Jessica Bronstein, Lawyer and Writer

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No sooner are Kendra and Sam bedding down in the creepy laboratory castle in Zhen, but someone on a gryphon comes flying down to Sam’s balcony and snatches him away. Kendra tries to stop him, but the kidnapper does something to knock him out, and off they go.

Thankfully, Kendra is no damsel in distress. While Damien makes his way into the castle to try to rescue her, Kendra engages in a magical battle with the centaur. Though Blaise is stronger on his home turf, Damien helps Kendra overcome a sound-based magical attack that nearly knocks her out, and Kendra recovers her broomstick. They head off to rescue Sam.

Meanwhile, Sam wakes up again. At first, he thinks he’s back in the hospital, but it’s a different sort of prison cell – and a much comfier one. Within minutes, the King of Gen finally shows himself.

He’s Landon. No one is likely surprised at this point.

Landon tells Sam that he needs his help, and takes him on a tour of Gen, to show him what a wonderful place he’s built. The tour is marred by an incident of mob justice, as a vampire is dragged bodily from her house and ejected from the city. Landon explains that while vampires are probably nice people in general, they are considered ‘undesirables’, because they prey on other citizens. He wants to keep his people safe, so vampires aren’t allowed in his country.

Sam finally loses patience and demands to know what Landon wants from him. Landon admits that he wants Sam to perform a spell that will allow Landon to become the King of Kun. He wants, ultimately, for the entire world to be united under his rule, and claims that this will make everyone happier and safer.

Sam is horrified by the murderous and power-grasping behaviour of someone who looks like his best friend, and flatly refuses to help. Landon isn’t happy.

–

I just finished Chapter 13, and I’m now just over 42,000 words into NaNoWriMo. Sitting on November 25th, with 5 days left to go, I’m feeling really good about winning this year. In fact, I’m going to see if I can polish off the last 8000 words this weekend.

While I’m feeling accomplished and excited about my success, 2000 words a day is a pretty difficult pace to sustain, and I’m looking forward to backing right down in December, though I intend to keep moving forward, just with time to work on other things.

I’m thinking of giving myself a goal of 500 words a day here on out. I’ve always had a daily goal of 1000 words, but on days when I don’t set aside at least an hour to write, it’s difficult to meet. I wind up writing nothing unless I have a good chunk of time to devote to it.

It also gives me little time to devote to things like research or editing. I have to do one or the other, so there are many days I don’t get any words at all.

I have been struggling for months to figure out how to sustain working on my current draft – Dreaming – and also work on editing The Sleeping Death so I can start querying it. Ideally, I need time to work on researching Sengoku Era Japan for my next book series as well! Somehow, there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to do it all.

So instead, I’m thinking that if I have a goal of only 500, then even on days when I go out and don’t get home until late, I could still meet the goal. In a 15 minute stint, I could easily hit that goal, and that means that if I got home at 10:00 after a movie or something, I could still take 15 measly minutes and get my words in.

It’s an experiment. I’ll let you know how it goes!

So the last time I updated was… Day 12. It’s now Day 20. Go me. I am the slackiest.

I can’t feel too bad, because I have been writing since then. I wrote about 8000 words since my last update, actually. But I just haven’t really felt like writing blog posts afterwards, I guess.

In fact, I feel like I hit my Week 2 slump in Week 3 instead. No clue why. But I’ve only missed two days of writing since my last update, despite feeling…slumpish. I’m hanging on to my lead by the skin of my teeth, as well. My stats aren’t looking quite as pretty on the site, but I am not behind, and that’s important.

Also, I woke up this morning with an exciting idea that I think is going to break me out of the slump. I’ve been struggling with this whole section of the story for some reason, and I’m not entirely sure why. At least, I know that my centaur/psychologist character isn’t interesting me nearly as much as I wanted him to, and I feel like at some point later I’ll need to go back and jazz him up, make him more quirky and terrifying. So I guess that’s a big reason why :/ But I think this idea will give me an opportunity to let this character flower into the terrifying mad scientist I originally envisioned, and I think that’ll make it a whole lot more fun.

—

On another note, I’ve noticed that the timer thing in Liquid Story Binder is both motivating me and screwing me up at the same time. It’s really quite fascinating.

If I’m committed to writing and get rid of all other distractions (like plurk, livejournal, rping, aim, etc.) I can write like the wind and the timer keeps me plugging away.

But if I don’t feel like putting all those distractions away and instead I want to just pick away at writing, doing a few words here and there (which I know is bad bad bad but sometimes I want to do it anyway, because I’m a masochist and like making myself miserable, I guess) I hesitate to open LCB at ALL because I know the timer will be ticking away even though I’m not looking at it.

