In all areas, not just writing! Which is good, because writing progress has been, ahem, sparse lately. Is a lil difficult to write much when your schedule consists of being out at work or travelling from/to from 8am - 6pm, then 6-8pm nap, 8-930pm cook and eat dinner, 10pm bedtime.
BUT! PROGRESS! Largely, today, the progress has been baby-related. We spent 5 hours trawling through baby stores making decisions about cots and prams and strollers and monitors and chairs and bedding and and and and *explodes*. The decisions, oi. Intense.
Also, we have made progress on the baby room. See, I had this horrible moment a few months ago when I realised that being preg would actually kind of involve having a child, and that this would necessitate storage facilities and, well, a bedroom. Which is fine; our house has three plus a study. Except... Yeah. About that storage. I'm not sure if I'm embarrassed by this or not (:P), but I was, in actual fact, making full use of BOTH spare built-in-wardrobes, as well as 2/3rds of the walk-in in the master bedroom. Um, oops?
So in a fit of attempted-organisation, I pulled all my stuff out of 'spare' wardrobe number 2, and dumped it all on the floor of 'spare' room number 1, which is to be the baby room, in the hopes that I would be able to sort it out, condense it down, and fit it all BACK into the now-empty spare wardrobe #2.
That was about four months ago. Again, oops. But today - TODAY! - we has progress. The Most Wonderful Boyo spent four hours this evening with me closetted in the back room, sorting through stuff, and while there are still some boxes on the floor that need to be moved/chucked, the wardrobe is actually now empty but for Actual Baby Stuff.
So. I have done exactly zero writing this weekend, which given I'm notionally aiming for 30k for November so as to finish the dog book and the SFR short is not especially helpful, but at least Other Stuff was Done.
And sometimes, life just has to come first.
Showing posts with label progress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label progress. Show all posts
06 November 2011
22 February 2011
Somewhat Distracted, With Stats
There is a small part of me that delights in the nonsensical that now wants to compile statistics for how distract I am/have been. Bwa ha, the amusement! However, despite the title of the post, quantifying my distraction is not today's aim. Today's aim, rather, is to concoct a post requiring as little *brain* as possible, because I've been distracted. With these:
I think that's a pretty cute excuse. Don't you? :o)
So, in order to have something actually sensible to say today (tonight; it's 1:30am and I'm up on puppy watch o.O :)), I'm totally stealing Liana's Brooks's post, and tweaking to fit. Thanks, Li B-)
Number of Unread Books in My House: *cringes* When Liana says 3, I kind of want to hate her. I OWN 176 unread books; I have a whole drawer more of books people have loaned me. ACK.
Number of Started but Unfinished Novels: Hmm, this one's a little more encouraging. Actual novels that have actual writing, as in are beyond the idea stage: 26. In addition to that, ideas that may someday get off the ground: 24. That makes 50. I like 50. No more new ideas, brain! O:) :D hehe.
Number of Finished Novels: Define 'finished'... I have 4 with complete drafts, not counted above.
Number of Words Cut this Week: About 1300. Not as bad as it feels o.O
Number of Scenes Cut this Week: 1. And its replacement is at least twice as long.
Number of Words Written this Week: Only this week? Hmm, I'm not keeping daily stats at the moment. I could figure it out if I really wanted to, but - oh, who am I kidding? I want to. *goes to figure it out* There, 4,152 since the 13th. Bwa ha.
Number of New Scenes Added to WIP this Week: Only the one to replace the cut scene. I've been going through polishing what I have, rather than working on fresh/new material.
This Weeks Favorite Discussion on FB or Twitter: Finding someone had quoted a sentence from my WIP and a whole bunch of people had 'like'd it :o) ...That may have been more than a week ago. Never mind. Let's Play Pretend B-)
Favorite Character of the Week: Finally, FINALLY have hit my stride with Jess from Jesscapades, after reading a great article by Janice Hardy. Hence, have been going back through the first 8 chapters and revising to get them more tightly into Jess's POV. Rah!
Number of Puppies Born: 8, on Saturday at the vet's. 5 girls, 3 boys, all healthy and wriggling and squiggling. Yay!!
Number of Hours of Sleep Lost: Several, though less for me than the dear-sweet-wonderful-husband, and also the fantabulous mother & her husband, who helped with the night shifts over the weekend :o)
And last, but DEFINITELY not least (trust me on that!!),
Number of Minutes Until I Can Go Back To Bed? Priceless. Ah ha, sorry, bad reference to the Mastercard tv ads. In seriousness, without jesting (something I never lower myself to O:)), twenty-three. Yay :D
Tell me tell me, what's your random statistic for the week?
I think that's a pretty cute excuse. Don't you? :o)
So, in order to have something actually sensible to say today (tonight; it's 1:30am and I'm up on puppy watch o.O :)), I'm totally stealing Liana's Brooks's post, and tweaking to fit. Thanks, Li B-)
Number of Unread Books in My House: *cringes* When Liana says 3, I kind of want to hate her. I OWN 176 unread books; I have a whole drawer more of books people have loaned me. ACK.
Number of Started but Unfinished Novels: Hmm, this one's a little more encouraging. Actual novels that have actual writing, as in are beyond the idea stage: 26. In addition to that, ideas that may someday get off the ground: 24. That makes 50. I like 50. No more new ideas, brain! O:) :D hehe.
Number of Finished Novels: Define 'finished'... I have 4 with complete drafts, not counted above.
Number of Words Cut this Week: About 1300. Not as bad as it feels o.O
Number of Scenes Cut this Week: 1. And its replacement is at least twice as long.
Number of Words Written this Week: Only this week? Hmm, I'm not keeping daily stats at the moment. I could figure it out if I really wanted to, but - oh, who am I kidding? I want to. *goes to figure it out* There, 4,152 since the 13th. Bwa ha.
Number of New Scenes Added to WIP this Week: Only the one to replace the cut scene. I've been going through polishing what I have, rather than working on fresh/new material.
This Weeks Favorite Discussion on FB or Twitter: Finding someone had quoted a sentence from my WIP and a whole bunch of people had 'like'd it :o) ...That may have been more than a week ago. Never mind. Let's Play Pretend B-)
Favorite Character of the Week: Finally, FINALLY have hit my stride with Jess from Jesscapades, after reading a great article by Janice Hardy. Hence, have been going back through the first 8 chapters and revising to get them more tightly into Jess's POV. Rah!
Number of Puppies Born: 8, on Saturday at the vet's. 5 girls, 3 boys, all healthy and wriggling and squiggling. Yay!!
Number of Hours of Sleep Lost: Several, though less for me than the dear-sweet-wonderful-husband, and also the fantabulous mother & her husband, who helped with the night shifts over the weekend :o)
And last, but DEFINITELY not least (trust me on that!!),
Number of Minutes Until I Can Go Back To Bed? Priceless. Ah ha, sorry, bad reference to the Mastercard tv ads. In seriousness, without jesting (something I never lower myself to O:)), twenty-three. Yay :D
Tell me tell me, what's your random statistic for the week?
