First Cup of Coffee - December 4, 2018

Talking today about why it's good to stop writing while the flow is going well - why that honors the subconscious creative self. Also dreaming about the book, picking titles, and progress on Sorcerous Moons #5.

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Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy and I'm here with my uh first cup of coffee. First cup of London fog. I put nutmeg on the top so it's all fragrant. Redolent of the season, yes?

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Today is Tuesday, December 4th, about 8 o'clock in the morning, my usual lately.

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And I don't know if I have anything to say today. We'll just see how far I get. I did hit word count yesterday. Um I got my 3,000 words and got it fairly early in the afternoon, so that was nice. I would like to work it back earlier and earlier in the day. See if I can um I feel like I have more time if I finish earlier in the day. Um, less dorking around before that, especially if I'm only doing 3,000 words. So I've now passed 20,000 words on Sorcerer's Moon's number five. Considering, I was dreaming a lot last night about the book. Um that's something that happens once I get once the it's a sign that the story is really kicking in, is if I'm dreaming about the book and it starts to come alive in my head that way. I was dreaming about the title. Because yeah, um, someone commented that it was the you know, that the first two, Lone and Torn O'Brias Gambit. It was sort of the person and the thing. And then the next two were the Tides of Bara and the Forests of Drew, which were places. And I do agree that the Tides of Barra is a place, um, because it refers to that bore tidal zone outside of the walled city. It was funny when um I wrote that book, my copy editor uh who's worked with me on all the 12 Kingdoms books, Rebecca Kriminesi, uh, who's just terrific and she's great, but she kept um commenting on the bore tides. She kept saying, I don't think this is a thing. Is this what you mean? She said, I've looked it up and I don't think this is what you mean. And I th I thought that was funny because one of the things I was thinking of was um those tidal flats outside of Anchorage, among other places. I've also seen them on uh Vancouver Island, but those long, very flat, uh typically muddy beaches with a lot of little tiny tidal pools, and those tides come in super fast because the beach is so flat and shallow, and that's called a bore tide. Um, and a bore tide can be really deadly, and the uh mud flats outside of Anchorage have signs all over the place with pictures of people being mired in the mud because the tide comes in faster than you can run, and if your feet are sunk in the mud, you can be in water up over your head within minutes because the tide comes in that fast. So that was one of the things I came up with for my world where Drew and Bara are part of places in, is that with the two moons the tidal forces would be amplified. I decided that they could be twice as much. So the bore tide could be twice as deadly. So that's what I was thinking of with the tides of Bara. That it is, I mean, I don't want to say the mud flats of Bara, right? Not nearly so romantic. So then, yeah, I agree that these last two titles should be something if we had like the person and the thing and then the place, that these last ones are I don't know, some sort of action, I think. Maybe finally uh I don't know, some sort of resolving action. And I like the idea of using the mask because the mask is figuring in heavily into this fifth book. And I was just remembering something else I want to be sure to put in the story. In fact, I might just note it down right now because it has to do with these vor tides. But I won't tell you so it doesn't spoiler anything. Um I'm writing this down. Yeah, just four words. Uh one of the things I I do keep little pads of paper and pens all around the house for when I think of things like this. And the only problem is that I sometimes leave myself notes that are too cryptic. I would say, you know, like 80, 90% of the time I know exactly what I meant, and my note is a cue that triggers what I was thinking of, and it works just fine. And then, yeah, maybe 5-10% of the time I find these cryptic notes to myself that I have absolutely no idea what they mean. One of my favorites was I found a little sticky note that said humans with three question marks. And that was not a helpful note. I actually, though I did finally figure out what I was thinking about. It was back when I was writing um Covenant of Thorns, and I realized in that third book, or maybe the second book. Anyway, one of those that I needed to deal with the presence of humans and fairy and like what sort of um civilization they might have. See, so much encapsulated in a single word. But you know, those three question marks are key too. Those are a critical component of any kind of clue. So yeah, I I'm thinking some sort of action and something to mask. We'll