Even when I’m planning on doing a writing session with no distractions, I don’t open LCB until I’m ready to drop everything and go, and sometimes that means I don’t start writing until hours after I intended to, because I keep getting distracted, doing other things, without that window open and staring at me from my computer. I used to open Microsoft Word and just have it sit there while I did a bit of email and such, and then it would keep sitting there like “You were going to write, remember?” until I finally surrendered and went “Oh yeah…better…close my email and get to that”.

None of this is coherent, I know.

–

When we last met our intrepid heroes, they had just been attacked by a horrible monster in a lake, and Damien left because things were getting too hot for him.

Sam and Kendra continued on their journey and passed the border into Zhen. This is a rather pretty country with lots of grassland and gently rolling hills.

And thunderstorms. Lots of them.

And also horrifying mutated creatures who try to capture them.

They run from the mutants, and Damien appears out of nowhere to distract them long enough to get out of Zhen and back across the border into Shun, where the mutants won’t come. They rest for a bit, and decide to try flying over Zhen instead. They only have one broom, but Kendra has wings. She says if they rest frequently, and don’t go too fast, they can make it. The broom definitely can’t support the weight of all three of them (it can barely handle both Sam and Damien), and Damien wants to come, though he won’t say why he’s changed his mind.

So they try it, flying deeper into Zhen and avoiding the mutants, until Kendra calls for a break. Again the mutants show up and encircle them, cutting off their escape, but instead of attacking and eating them, one of the mutants explains that their King has requested their presence at the castle, and is offering them a place to rest and assistance on their journey.

Reluctantly, Sam, Kendra, and Damien climb into the coach that’s provided for them, and are brought to the castle in the middle of Zhen. Damien manages to give everyone the slip, and Sam and Kendra are welcomed to Zhen by a majestic (if I bit oddball) centaur, quite different from the ones that Sam ran into way back in Chapter 1. His name is Blaise, and he looks exactly like Sam’s psychiatrist at the hospital in the real world.

Back in the real world, we see Kendra and Landon coming to visit Sam again. Blaise the psychiatrist tells them that there’s a problem – Sam won’t wake up, no matter what they do. Something is very wrong, and he believes that Sam’s mind is retreating from reality.

In the dream world, Sam and Kendra are offered assistance in getting over the Gen mountains, which lie on the far side of Zhen. They’re also offered dry clothes and a meal and a night of rest. Though neither of them is comfortable here in this creepy stone castle, they agree to stay. It’s not like they really have any choice.

It’s now day 12. I think last update I was on day 9 and had just started Chapter 10. It’s now day 12 of NaNoWriMo and I just finished it. It was longer than Chapter 9. Sob.

–

Kendra, Sam and Damien succeed in eluding the Thief King in the dark and head West towards the country of Kun, which is supposed to be peaceful. Little do they know that the Queen is already dead.

They pause to get supplies in a city in Li, and while Damien goes to get food and money, both of which were stolen by the bandits, though they thankfully do have the rest of their belongings, Kendra and Sam browse at the market. A gang of cat-headed thugs try to surround and capture them, and they manage to elude them, meeting up with Damien and flying away before the thugs can catch them. Damien has heard rumours that the King of Gen has offered a reward to anyone who brings them to him, hence the near-capture.

Then they reach Kun. Or at least, the border. They can’t get into Kun, because the entire country is encased in a magical, fluctuating storm. Kendra explains that the Kings and Queens aren’t just died to their country in certain magical ways. The country shapes itself according to the personality and desires of its monarch. If there is no monarch, there’s nothing to tell the country how to be, and that seems to be the situation with Kun. They can’t explain how it’s possible that a monarch could have died without passing their Queenship on to a successor, but that’s a question for later. They have to turn back.

Instead, they go north, to a lake that dominates the central part of the whole world. The lake is dark and foul, and is apparently inhabited by something called a Shiketh, which makes it impassable.

They see a lonely cart drive up to the very edge of the lake, and begin pitching bodies in. When Sam stops to watch this, horrified, he sees the bodies attacked by some kind of enormous monster. All he can see are the claws of the monster, which can cut a corpse in two with ease. Then a claw attacks him, and his broom is destroyed, though thankfully he isn’t eaten.

Damien decides that things have gotten far too dangerous for him, following around with these two, and leaves. Kendra can’t blame him, and she and Sam head on towards a country called Zhen, which is apparently not much better than what they’ve just left behind.

–

I’ve had some days of major productivity – as much as 4000 words in a day – and some days of nothing, but I definitely can’t say that week 2 has been difficult. I’m almost through it, and I hope I can keep up the pace in week 3. I’m at about 23k right now and considering trying to push forward to 25k by the end of the night. We’ll see how it goes after I’ve gotten some dinner in me!