03 August 2010
The Week of Much Writing
So, it seems that the slump might actually finally be over. I've written consistently for the last two and a half weeks, and How Not To Take Over The World (affectionately abbreviated to HNOT) is nearly done! I'm so excited :o)
Unfortunately, I haven't been around on the net a lot lately - school has been back for two weeks now, and it's been a flurry of lesson planning, extra-curricular, and a whole bunch of out-of-school stuff as well. The good news is, things are settling down :) The better news is, this semester hasnt' been anywhere near as stressful as last semester - I'm actually getting the hang of this whole teaching thing ;) :D hehe.
But the funk is well and truly gone: I'm tremendously excited about writing at the moment. Where a month ago, everything I was working on was stuck, now things are flowing and the muse is hyperactive. Edits for Jesscapades begin on Sunday (Liana and I are working through a schedule together, in an effort to keep us both on track), Marked (previously The Hunter Hunted) is nearly finished being edited (although it will be put aside to make way for Jesscapades for the next couple of months), a new story, Secret Breaker, is firing on all cylinders in my head and involves much shiny, like werewolves and secret detection and lies and betrayal and forbidden blood magic and invisible tattoos and kidnaps and and and... O:) *shines*
Yes. I'm excited to think about starting Secret Breaker.
But the best news, at the moment, is that HNOT has only four-and-a-half chapters to go. If I work really hard this week, I can get it done before I start editing Jesscapades on Sunday, and THAT would be AMAZING.
Hence, this is The Week Of Much Writing. I have 4.5 chapters to write in what is essentially now 4.5 days, and each chapter is somewhere between 2 and 3k. I haven't written in those kind of quantities since I was working on Sanctuary in March, but I wrote 2300 yesterday, which is more than I've written in a day since Easter. So it might just be possible.
Here's to trying :D
Also, I take great comfort in the fact that Liana also has to finish her current novel before edits on Sunday, and even more pressingly since she's finishing the novel she intends to edit ;) So I am not alone in my Week of Much Writing. Misery loves company, after all O:) :D
Feel free to join in with the Week of Much Writing, if you like. I'll report my progress on twitter using the hashtag #muchwriting - I'll be looking out to see if anyone else is there too :o)
Unfortunately, I haven't been around on the net a lot lately - school has been back for two weeks now, and it's been a flurry of lesson planning, extra-curricular, and a whole bunch of out-of-school stuff as well. The good news is, things are settling down :) The better news is, this semester hasnt' been anywhere near as stressful as last semester - I'm actually getting the hang of this whole teaching thing ;) :D hehe.
But the funk is well and truly gone: I'm tremendously excited about writing at the moment. Where a month ago, everything I was working on was stuck, now things are flowing and the muse is hyperactive. Edits for Jesscapades begin on Sunday (Liana and I are working through a schedule together, in an effort to keep us both on track), Marked (previously The Hunter Hunted) is nearly finished being edited (although it will be put aside to make way for Jesscapades for the next couple of months), a new story, Secret Breaker, is firing on all cylinders in my head and involves much shiny, like werewolves and secret detection and lies and betrayal and forbidden blood magic and invisible tattoos and kidnaps and and and... O:) *shines*
Yes. I'm excited to think about starting Secret Breaker.
But the best news, at the moment, is that HNOT has only four-and-a-half chapters to go. If I work really hard this week, I can get it done before I start editing Jesscapades on Sunday, and THAT would be AMAZING.
Hence, this is The Week Of Much Writing. I have 4.5 chapters to write in what is essentially now 4.5 days, and each chapter is somewhere between 2 and 3k. I haven't written in those kind of quantities since I was working on Sanctuary in March, but I wrote 2300 yesterday, which is more than I've written in a day since Easter. So it might just be possible.
Here's to trying :D
Also, I take great comfort in the fact that Liana also has to finish her current novel before edits on Sunday, and even more pressingly since she's finishing the novel she intends to edit ;) So I am not alone in my Week of Much Writing. Misery loves company, after all O:) :D
Feel free to join in with the Week of Much Writing, if you like. I'll report my progress on twitter using the hashtag #muchwriting - I'll be looking out to see if anyone else is there too :o)
11 June 2010
Why Do We Care?
Feedback: it's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, writers generally long for feedback on their work - some sense of encouragement, an external recognition of progress. On the other, we dread it; what if someone hates it? What if we've just wasted two thousand words? Ten thousand?
Actually, I've done that before. I wrote the 'first' 10k of a novel called Logan's Prize, and realised that really, the interesting stuff happened in chapter eleven. I had a friend read over it, and they agreed; the first ten chapters were filler, backstory, uninteresting and unimportant. Ouch. So I dropped the story.
(Of course, being as tenacious as I am, I refuse to ever really give up on a story; I still have Plans for that one, bwa ha, and yes, they do include using some of that 10k that I've written).
But back to the point. Although one of the things that determines how quick a story will be written is me (surprise surprise), an unfortunately large amount also rests on the shoulders of my alpha readers. You see, I don't like first drafts. Not really. Sanctuary was, sadly, an exception that proved the rule. First drafts are ugly, and messy, and broken, and even when you finish them you just know you have so much more work to do. And invariably, there are Teh Hatez that happen somewhere around the middle, where you realise the beginning was all wrong and the story would be so much stonger if only THAT had happened instead, and while you could just keep writing and pretent that THAT had happened, wouldn't it be so much nicer to go back and fix it while you still remember what you want to fix?
And so you stop, meaning to go back, but you never do. Yup, done that too.
It seems I need readers to carry me through that phase, to remind me that progress is progress no matter how small, that finishing is a worthy goal in and of itself, quality aside. NaNoWriMo's great for that. So are alpha readers.
So what do you do when, for one reason or another, you can't have alphas? More to the point, what do I do?
That's not a rhetorical question; it's something I'm up against right now. Borderlands refuses to be written linearly. It has two timelines, one of which isn't chronological, and the scenes are all over the place. I know I need to let go of my need to write things In Order and just let the book be written - but doing that means sacrificing the ability to post to my alpha reader/s every time I finish a scene, because I do want them to read it in order after all.
So I'm stuck, right at this minute, between doing what I know I need to do and not being able to share it with my support team, and forcing myself to do it the wrong way just so I can feel better about myself.
We know which way I'll go, of course; I need the book written as well as it can be, not just written for the sake thereof.
But it's going to be a tough slog.
So tell me: how do you keep yourself motivated to write when no one else can do it for you?
Actually, I've done that before. I wrote the 'first' 10k of a novel called Logan's Prize, and realised that really, the interesting stuff happened in chapter eleven. I had a friend read over it, and they agreed; the first ten chapters were filler, backstory, uninteresting and unimportant. Ouch. So I dropped the story.
(Of course, being as tenacious as I am, I refuse to ever really give up on a story; I still have Plans for that one, bwa ha, and yes, they do include using some of that 10k that I've written).
But back to the point. Although one of the things that determines how quick a story will be written is me (surprise surprise), an unfortunately large amount also rests on the shoulders of my alpha readers. You see, I don't like first drafts. Not really. Sanctuary was, sadly, an exception that proved the rule. First drafts are ugly, and messy, and broken, and even when you finish them you just know you have so much more work to do. And invariably, there are Teh Hatez that happen somewhere around the middle, where you realise the beginning was all wrong and the story would be so much stonger if only THAT had happened instead, and while you could just keep writing and pretent that THAT had happened, wouldn't it be so much nicer to go back and fix it while you still remember what you want to fix?
