mental health morning

Or maybe mental health day. Not a good sign to be taking one after 2 days of work, but I got revision notes on HEART OF STONE _and_ PHOENIX LAW, and that always requires some mental health time.

As usual, ever so frustratingly, most of the notes are utterly legit. HEART OF STONE is particularly depressing because I am full of hate and loathing for that book at this point, and the “increase sensuality” part of the notes just makes me want to slam my head against the wall a few thousand times. That the ending is too pat is frustratingly accurate (it always has been, and it’s always bothered me, but not enough to fix it without someone telling me to, apparently), and the ‘add more mythology’ part might actually be fun, in so far as anything regarding this book can be fun. I am just *sick* of it.

PHOENIX notes are comprised almost entirely of detail work. _Plenty_ of detail work, which means holding the whole book in my head is going to be a bitch, but none of it’s *hard* detail work.

*groan* I don’t know. Maybe I should do those revisions now and go back to HOUSE OF CARDS when I’m done. It’d help to get the HoS revisions done before doing HoC, I think, and right now I feel fairly strongly that the rough draft for HoC is going to suck.

That’s not precisely accurate.

I think it’ll be a perfectly fine draft as a me-book, with the plot moving along and elements in the right place and all. It is, however, going to take at least one big fat revision (revision, not rewrite; that’s something, anyway) to get the whole sensual mood and stuff they want for this series. It is not easy for me to write that way, and I’m clearly being too subtle about it anyway, if the HoS revisions are asking for, as put it, “more secks”. I said last night I obviously needed to learn to write like this other writer who was similar to me but different in that she could do more sensuality could write, and suggested I costume myself as this other writer in order to get into her headspace.

You are all snickering behind your elbows, but I think that might be an utterly great idea. I may go shopping later today. I think she wears long skirts and cloth headbands and, as Mom suggested, frilly blouses and dangly earrings and clogs. (Apparently she’s a hippy.) Although she will not wear clogs while writing because her feet would turn to icicles, so she has to wear the fuzzy socks. Perhaps the clogs can linger nearby.

Anyway, so it’s possible doing the revisions on HoS before I do the rough draft of HoC will help. It’s possible nothing will help and I’d be better off digging my eyeballs out with a spoon, too. *mumbles*

I’m going to go get some more Gena Showalter and Katie MacAllister books and read them to study some more on how this sensuality thing is supposed to be done. (Ok, once more, I gotta say, when you actually get to read trashy romances as research… that’s a pretty cool job. :)

My hair is very very dark. Nearly black, one might say. One might even say black. I washed it 3 times this morning to get as much extra dye out of it as I could, and now it is a less saturated black than it was before. (I’d have washed it more times than that, but I ran out of shampoo.) I suspect sometime in the next couple of weeks it’s going to become about four inches shorter. Maybe even more than that. Since it’s not long enough for X3 Rogue even under the best of circumstances. I’m not going to get it cut short, but several inches off would get rid of a fair bit of the Wrong Color. (Honestly, my hair has been one wrong color after another since last November, when I wanted it to be essentially my natural color except just a *tiny* bit redder, and I came out of the salon a flaming redhead. Sigh.)

I’m going to package up books to send out, and go to the bank, and go into Cork today. Those are my plans. Mental health day.