The Writer's Process: A WIP is Born.

I've been sneaking around a great deal lately, under the radar and such.

I blame my betas.

In the general course of perving #soldierporn on Tumblr around the beginning of September, I stumbled upon an inspiring photograph. While it's one I've seen before, my admiration for it has many layers. Mostly for the body language of the individuals who are the focal point. The communication taking place is decidedly...intimate, although that's not unusual for military types and even less so for battle buddies.

I don't have a source or credit line for this photograph. I reblogged it on Tumblr with the simple caption of ....

[Body Language.]

There is undeniably a great deal of that going on there.

Certainly a story wanting told.

Or a few, because the story that *I* have pulled out of this photograph has been rather loosely translated and thoroughly removed from the assumptions one would make looking at it.

On a seemingly unrelated note, I finally ran out of space in my Moleskine notebook. It took six months to fill, and it's crammed with scrawled notes of about five different stories. I went shopping for some notebooks. Picked up a couple replacements, but also nabbed a set of three thinner ones, eighty pages each.

Their covers screamed for Sharpie markers. I had difficulty getting a clean shot without the matte surface refracting a glare, for some reason. 

WIP: Fang & Fire

Not to get ahead of myself since the notebooks are still completely blank on the inside...but these three thinner ones will have nothing in them but notes and scribbles and doodles for this one story. Nothing else. We'll see if I actually use all three, but from what I've outlined of the plot thus far, they should fill up rather swiftly. My day job means that I often find myself fleshing out scenes in longhand and transferring them to Scrivener in marathon sessions. It's the front line editing process, you could say. Going from raw stream of consciousness writing, to the "rough" prose of the first draft.

And once this project is finished and off my desk, I have every intention of sacrificing these now "one of a kind" beauties for a promo release giveaway. A little piece of the process, and the art, that few ever get to see. Little bits and pieces that are shaved away, remolded, or discarded in the journey to the final product.

Although I have become increasingly averse to sharing intimate details of plot, characters, and world-building on public venues over the past couple years, don't worry-- I'll be sharing the process. And maybe even some shots of the pages as I fill them. My handwriting varies widely depending on my energy level and artistic focus. The font I use ranges from Typewriter to Prescription Scrawl.

So there you have it: a WIP is born. 

Who knows, maybe the final cover of the published book will have the same title and artwork.