And so you stop, meaning to go back, but you never do. Yup, done that too.
It seems I need readers to carry me through that phase, to remind me that progress is progress no matter how small, that finishing is a worthy goal in and of itself, quality aside. NaNoWriMo's great for that. So are alpha readers.
So what do you do when, for one reason or another, you can't have alphas? More to the point, what do I do?
That's not a rhetorical question; it's something I'm up against right now. Borderlands refuses to be written linearly. It has two timelines, one of which isn't chronological, and the scenes are all over the place. I know I need to let go of my need to write things In Order and just let the book be written - but doing that means sacrificing the ability to post to my alpha reader/s every time I finish a scene, because I do want them to read it in order after all.
So I'm stuck, right at this minute, between doing what I know I need to do and not being able to share it with my support team, and forcing myself to do it the wrong way just so I can feel better about myself.
We know which way I'll go, of course; I need the book written as well as it can be, not just written for the sake thereof.
But it's going to be a tough slog.
So tell me: how do you keep yourself motivated to write when no one else can do it for you?
04 June 2010
May: It's Over!
Which is, in my opinion, cause for much celebration. May was a hard month, following on the heels of a hard month. We moved house, we moved my mother in law, I had to deal with my first batch of final grading/report writing fun, during which the computer make a vow to drive me as insane as possible by eating all my work at one point, two days before everything was due o.O Yeah, much fun. Also, I got sick :P
This is all very tragic, because autumn is usually my favourite season, and the weather has actually been quite pleasant this year. Or maybe it's just that I'm regaining circulation, living in a warm house and working in a warm office, so I'm not feeling it as much as I used to O:) :D
Either way, 'tis all behind me, and June is set to be much more pleasant - not least of which because school holidays are coming up ;)
For May Madness, however, there is not much to report: I managed a total of 4,624 words, less dismal that I initially expected, but still in the bottom six months of all time. Pretty much all of the writing was on Borderlands, my current wip. I'll pop a blurb up on the wip page soon, but suffice to say it's dark, it's adult, it's confronting, and it's fun as anything to write B-) Woo, underground cities and evil machines and elemental power! Ensnarement, torture, war and pillaging! Death! Destruction! And the obligatory (for me) shiny, shiny rainbow magic, waaaay on the other side of the desert.
Yes, I do loves my Borderlands B-)
The only other thing I worked on was yet another beginning for a Secret Breaker novel. The Secret Breaker series is my urban fantasy series about people with the psychic ability to detect secrets and lies - intentionally and not. It's a lot of fun - urban fantasy complete with kick-ass heroines, splashes of romance, and a bit of gothic-inspired fun in the shape of imposing mansions, hidden crazy ladies and the like. Sadly, I have about four beginnings for novels in this series lying around, and nothing else o.O Ah well. Not a priority at the moment; I'll finish Borderlands first.
Of course, what I really should be doing is tidying up Sanctuary :P But forcing myself to focus on editing is beyond my brain capacity right now; that's what I'm claiming, anyway O:)
But anyway, all of this has gotten me thinking about doing a post about my main series (about six, I think). Would anyone be interested in hearing about that? Or are the only people who might be interested the people who already know all about them? :D
And the ultimate question, of course: How was YOUR May? O:)
This is all very tragic, because autumn is usually my favourite season, and the weather has actually been quite pleasant this year. Or maybe it's just that I'm regaining circulation, living in a warm house and working in a warm office, so I'm not feeling it as much as I used to O:) :D
Either way, 'tis all behind me, and June is set to be much more pleasant - not least of which because school holidays are coming up ;)
For May Madness, however, there is not much to report: I managed a total of 4,624 words, less dismal that I initially expected, but still in the bottom six months of all time. Pretty much all of the writing was on Borderlands, my current wip. I'll pop a blurb up on the wip page soon, but suffice to say it's dark, it's adult, it's confronting, and it's fun as anything to write B-) Woo, underground cities and evil machines and elemental power! Ensnarement, torture, war and pillaging! Death! Destruction! And the obligatory (for me) shiny, shiny rainbow magic, waaaay on the other side of the desert.
Yes, I do loves my Borderlands B-)
The only other thing I worked on was yet another beginning for a Secret Breaker novel. The Secret Breaker series is my urban fantasy series about people with the psychic ability to detect secrets and lies - intentionally and not. It's a lot of fun - urban fantasy complete with kick-ass heroines, splashes of romance, and a bit of gothic-inspired fun in the shape of imposing mansions, hidden crazy ladies and the like. Sadly, I have about four beginnings for novels in this series lying around, and nothing else o.O Ah well. Not a priority at the moment; I'll finish Borderlands first.
Of course, what I really should be doing is tidying up Sanctuary :P But forcing myself to focus on editing is beyond my brain capacity right now; that's what I'm claiming, anyway O:)
But anyway, all of this has gotten me thinking about doing a post about my main series (about six, I think). Would anyone be interested in hearing about that? Or are the only people who might be interested the people who already know all about them? :D
And the ultimate question, of course: How was YOUR May? O:)
03 May 2010
Checking In: April
So, April has been and gone, and all I have to say is thank goodness, and may May pass just as quickly. May - well, I had high expectations of May, after April. I thought it might be the final calm, that it might bring the resolution to a whole bunch of exciting, on-going problems.
May is tricksy and false. :P Only three days in, it's set to be worse than April! Oh noes! *shakes head sadly*
So, may it speed by without delay, I say. Ha.
But anyway, April. The month wherein I did practically no writing :P - although my statistics do not bear this out! I actually managed 10,417 words last month, which is insane, giving as of yesterday I'd written not a word since Easter!
The majority of this was on Sanctuary, which I FINISHED, oh-my-goodness-YAY! *confetti* *streamers* *balloons*!!
I finished on April 5, Easter Monday - and then fell into a massive funk. It didn't start out as a writing funk, but writing soon joined everything else, and nothing much else happened all month.
But anyway, Sanctuary was finished. This is yayful :)
How was your April?
May is tricksy and false. :P Only three days in, it's set to be worse than April! Oh noes! *shakes head sadly*
So, may it speed by without delay, I say. Ha.
But anyway, April. The month wherein I did practically no writing :P - although my statistics do not bear this out! I actually managed 10,417 words last month, which is insane, giving as of yesterday I'd written not a word since Easter!
The majority of this was on Sanctuary, which I FINISHED, oh-my-goodness-YAY! *confetti* *streamers* *balloons*!!
I finished on April 5, Easter Monday - and then fell into a massive funk. It didn't start out as a writing funk, but writing soon joined everything else, and nothing much else happened all month.
But anyway, Sanctuary was finished. This is yayful :)
How was your April?
21 April 2010
March Madness
Yes yes, I know it's like, nearly the end of April. Nowhere near March at all. March has well and truly been and gone; disappeared; evaporated; kicked the bucket.
HOWEVER.