So yesterday was my birthday. I received a new laptop, so I made the executive decision to spend the evening a) having a lovely dinner and drinks, and b) loading all of my files and programs onto my new laptop, instead of writing.

I can’t say I regret that decision. But as of today I’d got all of my files transferred over, I’ve got Liquid Story Binder loaded up, and I was ready to go.

–

Today I decided to call Chapter 9 finished and add a new scene onto the beginning of Chapter 10, instead of continuing the longest scene ever. It had a pretty decent cliffhanger the way I had it, so I think it worked, and it meant that Chapter 10 starts with a bang.

Literally.

With a little smart thinking on Sam’s part, Kendra manages to incapacitate their two guards. Then Kendra uses her magic to cause a lot of chaos, and Damien sneaks into the supply tent to rescue their things, his things, and their broomsticks.

They fly away, but are being pursued by an angry Thief King with powerful magic, and a whole lot of bowmen trying to bring them down. Obviously Anju doesn’t want them dead, but she is trying to force them to land and come quietly, and is keeping the sky lit up with magical flame.

Sam remembers the amulet that had been used against Kendra to block her magic while she was being held prisoner. He’s got it in his pocket, and he loops back, rides his broom straight at the spider Queen from hell, and drops it right onto her.

This causes her magic to fizzle, and the three escapees are able to lose their pursuers in the dark by heading in a different direction.

–

After I’d gotten that written – and in mid-sentence – I got interrupted by my roommate coming in to talk about some stuff he’d done tonight. I’ve got about 1920 words for the day, so I decided once he’d gone to bed, that I’d leave the rest for tomorrow night.

I have about 17,000 words now, and I’m still well ahead of the necessary pace. Week two seems to be going well so far! I usually have a really hard time motivating myself to write in the second week, and I did feel a little bit of that malaise tonight, but I forced myself to get going, and it went well. I just have to keep on myself and not let myself get distracted.

This is the longest chapter in the universe.

The last two days I’ve been working on Chapter 9. Still. It’s still not done.

–

When we last left our intrepid heroes, Sam and Kendra had reached the desert country of Li. They were attacked by a band of raiders, who brought them down off their broomsticks and took them prisoner.

The leader of the raiders is the King of Li, a fearsome creature with one eye and eight legs. His lower body is like a spider, but with a human torso. He turns out to look exactly like one of the partners at Sam’s firm, Anju Singh, who is a woman. Sam is convinced this means the ‘King’ is actually a lady, though what this means is unknown.

Anju plans to either sell her prisoners into slavery, or sell them to their enemy, the King of Gen, for whatever reward he will give her. They place an amulet around Kendra’s neck that makes it impossible to use magic, and tie them up.

Meanwhile, the King of Gen attacks Kun, the country where Sam and Kendra were headed. He murders the defenceless Queen of Kun in cold blood, and carves a large gem out of her body. It had previously been revealed that each of the Kings and Queens has a similar gem somewhere on their body and it gives them great power as part of their position.

Things look bleak for Sam and Kendra, but then a dog enters their tent. The dog turns out to be a werewolf, who looks exactly like their son in the real world, Damien. Damien offers help in escaping, in return for taking him to Kun. Why he needs to escape from the raiders, and what he’s doing there, disguised as a mutt, is currently unknown.

–

I got a LOT of writing done on the weekend – over 6000 words. Tonight I stopped at around 1800 words, because it was a natural stopping point, but after the hard work I did on the weekend, I think I deserve it XD Also I didn’t get to start working on writing today until past 8:00, so it’s getting late now. I’m excited to get going on the Grand Escape, though! I have some fun ideas about how they’ll pull it off.

I’ve passed 15,000 words, so this year’s NaNoWriMo is looking really doable at this point. My toughest part is always week 2, which is why I’ve been working so hard at giving myself a healthy margin to work from, but if I can keep up some momentum, I’m sure I’ll be fine.

Welp, today I came back to Dreaming, refreshed and ready to tackle it again after my break. I had a sort of tentative goal of 5000 words for today, but I didn’t get started until late, had an interruption in the form of houseguests for an hour, and then hit a slight wall when I realized I wasn’t exactly sure how I wanted to do the next bit and needed to have a bit of a think. So I topped out a little over 3000 words for the day.

I still feel really good about it, though XD 5000 words in one day is something I’ve only managed a couple of times. It was an ambitious goal and I’m happy with 3000, which puts me over 10,000 words for the month so far.

