Weekly Round Up 3/7

Saturday night I went out to hang at my best friend’s house with a couple other girls for a night of pigging out and drinking potent fruity adult beverages. Now, I’m fairly careful to basically never imbibe liquor anymore. I’ve gotten into some unsafe situations, and–as much as your friends say they’ve got your back–when everyone’s judgement is impaired, well… Anyway, however, this seemed like a fairly safe sitch. My bf’s hubby was out of the house, there were no kids, and it was just four girls in comfy clothes having fun.

But THEN someone offered me Red Bull and vodka.

Well, gentle reader, I drank it. Two of them, in fact. And the thing about me is that I’m really, really sensitive to caffeine and to Red Bull especially. If I drink a can of Red Bull, I’m not going to sleep within the next six to eight hours, you know? Usually, if I do drink Red Bull, I make sure it’s imbibed before eight o’clock and I never mix it with anything other than beer. But… you know… impaired judgement and all of that.

So, anyway, it’s like midnight, and all the other girls either have passed out or gotten their husbands to pick them up. We are all in our thirties, and we got started at like six in the evening, so that’s six solid hours of drinking, and it’s, you know, enough. But I was wide, wide, wide awake. So I drove into town, went to the bar, and drank hard ciders!!

Anyway, it took two days to recover from that. (And BOY was it a bad idea to drive. BAD, BAD, BAD. I was meant to sleep there.) A brief word on hangovers. I can’t be creative when I’m hungover. My brain does not have ideas. It’s just… mushy. Writing while hungover is impossible for me. Can’t do it.

So, on Tuesday, I began plotting out the third Cole and Dana book, Moon Dance. I lied and told myself that I’d be able to plot out all 80-90 scenes in one day. Hahahahahaha. That was a silly idea.

On Wednesday, I continued plotting out the book. I couldn’t get 80 scenes. The plot was just over at 68 scenes. Just… over. Generally, I know that my scenes tend to be longer at the beginning of the book and get gradually shorter and shorter as I get towards the end. I’m not sure if this is just because I’m like, “Enough already. I want this book DONE” or if it’s because the end of the book tends to be tense and action-y and tense/action scenes usually run shorter. So, I usually figure an average of 1000 words a scene, but that means that most of my scenes actually run between 500-2000 words. Anyway, I divided 90,000 by 68 and got 1300-something. I decided that I could totally get all my scenes an average of that length and just started typing.

My goal for finishing the first draft of this book is March 20th. If I hadn’t been a wreck on Sunday and Monday, that would have meant that I had three days to plot out the book and then I would have had 12 days to write the book, and I’d need to get about 7500 words a day, which would give me some wiggle room. I would have been able to give myself a couple 6K days if I didn’t feel like doing 8K every now and then.

I desperately wanted that tiny bit of wiggle room. But I don’t have it. I’m exactly on schedule.

So Wednesday, I did 2K.

Thursday, I did 8K.

I’m now at 10K and I have 80K left. That will take me 10 days at 8K a day, meaning I should finish in two weeks, right on time. But… well, I just know myself better than that. There are always about two days in the drafting process where writing 8K seems impossible. Now, during Out of Heaven’s Grasp I had about four days where I felt like I might be able to do 10K. But I was like, “Don’t push it.” If I get that feeling this time around, I’m pushing it, because I know that I’ll be able to use the wiggle room.

If you think that I’m being absolutely ridiculous about this schedule, you are right. It actually doesn’t matter, right? The March 20th day is an arbitrary day I pulled out of thin air, and I don’t have to hit it. This is a perfect example of low-grade OCD in practice. It’s not debilitating, and I’m functioning just fine, and it’s only a tiny bit crazy.

Still crazy, though.

Other things that happened this week that were wonderful: The return of both Bates Motel and Hannibal. The scene in Reign where Bash was forced to watch Francis and Mary get it on. Gave me chills. Katherine’s death speeches to everyone on The Vampire Diaries in which she proved that she’d made them better characters, and she was right. I sure am going to miss that lady. I hope she’s not actually dead. Martin’s grocery store finally stocked enough Blue Sky Root Beer that I could buy three six packs. Best root beer in the world, I tell you. Overall, a good week. Hope yours went well too. And for those of us in the upper hemisphere here, I’m really crossing my fingers for spring. Anytime, weather. I’m up for warmer weather. And if you live in Australia, well, maybe you’re looking for respite from the heat?