I dusted and moved back into my office today. Even though I call it my “office,” it’s really the room where I do my writing. I don’t call my writing “work” if I can help it. Writing and painting are fun creative acts that I enjoy, not work. Publishing, getting the creativity out to the world, now that’s work.

Temmy was very excited and curious about what I was doing in there, until she realized that I spoiled all her fun. I wouldn’t let her climb on my desk or into my garbage can or into the window sill. I took the cat box in there for her, but she wasn’t in the mood to settle down and watch or take a nap. Finally, she decided I was boring and returned to her condo to take a long nap.

That’s when I finally got some writing done.

I decided I would continue on with Siva’s story. It is part of the Wellsdeep or whatever I’m going to call the series (since that’s not a truly appropriate title but I’ve got nothing else for it at the moment). Siva is a woman about to go through with an arranged marriage in order to help out her brutal and starving world. Little does she know that her world isn’t the only one that’s brutal and facing unsettled times. Of course, if she knew anything about novihomidraks (new humans born from the dragons), she would realize that having three of them on one world wasn’t a good sign to begin with. This is the first story that I’ve written from a point of view outside of a novihomidrak. At least partially. I decided to also show Rake’s point of view. Rake is the novihomidrak who Siva will fall in love with. Before anyone screams, “Romance!” let me say that I don’t know how this is going to end. If I have to be honest with myself, then I’d say they don’t end up together, which kind of nixes it for a romance. Either way, there it will have romantic elements even if it doesn’t become a “romance.” But, I don’t know. I’ll have to see how the story leads. The characters decide, not me. Granted, Cirvel ended up with a human in the end of Palladium, so one never knows.

Anyway, it’s a bit hard for me going through this. I apparently started writing this story in 2019. As I said yesterday, I got 40,000 words in. That’s the minimum for a novel right there. Adding Rake’s point of view will dramatically increase the word count. The good thing is that it’s not done, so I still have lots to explore. The bad thing is that somewhere along the line as I remembered, I made her a skilled warrior. She’s an expert marksman and competent at hand-to-hand fighting. It was in developing this that I began to understand the dire needs of her world.

However, because I was dictating most of it and didn’t have time to go back at that moment, the beginning is very rough. In fact, she’s not very strong at all. I’m having to go back and take out all the parts where she’s weak and afraid and make her strong and motivated. I like that much better. The stakes of her making this sacrifice for her people just plays much better. I have a feeling though that the time will come when I need to rip off a huge chunk of the story and drop it away because she’s simpering and whining. I hope not, but I seem to recall a section where she was becoming tiresome on me which is why I turned around and gave her a backbone and some extreme military training. So much better.

But that leaves my critical voice crying out in agony every time I make a cut. Oh, you should have written it right the first time. This is what happens when you don’t plan things. You should wait for inspiration to begin a story; don’t you see how far off track you got by running with it? Oh, now your creative voice is going to hate you. Your creative voice wanted it that way. You’re killing it. You’re killing your character. You’re killing your story. Oh, you should just stop now. Oh, oh. Oh!

Yeah, and I’m only in chapter 2, and that’s a chapter that I added in for Rake’s point of view. (Technically I was about halfway through what is now chapter 3 before I decided I wanted to add in some for Rake). I can only imagine how bad the critical voice is going to be nagging me by the time I get to chapter 5. Oh, and this didn’t have chapter breaks in it, just breaks where I thought they should be when I was dictating. I’m glad that in the future, I won’t be dictating all willy-nilly and I’ll have the time to clean it up as I go. But I must get the older manuscripts done first.

Well, only writing has been done today, so I am off to see what else I can accomplish this evening.

Until next time, cheers!