see. We'll see. Ah. But it's coming along well. Um, I'm going to hit the end of scene five today, for sure, because I'm only a few hundred words away from it, and I know how this scene is winding up, so that's good. One um one advantage of writing to word count and stopping after word count. I think I've mentioned this before, but I think it's important to when you set a word count goal to stop at that point. And I know a lot of writers don't do this, and it's tempting not to do this because typically the the first 1,000 words, especially if you're going for several thousand, but we could say just the first chunk, typically the first chunk, the first session, is the creakiest. It certainly is for me, and I've heard other writers say this too, that it just takes a while to oil up. For me, that first thousand words, I tend to eke it out a little bit. So much so that I have a um milestone for 500 words because it makes me happy to hit that first 500. After that, I just do it by thousands. But that's because those second two thousands come pretty fast. In fact, I'll usually write 11 to 1200 words in the next two hours. Um and then that last stint, because I've written overwritten the like the second run, very often I don't have to go all the way to a thousand in that third one, you know what I mean? Or if I go into a fourth session, they're they're real short ones. And because you're oiled up at that point, it's tempting to keep going. And I hear writers talk about this. I heard hear them reference, and they say, Oh, well, you know, I was so hot. I kept going and I wrote another thousand words entirely. And I think that that's um as tempting as it is to do, what happens is is that you write until you run yourself out. And once you're running, once you run yourself out, it makes it that much harder to pick it up again the next day. There's also the aspect of that you've broken agreement an agreement with your subconscious creative self, right? That you said you were going to write to this point and stop, and then you you were ngged. You were negged on the agreement and you kept going. So I think that's a real problem too. But if you stop when you hit that 3,000 words, or so, I mean, I don't like type up through the you know 2,998, any of that. I'll um I tend to write in little bursts, and I have my word count uh counter set on my word document at the bottom of the screen. And I will stop periodically and plug in my total word count into my spreadsheet, which has a formula in it that shows how much I've done in that hour and where I am overall. So sometimes uh I will go 20 or 30 words past 3,000, and that's okay. You know, it's just like it's either that or like meticulously watch the number, which I don't want to be doing. So if you go a little bit past like that, and then you're like, oh, here I am mid-scene, mid-conversation, maybe, but I've hit my word count, so I'm going to stop. Well, then the next day you know exactly where you're picking it up, and it's very easy. And I'm going to squeeze, but I thank you. Colleen always tells me, God bless you. Um, so it it's a piece of advice I heard a long time ago where uh somebody said, you know, stop when you when it's going really well. And I'm not sure that it makes sense to stop when it's going really well. Uh that's why it works for me to write to a word count. I do know writers who write by scenes. Um, you know, so or pages. But I who was it? Uh Jerry Smith Reddy told me that she wrote by scenes because otherwise she tended to put in too much fluff, too, too many extra words, uh, unnecessary words. Uh that was part of her owning and knowing her process, or knowing and owning. That's not ever my problem because I tend to be a concise writer. My revisions are always adding, adding and embellishing. Occasionally decapitating and cutting huge chunks, but that's uh the exception of the rule, and there's reasons for it. Um Yeah, I'm not sure. Well, so that that's the point there is um if you go for a word count goal or a single or a page goal, uh stop before you've run out. You know, try that because that can be really helpful to keep things flowing and keep things going the next day. So last night that was part of it, is I was continuing the scene in my dreams, and I was continuing to um I was plugging titles together. I it was like I had big jigsaw pieces, jigsaw puzzle pieces, and I was picking them up and putting them together, and I was thinking about that, like the the name of the person and the thing, and then the place. And so there's a trajectory there, and I could kind of say it in my dreams, but you know, you lose these things when you wake up, and I don't think it I don't think it's a problem because I don't think anything is truly lost. So even though I do write these little notes to myself, it's mainly to trigger things. Uh I don't have that fear that I'm going to to forget something entirely, to forget something, to forget and have it be lost forever. And then when I finished yesterday, I finished the inside decorating. So the house looks pretty. It's nice to