I was on hiatus while this all happened. So you know. I didn't get to do a March recap. And I don't know about you, but my March was FROGGING AWESOME. So I kind of want to recap it B-)
So, what did I do in March that was so amazing? I FINISHED SANCTUARY! YAYAYAY! *dances madly like a mad thing*
I also wrote a play about pirates, which was fun. But you know. I FINISHED SANCTUARY!!!
(Well, almost. Technically I didn't finish; I wrote about 10k in April. But it was all done by the 5th of April! And I wrote LOTS in March! So I can still squee, right? Right?)
I won't go into detail about the book and her pretty stats, because you can find that here and here and here. However, March stats:
39,628 words total. Apparently I have a Thing lately about achieving nearly awesome numbers o.O
Of that, 30,595 on Sanctuary, and 7954 on the play, which is called Where Your Treasure Is.
I also attempted to edit Death and Foxes, and it is now Significantly Better, but the MC is still a passive whingey woman, so I need to fix that before I can really do anything with it.
So. That was my March. How was yours, if you can still remember that long ago?? :P :D
Also, the contest to name my puppy is now closed. Winners will be announced as soon as we choose a name :D
HOWEVER.
I was on hiatus while this all happened. So you know. I didn't get to do a March recap. And I don't know about you, but my March was FROGGING AWESOME. So I kind of want to recap it B-)
So, what did I do in March that was so amazing? I FINISHED SANCTUARY! YAYAYAY! *dances madly like a mad thing*
I also wrote a play about pirates, which was fun. But you know. I FINISHED SANCTUARY!!!
(Well, almost. Technically I didn't finish; I wrote about 10k in April. But it was all done by the 5th of April! And I wrote LOTS in March! So I can still squee, right? Right?)
I won't go into detail about the book and her pretty stats, because you can find that here and here and here. However, March stats:
39,628 words total. Apparently I have a Thing lately about achieving nearly awesome numbers o.O
Of that, 30,595 on Sanctuary, and 7954 on the play, which is called Where Your Treasure Is.
I also attempted to edit Death and Foxes, and it is now Significantly Better, but the MC is still a passive whingey woman, so I need to fix that before I can really do anything with it.
So. That was my March. How was yours, if you can still remember that long ago?? :P :D
Also, the contest to name my puppy is now closed. Winners will be announced as soon as we choose a name :D
05 March 2010
Excuse Me? It's MARCH???
First up, welcome to all the new followers! It's nice to know you're out there, somewhere, lurking around the cyber-corners of my blog :o) In fact, I love my lurkers so much that I'm thinking of possibly holding a contest just for them... We shall see B-)
Anyway. Secondly.
IT'S MARCH. WHAT THE????
Someone, please, tell me how this happened? I mean, it was January a minute ago - wasn't it? *sigh*
So, in the month that totally disappeared while I was blinking, what did I achieve?
In non-writerly news, I survived my first month of teaching without anyone dying, and we had puppies!! YAY! PUPPIES!! Only two, which was a bit disappointing, but on the other hand having two makes them really easy to look after, so you know. Silver linings, and all that :)
In writing news, I actually MADE my 10k goal, which I am in total shock about, because I totally didn't think I would. The first few weeks of school were insane, and I was worried for a while that I'd never write again *melodramatic swoon with hand to forehead* But behold, I pulled back from the brink, and Words Did Happen.
11,120 of them, in fact. Wootery!
Even more wootery, 10,123 of them were on Sanctuary, which I call a Major Win. I cracked the 26k mark in the novel, which theoretically is halfway... But in actuality, Edge rambles. A lot. So who knows how long the story will drag on for o.O At least I know I'll safely be able to cut the rambling and still have a decent length novel.
Also, we are yet to get to the clockwork fairies, which makes me sad, but at least is giving my alpha reader an excuse to keep reading >:) bwa ha ha. And, although clockwork fairies are not yet in evidence, we DO have weird shadows, missing unicorns, and a strange force that pulled the MC across the boundary into the Land of Death, which Isn't Supposed To Be Able To Happen. Bwa.
Anyway. The other words: 837 words on my pep talk for NaNoEdMo (yes, yours truly was invited to officially cheer on the NaNoEdMo-ers in March), and 160 words on a short, Lightning, which the computer subsequently ATE. I was Not Impressed *eyebrow*
I also did a minor amount of editing on Hunter Hunted, and I did another round of edits on Leaving, a short set in the Shard universe and featuring Jess as a minor character. Yay!
Things I learned this month can pretty much be summed up in the post on why writers need to Slow Down - creativity needs time to brew, but don't waste your time at the computer. When computer (and brain) minutes are sparse and precious, know what you're writing before you sit down to write. Talk to your characters whenever you get a second, and talk through the next step in the plot with them. That way, when you sit down to write, you'll be able to dive right in, instead of wasting precious time trying to figure out what you're supposed to be saying.
I haven't seen a lot of progress reports around for February yet - is everyone else, like me, having trouble believing how fast it went? :D But do share: what did you do in February? Are we considering it a success, or a write off?
Anyway. Secondly.
IT'S MARCH. WHAT THE????
Someone, please, tell me how this happened? I mean, it was January a minute ago - wasn't it? *sigh*
So, in the month that totally disappeared while I was blinking, what did I achieve?
In non-writerly news, I survived my first month of teaching without anyone dying, and we had puppies!! YAY! PUPPIES!! Only two, which was a bit disappointing, but on the other hand having two makes them really easy to look after, so you know. Silver linings, and all that :)
In writing news, I actually MADE my 10k goal, which I am in total shock about, because I totally didn't think I would. The first few weeks of school were insane, and I was worried for a while that I'd never write again *melodramatic swoon with hand to forehead* But behold, I pulled back from the brink, and Words Did Happen.
11,120 of them, in fact. Wootery!
Even more wootery, 10,123 of them were on Sanctuary, which I call a Major Win. I cracked the 26k mark in the novel, which theoretically is halfway... But in actuality, Edge rambles. A lot. So who knows how long the story will drag on for o.O At least I know I'll safely be able to cut the rambling and still have a decent length novel.
Also, we are yet to get to the clockwork fairies, which makes me sad, but at least is giving my alpha reader an excuse to keep reading >:) bwa ha ha. And, although clockwork fairies are not yet in evidence, we DO have weird shadows, missing unicorns, and a strange force that pulled the MC across the boundary into the Land of Death, which Isn't Supposed To Be Able To Happen. Bwa.
Anyway. The other words: 837 words on my pep talk for NaNoEdMo (yes, yours truly was invited to officially cheer on the NaNoEdMo-ers in March), and 160 words on a short, Lightning, which the computer subsequently ATE. I was Not Impressed *eyebrow*
I also did a minor amount of editing on Hunter Hunted, and I did another round of edits on Leaving, a short set in the Shard universe and featuring Jess as a minor character. Yay!
Things I learned this month can pretty much be summed up in the post on why writers need to Slow Down - creativity needs time to brew, but don't waste your time at the computer. When computer (and brain) minutes are sparse and precious, know what you're writing before you sit down to write. Talk to your characters whenever you get a second, and talk through the next step in the plot with them. That way, when you sit down to write, you'll be able to dive right in, instead of wasting precious time trying to figure out what you're supposed to be saying.
