{A Work in Progress}
Wednesday, May 29, 2002
Thankfully, I've got the templates to a place where I'm happy with them now. That leaves that behind as a possible procrastination point. I've been doing bits and pieces of work on the story ideas, and I'm going to set the blog up so I can e-mail and post. That should be fun.
I am working on the hero's journey, even if it's in bits and drabs. Just posted up some thoughts on the Ordinary World for both Buffy and Spike, which is where my main plotline needs to lie. Not much, just a few thoughts.
Disappointingly, the feature where one can e-mail one's post to one's blog doesn't seem to be working. I mailed one a couple of hours ago from work and I've gotten nothing. Could be just my office mail system, but won't know for a while.
posted by Caro on 10:39 AM | #
Monday, May 27, 2002
Long time between updates, but work has been going on. I've got the start of a plot, and my main five characters -- Spike, Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Marge, Spike's grandmother. I've also updated the basics on the characters, so that page is going, as well as one for locations. Most importantly, I created a sub-blog (yes, a blog within a blog) for story ideas. That way, when this is done, I can go back and look at how I did things in a chronological order. Should be interesting.
Although the fan fic is still getting the most attention (five stories are currently going), I am doing more and more work on this book. With the prospect of my contract being up and a week or two of being off work, I think we should see much more progress.
Monday, May 20, 2002
Did a tremendous amount of work on Bad Boy this weekend. Don't know if the story will work, but we'll see what happens. I'm having confidence in my plot -- I just need to find all the twists and turns around it.
An important thing is that I now have confidence in my ability to write a decent black moment. Apparently, the work on Reactions III was not at all in vain, as I had people screaming at me via e-mail about the point where they thought Buffy had actually walked out on Spike. Re-reading that, I believe his impassioned speech to her and I don't feel it's melodramatic. There's real emotion there and that's what I need to do this stuff. Much like Buffy, Spike is helping me get the fire back.
The fire being back is important, because there are bad fires other places -- the RWA link system is about to collapse, and I will need to go through the digests to figure out what the hell has happened. I don't like what I'm hearing on either side and I'm very glad I'm not going to Denver. I'm too emotionally fragile to deal in that type of fight and I'm glad I've reached point where I can admit that. This is progress at least. It's sad because now is the very moment when I'm looking at RWA as something I need because I'm getting ready to write a contemporary romance, a field I haven't worked in before. Well, haven't worked in for a decade and what I wrote then was crap. I'm stepping into a new market and that's something that makes me a little nervous. That's the purpose of this blog; to help me work out that nervousness. (And you thought I just liked to hear myself talk.)
Back to the work at hand. There will probably be a lot of updates to this site this week -- I'm going to start a new blog for the story ideas, where I can keep track of what I've thought and come up with in a coherent fashion. Well, there's going to be the background work and the "Oooh! Oooh!" stuff. Background will be fairly formal, "Oooh! Oooh!" will be bloggish. This will be for the complaining about the lack of progress and general procrastinating. I wouldn't be surprised if I end up with specific character blogs for my main characters.
Hmmm. Remember what I said about lack of progress and procrastinating?
Friday, May 17, 2002
Did some small things this morning to work toward the book -- ordered five contemporary category romances that were Romantic Times top picks for April 2002. This should give me an idea as to what the publishers are buying, but I do need to be looking at more than just those five.
As I haven't even gotten my characters actually off the ground, though, it's a little early to anticipate that I'll be sending Bad Boy off to a publisher any time soon. This is definitely a piece that I'll be submitting to a contest or two to see how it goes. Not the GH anytime soon because I know I'm not ready for that one, but to some local contests.
Of course, that's still getting ahead of myself. I mean, what do I know about my characters so far? I know that Buffy works for the Sunnydale Chamber of Commerce (and does a damn good version of the Buffybot when required) and helps local merchants promote their business. Xander is a supervisor at a construction company, the good solid steady guy. Willow, I'm not quite sure what she's doing at the moment. Is Joyce alive? Haven't decided.
The real key is going to be Spike. The whole idea is that the Bad Boy rolls into town, hiding and hurting. The Good Girl, who's dating the Appropriate Boy, is attracted to the Bad Boy, even though it's wrong. Of course, she eventually comes around and provides redemption for the Bad Boy, while the Appropriate Boy goes off the marry the Best Friend who's been waiting in the wings.
Of course, it might be much more amusing if it's not the Bad Boy who needs redeeming, but the Good Girl. So, it's not that he's holding a secret (he might not be willing to talk about why he came to town and there may be a bit of a mystery there but it comes to naught), but that she is. So, the question is what secret does Buffy hold? What secret can she hold? Does Xander have any idea about the secret and what it implies. How does Spike find out? How does Spike redeem her. (Well through the power of love, obviously.)
Much to think on.
Thursday, May 16, 2002
Not a lot of work done over the past few days as I deal with real life stuff (and the fan fic writing). However, did go and get some basic guidelines for Harlequin/Silhouette Books. I haven't had those in years, so it's a serious thing to be looking at page counts. As I see it, my best bets are Harlequin American (70-75,000 words), Harlequin Blaze if it gets really sexy (70-75,000 words), Harlequin Tempation (60,000 words), Silhouette Desire (55-60,000 words) or Silhouette Special Edition (75-80,000 words). So we're looking at a range of 55,000-85,000 words or 220 pages to 340 pages. If it gets real funny (and light, plotwise), there's Duets at 50,000 words or 200 pages. I'll have to see how it works. Looking at size is a good thing.
Now I just need to figure out what secret it is that's sent Spike running for this town...
Monday, May 13, 2002
Well, I've managed to come up with a theme for the book Bad Boy (and a working title, btw). The theme is "Love is worth the risk. A heart that does not take risks is a heart that is not alive."
Okay, so it's hokey. It's a theme and it's a start.
Welcome to A Work in Progress. At this point, no one's probably reading this, which is for the good. Not going to ping Weblogs until I get things actually set up. Not going to worry about archives yet, either.
This blog is to chronicle my writing efforts. After what feels like a long dark night of the soul, I'm moving back to life and to writing. I've been doing Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan fic writing (check out Missves From the Hellmouth to see what I've been doing), and while it's been terribly satisfying and I'm not going to stop any time soon, I do want to get back to attempting to write for publication.
I've been trying to get published for damn near fifteen years now and will make progress then stop. I'd like to get beyond that, to conqueor the fears I have of success and actually get things moving. The problem is, I often feel like I'm writing in a vacuum, with no real outlet or criticism beyond one or two people. Well, I'm not expecting an audience of thousands here, but I think it will prove a nice place for me to "see" things in an environment other than my word processing program. I can do whatever I feel like -- post ideas, character sketches, answer question post chapters -- and it will be a sense of getting things out into the ether beyond my little cyber circuits. At first this is not going to be a daily updated blog, but I think it will be interesting to see what comes of it.
