Snow on Snow

3692 / 50000 words. 7% done!

That is indeed the very same word count it was two weeks ago. Yet I have changed the spelling of one of the names and then changed it back again, and realized I was being inconsistent about someone's age. I have indicated this by changing the color of the progress bar. I am also flipping back and forth on whether a certain someone's mother is alive and an indifferent watercolorist, or a victim of the 1918 influenza pandemic.

In fact I am only pretending that I am being a lazy and indifferent writer, because it makes me feel better to think that if I would only buckle down I could knock this out, when the reality is that I'm generating several thousand words of notes each week, and doing hours of historical research every day, on top of the notes and plotting and research I did over the past three years. I had also hoped I would bring this in with two volumes, but it's becoming obvious that it's three, and that the story ends later than I thought it did. Which means I have to plot all of that. It's going to take me something like five more years to get all of it done. During which time I will find work, have kids, and switch countries, any of which could make it take LONGER. I believe it will sell well enough to pay for that time, but no advance would cover it.

I am not writing much in my journal because the only thing I have to talk about is writing. Ciro and I sit at home at our respective computers and type, and sometimes we go to coffee houses or bars or friends' houses, where we sit at our respective computers and type. Aside from the Nanonovel, I have two other books and four short stories at various stages of completion, not to mention a number of scripts and a master's thesis. It is difficult to manage my time and know which one I should work on during any given day, so I just go with whatever seems easiest. Which isn't scripts right now. I'm feeling very disconnected from film. In contrast, fiction is something I can do alone, and for which I don't need to cover operating costs. Also, I'm dead in the water filmically until the holidays are over and I can talk to people about permits - no point writing anything I'm not sure I can shoot.

I feel pretty boring. Most of my news is other people's. There's a major upheaval upcoming in the situation with the crazy man sleeping on my kitchen floor, who to Ciro and my surprise will not be going to Italy after all, but neither Ciro nor I has the energy to hammer it out just now. I get tired of talking about it. We're pretty happy, and most of our complaints are about bad covers of Christmas songs.

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"What can I give him, poor as I am?" - Christina Rossetti, "In the Bleak Midwinter" (which was a poem before it was a carol, although Holst did a fine job with it. Rossetti is best known for another poem, "Goblin Market," which among other things shows up in a Dr. Who episode. More of her poems showed up in Dark Shadows. Wow we genre authors sure like her.)