I haven't seen a lot of progress reports around for February yet - is everyone else, like me, having trouble believing how fast it went? :D But do share: what did you do in February? Are we considering it a success, or a write off?
26 February 2010
How To Revise Your Novel 1
Quick note: Puppy-induced sleep deprivation and the whole new fulltime work thing are eating my brain cells. Possibly, they're also eating other cells too. I may fall apart at the seams any day now and start spilling internal organs everywhere. That would be exciting, and nearly as messy as the puppies will soon be. Bwa.
Yes, I has pointz here - for the next little while, posting on Inkfever will be Monday-Friday. Who likes Wednesdays, anyway? Ha.
On to the post...
Woo hoo!! Can you hear the screams of joy from there? Wherefore, you ask, scream I so? (oops, been watching too much Pride and Prejudice O:))
Because finally, FINALLY, I have finished lesson 3 of the How To Revise Your Novel course! YAYAYAYAYAY!!!
So, in honour of such a momentous occasion (it's only taken a month to do the relatively SHORT lesson), I'd bestow upon you all the great gift of a review O:) :D Don't you feel so privileged?
Lesson One: In which we discover our novel.
This lesson was pretty easy for me. It's something I tend to do with editing anyway, so it felt 'right'. The idea here is to discover three things: One, what you wanted when you started writing the novel, two what you got, and three what you want it to become.
One: Go back to the moment when you first started writing the novel and recall what it was that made you want to write it. Why this story? Why this way? What were you aiming for?
Two: Read through novel. Weep copious tears at how epically it fails to match number one. Use the shiny worksheets provided in the course and carefully examine what went wrong in several categories, such as story, character, worldbuilding, etc. Also keep track of bits you really, really love.
Three: Ponder upon all of this and try to imagine what you want the book to feel like when it's finished. Create a goal. Know what your intent is with your editing - otherwise you're guilty of Editing Without Intent >:)
This lesson was great because it gave me a feel for how much was really wrong with my story, and by using the worksheets I was able to identify that a few things that felt like lots of little problems were in actual fact just one big problem! :D
Lesson Two: In which we consider the nature of promises.
Every writer in existence really needs to have read this lesson. Holly talks about the promises that we make when we write a novel, some of which are universal to all novels (such as 'I will have something interesting to say' and 'I will not waste your time'), some of which we intend (the details we use to foreshadow, etc), and some of which we make without even realising it (eg, the details that we get a little too carried away with for no reason other than that they were pretty).
And even better, Holly talks about how to identify these promises. How can you tell when you've promised something? How can you tell when you've promised too much? Or too little?
When we write, there's an implicit promise that everything we include will be significant in some way. If there's a loaded gun in chapter one, it'll be fired (see Chekov). If the character introduces themself as having a particular issue, that issue will be addressed (if not resolved). And so forth. Promises are the foundation of story, the essence of your relationship with the reader, and they matter.
This lesson is all about identifying what you've promised, and whether you've followed up on that or not. I have a couple of random characters who are just that - random asides. They're not actually contributing to the story in any meaningful way - and I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been looking at promises.
Lesson Three: In which we examine the scenes.
Ironically this is the lesson that took me over a month to complete, and yet it is way, WAAAAAAY shorter than the other two. You've heard me talk before about The Sentence, that neat and tidy little way of encapsulating your scene and/or story and making sure it has all the necessary elements.
In this lesson, we go through our story scene by scene and create a Sentence for it. I tell you what, I thought I understood The Sentence before - but boy was I wrong!! Nothing, NOTHING, that I have encountered breaks down a scene so easily, in such a raw way, stripping away everything else and letting you scene it for what it really is - broken or whole.
Even if I do no further lessons from the course at all, this lesson ALONE will be worth the $188 I'm shelling out for the course.
It's a slog in a way that the other lessons aren't, because it really stretches your brain. You're forced to consider and reconsider, and figure out exactly WHAT it is that's making your scene work - or fail.
Two things I will take away from this that will help me forever in approaching The Sentence: One, the conflict is the natural result of the interaction between the protag and the antag. It's the meat of the scene. The twist, however, is the thing that matters. It's the change that makes this scene worthwhile, it's what gives the whole thing a point - and often, it comes at the end of the scene.
In Conclusion
So, that's it for now. I wish I was further along in the course than I am, but at present I'm struggling to even find time to write, let alone work through this course as well. But as I said, even if right now, today, this minute, you told me I couldn't have access to any more of the lessons, I'd still be happy. My story is going to be so much improved I get squiggly with glee just thinking about it.
Question for you guys: What's the biggest editing lightbulb moment YOU have ever had? The single thing that sort of went 'click' and helped you figure out how to deal with the process of editing?
Also, are any of you taking the course? What do you think so far?
Yes, I has pointz here - for the next little while, posting on Inkfever will be Monday-Friday. Who likes Wednesdays, anyway? Ha.
On to the post...
Woo hoo!! Can you hear the screams of joy from there? Wherefore, you ask, scream I so? (oops, been watching too much Pride and Prejudice O:))
Because finally, FINALLY, I have finished lesson 3 of the How To Revise Your Novel course! YAYAYAYAYAY!!!
So, in honour of such a momentous occasion (it's only taken a month to do the relatively SHORT lesson), I'd bestow upon you all the great gift of a review O:) :D Don't you feel so privileged?
Lesson One: In which we discover our novel.
This lesson was pretty easy for me. It's something I tend to do with editing anyway, so it felt 'right'. The idea here is to discover three things: One, what you wanted when you started writing the novel, two what you got, and three what you want it to become.
One: Go back to the moment when you first started writing the novel and recall what it was that made you want to write it. Why this story? Why this way? What were you aiming for?
Two: Read through novel. Weep copious tears at how epically it fails to match number one. Use the shiny worksheets provided in the course and carefully examine what went wrong in several categories, such as story, character, worldbuilding, etc. Also keep track of bits you really, really love.
Three: Ponder upon all of this and try to imagine what you want the book to feel like when it's finished. Create a goal. Know what your intent is with your editing - otherwise you're guilty of Editing Without Intent >:)
This lesson was great because it gave me a feel for how much was really wrong with my story, and by using the worksheets I was able to identify that a few things that felt like lots of little problems were in actual fact just one big problem! :D
Lesson Two: In which we consider the nature of promises.
Every writer in existence really needs to have read this lesson. Holly talks about the promises that we make when we write a novel, some of which are universal to all novels (such as 'I will have something interesting to say' and 'I will not waste your time'), some of which we intend (the details we use to foreshadow, etc), and some of which we make without even realising it (eg, the details that we get a little too carried away with for no reason other than that they were pretty).
And even better, Holly talks about how to identify these promises. How can you tell when you've promised something? How can you tell when you've promised too much? Or too little?
When we write, there's an implicit promise that everything we include will be significant in some way. If there's a loaded gun in chapter one, it'll be fired (see Chekov). If the character introduces themself as having a particular issue, that issue will be addressed (if not resolved). And so forth. Promises are the foundation of story, the essence of your relationship with the reader, and they matter.
This lesson is all about identifying what you've promised, and whether you've followed up on that or not. I have a couple of random characters who are just that - random asides. They're not actually contributing to the story in any meaningful way - and I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been looking at promises.
