Is it just me or does that deer have some wolf-like qualities?

















Tallest horse in Britain - Crackers.

I feel like such a bad writers-group member! I had exactly one thing to share two weeks ago, and have been rewriting the same chapters over and over again since then. Well, you will all be happy to know that I have FINALLY moved on to Ch. 3! I will not tell you how many chapters the final book has, because, well, I don't want to think about it.

And it is rewriting, not just editing. The pile of crap I wrote in November is really just starting material. I described it as a big tangle of yarn. I think it will eventually knit itself into a book, but there are a lot of really knotted sections that need to be smoothed out. I mean, at first I had my main character's Mom give her a ribbon to protect her from the fairies, then I had her Dad give her a nickel, then a talisman, and now... well, I can't tell you because hopefully this gift will stick.

"What is it?"

"It's a good luck charm."

"But what is it?"

He tucked her covers in tightly around her body and kissed her forehead. "Don't try too hard to figure it out, love. That's what makes the magic disappear."

Chapters: When I'm reading a book, I like medium-length-to-short chapters. That way I can always convince myself, "just one more chapter and then I'll go to sleep." I like the lengths to be varied so that some times I can't make it to the end.

When I'm writing (up until the point that I realized this just now) I have had chapters that are more like sections - like 50 pages! I felt like I was "cheating" to have short chapters. (???)

Other things that make me feel this way (I may have mentioned this before) include letters, some forms of flashbacks, diary entries, switching between two character perspectives (meanwhile, back at the ranch:) , and using italics and parenthesis. I have also gone back and forth on the idea of a prolog.

Well, in the interest of broadening my horizons, I just took my prolog, which is also a flashback from another character's perspective, and have made it into a short chapter. So there, muse! What do you think of that???

P.S. My muse is one of the Little Lords of Chaos who floats around on a cloud giving me both good and bad advice, both constructive and destructive criticism, and I rather hate him.

Writing is so weird.

I have been rehashing the beginning of my novel this whole week, to the point that I should be serving it for breakfast with two eggs and a slice of wheat toast. And although I can't say that it will stay the same between now and two minutes from now, as I read it this morning, it is looking SO GOOD! Like, "oh, so that's how it fits, okay. Now I can move on to the stuff I actually want to write."