Progress report

   I am plugging away at Ghost station. I'm up to Chapter 9, 109 pages out of 166.  A couple more pages and Chapter 9 will be done. Chapter 10 will be interesting.
    I bet you're wondering about those numbers. Confusing no? Well... I have a... possibly unique style of writing. I start with a general outline that has notes and scene ideas or dialog snippets in it. Usually I write the outline out fast when a muse strikes and then go back and polish it a little, adding tidbits over time while working on other projects.
   When I dig into it to finish it I start somewhere comfortable and just let loose with the muse. Once I am in the groove I get all sorts of ideas. Scenes start to pop up and I add them as I go along, or I'll place them where they belong in the timeline. Sometimes I get the ideas at the oddest and most inconvenient of times! Like oh, say sleeping, going to the bathroom, taking a shower.... or cooking! More then one dinner has suffered because of it. lol
    With Ghost station I had an idea for the ending while writing Destiny's choice. I opened the outline and just let loose. I managed to do three chapters before it ended. Then I went back to Destiny to finish it.
    This time I'm trying a more coherent method. Instead of jumping all over the place I took what I've got and then started from chapter one and started working my way through it one chapter at a time. Hopefully that will make the plot a lot more consistant and enjoyable.
    As I was saying... Chapter 9 is mostly written. It has scenes blocked out, some are partially written, I just need to clean up the beginnings and then tie them together. That's been my bad habit lately. I start jotting an outline for a scene then as I get into it I start flowing into dialog. Then when it tapers off I have to go back and figure out how to turn the outline into a coherent begining. :P
    At least that's better then another habit I hopefully have broken or at least gotten control of. Sometimes I would get an idea, write it out, then move on. It would be anywhere in the manuscript, sometimes completely out of order with other scenes. Sometimes I would think of the same scene twice and write out both versions at different points. That's incredibly annoying. Running into stuff like that while I do the rough editing pass is tedious and makes me grumpy. >:(
    I'm projecting the book to be about 300 pages or more. I'm about a third of the way into the story. I'm trying to not be repetative and tedious but it's difficult. I'm trying to keep a light brush to the detail and keep the story moving along. So far I think so good but we'll see what the readers have to say when they get their hands on it.

    I've also been working on other projects. Or trying to at any rate. I came up with a couple more short story ideas. Each of them are a 2-3 page mixed outline. The one I just jotted out is called Bounty.  I also started to try to make the neo powered combat armor for my reference and for the cover of First to Fight. I did say try right? So far not so good. See I sculpted Jethro and the team in Sculptris and then sculpted Jethro in a suit. Sculptris and I are not quite up to the task though.
    The suit is okay, but not great. It's also not quiet what I had in mind so I decided to start over with hard modeling. I figured I'd start with bits from my SC2 Terran Marine and then work from there. Buuuut... Well, Inspire isn't cooperating. It's old, yes I know. It turns out that when I updated to Windows 7 something got bollixed and I can't import files. Since Inspire has to be completely re-installed and I've got oh... 6 or 7 gigs of stuff in it's folders... Stuff I don't want deleted.... And Windows has locked up my D drive from being altered.... let's just say I'm in no hurry to do it anymore. Sigh. So... that project is tabled for now.