Right now my schedule seems to be: go to work and angst about the book for eight hours; come home and despair; make tea; stop despairing and start writing. I would like to skip the despairing bit and move straight into the writing.

96300 / 100000 words. 96% done!

Darling: "We are darkness and dust. It may be our nature to hunger for warmth and light, but we must extinguish them or be seared." Yeah, yeah, vampires are cheesy.
Tyop: lunched instead of lunged. A common typo when I'm hungry.
Mean things: Punch in the jaw; watching someone die, even if he was an asshole.
Deaths: Yes!

One death out of a handful accomplished. Too bad I still haven't written any of the bits leading up to it. :P

The combination of a deadline, Black Friday week, and PMS is definitely against the Geneva conventions.

Finally! Finally, the end of this book has revealed itself to me, in all its terrible angst-ridden glory. I have nearly a thousand words of it now, in bits and pieces. Mind you, there are still huge swaths leading up to the end that aren't done, but at least now I know how to get there. This is a huge and painful relief.

94345 / 100000 words. 94% done!

The search for an epigraph continues. I threw a placeholder up, from Swinburne's "The Garden of Proserpine":

I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.

I adore it, but I'm not sure it's exactly right. But cod knows I'm weary of this novel right now.

Today I faced the full magnitude of how little time I have to finish this book. I cried for a while, then had some cider and the comforting flesh of beasts, and now I have regrouped for a frontal assault on the end of this damn book.

One of us will be dead by December 1st.

I need an epigraph for Bone Palace or I will run mad. Quick, recommend me poetry with pretty, morbid bone/palace/rose/bird/death imagery!

The Bone Palace

92545 / 100000 words. 93% done!

That's a nearly 3000 words in the past couple days, and about -500 in deleted notes. So far I've managed nearly 2000 words of backstory, a fraught lovers' reunion, the discovery of a kidnapping, and the revelation of a royal affair and treason that's still floating at the end of the chapter without connective tissue. Now I need to get my antagette to go completely nuts and upgrade her sorcerous superflu, and probably kidnap a princess. Then I need to launch a rescue effort which turns into a clusterfuck which in turn becomes a climactic space battle. Right?

And then I need to figure out all the various 'splainy bits and foreshadowing that go in the front of the book, so this ending will make even the slightest bit of sense.

I can do this is just under two weeks, surely...

If only I had epigraphs. Epigraphs make all things possible.

---

And now, a bit of tacky. (Don't worry, I'm not going to suggest you become a fan of me on FaceBook. Ever.)

As you probably don't know, Bob, I have joined SFWA*. This is entirely because maryrobinette is so pretty competent and persuasive. And as you may have noticed somewhere on the internet lately, SFWA has this award thingy. And to quote the informative email SFWA sent me about it:

Works published between July 1, 2008 and December 31, 2009 are eligible in the following categories.

a. Short Story: less than 7,500 words;
b. Novelette: at least 7,500 words but less than 17,500 words;
c. Novella: at least 17,500 words but less than 40,000 words
d. Novel: 40,000 words or more.

So now you know, and knowing is some vague percentage of the battle.

*I'm still waiting for my stick to shake at those kids who stand on my lawn to arrive in the mail.

Feeling less stressed today. I sorted out a huge point of character motivation/action, and filled in an important [conversation]. And the first half of the book is still fun to read.

Today's random WiP questions:

Who is the saint of hunters?

What is the formal name of Erisín's east gate?

What costume is this assassin wearing when he infiltrates the royal ball?

What are some of Selafai's superstitious cures for the flu?

Is my deadline sailing past overhead. The Bone Palace is now officially late. Luckily my benevolent editor has given me the rest of the month, so the deathmarch continues.

The moral is, if you suspect you won't be able to make a deadline from the get-go, ask for another month. Unless the moral is really that I need a basement full of enslaved ghost-writers... That's a thought too.

Also luckily, the first half of the book is quite readable, and just needs a few more scenes and some plot points wedged in. It's only the back end that's a steaming pile of [transition]s and suck.

