So, the Exceptional Spouse and I are taking a little family spring break jaunt up Chicago way this week. Though I don't expect much time to work, I don't feel as if I can leave writing totally behind. So what pieces can I do while traveling?
I usually take too much, but I want to allow for "how the mood strikes me." I will always take along:
1. a laptop in case I want to enter edits, update the website, blog (!!) or just check email. Since Christmas, I've had a tiny laptop for traveling in addition to the sturdy Sony that I live with. This is my first air travel with the little beastie, and it is great. Very lightweight. Fits on the tray table without any worries that the person in front of me will lean the seat back and crush the screen. Nice.
2. Something of the current WIP printed on paper (for the times with no electronic devices, at the least, or in case I run out of battery power). This time, I brought the first two chapters of The Soul Mirror along. Also, despite my intent not to revise for a while, I brought a few middle chapters of The Spirit Lens that I hadn't looked at in a while. Just in case...
3. Other pages I have for review. I completed the reviews I was doing for a writers conference. So I brought the three page sets I'm reading for the Norwescon Writers Workshop. I've done a first read on two of them. Still one to read fresh, and then the actual review and writeup to go for all three.
So what won out on the trip up here? The internal chapters of The Spirit Lens! They're some I haven't looked at in a while - and presage an important turning point in the book (and they're some I really like - Portier is in real trouble). I did some word tightening and cleanup. A little updating according to the new things I learned by the time I got to the end. Best of all, I had an insight as to the climax...not of The Spirit Lens, but of the new book. Somehow, having been immersed in the new book and going back to a place where I sort of strip Portier down and learn what he's made of, gave me an idea about the destination for his character arc in the second book - which meshes nicely with Anne's arc and several others. Yes, Yes, I like it.
If I get all these edits put in before heading home later in the week, we'll see where the muse might take me as I journey home. I'm glad she was along for the ride!
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Traveling
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2 comments:
"Fits on the tray table without any worries that the person in front of me will lean the seat back and crush the screen. Nice."
HAHA Nice indeed <3
Mixed feelings about hearing you on 'vacation' and still immersed into your new works. You should be relaxing and enjoying yourself, not high strung and working, but then again...a writer cannot deny the calling of the muse. No matter how hard they try. Your characters will pester you to the ends of the world. And there is NOTHING more annoying that getting a great idea (with me its mostly deep in the night when I'm trying to sleep) and having no way to record it but to repeat it to yourself over and over, then half an hour later forgot what it was altogether.
All in all, VERY glad to hear the threads of the story (and the three books) are meshing together for you and forming that wondrous tapestry of a series!
Do enjoy your family spring break, don't work too hard during it!
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