Interrobang‽

This isn’t news to most people following this blog, as most people following this blog are either my own doppelgänger (Branden), follow the same nerdy sites as me, or are well-versed in their own right, but this. This bit of punctuation! I didn’t know that there was a way to type it. There’s apparently also a punctuation mark that is a backwards question mark and a forward-facing question mark that share the same dot, which is called a “love mark” and is meant to end a sentence that expresses love, like “Happy anniversary.” I wish there was a way to type that, but so far I haven’t found it. (There are also many other cool punctuation marks that mostly don’t have a way to type them. See here.)

Second super-fun thing: Neil Gaiman will be signing books at Old Firehouse Books in Fort Collins on February 6, starting at 4pm! I think I’d like to try to get there, but I don’t know if I actually will, knowing me. If I did go, I’d bring Neverwhere for him to sign. And maybe book #1 of Sandman. Is that how book-signings work?

Having just reviewed my blog post from Monday, I can say, wow, I was loopy. That’s okay, I’ve written things while loopy that I wonder why I can’t write like that while fully intact. On Monday, after my blog, I did manage to write a little more. Not a lot; only about 200 words, but better than nothing.

I’ve been reading my tumblr and checking my deviantArt feeds till now and I think—I think—that I’m going to be able to open up my writing and write! That will be excellent. I have to say, I’m looking forward to having a finished project. And that anticipation should carry me through the rewrite.

I’m starting to identify more with Cassidy, and that is extremely helpful. I still stress about my ability to pepper clues and red herrings throughout the book, but I can’t fail until I try. What’s more is that the clues, while important, are actually much more understated than it seems they might be if you’re not really analyzing a work. I mean, a lot of the time, “clues” are just things that happen that your investigator doesn’t have the proper context for, that make sense after the mystery is solved. Only very occasionally are clues going to be the fingernail trimmings found in the ashtray, or the discarded zorro mask. More often it’s the fact that the baby’s blanket disappeared, or the friend you haven’t seen in a decade happens to drop by.

I’m trying to work Cassidy’s history into the “present-tense” narrative of the story, and I’m not sure if I’m doing a good job, but hey, that’s what writers’ group is for, right? I’m liking how the theme of the book—identity—is working its way into the peripheral parts of the story without my having meant to squish it in. That’s pretty cool. Mostly, I’m appreciating the things that happen when my brain percolates the story, and I really look forward to writing those things down. So now I just have to conquer the sleepies and the what-if’s and the what-then’s and start writing things down. I managed the first draft in thirty days. Twenty-eight, maybe. If I set myself a word goal, maybe I could manage the second draft in, say, sixty days.

That’s it. I’m setting myself a weekday word goal of 2,000 words per day. I don’t have a top limit, so that’ll be until the book is written, however long that is. On my blog posts I’ll be posting my word count, so all of you readers, you many readers, you legion of readers can keep me honest.

To infinity. And beyond! (Today’s word count: 5,129. Special character? ᐉ [typography is fun])