Due to my knee acting like a complete bitch this morning from messing it up on Wednesday at the gym and hobbling all around the damned hotel yesterday, I missed my reading at the con AND my other morning panel, and was basically miserable until about 2 PM. By the time I got back to the con I was tired, cranky, and ready to be swept up in some fun, so I pretty much took today off (I actually wrote more than 61 words, but I deleted about 270 so, yeah, that happened). Meh, it happens. I’ll play catchup over the next few days.

Also, if you have knees that feel like they’re full of ground glass due to injury, arthritis, whatever, go check out this knee brace (it’s called Kneed-It). My friend Selina saw me hobbling into the hotel, said, “I’m going to lend you my other brace,” and gave it to me. I swear to God, if this brace was human I would marry it and have its babies, I love it so much. NO PAIN. AWESOME.

Today’s stats:

Started With: 18,109 words
Wrote: 61 words
Total word count: 18,170 words
What else did you do today, Nicola: Drank hard cider, ate a lot of candy, discussed the beauty of Michael Fassbender with a large table of people, 75% of whom were straight males, showed off my Sherlock plushies at a fencraft panel, and had a shitload of fun.

Writing Tips: An outline is a good thing, but you do not have to follow it slavishly. It should be a general road map to the story, but you will quite often run into all kinds of interesting detours, side trips, U turns and out and out dead ends that you didn’t expect but wind up informing your story (and often making it better). Frex: Empress has been laid out in three acts — Act I is where Matthias and Danäe start out on the bumpy road of their marriage and find out surprising things about each other and the people around them. Act II is the trip back to Hellas for the second marriage there — I knew I had to have some complications added there as well as a mid-point bump, but didn’t really know what that was going to be. Holding a cheerful two-year-old on my lap while we colored and played with crayons gave me an insight into two people who really need heirs for their kingdoms, and BAM I had my mid-point bump. So be open to things around you and use them as inspiration for your writing — you’d be surprised how helpful it can be.