Random thoughts.

I have been struggling with allergies all week. The Benadryl has not been doing much for my itchy eyes and uncomfortable sinuses. It has lead to my not being as productive as I wanted to be. As much as I hate winter, I look forward to the time where my allergies will be alleviated by the blanket of white everywhere. I have, however, been thinking quite a bit.

I have a new laptop. As I am getting familiar with it, I find myself considering naming it and at something of a loss for what that name should be. I was worried at first because I couldn't find the word processing software and thought I had to download something. Then, after some tinkering, I finally found it and played around with it a bit. It seems to be just like Word, which I have been using for all these years when I am not writing out things longhand. I think my next logical step, before I start pounding out some serious writing with it, should be to acquire a thumb drive. I'm not sure what brands are good, so if any of you, my readers, have suggestions, please let me know in the comments.

I spent a large portion of this week cleaning up my project room. I now have a work space where I can sit with my laptop and work with out distractions. I will confess, in addition to my laptop, I have an assortment of pens which includes three dip pens (and bottles of ink), six felt tipped calligraphy pens, and two fountain pens with interchangeable tips. As I was going through my pen collection, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I really do love writing with these pens. At the same time, I feel like I need a good set of cheap but smooth writing ball point pens. I've been looking at the Pilot G3 pens at the local Walmart and moving towards buying a small stock of them.

With my uncovering my writing space and where I had hidden my lovely, lovely pens, I also discovered yet another notebook relating to a large writing project. It is the first one that I started to record ideas for the Sanctuary series in. I don't have a lot in there, but it is good that I found it because my other notebook is getting quite full. I am in the middle of working on revising the first book of the Sanctuary series. I don't feel as confident with that one as I do with the Umbrel Chronicles because the different genre. Still, I keep feeling the push to write it, so I have been. I am trying to decide if I will publish that under a pen name or not. When I have things more settled with that series, I will let you know more about it.

I have started the process of drafting out and plotting book seven of the Umbrel Chronicles. Editing books three and four has been slow and somewhat difficult going. I have been finding quite a few errors and correcting them. The major parts of the story, however, remain intact and that is something that I am pleased with. I have yet to begin the revision process on books five and six. They are in the 'mellowing' period where I let a manuscript rest before I come back to it and start revisions. I like to let a manuscript sit for around half a year so that I can come back to it with fresh eyes. It slows down the production process, I suppose, but it makes for a better quality result.

One thing that I do know, however, is that book seven will be longer than the previous books. I found myself writing to a word count (50k approximately) that has come to feel too arbitrarily short. Sure, I can tell a story in 50k words. My six books give evidence of that. I feel, however, that I am stopping in the middle of the action. Editing has only reinforced this feeling that I am stopping short of where I need to be. So, this time, I am going to write until the story tells me it is finished. I don't know if it will be 50k or 100k words when I stop, but I'm not going to worry about it. I am just going to focus on following the wisdom of Earnest Hemingway and 'Write the truest sentence you know.'