Draft Zero, new job, blah blah

Sorry for the delay, folks. Work is a verah srs environment, and I'm in a cubicle, and they block a lot of sites. Not twitter, surprisingly, and not blogger or livejournal. But I've been busy enough that I haven't really explored the tolerances of the filter. Anyway. I'll try to update this thing more frequently.

Some thoughts about the new job. First of all, I'm glad I'm here. I'm glad I made the move. I went from an environment where I pretty much knew everything and had no interest in expanding my responsibilities, to an environment where I know a lot about a tiny aspect of the job, and there's a lot of room for improvement and involvement. And I'm finally using SQL, though sparingly. My responsibilities in that area will evolve, and I'll learn as I go because I'll *have* to learn just to stay afloat. It's a nice change.

Also, people here care about their jobs. That's new.

And writing is progressing. I've been asked to provide character descriptions and sample chapters for the cover artist. I won't tell you who it is, because I'm not sure how final it is and I'd like the final product to be something of a surprise, but I'm happy. I'm about halfway through chapter four. I think I finally found the voice for the book last night. Not to say that the bits written are bad, but they're a little unfocused. This is why I handwrite draft zero. The creative process works better for me with pen and ink, and we're still very much in the creative part of this project. But last night I wrote a dialogue between Eva and the Elder Alexander, and it just...it was right. It's still funny to me that I so often find the groove for a work in dialogue, when what drew me to writing was descriptive prose. We develop, my friends. We grow. I'll probably finish out chapter four, write the prologue (or probably the opening to chapter one) that I've been kicking around since I envisioned the character but didnt' want to write until I really had a handle on her, the Cult of the Warrior, and the world. And I have that handle now. Anyway. It's going well.