Lesson Three: In which we examine the scenes.
Ironically this is the lesson that took me over a month to complete, and yet it is way, WAAAAAAY shorter than the other two. You've heard me talk before about The Sentence, that neat and tidy little way of encapsulating your scene and/or story and making sure it has all the necessary elements.
In this lesson, we go through our story scene by scene and create a Sentence for it. I tell you what, I thought I understood The Sentence before - but boy was I wrong!! Nothing, NOTHING, that I have encountered breaks down a scene so easily, in such a raw way, stripping away everything else and letting you scene it for what it really is - broken or whole.
Even if I do no further lessons from the course at all, this lesson ALONE will be worth the $188 I'm shelling out for the course.
It's a slog in a way that the other lessons aren't, because it really stretches your brain. You're forced to consider and reconsider, and figure out exactly WHAT it is that's making your scene work - or fail.
Two things I will take away from this that will help me forever in approaching The Sentence: One, the conflict is the natural result of the interaction between the protag and the antag. It's the meat of the scene. The twist, however, is the thing that matters. It's the change that makes this scene worthwhile, it's what gives the whole thing a point - and often, it comes at the end of the scene.
In Conclusion
So, that's it for now. I wish I was further along in the course than I am, but at present I'm struggling to even find time to write, let alone work through this course as well. But as I said, even if right now, today, this minute, you told me I couldn't have access to any more of the lessons, I'd still be happy. My story is going to be so much improved I get squiggly with glee just thinking about it.
Question for you guys: What's the biggest editing lightbulb moment YOU have ever had? The single thing that sort of went 'click' and helped you figure out how to deal with the process of editing?
Also, are any of you taking the course? What do you think so far?
03 February 2010
Lament for the Holidays
*sniff sniff* January is gone, and with it summer holidays. Behold, it is tragical indeed!
January turned into month that surprised me with its productiveness. After angsting mildly about the fact that I couldn't seem to write, Edge, the MC of Santuary jumped on me on the 12th of the month and never let go! Go Edge!!
Here are the stats:
Total word count: 15,761
On Sanctuary: 14,329
On a random background short for HNOT: 257
On the Powers short that's plodding away: 202
On my completed short for the month, Sculpt: 973
How's that compare to my goals? Surprisingly good! This was my most productive January ever! 15k a month would put me at 165k not including NaNo in November, so I'm on track to break 200k. Also, I cracked 16k on Sanctuary this month, and given I'm aiming for a total of 50k, I'm about a third done! Finally, I wrote, edited, and submitted one short this month, in keeping with my one-short-a-month goal.
So I'd say I did pretty well!
Biggest thing I learned? Sanctuary is one big reinforcement of the idea that voice is everthing: if I have my character's voice and actually listen to it, the story just carries itself :)
January turned into month that surprised me with its productiveness. After angsting mildly about the fact that I couldn't seem to write, Edge, the MC of Santuary jumped on me on the 12th of the month and never let go! Go Edge!!
Here are the stats:
Total word count: 15,761
On Sanctuary: 14,329
On a random background short for HNOT: 257
On the Powers short that's plodding away: 202
On my completed short for the month, Sculpt: 973
How's that compare to my goals? Surprisingly good! This was my most productive January ever! 15k a month would put me at 165k not including NaNo in November, so I'm on track to break 200k. Also, I cracked 16k on Sanctuary this month, and given I'm aiming for a total of 50k, I'm about a third done! Finally, I wrote, edited, and submitted one short this month, in keeping with my one-short-a-month goal.
So I'd say I did pretty well!
Biggest thing I learned? Sanctuary is one big reinforcement of the idea that voice is everthing: if I have my character's voice and actually listen to it, the story just carries itself :)
01 February 2010
Life or Something Else?
Insert a deep sigh of relief here.
The week is over. I survived. 10 points to me. The wedding was amazingly fantastic (anyone interested in photos??), and the new job is great. Admittedly, the kids haven't arrived yet, so I reserve the right to alter my judgement after Tuesday O:)
Last Monday I posted about giving yourself permission to have time off, and about knowing your own limits. This past week I've had a perfect opportunity to put that into practice :D
I didn't write Monday, because it was the wedding. I didn't write Tuesday, even though it was a public holiday, because we spent all day looking at/editing photos from the wedding, talking to all the relatives, and then collapsing into a heapy heap to recover afterwards.
Then Wednesday I started my new full time job.
For a while, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to write again for weeks; my brain just seemed to full of everything else, and whenever I opened the document to write, it just wouldn't work.
But then on Thursday I had a revelation. I was in the bathroom, getting ready for bed, and was vaguely pondering Sanctuary. I knew I needed another scene with the MC at school to set things up properly. I'd gotten the MC into the classroom, and into her seat... And then nothing. Not. A. Thing.
I had kind of just assumed that it was because I was tired/busy/stressed/preoccupied, so my creative brain wasn't working.
But on Thursday night, it hit me: I'd been trying to take the story in the wrong direction. I'd had a loose idea of what needed to happen in the scene - but it was all wrong! My MC was being too passive! Will all that anger and irritation and frustration building up inside, I still had her sitting around in class being passive!
Bah!
So I stopped for literally about ten seconds, closed my eyes, and said to my MC, "Fine. You tell me what's happening in the scene."
And guess what? She did. And on Friday after work, I wrote it all out straight in about ten or fifteen minutes, and squiggled in glee. It's a fun scene with no less than three occurrences that have given me the basis for main plot points, and the MC attacks a boy in the class, and things are just generally FUN.
My round-about-way point is this:
Next time you think it's life getting in the way, take ten seconds out to make sure it isn't you getting in the way. I'm really good at telling my characters what to do. I need to remember to let them talk too ;)
PS Vote for my cupcakes! Liana & my blog is Heart of the Home ;)
25 January 2010
Commitment
As this post - er, posts, I will be primping my hair, having my face painted and putting on shiny shoes and a lustrous dress - in other words, I'll be getting dressed for my sister's wedding. How excitement! O:)
Also, on Friday it is my own wedding anniversary; and there are at least 3 other couples I can think of off the top of my head who we are friends with who have wedding anniversaries this week.* So clearly, it's Commitment Week! Huzzah!
Commitment Week? I hear you say with undue scepticism. What does Commitment Week have to do with writing?
Ah, I say with a knowing smile. Allow me to elaborate.
It's quite simple, really. In order to be a writer, you have to be committed to the act of writing. It's not enough to just talk about writing, to want to be a writer, to have great ideas and hang out with writers. You have to actually write. Pretty simple, pretty straightforward.
Superficially.
Like a relationship, really. To have a successful relationship, all you need to do is love each other and communicate, and you're sweet. Simple as that.
Uh huh, reeeeeeeal simple.
But having a commitment to writing is much like having a commitment in a relationship. After all, you have your ups and downs, your good days and your bad days, your lovey-dovey moments where everything is great and you've never felt so inspired and oh my goodness your feet are just walking on air the words keep coming and coming and coming...
Aaaaand there are the days where, seriously? You'd rather bash your head with significant force against a brick wall than go home. I mean, write. O:)
Like any relationship, it's the knowledge that the bad times will get better, and the knowledge that this is a decision you made, that gets you through.