37. Soulless - Gail Carriger

38. Ghost Ocean - S. M. Peters

39. Darker Angels - M. L. N. Hanover

40. Traveling With the Dead - Barbara Hambly (reread)

I've been carrying this around like a teddy bear the past few days to cope with my deadline stress. I have no idea how many times I've read TwtD since 1996, but I've noticed something. I have always cried on page 327, at the line There was blood on her mouth, and on her hands to the elbow, but the gold of her wedding band shone through. More recently I've started tearing up a few pages earlier. As of today my sinuses start to prickle on 317. Eventually I'm going to start crying as soon as I pick up the book.

At first I typed "Girl vs. Kayak", but my relationship with the kayak is nowhere as adversarial as my relationship with the wall.

Kayaking was awesome, as expected. We went the more scenic direction this time, and got to admire the cliffs over Town Lake and the impossibly expensive houses on them (and the private docks they let rot, the bastards--give me those houses and I will keep the docks pristine!), turtles on logs, ducks, herons, other birds, dogs on Red Bud Isle, and rowing teams of both genders. Rowing teams are a bloody menace, but very nice to look at. It was warmer than I feel November should be, and I forgot sunscreen, but all in all very lovely. And now my shoulders ache. I may never lose the fifteen pounds that cling to my midsection, but I will have valkyrie shoulders if I keep this up.

The fact that I left the dock and promptly ate a plate of migas bigger than my head might have something to do with those fifteen pounds...

Tonight I sent seven problems eight times (total, not each), and two of them were V1s. I also started a V2, though I only got a couple of moves up. Still, this makes the fourth climbing night in a row that I have climbed a lot and well. I think that means it's a real improvement. Tomorrow I'm going kayaking, which should also be lots of fun. Then we will resume freaking out about this novel.

90000 / 100000 words. 90% done!

Why? Why aren't you done yet, book?! GET THIS THING OUT OF ME!

I am generally a mellow sort of person. I don't get stressed often--monthly mood swings aside--and other people's stress usually rolls off me.

Last night, the deadline stress kicked in. Today it got worse.

Symptoms include:

*Sweating
*Increased blood pressure
*Unhappy stomach
*Tight jaw
*Rapid breathing
*Adrenaline scald in my arms
*The constant and near-overpowering need to scream

I survived eight hours of that at work. At least now I'm at home where I can indulge in scream therapy. I will now eat pizza, write some more, and find a martini to drown myself in. Not necessarily in that order.

ulthar_kitty gets first dibs, but I might as well ask everyone. Does anyone want to invent me some ballroom dances? They have slow and fast waltzes (for which I need a different name), closed figure and free, but I need some more formal and intricate group dances--like a variant on pavanes, maybe. Any ballroom dancers out there who want a spot in my acknowledgments page?

2100 words today, leaving me with a -1100 deficit from yesterday and Sunday, but still reasonably on track. My latest sticking point is trying to make up and describe dances, because renaissance dances just aren't doing it for me.

Deathmarch stats:
Sunday - 1300 / 2,000 words
Monday - 0 / 500 words
Tuesday - 2,100 / 2,000 words
Wednesday - 2,000 words
Thursday - 1,500 words
Friday - 500
Saturday - 0
Sunday - 1500 words

I must resist the urge to make a Dragon Age character until this damn b*@k is turned in. The boy is not sufficiently flirting with Zorro the Gay Elf, so I'll have to take matters into my own hands eventually.

Posting before words, but also before I get too smashed on Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron to type. I sent six problems a total of eight times tonight, which I'm pretty sure is a new record. This is the third time in a row that I've climbed a lot in a shorter period of time. I think I sank some points into strength and endurance when I wasn't paying attention. Now I have puny T-rex arms.

1300 words tonight. This may be a deathmarch, but I still have to go to work in the morning. Hopefully I can make them up after climbing. Urgh. This would be so much easier if I knew what was supposed to happen.

But hey, I got to write a snippet of serial-killer-bird pov after all. Maybe it will even survive the draft.

