This is the 12th Day of Shar and I’ve actually gotten a lot done. This is the first time the 12 Days thing actually worked–well, it worked pretty well cleaning my office–and I think it’s collaborating that really makes the difference. As long as we give ourselves lots of space, we can really push ourselves and each other. This past month has been really interesting as a lot of what we’ve been doing is figuring out how we each work, and how that changes within the collaboration. We’re all seat-of-the-pants writers, but Lani and I have really taken to doing one rough and then analyzing the hell out of it. Krissie needs more time with her drafts before we come in with our scalpels but she loves to brainstorm. So a lot of it is just seeing where everything fits. It’s such a good collaboration.

So this was the day that I went through all my Dogs and Goddesses file. There are literally hundreds of them since I’ve been working on this for over a year. Got rid of duplicates, organized the images, recovered all the fragments that are going into the last three acts, wrote more on the scenes, skipping around. Lots done. I’ll definitely have Act 3 done by Dec. 31 and may even have Act 4 done. Now if I can just hold onto this process for Emmeline, I might have a really good year (Bob will keep me moving on Wild Ride, it’s just the solos I get blocked on).

I love this part of the book, when a story that started because it seemed like a fun thing to do suddenly reveals itself to be so much more. This is when things really get crunchy and the rewrite becomes a whole new book. So the last week of 2007 is going to be good times and dogs and goddesses and great friends to write with. Can’t ask for more than that.