have that done. So then today, when I get done with word count, I really do need to catch up sales reports. Another side of the uh self-publishing business, especially if you're working with other people, but I keep pretty meticulous numbers of all of my sales and so forth. So I uh need to get those in. I need to send a few numbers to Agent Sarah that she asked for on um on a foreign rights project, one of the self-published series. It looks like we are going to uh have translated into another language. This is different than the check deal. So as soon as that is confirmed, I'll tell you about it. But that will be kind of exciting. And yeah, I don't think I have anything else to tell you guys. I guess uh I can tell you one thing. I got kind of every once in a while I get questions through the website. People get on my website and use the forum to email me and ask me questions about the books, which is great. That's a perfect way to do it. Um, and this gal wrote in and asked me about the age difference between Wraith and Andy in the mark of the Tala. And I thought it was an interesting, nobody had ever brought it up before, but she'd kind of been doing the math, and she'd figured out that uh Andy would be about 23, and that with all of the ensuing years and so forth, that Rafe must be somewhere in his early 40s. And she was surprised that it was that much of an age difference. Um and I did not correct her that Andy is probably closer to 21, because the three princesses are all born five years apart, and at the start of the mark of the tala, uh Amy is between 16 and 17, and then Andy is around 21, and Ursula is 26, and they sort of age a year or so over the course of the stories a little bit more as time goes on. So yeah, Rafe is in his late 30s, early 40s, probably something like 42. But it was funny to me because I've never thought of that as a huge age difference. Um, you know, I guess if I do the math, I can see that it is. Um but to me, you know, maybe that's part of being where I am in life, that I don't see 40 as being all that different than it was than 20. When I was 21, I dated a guy who was 40. Uh and and there were some age differences, but part of that was because he was already a crotch-the old man. I refer to him as my great mistake. He was that I should never have dated him. Really the one person that I feel like I should just I would take back, you know, most for the most part, I think that you know, nothing is ever lost. Same same theme, right? That we learn from all relationships and grow from them. And perhaps I did learn and grow from that one, but overall I think that one was pretty much just a loss. I could have skipped that phase. It was only like six months. But uh yeah, I could have skipped my great mistake. So maybe there's something to that. Maybe it is because he was so much older. Who knows? I think I was 22. Yeah, it was beginning of grad school. Uh, but at any rate, you know, among the Tala, uh, one of the things that I told her is that the Tala are a very long-lived race because of the shape shifting, especially the prolific shapeshifters, they're constantly renewing their bodies. So uh Rafe wouldn't seem like a human 40. And but but yeah, I mean, when I originally conceived of that story, I was thinking of some of the um oh do is trope the word I want. Maybe trope. You know, sort of the aspects of human history, right? Where you know, young women were often, you know, especially if a guy was a king, by the time he got to be king, he would be, you know, like 40. And uh you know, young women were married off at a you know usually much younger than 21, right? You know, you'd have girls, you know, as soon as they menstruated, they were considered fertile, and it was especially in eras of bad health care with um you know no antibiotics and so forth. You wanted to have your babies when your body was young and resilient. So, you know, I imagine it was not at all unusual for a 13, 14-year-old girl to marry a man who was 40, especially in the noble ranks. Nowadays that seems like a huge difference. But um, yeah, it's funny. I hadn't really ever thought of that as being a problem in the Mark of the Tala. And and she said that there was nothing wrong with a May-October romance, which I thought was funny because I'd never thought of Rafe and Andy that way. But part of that is because as far as his lifespan, Rafe would be nowhere near October, you know, if you figure the end of the year is the end of his life. So, you know, maybe that's part of it, the magical difference. So, anyway, that was kind of entertaining. All right, well, I hope you all have a lovely Tuesday. Thank you for sharing my first cup of coffee with me. I'm going to get at it here and try and I'm I've been keeping track of my uh average beginning time in the morning because I've been pushing it back and back and ending up starting around 10, and I would like to move that earlier. So that's the the new project. Keep getting that going a little bit earlier. So, you all have a lovely day, and I will talk to you tomorrow. Bye bye.