You sound like the voices in my head, erika. Tell them to shut the fuck up.

I have those voices too I think Burrell has the right plan.

Yeah, I should, but if I felt that I would listen to myself, maybe I'd feel confident enough to make the books happen. I know I am at least a little better than when I wrote those other things, though.

I managed to outline chapters 8,9,and 10 last night. Now I can get back to writing. Maybe 8,9,10 and 11. There's a lot going on in 8 and it may need to split.

I just remembered something that needs to scheduled in chapter 9 so it will show up again in chapter 15 without coming out of nowhere. Time to email myself and remind myself to schedule the drug overdose.

My wife finally read chapter 5 and she said she loved it. I've decided to take this as meaning that chapter 5 is good rather than a sign of blatant bias. It's got me all worked up to get started on 8. Only work, the evening schedule, and the school newsletter stands in the way. Sigh.

My wife thinks chapter 6 is pretty decent and chapter 7 might need to be tightened up a bit. She also gave me an idea that might be kinda cool and would add some more stuff to the world's backstory. OTOH it would require a pregnancy which I hadn't intended and don't especially want to put in there, and I'd have to kill off a character that wasn't going to get killed off. OTOOH, could be really cool.

I gotta decide what I want to do. Luckily, it is looking to be a really slow day at work so there is time for the occasional space out and think session.

Ha! Not just yours.

::beams::

I love hearing about your progress. It's so very different from the way I write. It's also hard for me to give advice, though -- I'm really not good with the abstract. If I had pages to look at it, it would be different, but I'm also really, really not a fantasy reader, so.

In other news, an agent-turned-author (but still agent, too!) posted a link to her blog piece about her first sale. And I sort of thought, uh, unless you were writing the worst drivel in the WORLD, your first sale story is probably *not* as impressive as someone who doesn't have years of industry experience and contacts, lady.

Partly I'm posting just because I feel like if I report progress someplace I don't want to stop making progress to report. In theory I have two people looking at it, my wife who has no information expect what's on the pages, and another guy who is a big fantasy reader who has some information about where I'm going with stuff. I've only got feedback from my wife, but the other guy is in the middle of moving so I can understand being a bit slow to respond.