where I am, as best I can tell.

It's Wren-weather outside: a little heavy on the actual wet part, but with frequent rolls of thunder and splats of lightning, enough to fill the heart (and core) of any Talent with glee. She has requested and been given permission to take the day off and go play in the current. Sergei's taking advantage of this to go back over the manuscript and give himself a few more scenes, cheeky bastard.

Me, I took this morning to look back over the pages, and realized that the first (very rough) draft of Burning Bridges is almost done. I don't write the last few scenes until everything else is ready to go -- for me, once the story's out of my head, it's tough to do anything more on it. So the capstone waits until everything else is polished up and ready to send out.

The interesting thing about writing this book has been the fact that I'm far more comfortable with the way I work. Staying Dead was done on spec, so it was a different creature entirely. With Curse the Dark I had a total case of secondbookitis, and had to have the manuscript dragged out of my clutching fingers (okay, so I was going through some Rough Life at the time, too. Didn't help). By Bring it On I had become a little more aware of my own tendencies and writing habits, and started to obsess about them.

With Burning Bridges? I've gotten to the point where I recognize that this is the way I write novels. It's neither wrong nor right, but what works for me. Trying to do it another way, even if it might be more efficient in theory, or more effective in concept, isn't how the story gets told. So even as I was panicking ('the book took a left turn! a right turn! a u-turn! It's going to be 40,000 words too short!') I was aware that I'd panicked exactly this way for the past two books, and would continue to panic this way for the next book as well, and that's Just That.

Amazing, how much energy not panicking about your panic frees up.




Later this week, I will switch heads entirely, and work on a non-fiction project for a client, which is so academic it's making me feel like I should at least get library privileges down the street at Yale... dry, dry, thine name is Dry! *hacks up dusty verbiage* The advantage of non-fiction work is that you're just relieved to get back to the fiction: it feels like you've been let out of a leg brace and can dance again.


And now, for something completely frivolous...

( funeral for a (wardrobe) friend )

props to NCIS

The bastards. But bastards with sensitivity and class.

Gibbs has lost the last 15 years of his life, thanks to trauma. He doesn't remember anything. His old partner, the man who trained him, is called in to help him remember things.

He has to tell Jethro about 9/11.

Painful, but real, and beautifully done.

Props, people. Props where they're due.





(and oh, they just broke my heart. Gonna be a loooong summer...)