Holiday today

We're one of the few companies that close today, which is good because Cam's rat Karma is pretty lethargic. We're taking her to the vet when he gets home from school in about an hour. Then if there's time I'll come back home and take Cullen to the credit union to transact some business. Then the library and probably the laundromat because our washing machine broke. That's how we party down at my house...

I finished the Destiny Project yesterday and what a lumpy mess it is. It's the lumpiest first draft I've ever written in my life. Usually I write pretty decent first drafts, in fact my columns are all first drafts since I don't have time for anything else, but this time I just went with a lot of different ideas and made some notes so I can tear it all apart and put it back together in a different order.

Now I just need to finish the Clive thing, which is feeling pretty uninspired right now, mostly because the big exciting scene that solves all the major problems scene is supposed to happen tonight, in story time, yet the actual story arch and character growth I set out to write about is just beginning. I'm about 49,000 words in and half of me says just chuck the whole thing. But maybe I'll just finish the big conquer the forces of evil scene (I don't think I've written one of those before, at least not on this scale) and then make a bunch of notes and when I do the rewrite start the story and character arch a lot sooner in the action. I'd like to have this thing wrapped up enough that I can abandon it come November first and start the third Kitta book. And I need time to rewrite the first two and the Gabriel book. Making time for rewrites is very hard for me at any time and for some reason it's been especially hard recently.

I know some writers do well when they take some vacation time and lock themselves away from the intertubes and other people but I do so much research as I'm writing. Not so much to learn about new things, although I do some of that, but mostly to check my facts because since I had meningitis some things just don't sound right anymore. Sometimes words don't even sound like real words so I look them up and some things are just odd so I look them up. Really? Really there's a fish that clamps itself to the side of sharks? Really there are birds that hang out in crocodiles mouths? And is it crocodiles or alligators? That sort of thing.