Fridays I’m in love

Happy Friday, everyone. The weather is disgusting here in D.C. Cold and dreary. However, it won’t be getting me down. I have plans, my friend. Plans. Today, I’m going out to lunch with my… um, future cousin-in-law? Yeah, that’s it. I’m really looking forward to it. We’re going to this darling little restaurant that I’ve been dying to try out ever since I moved into town.

And then, tomorrow is my anniversary. It’s actually my last anniversary, because starting next year, they are changing the date of daylight savings time. So we will be celebrating our anniversary on a different date from now on.

If the blog posts are a bit thin on the ground in the coming weeks, don’t be alarmed. It’s just that I’ve got a lot of things on my plate right now. I’m several thousand words into SSG3 (currently untitled, and honestly, the only ones springing to mind right now are joke titles), but I’m going to be taking a break on that next week for a last, whirlwind round of line edits on SSG2. And then, NaNoWriMo. Yes, I’m going to be trying my hand at that again, despite the fact that it was a desperate failure last time. (I’m more of a tortoise than a hare when it comes to writing.) Who else is doing it?

It’s very odd to me to be writing scenes from SSG3, because several of these bits are scenes I’ve been thinking about writing since well before I finished SSG — so it’s been over a year and a half now that I’ve been waiting to write this. And the incredible thing to me is that they still fit the characters and the situation. It’s been 500 pages of other stuff, and Amy & Co. were still marching, inexorably, to this point. Contrast that with SSG2, in which I had a plot mapped out way in advance, but there was only one scene which I absolutely knew that I must have in the book, that I had imagined out beforehand, and when I finally got to writing that scene, I was very worried that it no longer “fit” the story I’d written. (Luckily, I only needed a few modifications, and I think they’ve made it even stronger.)

Also, SSG3 is currently on spec, which is the first time I’ve done that in 18 months. Yesterday, the aforementioned future cousin-in-law and I were discussing the life of the freelancer. It’s so different from having a job. You get a contract, you work to fulfill it, and then there’s that moment of freefall before you get your next contract. I guess it’s that thrill that keeps you hungry.