Coincedently, a good friend of mine is also having a commitment crisis right now; she's questioning her commitment to writing. She feels like she hasn't written seriously in a couple of months and is wondering whether she either needs to get a move on with writing or admit that she's quit.
At this point, let me point out that she has, in actual fact, written 25k in the last two months, which for some of us is phenomenal. But for her, it's less than up to par. And it's left her feeling unproductive and uncommitted.
So what's a writer to do?
First of all, something I'm having to learn in all areas of my life, one day at a time: Life isn't all or nothing.
It's not a matter of do something perfectly or don't do it all. It isn't a case of wash all 3 million dishes or don't touch them. It's actually okay to just wash the first few hundred thousand and save the rest for later. It isn't that you need to teach every single class perfectly and to an outstanding standard. It's enough to get most of them right.
It isn't that you have to write a thousand words every single day come rain, come hail, come shine - come illness, come death, come exhaustion, come work, come study, come family, come life.
It isn't. It really isn't.
Going through the mechanical motions of writing because you have to will give you about as much success as going through the motions in any other relationship - which is to say, you'll quite probably get results that look good from the outside, but you run the very serious risk of losing the heart of your work.
In writing, taking a break doesn't mean giving up. Having a month of lowered productivity - or two, or three - doesn't mean giving up. And having days where you don't write doesn't mean giving up either.
I counted them up in talking to said friend: So far this month I've written a mere 11 out of 23 days. In December, I had 19 days where I didn't write. September and October boasted 12 days each of no writing, and in August I didn't write for 17 days.
Life happens.
Things get in the way of writing.
It's up to you whether or not that will break your commitment to writing, or whether you'll give yourself permission to go at the pace you need, and accept what productivity you can get.
Life isn't all or nothing - and neither is writing. And it's a proven fact that stress lowers creativity, so taking the pressure to perform away can actually boost your productivity (like my September).
Do what you can. Write what you can, when you can. And most importantly, as for everything in life, Know Yourself. Know whether your behaviour is laziness and lack of commitment, or whether it's life getting in the way. And feeling unmotivated to write isn't an indicator either way - you can feel unmotivated because you're lazy, or because you're exhausted.
It's okay for writing not to be your number 1 priority, even if you are aiming for publication; sure paper can keep you warm at night, but it's not as cosy as your family ;)
In the end:
Commitment. It's all in your head. Which means it's up to you.
:)
Also, on Friday it is my own wedding anniversary; and there are at least 3 other couples I can think of off the top of my head who we are friends with who have wedding anniversaries this week.* So clearly, it's Commitment Week! Huzzah!
Commitment Week? I hear you say with undue scepticism. What does Commitment Week have to do with writing?
Ah, I say with a knowing smile. Allow me to elaborate.
It's quite simple, really. In order to be a writer, you have to be committed to the act of writing. It's not enough to just talk about writing, to want to be a writer, to have great ideas and hang out with writers. You have to actually write. Pretty simple, pretty straightforward.
Superficially.
Like a relationship, really. To have a successful relationship, all you need to do is love each other and communicate, and you're sweet. Simple as that.
Uh huh, reeeeeeeal simple.
But having a commitment to writing is much like having a commitment in a relationship. After all, you have your ups and downs, your good days and your bad days, your lovey-dovey moments where everything is great and you've never felt so inspired and oh my goodness your feet are just walking on air the words keep coming and coming and coming...
Aaaaand there are the days where, seriously? You'd rather bash your head with significant force against a brick wall than go home. I mean, write. O:)
Like any relationship, it's the knowledge that the bad times will get better, and the knowledge that this is a decision you made, that gets you through.
Coincedently, a good friend of mine is also having a commitment crisis right now; she's questioning her commitment to writing. She feels like she hasn't written seriously in a couple of months and is wondering whether she either needs to get a move on with writing or admit that she's quit.
At this point, let me point out that she has, in actual fact, written 25k in the last two months, which for some of us is phenomenal. But for her, it's less than up to par. And it's left her feeling unproductive and uncommitted.
So what's a writer to do?
First of all, something I'm having to learn in all areas of my life, one day at a time: Life isn't all or nothing.
It's not a matter of do something perfectly or don't do it all. It isn't a case of wash all 3 million dishes or don't touch them. It's actually okay to just wash the first few hundred thousand and save the rest for later. It isn't that you need to teach every single class perfectly and to an outstanding standard. It's enough to get most of them right.
It isn't that you have to write a thousand words every single day come rain, come hail, come shine - come illness, come death, come exhaustion, come work, come study, come family, come life.
It isn't. It really isn't.
Going through the mechanical motions of writing because you have to will give you about as much success as going through the motions in any other relationship - which is to say, you'll quite probably get results that look good from the outside, but you run the very serious risk of losing the heart of your work.
In writing, taking a break doesn't mean giving up. Having a month of lowered productivity - or two, or three - doesn't mean giving up. And having days where you don't write doesn't mean giving up either.
I counted them up in talking to said friend: So far this month I've written a mere 11 out of 23 days. In December, I had 19 days where I didn't write. September and October boasted 12 days each of no writing, and in August I didn't write for 17 days.
Life happens.
Things get in the way of writing.
It's up to you whether or not that will break your commitment to writing, or whether you'll give yourself permission to go at the pace you need, and accept what productivity you can get.
Life isn't all or nothing - and neither is writing. And it's a proven fact that stress lowers creativity, so taking the pressure to perform away can actually boost your productivity (like my September).
Do what you can. Write what you can, when you can. And most importantly, as for everything in life, Know Yourself. Know whether your behaviour is laziness and lack of commitment, or whether it's life getting in the way. And feeling unmotivated to write isn't an indicator either way - you can feel unmotivated because you're lazy, or because you're exhausted.
It's okay for writing not to be your number 1 priority, even if you are aiming for publication; sure paper can keep you warm at night, but it's not as cosy as your family ;)
In the end:
Commitment. It's all in your head. Which means it's up to you.
:)
13 January 2010
2010
Broken up by category:
1) Wordcount: I really would like to crack the 200k mark for real this year. That would be shiniferous.
2) Short Stories: I also want to keep at it with the short stories; I have about 13 sitting in various stages of completion on the harddrive, plus ideas for a bazillion and a half more. Last year I completed 9 shorts; this year I'm going to aim for 12, an average of one a month. It's still not very many, but hey, I'm chilling, remember? O:)
3) Novelettes: Hunter Hunted Shall be Edited, and Fever and Earth written. And maybe the wolf one or the elephant one, depending. These are all about 20k each.
4) Novels: Finish HNOT. Do something for NaNo. I've picked up Sanctuary, a YA fantasy with steampunk elements in the last couple of days, and it's working for me, so maybe complete it too.
Alternate way of breaking it up:
Drafting: Draft/complete drafting at least 12 short stories (say 30k), HNOT (another 20k) and Fever and Earth (20k), and possibly Sanctuary (40-45k). Total draft words: 110-115k.