–

Today I wrote Chapter 8, which turned out to be pretty short. The first bit is from Sam’s best friend, Landon’s, POV, in third person. He reflects on his own perspective on all of this. While he cares about Sam, he also is determined to get the partnership at the firm, and feels he’s likely to get it anyway. He thinks it’s probably best for everyone if Sam just gives in now, instead of working himself into a nervous wreck competing with him for the spot.

Kendra comes out of the room, distressed, and Landon gets perhaps a bit too intimate while comforting her. Is he just a close friend? Or does he have designs on Sam’s wife as well as his promotion? We find out that it was Landon’s idea that Kendra sign Sam’s rights over.

Then we’re back in Sam’s POV as the doctor returns. Sam is angry and shouts a lot, and finally takes a swing at his doctor. This has predictably poor results, considering Sam’s in a mental institution at the moment, and they sedate him.

This sends us into Chapter 9, where Sam wakes up in the castle where he had gone to sleep earlier. He dresses in native clothing with the help of invisible, magical servants, has breakfast with Kendra in the huge, empty castle, and then they depart, using broomsticks to travel faster. Riding a broomstick and dealing with all of this magic is disconcerting to Sam, but also fun.

Right now he questions whether the whole episode in the hospital is even real. Maybe everything he’s experienced has been a dream up to this point. He has a hard time believing that there’s a real world where he could have a breakdown like that, and where his wife would betray him to such an extent.

They reach the borders of the country of Shun and enter Li, which is a vast desert. And that’s where I stopped for the night, because they’re about to be attacked, and I have to decide if I want them to land first

So yesterday I decided to take a day off, lol. I know it might seem strange that I would take a day off only four days into a 30 day challenge but:

1) I desperately needed it. Not because the writing was stressful, but because the week as a whole was and I was on the edge of a general stress-related meltdown of epic proportions.

2) It was Friday, and I think Fridays are a good day to choose to have a regular day off. Writing 7 days a week, 365 days a year is a pretty harsh thing to set yourself. From what I’ve heard, most people do take one day a week off. Most of them seem to choose Sundays, but the idea of sacrificing a weekend day gives me the shivers. Those are usually my best days. Whereas it’s nice to come home after work on a Friday evening and know there’s absolutely nothing that you need to do.

3) I’m ahead in my wordcount so it wasn’t a big sacrifice.

So I think I made the right decision. I plan to write a bunch today and tomorrow to make up for it and take advantage of the weekend, as well as giving myself a solid cushion heading into week 2, which is always a tough week for me. More updates to come.

Today I finished Chapter 7 of Dreaming. I wrote about Sam waking up in the real world again. He’s been placed in a hospital, and his wife, Kendra, signed his rights away through her Power of Attorney, so the hospital has the right to keep him until they can be sure he’s not a danger to himself or others.

We meet a new character, Dr. Chevalier, who is to be Sam’s psychiatrist. He is an intelligent man, and more than a match for Sam’s stubbornness, rather mule-like in his determination to keep Sam here for a while, for his own good.

Sam, of course, has no idea what caused the hallucinations, but he’s not about to admit to any sort of mental deficiency, even to himself. He’s afraid that he really did have a nervous breakdown of some kind, but he’s not about to stay in a hospital. He really wants to get out of here.

He and Kendra have an argument over it, and she leaves in tears. Sam’s home and work situation are definitely going from bad to worse.

–

I had a rather tiring evening and wasn’t really in the mood to write at all, but I did force myself to and I’m glad I did.

Part of the reason why I found writing a bit daunting at first was because I felt like I really didn’t know what it was like in a psyche ward. But I talked to a friend of mine who had spent a stint in a psyche ward at a hospital and asked a bunch of questions about what it was really like, from the smells and sounds to the procedures. It was super valuable, and I felt far more capable of tackling this part of the chapter after I talked to her.

The next chapter will continue in the hospital, so I guess I’ll get started on that tomorrow.

When I first counted my words up I was at 1985 for the night. I’ve been giving myself a multi-tiered goal each day, which is my usual strategy for NaNoWriMo that has served me well in the past. 1667 is the absolute minimum, I-will-force-it-out-no-matter-what daily goal. But if I can, I want to hit 2000 words or exceed it each day, giving myself a cushion for days when things get hard and I really don’t have time to write at all. The nice thing about the multi-tiered system is that once I hit 1667, 2000 doesn’t seem that far away, so if I write towards what I absolutely have to do, I usually can go further and hit the second goal as well. But I don’t have to do it, so it’s less intimidating.

So I could have stopped at 1985 and achieved my minimum goal. Since I was kindof feeling low, I might have given myself a pass and not bothered to try to reach 2000. Especially since I had reached the end of a chapter, I was tempted. But 15 more words…?

So I went back and massaged a paragraph into being longer and wound up with 2020 for the night. Yay!