Unintentional Marathon

Ten pages. That's the length of the section I wrote last night, which means that it must have been a long, freakin' night. I don't know. When I write, I don't really experience the passage of time in the same way as when I'm not writing. Most writers call this "being in flow". Well, it flowed. Not exactly a flood, not exactly a trickle. More like a steady river of words that resulted in a complete new section for the fairy book, which I'm calling Beyond the Pale. I've decided that my reward every time I finish a chapter of Shifts of Perception will be a section of Beyond the Pale. That might keep me from getting burnt out on either one as I'm writing them, because if I get really stuck on one, I can turn to the other for a while. I can probably afford to do this; I already have the first two books of my trilogy in submittable shape, I refuse to call my agent until Mercury gets out of retrograde, and even if I got a publishing contract tomorrow, it would still be quite some while until the deadline for Shifts would kick in. Even with a really agressive publishing schedule, like bringing the books out six months apart, I figure I have a little time to kill while writing Shifts.

And Beyond the Pale is so seductive right now. It's new, fresh, hot, and entirely too much fun to resist. Even if it doesn't sell or Bob tells me outright that it's garbage, I'll still be glad to have written it--my first urban fantasy. Damn, I love my job. Could use a pay raise, though!