I’ve now written 24,000 words, give or take a hundred, in four weeks.
I feel the arc of the book bending to a close, though there’s still a lot of scenes to write. I’m not a tight outliner; I keep a flow chart and notes, but I try to give the characters free rein if they want to take another path.
We’ve turned the wheel of the year past winter solstice. Today is a brilliantly sunny day: time out of time, definitely a December day and yet all sun.
It happens: Someone we thought highly of turns out to be all too human. A teacher or leader in a community, someone we looked up to, gets called out and reacts poorly. Or the thing they did proves too big to let pass, or they show up being their problematic self again. They lose their crown. Their community turns on them. I don’t have just one story in mind.
Sometimes in this merry-go-round I play authority figure too, and what I notice is that my faults (and I have many) get magnified. Probably my main problem is my short temper. I snap at points of stress. I often owe someone an apology. Others have pointed out I duck publicity. I like being a big frog in a tiny pond. I solve the problem of being called out by staying too small to bother with.
I wrote another 6,000 words this week. If that’s pretty much all I do, besides eat, sleep, and work my day job, I can hit my marks. At least, I have so far.
I did go to one holiday party. Don’t tell the writing gods I played hookey…
Hekate deipnon, last night— I gave her some Fires of Hekate incense. Hekate has a place on my main altar with her key, sitting in front of Cernunnos, who you can see in the background.
The new moon is in Sagittarius. The astrologers I’ve read say it’s a sparkly one, as new moons go, full of hope.
Keep going, Hekate says. I keep going.
I’m surprised and excited—all the people I asked to beta-read my second septet book agreed! I feel like a very lucky writer.
Now I have to finish a draft of the book. I hit my goal last week of 6,000 words. Now there’s this week, and then three more weeks to go.
I suspect most of you know where we are.
The Tower card I show is from my Morgan-Greer Tarot deck. I love this deck because the illustrations are like in a children’s book, an old one about the realms of Faerie. At the same time, the deck hews pretty close to Rider-Waite. I have several other oracle decks, but I mostly work with the plain-vanilla Tarot. This deck also has a personal connection—the mother of a friend of mine knew the deck artist.