Sheila Rambles

 Dear NaNoWriMo.org-- I'd already planned to skip National Novel Writing Month this year, in part so I can devote my time to getting a novel (a novel rooted in my first NaNo win, in fact) formatted for EPUB and prepped for public release, but mostly because I don't have any ideas particularly burning to get out. My brain is focused on the Christophina saga, and I have no new volumes that I want to work on just yet. When you chucked several marginalized groups under a bus to keep people from criticizing you about your stance on generative AI, I decided that even if I did  do National Novel Writing Month, I would not do it on the official site--I would use TrackBear to graph my wordcount and find a Discord server where people were doing it unofficially. However, I did not delete my account, as many have, because I still hold out hope that the event can be recovered. What does recovery look like to me? Three things: 1. Get rid of Kilby Blades . This is non-negotiable. She has d...

 Well, well, the word got out, didn't it? The folks at NaNoWriMo HQ have edited the page where they called objections to AI ableist and classist, and posted a statement that comes down to "sorry if it came across that we were accusing AI critics of being ableist and classist, we didn't really mean it quite like that , and, no, we're not going to apologize to the people we used as human shields to justify our argument." Is this really the hill you want to die on, NaNoPeople? Because I think you're going to die on it. That said, there are some things I've been seeing that starting to nark at me and if I can rant about Oxford commas, I can rant about these things, too. 1. They're going to sell your novels to the AI people!  Nobody who declares this actually has evidence, of course, it's just "the sort of thing they would do." I see this a lot from people who don't seem to understand how NaNoWriMo works in the first place. For a while, y...

 Boy howdy, did you shit the bed. I know you lost a lot of people with the grooming scandal on the forums. I stood by you, NaNoWriMo, even then, because your board stepped in and promised real action. Which...hasn't really been done? Moderator X has been sacked, but the forums are still in limbo and we're closing in on a year since they were shut down. But that's not really what my problem is. You're under no legal obligation to even have  forums and I can just write it off as This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things. I only just now learned about the controversy over you plugging known vanity presses, so that's not really what my problem is, either. I'll just say...really? I don't even have a problem with your refusal to condemn the use of AI in novel-making. I work in AI; it pays my bills. If somebody wants a fast-food novel instead of writing one from scratch, I guess that's what works for them. I even understand why  you're refusing to take a s...

 I finished drafting Christophina's Moon  last week. Grabbed the epilogue from the zero draft, updated it to match the reboot, grafted it on (because it was Camp NaNoWriMo and I set my own rules), and hit the finish line. Yeah. Next step is to add a scene to Christophina's Garden  so I can submit it to my writers group and set things in motion to get that book gone over, whilst also doing a final grind and polish on Christophina's Wings . I'll be consulting my niece for some insights into ice skating. Things like that. I still don't seem to have a sense of completion, since I've gone from finishing one thing to revising another. I probably won't feel complete about this trilogy until I've shipped out that last one for publication,

 Please excuse Sheila from working on her novel today, as she spent all her writerly energy drafting a short story to submit to an anthology of interest to her.

 Now that I've brought Christophina's Garden  to a proper ending, it's time to complete the trilogy and get Christophina's Moon  finished. I looked over the outline, made some calculations, and set up a Camp NaNoWriMo goal for July. I'm shooting for 30,000 words. I think I can pull it off. Heck, I've got one more day to work with than in November. The rest of the month will be spent drafting a short story for a Tanith Lee tribute anthology. My hope is to get it done in time to run it past my writers group before the submission window opens. I've banged out an outline and I'll start writing it tomorrow. I have no idea how long it's going to be. Long enough to get all the ideas in. That's all I can be certain about.

The longest day is over The longest day David Sylvian, "Alphabet Angel" Two hours after sunset on the summer solstice, I finished drafting the reboot of Christophian's Garden . It is now narratively complete. I have an ending. I have 109,034 words. I have a lot of work to do. The next steps are to reread the whole thing and divvy it up into segments for use with Scrivener. July is reserved for finishing Christophina's Moon , taking advantage of Camp NaNoWriMo for motivation. August will be devoted to a final grind and polish on Christophina's Wings  and maybe even putting it out for public consumption. It's still June, so one thing at a time. But it's done. It's done. It's done. It's done!

 Please excuse Sheila from working on her novel yesterday as she was cleaning up and recovering from her birthday party on the 15th of June. She has done work on her novel today.

I've decided the only way I'm going to get this trilogy finished is to issue myself some deadlines. They are as follows: I will finish Christophina's Garden  by June 30th. I will take advantage of Camp NaNoWriMo in July and bring Christophina's Moon  to narrative completion by July 31st. I think it's feasible. I'll find out, won't I?

 Please excuse Sheila from working on her novel yesterday as she went to a screening of Citizen Kane  that afternoon and spent long-delayed time in Second Life that evening. She has already started work today.

 Many years ago, my father set up a micropress to publish a textbook my mother had written about nursing education. When I got it in my hypomania-addled head that I wanted to publish some self-help books of my devising, I put together one called Catbooks and Other Methods  about various free-writing techniques for head-clearing and problem-solving. My father let me release it through the auspices of Lullwater Press. (You can still get it! Just go to  https://www.wonderbink.com/books/ and pick your ebook purveyor of choice.) It was a new experience for him as it was for me, since my focus was digital publication and the previous book he'd done had been in print. I designed the cover and handled the conversion process; he got the ISBN block and provided the company details to the various booksellers.  I still haven't sold enough copies to collect payment on it. But, I'm kind of okay with this. It was, primarily, an exercise to to get a feel for the process. I had othe...

 Please excuse Sheila from working on her novel yesterday as she had a very long drive from the lovely little condo where she vacationed to the lovely little condo where she lives.

 Early on in this blog (I'm not going to link to it and embarrass myself) I said that self-publishing was doing the hard work from the wrong end; that the hard work didn't go into making the manuscript perfect enough for a major publisher to pick up, but instead went into notifying the world that your book existed and would anybody like to buy it, please. Please relax. I have rethought that particular perspective, so please don't expend the effort into defending independent publishing. I'm with you. The fourteen-odd novels I've crafted with the help of National Novel Writing Month somehow wove themselves into a unified world which I've taken to calling the Juneiverse, after the main character in a novel called Soft Places , which I tried to revise and submit to agents but got nowhere with. (The last time I reread it, I understood why.) I hope to retell June's story one day in a much better version, but first... The first NaNoWriMo I have successfully complet...

Please excuse Sheila from working on her novel today, as her evening was taken up with planting tomatoes, preparing feedback for tomorrow's writers group meeting, making lunch for the week, and taking a damn shower. Thank you.

 Please excuse Sheila from working on her novel today, as her evening was spent making up the work hours she lost to oversleeping this morning. Sheila would also like to report that, as of yesterday, she has completed the reverse-engineered outline for Christophina's Garden  and is looking forward to completing the work as a whole. Thank you.

 Please excuse Sheila from working on her novel today because she had a full day of work and a visit from a dear friend. Thank you.