Winter Wonderland

Winter has arrived in the north! The snow is falling. Beautiful, soft, sparkling powder has been falling now since this afternoon, and all the noise, zooming cars rushing by, the echo of trains and engine brakes from far off, are dampened in the blanket of snow. I love this almost more than anything...snow brings such peace, if you don't have to be anywhere or drive in it, that is. What a luxury to walk out of the school this afternoon, and know I don't need to be anywhere than in my cozy home, snuggled up on the couch, reading and writing and drinking a cup of hot tea.

I have officially "shut off," that is, Christmas vacation is still two weeks away and already I am changing into what I call my "vegetative" gear. Christmas music, Christmas movies, it's all coming out! Better yet, we're off this weekend to cut down our tree in the boonies. A truly non-commercial Christmas: find your BC Forestry "good for one tree" pass in the paper and off you go into the woods with a saw. Love it!

I'm still taking a breather from the book...waiting for a good chunk of time to tackle it and get back on track, although those chunks are few and far between right now. I'm doing lots of reading on the next step, as in, what to do once I actually do finish the book. I've included a few interesting links: one that details the warning signs of a scam publishing agency (http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2007/02/happy-valentines-day-from-writer-beware.html), as well as Writer Beware's "Two Thumbs Down" publishers list (http://anotherealm.com/prededitors/pubwarn.htm). 

As for writing, I must wait until the concert season slows down. How did I all of a sudden end up performing in four concerts? Only one involves me singing, but the piano accompaniment concerts scare me more. If I goof up, the singers following me do as well. Arg. Can't wait till December 16th when it's all over, and I can just focus on getting through to the holidays.

I think I'll go and stare at the snow a little before bed. My fascination with snow never ends...even up north, where it just keeps coming, where it gets ugly and cold and frustrating because spring always seems to be "just around the bend" but never comes till May...even here, I love the snow. It is all the magic of childhood rolled into one - imagination, a sense of wonder, innocence and purity. I hope I can always remember that. Especially when I slip and fall in it and want to walk around with a blow dryer to melt it all. Ah! Snow.

Snowy Slush and Late Night Mush!

There is a winter wonderland of slush outside, and my desire to merrily sing Christmas tunes has been sated. There's just no rejoicing to be had when you're sloshing around in scummy looking wet snow! But it started out rather majestically...come January, when the deep freeze sets in and sticks the snow to every living and inanimate object, I'll probably wish for the changeable nature of slush! Till then, bring on the sunshine. And sleep...can't wait to curl up in my flannel sheets tonight because, (what else is new?) I'm pooped.
More success writing tonight. It appears I need a good 2-3 hour window to be really productive. By the time I finish searching for that word that's on the tip of my tongue but just won't come out, or research whether or not 18th century France had ice boxes, it takes 3 hours to get a good chunk of writing done. It frustrates me that I can't have that much time each night of the week! And, when I do, by 10:00 Bailey is staring at me to rub her, and let her out to pee and then put her to bed. Yes: I communicate with my dog. In fact, I know all the different tones of her barks like a mother does her babies cries! Right now she's guilt tripping me with the biggest sighs I've ever heard emitted from an animal. They can be roughly interpreted as: "I don't understand why daddy is in bed sleeping, and I'm not!"
I feel like I've made some really great progress on the story. My characters are developing on paper (they're already developed in my head), and they're actually getting places geographically and emotionally...the story is slowly unfolding! Nola's 6-year old self is firmly esconced in France, elements of her character being revealed through her actions (like galloping a pony through a field to her mother's chagrin)...it's a whole new story. To explain further, I started this whole idea on a completely different bent, at a later date than 1782. It was so EXCITING and I loved it...but it needed more background. Then, adding the background with flashbacks made it too choppy and felt the pace of the narrative was lost. So all those flashbacks and now an entirely new book on their own, a prequel in a sense to the original story, now book 1 in what will inevitably (because, as you can see, I'm wordy) become a multivolume saga!
Amazing how you start with one thing, and it ends up completely different in such surprisingly pleasing ways!
I just kick Bailey off the couch before she falls asleep again...when she gets to that stage I must physically drag her off while she gives me the evil eye (ha, should have put me to bed sooner, mum!). She'll hang 3/4 off the couch before finally relenting to drop a foot to the floor.
I'm hoping to pull some passages soon (all those flashbacks) from my first manuscript into this new one, the first attempt sitting at about 30,000 words right now, and that will hopefully boost up my word count drastically. I'll never make it to 50,000 by the 30th in order to (try to) win this NaNoWriMo competition, but I'll keep trying! No matter what, progress is progress, and if I continue this pace past the 30th, I'm guaranteed to finish the book sooner (and get published?!!!!!!) than if I had never bothered to enter the contest at all. Amazing what a little competition will do.

Novel Word Count: (drum roll....) 11,098!