I’m at the halfway point on my current ms…which means this one will go long as so many of mine do.  I like words.  I like to use a lot of them, which means when I return to the first draft that I cut out lots of words.  I always use a red pen when I go through my draft(s).  Some of my pages look like a red packet in money stolen from a bank exploded on it, leaving more red than black on the page.  That’s fine.  I learned years ago that perfection isn’t a requirement on that first draft.  What I needed to do was get structure and character onto the pages.  If I worried about everything being perfect, I’d never get past page one, because there’s always another word that might be a bit better.  This ms will probably fly past its 90k word limit.  I’ve learned not to worry about word count either.  When I did, I contracted the end, changing the pace of the novel.  Now I let it play out and then come back to do surgery throughout the ms.  I always remind myself that no one else (except my husband who is my first reader) will see this until it meets my standards.  No one else will know if I do 2 drafts or 2 dozen.  So I will write this ms long, if that’s how it goes.  I won’t worry about it now.  I’ll just enjoy the discovery of scenes and words and character development.

Later I’ll get my scalpel (that red pen), and begin the liposuction surgery to  get the ms in the proper shape.

Every day when the flag is flying on our porch (and just outside the window of my office) is a proud day for me, but Veteran’s Day is always special.  It’s an opportunity for me to thank those who served with me and those who have served since I left the US Army.  What a change in those ensuing years.

I received my commission as a second lieutenant in 1975, at the very end of the Vietnam War.  I had graduated a semester early from college and wanted a challenge before I continued on to grad school, so I applied for a Direct Commission.  This program was in place in the years before women were admitted to West Point or allowed to participate in ROTC.  I had planned to follow my Uncle Mark into the Navy, but the commission was too good to pass up.

Even though I never faced the challenges that some of today’s military men and women face on various fronts throughout the world, I met some wonderful people and learned more than I had expected.  In my quartermaster basic school, there was Killer – whose real name was Koller, but was listed as Killer on a roster, thanks to a typo.  He was a gentle guy who cared deeply for anyone under his command.  There was George who could not wait for Ranger training where he could learn to live off the land and train for just about any emergency.  There was one guy, whose name now slips my mind, who was desperately waiting for every mail call to see if he had passed the bar in his home state.  And there were my fellow female officers who proved that we could keep up with the guys, not because we wanted to prove we were as good as they were, but because that was what an army lieutenant did.

In my permanent assignment, Gary, Joe, and Willie were good friends who shared the ups and downs of life as a junior officer with me.  We had the WAC Pack, a monthly gathering of female officers on the post – there were less than 20 of us who weren’t nurses.

That sense of camaraderie was something I thought I’d never find again until I became one of the founding members of the RomVets, a group of romance writers who also served in the military, both the US and Canadian.  They offer a similar sense of esprit de corps as we work to build and maintain writing careers.  Check us out at http://www.romvets.com

Thanks to all the vets out there – the ones I had the honor to serve with and to know and all the ones who have come before and since.  I know that the flag flying on my porch is still there because of each and every one of you.

I started a new ms a few days ago.  Sea Wraith is the third book in Nethercott Tales trilogy.  I have given myself a very short deadline for it — a good first draft done by the end of the month before I leave for a writer’s retreat and then a short vacation with my husband before Christmas.  That means writing every day.  Every day — whether there’s football on or the election results being announced or a big discount weekend at the chain of stores where my husband works.

Or whether my goals partner is coming for a week.

Now that is the real challenge.  I want to spend time with her talking about writing, brainstorming, discussing the vagaries of publishing…but I need to produce pages.  When I visited her last year, I still managed to get a few pages done each day, but that was because she was on the west coast and I could stay on eastern time.  That meant I could work “late” at night when my brain functions best and still be up “early” in the morning to spend time with her.  Now we’re going to be operating in reverse mode.

Everyone has a different rhythm for their writing – the time of day when the words flow best.  For me, it’s always been in the evening and late into the night.  I can write more words between midnight and 2 am than I can in a daylong session.  No matter how I try to switch my internal “creative” clock, it refuses to change.  While going through renovations on the house, my per day page production collapsed – because I had to go to bed early to be up before the contractor and his guys arrived at the house.

And now I have this month-long challenge.  My own version of NaNoWriMo.  Will I keep to my schedule?  What are the consequences if I don’t?  I don’t have answers for either of those questions yet, but I have 105 pages of ms completed with a goal of 360 pages.  105 pages that are far from ready to be submitted to my editor, but that’s okay.  I like revising and chipping away at the dross to find the finished story.

So I’m going full steam ahead.  Damn the torpedoes!  Remember the Alamo!  Win one for the Gipper!  Write like I mean it!