With the completion of a Jason/Carly scene, I officially crossed the 50,000 word threshold for winning CampNaNoWrimo. I logged six chapters, and one scene from the seventh chapter as work I’ll be keeping and moving forward with. That’s about 30,000 words. Another 10,000 words for a draft I didn’t keep, maybe 10,000 for outlining and plotting out the new draft. The way NaNoWriMo works is that you have to write 50,000 words even if you’re not going to keep everything you wrote. I literally cannot remember the last time I wrote that much in one month.

I still have the rest of today and three full days so I’d like to write another 20,000 words to officially make it 50,000 words kept for Mad World, but we’ll see how it goes. As a celebration, I am posting two versions of a Jason/Elizabeth scene from the discarded draft. I had originally envisioned Mad World as taking place in 2004 in the wake of Sam’s pregnancy, Kristina’s paternity, and Cameron’s birth, but I’ve now moved it back year to place it in the context of the panic room storyline, keeping many of the same elements.

I’ll keep you guys posted for how it continues to go, moving forward into August. Make sure you’re following me on Twitter @crimsonglass, #crimsonglass for specifically CG related tweets.

Continue reading →

So I’m working on the logistics for Mad World — I wrote a ton, but then I had to kind of stop, and look at the product so far and start figuring out what I haven’t written yet and what order the scenes should go in. Something I’ve done to mostly keep myself on track about what’s happening when is to use dates at the top of every chapter or when a scene in a chapter happens on a different day.

I found myself doing it for Mad World and wondering if this is something I should delete from the final product? I mean, it’s useful to me to know so I can keep weekends straight and I don’t have two Saturdays or whatever. But is it something the reader gives a damn about? So give me a shout in the poll and let me know what you think.

I posted a new Micro Fiction, Birthdays and Anniversaries. It’s not connected to the last two mostly because I was n’t sure where to go next, and I saw this prompt. I wrote it about 22 minutes. I had set my timer for 20 minutes, but I wasn’t quite at an ending spot, so I cheated a bit 😛

Camp NaNoWriMo update: the writing is going well, but my schedule was cranky this week so I didn’t get as far as I wanted. However, what I’m writing I absolutely love. I have today and tomorrow completely off with only laundry to do, so I’m just going to write until I stop. I took a break to write this and I hope to get a Flash Fiction in tomorrow.

Make sure you’re following me on Twitter. I usually post about my writing progress and usually mark the timer for Micro Fiction, but I forgot today, haha.

Hey! Checking in to let you guys know what’s going on since there’s actually stuff to care about. I had back to back family parties this weekend and work, so I didn’t have energy for Micro or Flash Fiction. I’ll have them both this week at some point.

I wrote about 10,000 words for Mad World last week but it just was not working. I kept changing tiny pieces but it just felt like I was punishing myself for some reason. So I stopped on Sunday night and I just started writing about what I wanted the story to be. What story I wanted to tell, the meaning I wanted my characters to have.

And…I completely changed the story. It’s still called Mad World, but I’ve moved it to the summer of 2003 and made it almost a rewrite of the aftermath of the panic room storyline. And after that, I wrote 5000 words like it didn’t matter.

And this morning, I wrote a Jason and Elizabeth scene that was about 800 words in 20 minutes and I loved every single word of it. I think the story I’m going to tell now is so much better and I’m so much happier with it. So yeah, Mad World is going to be completely different but some of the same strains will be the same which is why I’m keeping the title.

I have to update the graphics for it since I dumped the entire Brooke, Alexis, and Ned stuff and the page will be updated when I have a chance. But things are going well with my writing for the first time in a year, and I’m really happy about it.

First, I just posted Micro Fiction #2: Spontaneous Combustion, Part 2.  It’s a crazy little story that probably isn’t very close to character, but I need to loosen up and just have fun. I’ve published more fiction in the last two weeks than likely the entire last eight months so I imagine you guys aren’t complaining 😛 I wrote it in about 19 minutes so I feel good about that.

I post on Twitter and Facebook when I set the clock for the flash and micro fictions, so make sure you follow me on both. At the moment, my Twitter is personal and related to Crimson Glass, so you’ll get both.

Camp NaNoWriMo is going pretty well actually. I’ve figured out what’s wrong with this draft and I found some fun ways to fix it. I like where it’s going. I’ve written 11200 words total, but since I eliminated some aspects, only about 3000 words are going to be kept after the month is over. I’m looking to get to my original 50,000 goal with the new version.

I know I said I was going to continue last week’s Flash Fiction, but Gayle Callen released Love With a Scottish Outlaw and it made me want to dust off A King’s Command. All parts of that story have been renamed, btw, so its A King’s Command, Part 1, Part 2, etc.

So enjoy Flash Fiction #11: A King’s Command, Part 5.

Today is the first day of Camp NaNoWriMo, which is similar to the November writing event except this fits my schedule so much better than November has the last two years.  I wrote over 2000 words today and hope to keep going tomorrow. I’m working on Mad World, so I can kind of do something different recharge my creative juices. So far it’s going well. I had written a bit of it before the kick off, and I have about 6000 words overall. I’m feeling better about my writing than I have in months so I’m looking forward to keeping the flow going.

