Day 3 of the Year-End Project

All of my outstanding invoices have been paid.  Happy Freelancer is Happy.  Also, solvent, at least until the bills land in January.....

Goal: Goal: to have 50k words in polished working order by 1 January.
Day 2: Beat the hell out of fine tuned Chapter 1.
Day 1: Got the errata, notes, and existing text imported into Scrivener. Created a character call-sheet.
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Today, I moved on to chapter two, and a change in POV characters. Also, different languages. A portion of the afternoon was spent tracking down the right word in German to convey a feeling, and we're still not sure we got it right. But all hail Twitter, where I can discuss it with native German speakers, within five minutes of asking the question. :-)

Her courage began to fade.  What had she been thinking?  She was a nobody, a would-be, der mochtegern, her only entrée into this society her family’s name, and her cousin’s patronage

“Virginie!”  As though thinking of family drew her eye, her hostess spotted her, moving through a crowd that gave way obediently.  “Ma petite, you look lovely.  Tired, and has no-one been feeding you?  But lovely.”

I also had to do some follow-up research on Parisian townhouses, cigarette lighters, and sea travel in the relevant time period.  Oh, how I suffer...

I had a sudden thought about this second character (henceforth: Gigi, as per la_marquise_de_'s helpful commentary), that required rethinking certain things that happen down the road.  Her greatest desire will be granted, but nowhere in the way she expected.  Of course, she never expected her greatest desire would happen, anyway. In the meanwhile, I spent half an hour trying to rework the opening paragraph.  Fiddly fiddly bits.  Then I sailed through the next thousand or so words, because I'd already been so fiddly with it before.

Only about 5k words fine-tuned today.  I blame the arrival of a New! Bookcase! for distracting me... 


(I am hesitant to do a full word-count on the project, since I'm doing a lot of pruning and fine-turning right now.  Would people find it of interest, to see how the count goes up and down?)

Ave, Leverage.

Deadline.com posted the news, and John Rogers confirmed it on Twitter: after five seasons, Leverage has ended its run.

I am...of mixed feelings about it. On the one hand - this is one of my top-ten-ever favorite shows, a not-guilty pleasure and a must-see tv date. Part of me wanted it to run forever. Let's go steal us a (new) network.

But part of what made Leverage so wonderful is also what makes me able to let it go, and say "yes, this is okay." Because the characters changed. They grew. They evolved. And they were starting to reach a point where the original premise no longer worked: they weren't emotional misfits held together by the sheer will of their leader and their own surprised joy in the con-for-good. They'd become functional, responsible adults, settling into their skins and their relationships. And that was lovely to watch....

But it also took some of the joyfully chaotic energy out of their scams. And - let's face it - there's only so many times you can take down [fill in the blank] and make it seem fresh and filled with potential disaster at every turn. I've been enjoying this season, but the writer-brain was constantly seeing where the threads were beginning to tie off, closure coming up in the distance. I would have been happy for a sixth season, but I would have been worried, too.

And I'd rather they go out on a high note*.


Now. How fast can we get them all working again?



*and hey, we still have the novels to come...