For some reason Swan Sister decided to drag itself out of the undead novel closet. This is not what I need. I’m trying to have Orchestrated finished by the end of the year so I can send queries out to agents. I do not need an undead swan novel battering at my brain.

Yeah, have fun with that imagery, zombie fans.

What I suspect my subconscious might be doing (other than attempting to sabotage me, but I’m so wise to that tactic by now) is offering me an alternate way to warm up. When I have two things to work on at once I can use A as an excuse to avoid work on B, and work in general gets done. (Or vice versa.) My overall productivity goes up.

What do I get at the end of all this? Well, theoretically I’m just aiming to have one novel complete. But Swan Sister is half-written and the second half of it does exist in plotted-out story cards. If using it to warm up for Orchestrated also manages to get it closer to being a complete first draft, that’s fine by me.

I found those twelve handwritten Swan Sister pages I scribbled out six months ago in the associated notebook, too. Haven’t transcribed them yet though. First of all, I’m saving it for when I need a gratifying word count boost, and second of all the bit I wrote hasn’t arrived in the plot yet, and I kind of want to bridge the characters from where they are now to where they need to be for the handwritten stuff to be added.

Finally, I had a candy-making day with Ceri this past Saturday (yes, because by the day after Halloween we obviously hadn’t been exposed to enough sugar) and she dropped three containers of the finished product off while we were grocery shopping yesterday. I have consumed more sugar today than I did all last month, which is saying something. Evidently I have zero self-control because I just keep wandering into the kitchen, popping open one of the containers, pulling a piece or two out and wandering back into my office.

Time to switch to the iBook in the living room. Or maybe I’ll try working in the reading chair here in my office. So long as it’s not the desktop I’m using, I think I’ll be okay. (Do not ask me why Orchestrated does not work on the desktop. I do not know. Keyboard? The Mac layout/design/screen? It’s a mystery. I’m not going to mess with the vibe.)