chipotle | (no subject)

I got word from the agency that they’re going to push my start date back to the 29th from the 22nd. This doesn’t really surprise me, given that the 22nd was, well, Thanksgiving week.

The novel progress has slowed down, which worries me a little—but on the flip side, I’m getting some writing done every day, which represents some kind of little internal victory.

What’s less of a victory is that I’m letting other things slip, as I’ve written about before (so I won’t belabor that again). But there’s a silver lining there, too, of sorts—I’m starting to feel like I’m getting a bit more of my focus back.

I’ve been told that there may well be flyers about Why Coyotes Howl at MFF this weekend. I’ve also been sent some corrections on various typographical blips in the proof copy, which is something else that I need to get to this weekend. That’s a cool thing to have to get to, though. I need to write at least a draft version of the back cover copy, too, which could be a minor chore.

Part of me thinks I also need to see if I can, real quick, get some relatively major name author somewhere to read the proof copy and say something good about it, so I can put a nice blurb quote on there somewhere. :)

I’m now planning to go back off to a coffee shop and see if I can get going on either those edits or on another slog against the dragon manuscript. I suspect I need to be working as much on the outline as the novel at this point, and also need to start writing scenes “out of order” just to get them down on paper in first draft form. There are several things I’ve seen in my mind working on this—and working on the original notes years ago—that I haven’t gotten to yet, and need to be captured. I suppose I may find that they don’t actually go anywhere in the story after all, but the piece needs powerful images. (I suspect a lot of the second draft, assuming it happens, will be working on fleshing out imagery and description, converting a lot of what’s being said openly—sometimes in direct language in dialogue—to more metaphor and symbolism.)