Magick,  S. Connolly

Day 25: The Momentum Burns #domagick

Producing this much material — it’s liberating. I feel like I’m washing out my brain. I love it when I’m in the middle of a story and it’s just flowing out of me like water from a faucet. The downside to producing so much in such a short time is, of course, burn out. That’s the danger right there. These huge highs of productivty can crash into crippling depression, or worse, periods of inactivty. The stalemate. It’s the thing all creatives fear. I know that at some point in the next few days I’m going to feel utterly exhausted.  Luckily I won’t be facing the block. Because I have so many projects in the works, I can always switch to another and get words down on that if it’s speaking to me more.

But the ultimate goal is that completed draft of Eagle’s Talon Gray. The words are coming. They may not be good words (yet), but they’re words. I can work with words. Rearranging, rewriting, and editing. What I can’t work with are no words. You can’t fix something to make it better if you have nothing to fix, right? Which is why it’s always better to have a shitty first draft (of anything) than nothing at all.

Today I slowed down a little  (a lot) and paced myself.

Now to some self-care to-do’s. Today I was going to resolve to take a walk with my husband at some point. Even if it was just around the school. Yeah – that didn’t happen.

My poor house is also going to be in desperate need of a solid cleaning when I’m done. We’re also coming up on the last five days of #domagick and I’m doing my magick.  Aside from the invocations, prayers, offerings, and divinations – the writing is part of that magickal work. At some point we have to stop ruminating over what we want, seeking higher powers to help us — it and actually put forth some effort, right? This is that “following through” with the magick that I’m always talking about. All the meditation, petitions, pacts, chakra balancings, divinations, and invocations in the world won’t put words on the page. I actually have to do that part of the work.

Now on to today’s work.

I woke up early this morning and did my invocation to Bathin, at which time I offered him a candle anointed with a drop of my blood. I took a few minutes to stretch, but don’t misconstrue this as a full yoga session. I’ve still been super-lazy with the yoga. I don’t know when I got out of the habit of yoga, but at some point I’ll work to reincorporate it. I felt so much better when I did it a few times a week. I skipped my chakra balancing last night, but need to get back to it, That may not happen again until Tuesday.

Foundational Sigil of Sorath

Today’s Early Revelations: I know where this story is going and I’ve come up with two solutions for the resolution. One seems a convenient, easy way out. My MC in this particular story tends to take the path of least resistence, and it tends to bite her in the ass and forces her to take the harder path. As a result, she triumphs (not without pain and failures along the way) and becomes a stronger, more changed person for the experience. I have three solid plot points I need to contend with before the story comes to its final resolution. As I said earlier, this draft is the bare bones. I imagine I’ll be adding much more during the revision, but the point of this challenge isn’t to turn out a perfect manuscript on the first try. It’s to get the whole story out onto the page. And that is exactly what I intend to do. Ten thousand words are all I need to hit my minimum mark, but I also know stories happen in their own time. I am in the home stretch though – near the end. Which means if I can do that today (or the bulk of it anyway), I can have a bare bones draft to work with. Which also means I’ll need to move on to another project for tomorrow and Monday. I think I’m going to go with The Ba’al Collective. That seems best. Which means once this weekend of writing madness is over – I could very well have one novella, one novel, and the beginnings of another novella in completed working draft form. They won’t be “done” as it were, since there still needs to be revision and edits. But they will be done as far as having been initially written. And that’s a pretty damn good feeling.

Tonight’s Revelations:  I knew exactly where this story was going. I still have to write the final scene, but that’s a wrap and the book goes into the editing pile. I will finish the final scene tomorrow after classes unless by some miracle I wake up early revving to write before classes start.  It was a hard day, but I pushed through it and excelled in my expectations. I am pleased.

Daily Tarot: Ten of Wands: Rewards after hard work. But with this cards comes the warning of taking on too much, or putting too much pressure on yourself. It suggests delegation of duties to lighten the load if possible. Otherwise you won’t be able to bring your hard work to fruition.  So I’m taking this to mean that slow and steady is the way to handle today’s work. I am pacing myself.

DAILY NOVELRAMA WORD COUNT STATS   22,497/25,000

  • Total Challenge Goal for Four Days 25,000
  • Day 2 Goal: 7,000
  • Day 2 Ideal: 10,000
  • Day 2 Actual: 10,232 

Steph is an award winning and bestselling author of thrilling steamy and paranormal romances, dark urban fantasy, occult horror-thrillers, cozy mysteries, contemporary romance, sword and sorcery fantasy, and books about the esoteric and Daemonolatry. A Daemonolatress and forever a resident of Smelt Isle, she is happily married and cat-mom to three pampered house cats. Her muse is a demanding sadistic Dom who often keeps her up into the wee hours of the morning. You can contact her at swordarkeereon@gmail.com

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