Progress -- Beacon & Palaios

I nearly finished Beacon Burning back in March, but I just haven't been able to get going again. My mom's condition continues to deteriorate and being a sole caregiver is a 24-7-365 job.

I have done a little bit of work on Palaios, which is my pre-Casanarvan world, the place where the Tazaqwayn came from. It is a place of many gods and goddesses and fiery blood sacrifices.

From this world a priest, Licas, escapes with a few hundred followers, including several warriors who become his bodyguards and eventually form the original Velnar Knights.

I know little of this world and am just feeling my way along. Recently I saw a picture of a city by a sea and recognized it as the capital of Palaios. I had not known before if Palaios was a coastal city or not. Details will come to me and I will be able to See this place much better in time. Eventually what I see probably won't resemble the picture at all, but that doesn't matter.

Slow progress

Life keeps getting in the way, but I'm slowly making some progress on Beacon Burning.

I was really stalled out on chapter 3. I kept trying to weave in Catreena and Saray's story, and it wasn't working. Gradually I realized that a scene I was trying to avoid writing HAD to be written. It actually wasn't hard once I got into it. I just had to change my p.o.v. character. Now I think I'm back on the right trail.

I believe a lot of what we call writer's block is a resistance that builds in our minds when we try to convince ourselves we know a shortcut or a better way around in a story, and the story itself won't let us. You can call it your muse or say your characters are controlling the story, but whatever it is, it does form an impediment to continuing the story or even continuing to write the story.

Life may conspire to block our progress, but I've found that if I REALLY want to write, I will do so in spite of whatever problems I'm facing. In fact, my writing provides a release from stress and an escape from daily disasters. Rarely do my characters experience anything like what I'm going through, yet their "trials and tribulations" often make my problems seem trivial, so that I discover a double relief--that of escaping into their world for a while and that of escaping back into my own once more!

Candles finished

I finished Candles in the Wind (topped out at 419 pages) on Aug. 29, went back and polished up the last four inserted chapters and sent them off to a couple of my critiquers.

In working on these chapters I came across a couple of things I wanted to fix in Lamp and Darkest Hour, so I'm glad they hadn't been carved in stone.

Now I'm ready to re-start Beacon Burning. I went over the first two chapters, and they look solid. My imagination is already racing ahead to scenes and dialogue for Beacon. I have quite a bit written, not as much typed in yet as I'd thought, but I'll get there.

Also I came up with a tentative title for the collaborative Adventure in Eedo. I'm calling it The New Moon. "Moon" is always good for Eedo! And I'd had that title on my list forever. That story will need a lot of work--half of it isn't even typed and some isn't canon (The wedding springs to mind immediately. I was in a hurry and based it on Catreena's two weddings!). My partner in crime has written a fresh beginning, and I'm thinking that maybe we could even start the story further back in time, but for now, it's good.

Life has been getting in the way of writing. I don't mind the work--when hands are busy, the mind often runs free and comes up with "story"--but I've got to get my mind back to focussing on the story. I've lived so long in Valtarmelsa and in Saráy that I've forgotten what Eedo and Goffeleccee are really like. Very scary. I need to re-immerse myself, not only in the geography, which is easy, but in the culture and traditions of these two kingdoms.

Getting ready for NanoFeb

I've spent most of this month working on my historical novel The Coleman Massacre and rearranging some of the chapters in Darkest Hour.

Next month, our writers' group is going to do our own little NaNo, and my goal is to get back to the third book in The Casanarva Scrolls: Beacon Burning. I have several chapters written, and really want to make some progress. I think when I stopped last year, I left Lord Normavel up on the side of a mountain, and I'm sure he's not pleased with me. But now I'm eager to get back to Casanarva.

I've gotten my office organized, my email cleaned out, and most of my computer backups completed, so if life cooperates I should be able to get some "real" writing done this month. Last year my computer died, my cat got sick, and my mom had a heart attack. I'm praying for a better, quieter year this time!