Setting a Deadline

After Monday's session at the author'smeeting, Tori suggested I need to set a deadline to be done with Scurvy Dogs! Without it, I'll always have a reason to do something else – work for my day job, family things. And, as a longtime journalists, deadlines have always been part of my life.

It doesn't matter how much I talk aboutit if I don't finish it. So here goes.

Scurvy Dogs! will be finished by Aug. 20.

It's not really that far away. I'm mostly stitching new stuff into the early half to make it, as I said, more rollicking, and then going through to see how the changes I've made at the top effect the action later on. I don't think it'll be much, but you have to be sure.

So Aug. 20. That's the day.

Today was a good day, and about time. I wrote about 700 words before noon, and that got me rolling. I've finished for the day, and have cranked out a total of 2,199 words. Not a bad day's work.

And they're good. They set the story much more firmly, and I got to use a line I thought of six weeks ago and have been waiting eagerly to work in.

Two of the kids have a drunken bastard of a grandfather, once one of Morgan's men, now a fisherman who drinks too much and remembers the old days and basically ignores the kids.

The villain (well, one of the villains) threatens him – "You're a dead man!"

He replies wearily, "I've been dead for years."

I like it. Sets exactly the right tone for the character.

Just gotta keep it up now. I have 26 days to go.