Thursday, October 22, 2009

Finally, I can read again

Mom gave me the new Terry Pratchett book for my birthday, Unseen Academicals, and I spent many lovely hours today reading it. It's awesome. I had to set aside Jim C. Hines's The Mermaid's Madness to read it, and in turn I had set aside Fritz Leiber's Swords & Deviltry to read that. I am surrounded by awesome books. And now that I'm done with Bell-Men, I can read them all muahahaha at least until NaNo starts next Sunday.

Next Sunday! And I'm already wondering if maybe I should throw out Tiger and write a YA story I have in mind instead--but I think I need to spend more effort worldbuilding and plotting and ultimately writing the YA story. Tiger is just a fun throwaway idea, perfect for NaNo.

And despite the reading, I find Bell-Men creeping into my thoughts frequently. The writing is solid, and the plot and pacing is good up to about 3/4 through. Then things feel rushed and the ending frankly sucketh mightily, with a bonafide deus ex machina. I'm already coming up with ways to fix all that. I wasn't intending to tinker with Bell-Men until probably January, but I suspect I'll be writing new scenes for it this week. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the final wordcount comes to 100,000.

13 comments:

Fox Lee said...

Bad endings are like placeholders. Eventually the muse figures out the way things are meant to end. Which, in my experience, always feels pretty sweet ; )

BT said...

Happy Birthday - or did I miss something - or did I not miss something and just forget...again :c(

Alan W. Davidson said...

Yep, sounds like you've got things under control.

K.C. Shaw said...

Natalie--I like that philosophy. :)

BT--I Twittered about it but I didn't post it here, actually. So no, you didn't miss anything.

Alan--tenuously, as usual. :)

Aaron Polson said...

Reading is glorious, isn't it. Bask in it.

Until next Sunday, that is. Muahahahaha...

K.C. Shaw said...

I'm starting to get verrrry nervous about Nano this year. I have ideas for a lot of what will happen in my nano book, but I don't know why it all will happen. Maybe I should stop reading long enough to figure that out, huh?

Unknown said...

reading is one of my favorite things

Jamie Eyberg said...

Reading is good. (NaNo, is it that close already? Eek!)

K.C. Shaw said...

Horror Girl--mine too. I wish someone would just pay me to sit around reading.

Jamie--I'm trying to ignore the calendar. It's freaking me out, man.

Cate Gardner said...

Happy Belated Birthday... You're a writing wonder.

K.C. Shaw said...

Thanks! I'm sitting here killing time by jotting down notes on the Bell-Men revisions. I just wrote "why why why?" so it's not going too well.

Paula RC said...

Oh, how I wish that too! To be paid to read someones book, maybe there would be less unemployment in the world... Mmm, but I don't think much else would get done ;-)

Hope you had a great day for your birthday, K.C

K.C. Shaw said...

Thanks, my birthday was actually fairly pleasant although I did have to work that evening. Also I turned Old this year, which wasn't fun, but I've made peace with being Old since I already had Grouchy down pat. :)