I cruised past the 36000 line this morning. This week will be tough with the holidays, a trip out of town, and family coming home. I plan to do some solid pushing ahead this evening to see if I can’t get ahead.  I have changes and rearranged, plot, point of view, tense and now have a mishmash to wade through after November. I tried to keep it in labeled sections and if they are rewrites, I marked the version. I think I might need to invest in software designed for novel writing. After November I will be researching what is available and see what would be a good fit for me. Something that lets me keep track of characters, places, versions, and lets me reorder pieces that I write out of sequence.If anyone has experience and is comfortable with a particular piece of software (preferable one that doesn’t have a huge complicated learning curve) I would love to hear about it.

Creative copy Challenge 195: fail, trivia, master, dirt, swerve, memory, drive, bed, touch, right

We had been at it for hours. I was exhausted and more than a little pissed right now.  Aedan had my mother’s spell book in his lap. I had tried and tried to commit the words to memory, the actions as habit, and I just couldn’t seem to meld the two. I never had been able to do two things at one time. “You don’t have to drive me so hard. I’m tired. I want to take a shower and go to bed.” I sounded petulant even to myself. That just managed to irritate me more.

“This isn’t some kind of trivia game, Jae. If you don’t learn to control your power you will not be ready when Lucia comes back. You can master a few moves for defense, you have the touch. If you fail, you die. I will be with you all I can, but what if we get separated?” Aedan stood and placed the book on the chair. “Try it on me. Maybe that is the problem. You have no clear vision of where to aim the magic.”

“What? No! What if I hurt you? I have little control.” Now he was just being stupid. I was mad at him but it wasn’t his fault. He was just trying to help. I didn’t want to hurt him.

Aedan snorted. “You haven’t been able to cast enough to give me a pimple! You fade in and out as you shift and as a wolf, you try to swerve and run into a tree. It takes you forever just to shake it off and pick yourself up out of the dirt. From what I read in her book, your mother would be embarrassed. I am not worried. “

“Oh you did not go there!” I felt cold anger take me over.  My mother would be embarrassed? My hands were a blur of motion in the air and words I didn’t know were in my head poured out of me. I saw nothing, not Aedan, not the cabin, just red like blood. I felt it all, pouring through me, out my fingers and then a bright flash and I crumpled. My heart was pounding and my head throbbed. The cold receded and something whispered in my head. Aedan was lying on the floor a few feet from where he had been standing. I tried to make my limbs work and managed to drag myself to him.
“Aedan? Oh my god, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please wake up!” I knew this was a bad idea. Aedan moaned and turned over. Holy shit Jae. You trying to kill me? His words sounded funny, as though he had a bad case of laryngitis.

I started to cry. “You idiot! I thought you were dead! Why did you do that?”  I fell back on the floor next to him, shaking uncontrollably. “Guess I am stronger than I thought.”

Aedan reached for my hand.  “Looks like we found the key to your magic. Remind me never to really piss you off.”

I hate it when he is right.