Okay, I think I adore Bioware now, despite Dragon Age's cheese and stilted dialogue and Claudia Black's atrocious not-a-shirt. People threw a shitstorm over Mass Effect's blue-alien-lesbian nookie, and now Dragon Age has even more queer. I'm kind of in love with Zorro the Gay Elf.

You can also have hot demon sex (lesbian or otherwise), but sadly the hot demon in question is wearing stripper pasties. Just say no to pasties, my friends.

(Also, Zorro the elf happens to bear a more-than-passing resemblance to Legolas. And you can play a dwarf. I don't endorse Gimli/Legolas, but I still want to smooch the writers.)

Oops, I think I see my novel...

And lo, from the distance roes a great lamentation, and all who heard it did despair. The deathmarch had come upon them.

My first draft of The Bone Palace is due November 15th. My Adorable Editor has indicated that I can probably have a little more time if I need it, but I don't want to blow my first deadline any more than I have to. And so begins a deathmarch, and public accountability.

My goals for the next week are:

Today - 2,000 words
Monday - 500 words (I'm going climbing after work, because climbing keeps me from becoming a large and moving torb)
Tuesday - 2,000 words
Wednesday - 2,000 words (I will not be climbing on Wednesday unless I have my 2k beforehand)
Thursday - 1,500 words
Friday - 500 (more climbing, unless I'm behind)
Saturday - 0 (I'm kayaking in the morning and closing at work, and even deathmarchers need a day off)
Sunday - 1500 words

That has me writing 10,000 words by the end of Sunday, and hopefully finding most of the end. Since this is the zero draft, I'm allowing myself as many [transition]s and [description]s as I need. I may also be spamming LJ, Facebook, and Twitter as I try to cling to sanity.

And now my tea is ready, and so we begin.

---

Oh, and happy birthday arcaedia and retrobabble!

The Bone Palace

84023 / 100000 words. 84% done!

The winner of the costume/story contest is desperance, since I used a good chunk of his idea. My version--as well as an excellent example of how I avoid naming things as long as possible--goes like this.

In Selafai, brides wore red--the color of life and life's blood, virgin's blood, the blood of childbed, blood comingled in children. A color of fertility and fruitful unions. Veils had mostly gone out of fashion, and those who wore them still usually chose gold or silver, or more crimson if their complexions could stand it. Black veils had been made famous decades earlier by the playwright Kharybdea, who chose the color for X in the tragedy Y, the priestess who was broke her vows for love of Z, only to be betrayed and abandoned on their wedding night, after he had stolen her temple's greatest treasure. She killed herself on her saint's altar, and haunted Z in revenge, driving him to madness and finally death. It was probably the most relentlessly miserable story Savedra had ever seen on stage. It took a woman of morbid or vicious humor to dress as X for a masque; that three had done so tonight would surely be called an ill omen.

Now if someone wants to name X, Y, and Z, I'll be all set.

---

I've had anxiety dreams the past two nights. First I was trying to find a dress in a store full of hundreds of gorgeous dresses, but none of them fit, and the store was about to close, and my friends had already bought theirs. Then last night assassins broke into my apartment and I had to fight them off with a kitchen knife, then was stuck in the apartment with their not-quite-dead bodies waiting for help to arrive. (I got in a surprising amount of violence, since my dreams are the slow-running, crawling-through-peanut-butter kind, with any physical action muted and completely non-tactile.)

Yes, subconscious, I know we have a deadline. Anxiety dreams won't make it any better.

I need a costume to be worn at the solstice masque in Bone Palace, and I need a story to go with it. The costume itself consists mainly of a red gown with a veil. (I know, I know, this is just like the Mara costume in Kushiel's Chosen--I'm going to pretend it's homage.) The veil is important because three different women will be wearing it in a shell game to catch an assassin. And, yanno, veils and masks are a leit motif in this whole series.

So, tell me a story about a veiled woman in red that could become the sort of myth that engenders Halloween costumes. My favorite story wins an ARC of Bone Palace, whenever those happen. And, of course, my eternal gratitude.