That's a good idea, Deb. And I certainly will write if I have desire and the time/space to do it--I'm just not going to set myself a page count and push myself to meet it like I usually do, because that's never easy to do while traveling and visiting in any case, and I really don't know what this trip is going to be like.

Setting a page count under those circs - OK, you wanted an opinion, here it is. That would be suicidal. Seriously - creative suicide. This isn't likely to be a situation where you're going to have any control over, well, anything, really. It's likely to hurt like hell and make you crazy, not the writing, but the entire reality of the situation. Any sense of control is likely to be illusory. Nature and fate have the whip hand on this. All you can do is go along with whatever happens.

And I know different people have entirely different ways of dealing with this heavy-duty stuff. For me, I talk and I write. That doesn't mean you will - but be prepared, and don't feel guilty if some major emotional stuff makes you want to write. This is where some of the best writing on earth comes from.

But it hurts like hell.

Just my take.

Setting a page count under those circs - OK, you wanted an opinion, here it is. That would be suicidal. Seriously - creative suicide.

Well, I'd realized that much already, which is why I decided not to do it.

It's probably just as well I've reached the point in the story I have--there's no danger whatsoever I'm going to forget what I meant to write next.

AmyLiz, are you on RWAAlert yet? If not, let me know, and I'll forward the message I just got WRT the graphical standards meeting from last night--basically, they're suspended for the moment, and a committee has been formed to seek member input and actually figure out all those pesky details about when and how they'd be applied.

Three weeks yesterday for R&RNF.

54,238 words. Into chapter twelve.

The end of the book is a light at the end of the tunnel, and I can see it.

Shortest tunnel ever. My muse is apparently sucking crystal meth.

t applauds Deb

Damn...

This is nuts. It is. Attack novel, or something. I'm in the very high tension part of this thing, zooming in toward the solution and the ending, and I know precisely what's going to happen, what they're going to say to each other, the lot.

Hey - it's how Anne Rice wrote Interview. You're kinda similar except for the editor, the genre, the plot, the having an editor, and oh yeah - you have talent.

Heh. Aimee, there's also the fact that, as a writer, I don't have the verbal runs.

Seriously. In something like "the Feast of All Saints", I'd have cut a third of that book. When did "tight" become a rude word?