and upwards!

“The String Weavers” Book 5

Yesterday’s Revision Session: 12,671
Total for Novel (Out of 95k): 15,303

***

What is the “The Mother Hen String Weaver Project?” I’m glad you asked! Read here to find out.

To help out with Mother Hen’s treatment:

Click Here to use Paypal

Mother Hen’s Go Fund Me page.

Not that it went completely smooth. Hey, we can’t have that, can we! What went wrong, you ask?

The electricity. We called on Monday to set up to have it activated to the RV parking spot we were moving to. We get to the site, plug in…. and nothing. We called the electric company. Oops! Forgot to turn it on. They do it via remote control. Nope, power doesn’t work.

Outside temperatures are rising as we are trying to unpack the RV with no AC while we wait wait for the mobile electric company repair guy to get here. He finally does he finds power is to the meter. Which means the plugins and breakers there are the problem. Have to call the landlord, as those are his responsibility. So, we are back to waiting… as the temps grow higher…

The landlord arrives. I hold open the metal cover to the plug-in section of the power pole. He starts pulling things apart and finds…. a cut wire. A purposely cut wire going to the breakers!

So, all this time sweltering in the heat,and it was all because someone in the past two weeks between us and the last tenants of the space decided to be a criminal idiot. Oh lovely. Hey, you! Idiot! You could have harmed Mother Hen with this stunt. It hurt me! (I’m now in the midst of a flareup caused by getting overheated) I hope karma comes back and bites you on the hind end!

Sigh.

Anyway, we are here. I know it because of the allergies. I’m allergic to so many things up here, and so is Mother Hen. We’re all having to go full-speed ahead on all our allergy medications and hope they can keep up. We’re also going to be keeping an eye on her oxygen level, as she typically has issues at higher altitudes.

Despite that, I managed to get a few words of revision! It was hard, and I had to struggle through the first few hundred words, but I’m glad I did it. It started our summer months here on the right foot. It’s time for the revision and writing to kick into high gear!

“The String Weavers” Book 5

Yesterday’s Revision Session: 2632
Total for Novel (Out of 95k): 2632

***

What is the “The Mother Hen String Weaver Project?” I’m glad you asked! Read here to find out.

To help out with Mother Hen’s treatment:

Click Here to use Paypal

Mother Hen’s Go Fund Me page.

Today was her last radiation treatment! It’s also the last chemo until July. From tomorrow onwards, she is in healing mode. Something we all need.

She made almost all the back people cry as she was leaving. All through this they have complimented her on her good attitude and her smile (sometimes even when crying). They said they are really going to miss her. They gave her a diploma of ‘graduation’ that they all signed. Mother Hen kept looking at it as we were driving home.

We won’t mention the bills still coming in… (and ugh)

Mother Hen is feeling a little lost, though. On one hand, it’s wonderful that this part of the journey is over. On the other, this has been part of her nearly-daily life for an entire month. It’s now part of the rhythm of her life. The ladies who took care of her at the radiation center treated her really well and she’ll miss them.

I think moving will help with this. It will be a clean break that tells her brain that the next stage in her recovery is starting. We’re going to work to get her into new positive habits as soon as we can. This included more exercise, to try and get some muscles back that she lost because of the powerful steroids she had to go on for a couple weeks because of brain swelling.

In other news, the really rough draft of the next three Salmon Run books are now finished! A very fruitful couple of days there. I’m happy, for the most part, in the stories they will tell. For the rest of the month I will refine and revise them with the intent to write them come July.

Tomorrow is moving day. We’re moving into the mountains to escape the harsh edge of the coming summer heat. It will still get hot, but not nearly to the extreme of Phoenix. After that is done, I launch into the revision of the next String Weaver novel. I would really love to finish the revision of book five by the end of June. Then, after July, that will leave only the last two books to revise.

I’m getting there!

“The String Weavers” Book 5

Yesterday’s Revision Session: 0
Total for Novel (Out of 95k): 0

***

What is the “The Mother Hen String Weaver Project?” I’m glad you asked! Read here to find out.

To help out with Mother Hen’s treatment:

Click Here to use Paypal

Mother Hen’s Go Fund Me page.

Cue happy Snoopy dance!

Deadline for this story was June 8th. Yep, hit that in the head, with 6 days to spare! SCORE! Mother Hen is now jumping up and down at the prospect of reading another Salmon Run. I think she’ll really like this one, too. It has several fun moments.

Now that my head is deep in the Salmon Run town, I’m going to work on the outline for the next book. I want to have a basic outline that I can peck at and refine during the rest of the month while I work on the revision of the fifth String Weaver book. In June, I plan to write another Salmon Run story (and perhaps two or three)

Plus, it looks like we’re moving on Wednesday. I don’t want to get neck-deep into another revision and have it interrupted by something so big. This move is a good thing, overall. The temperature in Phoenix hit 106, and our poor air conditioning unit just can’t keep up. We’ve all been miserable. It’s a good 15-20 degrees cooler up in the mountains. We’ll be a lot more comfortable.

Mother Hen is excited about this week. On Tuesday she has her last radiation treatment and the last of the chemo for a month. Then she’ll get some chance to heal. Including allowing her skin to recover, and the hair to grow back. We’re all curious if the color of the hair at the bald spots will change color from the radiation killing the pigment cells. We’ve had friends where that’s happened.

It will be a busy week, but I think a productive one.

“Salmon Run” Book 7

Yesterday’s Revision Session: 8,862
Total for Novel (Out of 35k): 36,141

***

What is the “The Mother Hen String Weaver Project?” I’m glad you asked! Read here to find out.

To help out with Mother Hen’s treatment:

Click Here to use Paypal

Mother Hen’s Go Fund Me page.

A crucial detail idea for the last String Weaver novel!

Sigh. I’m soooo glad my writing head is working as well as it it, considering everything that is going on, but it sure is hard to get it aimed in the right direction sometimes.

Not unusual. This has happened many times before. When I’m doing a lot of writing, revising, and planning, the creative side of the brain goes hyperactive. New ideas come out. New projects. Ideas for projects in progress. This is why I don’t worry about ever running out of writing projects. I know for a certainty that I will continue to have too many story projects to ever write them all in my lifetime.

Which is a great thing for a writer.

Obviously I recovered. I took Thursday off, but then revised enough on Friday to make up for it. Make up and then some! A 16k revision day, and I like what I did!. I’m hoping to keep up the pace over the weekend. If I can, I could possibly get it done by Monday. Which would mean I can get back to The String Weavers and the Salmon Run outlines.

Mother Hen has had a few hard days. It’s too hot, she’s tired, still recovering from the x-ray stress, the bald spots getting bigger (this was expected), which has sent her into depression. I’m hoping she will get a lot of rest this weekend to help pull herself out of it.

This coming week will be short, though! The last radiation treatment will happen on Tuesday, and after that, she gets time off to rest and heal! The next round of chemo will be the first week of July. I’m looking forward to that rest just as much as she is.

Enjoy your weekend!

“Salmon Run” Book 7

Yesterday’s Revision Session: 16,356
Total for Novel (Out of 35k): 27,279

***

What is the “The Mother Hen String Weaver Project?” I’m glad you asked! Read here to find out.

To help out with Mother Hen’s treatment:

Click Here to use Paypal

Mother Hen’s Go Fund Me page.