Hope you guys are enjoying the updates!

Just a quick update to note some site cleaning up. I realized that I hadn’t updated my Recent Updates page since about September 1. This is the page that literally just lists what’s been added, updated, or changed without any of the chatter or fluff. It’s easier to keep up with what you’ve missed if you don’t subscribe to the website. That is now current through last night.

I also realized I hadn’t added the small ficlet I wrote last year, Cast Me Gently, to my Ficlet page. One of the things I want to do as part of my overall creative process is finish making the tiny little title images. They can often keep my creative juices flowing when I haven’t been able to write.

I plan to come back tonight with a Flash Fiction. Also, Camp NaNoWriMo starts today, so I’m going to be digging into that as part of my monthly priorities. Nora Roberts once said that you can’t fix a blank page and I’m trying to take that mantra to heart.

If you haven’t subscribed to updates from Crimson Glass, I encourage you to do so particularly during this period when my updates are erratic. I hope to be back on a regular schedule by the end of the year, but for now, getting an email in your inbox would probably be easier.  There’s a subscription link in the sidebar underneath Recently Updated Novels.

Thanks guys! I’ll see you later tonight!

I wanted to get a flash fiction done tonight, but I’ve been tired all week. Split shifts at work, dog sitting, and a low-grade sinus infection. Still, I’m committing to writing as often as I can so I decided to set my timer for 30 minutes and write.

I actually kind of like what I ended up with — I wrote it in about 21 minutes, and it’s inspired by the Catherine Gayle Thursday release, Power Play. If you love contemporary romance, you should be reading Catherine Gayle.

In other news, it’s been confirmed that Steve Burton is returning to General Hospital. I haven’t watched regularly in about a year or so, but if he’s staying long term and isn’t just a hallucination as rumored, it might just be the kick I need for my writing. To see Steve and Becky together again…*sigh* I liked Billy and I enjoyed watching his version of Jason up until the point Jason Morgan got his memories back. Billy made a good amnesia!Jason but he’s just not Jason Morgan for me, so I tuned out.

We’ll see what happens.

For now, here’s your first Micro Fiction: Spontaneous Combustion. I plan to come back tomorrow with a Flash Fiction, either continuing my Scottish romance or the mystery thriller thing I wrote last week. We’ll see what the muse wants to write.

So I was at the bookstore today and came across a book of 100 prompts for romance authors. I figured, what the hell. So I bought it.

My plan is to pick a prompt and write as many flash fictions as it takes to get to the end of a story. So hopefully, I’ll be back again next week. I wrote this in 40 minutes, but did not go back to really edit or do anything with it. I have no idea where it’s going or it’s going to make sense, but this is part of my practice to stop letting shit get in my head and just write. So I wrote.

Flash Fiction #10: The Wrong Place

 

Edit: Apologies — the link didn’t post at first, which is really gonna suck for people subscribing to this 😛

I’ve been struggling with writing for the last year or so — I don’t think anyone would be surprised that the amount of actual writing I’ve done since early 2016 has been negligible. I went back to graduate school — a more demanding program than my last go around. My health has been rough, my family obligations have increased (despite not having kids of my own somehow). And I’ve just lost the creative juice. I’ve said this before, but it’s become clear to me over the last month that it’s not just the creative mojo I’ve lost, but the actual love of writing.

I don’t know what to do about that. I have the urge to write until I open up the screen. I’ll get through a few scenes (there is actual progress that’s been made with Bittersweet), but I haven’t had that breakthrough moment. When I was writing A Few Words Too Many in early 2014, I wrote that entire story in about a month. It just poured out of me. I stayed up late, I wrote several chapters a day. I wrote every day — it was a struggle to stop writing to do every day things like my actual graduate work and go out with friends. The Best Thing and All We Are came in more fits and starts, but there were days like that for both of those stories, and of course the first two seasons of Damaged–once I figured out what I was doing with that story, it just flowed in about six months.

I’ve lost that somewhere. And it breaks my heart. I don’t know where it went. I still think about unfinished works every day, I plan it in my head. I write entire scenes while I’m supposed to be driving or working. And then I sit down to actually create what I’ve been seeing, and it just falls apart on the page. Maybe I’m being too hard on my self, maybe I literally just have to force myself to write. I don’t know. I’m not giving up.

I sat down this morning to work on Damaged, Season 3, and I’m ripping it apart for the fourth time.  I’ve been having trouble with it because there are some stories in there I’m not excited about and that hasn’t helped. I’m going to spend most of today on it — apart from getting ready a short shift at work. I’m going to keep writing. I can’t promise what or when I’ll be posting new content again.

But I’ll keep trying. I have this memory of the day I wrote If I Don’t Try With You in about three hours–it has to be honestly the best three hour period of my writing career. And that just poured out of me. I think it shows in how good it is (I’m not being modest–I actually cried while writing it, I love that story so much.) I know I’m capable of this kind of writing. I just have to find it again.

I love you guys for sticking around — as always, I am here. I’ll keep trying if you’ll keep waiting.