Thursday Thoughts

I'm back!

Wait ... no one knew I was gone, did they? Ahem. Yes, I've been in Baltimore with the folks this past week. Got a fair amount of writing done, rested, recharged my batteries, and spent too much time messing with Quickbooks. (Long story ...) Last time I visited, we did some sightseeing - Annapolis, the Library of Congress, the Spy Museum - but this was a more relaxed visit, more focused on simple family time.

I finished my character notes on the project that attacked my brain and demanded to be written, and am now working on the world notes for the mystery. Since I don't want "bleed" from working on one and then immediately jumping into the other, I am going to keep a close eye on my progress. If I feel I am repeating myself, I will back off. But I actually think I'll be fine, because I spent literally weeks on just characters ... and that, to me, has a different feel than structuring the world.

My only qualm is the names. I'm afraid all the names are going to sound very similar. However, I am entirely not feeling like doing a naming language now, so I will have to come up with a scheme / structure to forcibly differentiate them.

Now that I'm back, trying to get some critiques on at least the earlier chapters of Scylla and Charybdis. Critiques make me (quite literally) ill - I've lost sleep when I think some might come in overnight. So I have to take it slow, but I also know I need to get out of my head occasionally, and an outside eye is a good way to do that.

This extreme reaction isn't from lack of practice, unfortunately: while I've not done full novels, I've had plenty of short stories run through critiquing. I just don't seem to have the capacity to relax about the process.