Editing: Edit at least 12 short stories (may include already-drafted shorts) (30k-ish) and edit Hunter Hunted (20k). I'm doing Holly Lisle's How To Revise Your Novel course, so that should hopefully take care of HH. Total edited words: 50k.
Other words will be made up miscellaniously, as they always are.
Does it look like I'm chilling? Maybe, maybe not. But you can see that the focus here is on a) quantity and b) finishing, not on anything to do with c) publishing. Well, maybe the shorts, a little, but not in a big way.
ALSO, I would dearly love to read 50 books this year, since in '07 and '08 I managed 33, and then last year I got 49. FORTY-NINE! Behold, 2009 was the year of nearly-awesome stats o.O :D
So. 12 shorts, 2 novels, 2 novelettes, and 50 books. Are the goals S.M.A.R.T?
Specific - yup.
Measureable - check.
Attainable - if I get my butt into gear, absolutely.
Realistic - based on last year's stats, yes. I'm not really looking for an increase on last year, just a repeat.
Time-bound - yar, I have the whole year in which to finish them. *is tempted to write nothing all year and cram 200k into November just to observe the ensuing insanity*
...
*is not really tempted, actually* O:)
In non-writing news, I'm aiming for the rule of tens. Actually, in writing news, too:
Every day, 10 mins of exercise, 10 mins of housework, 10 mins of reading, 10 mins of writing, and 10 mins of praying/meditating/reading Bible.
10 minutes is an easy, manageable chunk of time to find, and breaking it up that way sounds much nicer than - I have 50 minutes of stuff to do today! :P
In conclusion to this somewhat scatterbrained and no doubt unilluminating post, I would also like to mention two things:
Firstly, that the cooking blog that Liana Brooks and I co-author is now alive again (*waves to the blog necromancers*), and that you should head there to check out the awesome BOOK CAKES (!!) that I made recently.
Secondly, sometime in the next couple of months, I'm planning a shiny addition to the blog, whereby you shall all glow magniferously and bask in the wonders of my generosity.
Also, competitions. I'm moving in the next couple of months, and am in dire need of a book clean out.
2010: May you be better than 2009. Not that that's hard. But hey, we're not a demanding lot around here.
Cheers! :D
12 January 2010
2009: Last Week's Post
So, here is what I was planning to post about last week: a reflection on all the things I did and learned writing-wise, in preparation for crafting some goals for this year :)
Yes, I know, it's an entire week into January already and I'm only now doing a yearly wrap-up for '09. I'm sure by now you're aware that my sense of time is ... loose O:) So I'm sure we'll all survive :D
Right, bare stats first.
2009 was an incredibly frustrating year for word count in the end, because I ended up with 199,142 words. Yes, a measly words away from 200k!! Argh! Had I realised how close I was I would have written more in the week between Christmas and New Years! *tears* *sniffle*
But, words is nonetheless a pretty shiny wordcount, and it is up 24% from 2008's wordcount, which was 161,207.
Interestingly, my general pattern of monthly wordcounts was pretty similar to 2008. To whit:
Sorry it's a bit hard to read the numbers, but basically, the purple line that bounces along the bottom is 2007, the blue line mostly in the middle is 2008, and the reddish line is 2009. Although the pattern is quite similar, I think there's also significant improvement shown here B-)
At the nitty gritty level, here are some more particular stats:
20,021 - number of words in my best non-nano month
4002 - number of words in my worst month
49 - number of books read (waaay up from previous years, yay!)
31 - number of submissions made
16 - number of projects I worked on that didn't get finished
9 - number of shorts finished
6 - number of stories sold (Yay!)
3 - number of times I wanted to really tear my hair out over writing
2 - number of novels finished
1 - number of plays I wrote that I'll actually admit to >:)
Overall, I think the biggest thing I learned was my theory that I began testing in September. As you can see from the graph, September was my biggest wordcount outside of NaNo. My theory was basically that I needed to put less pressure on myself to write on anything in particular, and just write. It worked really well in Sept/Oct, but then I did NaNo, and of course I wanted to finish that, so there was pressure on myself to concentrate on HNOT... And now it's January 12 and I've written less than 1k all month because I've been stupid and allowed myself to get stuck in the pressure spot again!!
Lesson discovered last year that really needs to be LEARNED this year: CHILL!! :D I'm only about halfway through my million-words-of-fiction, so I have another two or three years before I'm allowed to feel like I'm falling behind the game. If anything happens before that, well, I've done it in less than 10 years/1 million words, so go me! In the meantime, quit beating yourself up, Inky One!
:D
Overall, it really was a productive year. I'm happy with my progress, not only in terms of what I got on the page, and the fact that I had my first fiction sales, but because of the mental aspects that I learned. Writing is about having fun, first and foremost. And it's okay not to write every day; most months I only wrote about 2/3rds of the days, and I still had great wordcounts overall.
So. Tune in tomorrow or the next day for 2010: Looking Forward!
And I hope you all had fantastic 2009s, and will have an even better 2010.
Yes, I know, it's an entire week into January already and I'm only now doing a yearly wrap-up for '09. I'm sure by now you're aware that my sense of time is ... loose O:) So I'm sure we'll all survive :D
Right, bare stats first.
2009 was an incredibly frustrating year for word count in the end, because I ended up with 199,142 words. Yes, a measly words away from 200k!! Argh! Had I realised how close I was I would have written more in the week between Christmas and New Years! *tears* *sniffle*
But, words is nonetheless a pretty shiny wordcount, and it is up 24% from 2008's wordcount, which was 161,207.
Interestingly, my general pattern of monthly wordcounts was pretty similar to 2008. To whit:
Sorry it's a bit hard to read the numbers, but basically, the purple line that bounces along the bottom is 2007, the blue line mostly in the middle is 2008, and the reddish line is 2009. Although the pattern is quite similar, I think there's also significant improvement shown here B-)
At the nitty gritty level, here are some more particular stats:
20,021 - number of words in my best non-nano month
4002 - number of words in my worst month
49 - number of books read (waaay up from previous years, yay!)
31 - number of submissions made
16 - number of projects I worked on that didn't get finished
9 - number of shorts finished
6 - number of stories sold (Yay!)
3 - number of times I wanted to really tear my hair out over writing
2 - number of novels finished
1 - number of plays I wrote that I'll actually admit to >:)
Overall, I think the biggest thing I learned was my theory that I began testing in September. As you can see from the graph, September was my biggest wordcount outside of NaNo. My theory was basically that I needed to put less pressure on myself to write on anything in particular, and just write. It worked really well in Sept/Oct, but then I did NaNo, and of course I wanted to finish that, so there was pressure on myself to concentrate on HNOT... And now it's January 12 and I've written less than 1k all month because I've been stupid and allowed myself to get stuck in the pressure spot again!!
Lesson discovered last year that really needs to be LEARNED this year: CHILL!! :D I'm only about halfway through my million-words-of-fiction, so I have another two or three years before I'm allowed to feel like I'm falling behind the game. If anything happens before that, well, I've done it in less than 10 years/1 million words, so go me! In the meantime, quit beating yourself up, Inky One!
:D
Overall, it really was a productive year. I'm happy with my progress, not only in terms of what I got on the page, and the fact that I had my first fiction sales, but because of the mental aspects that I learned. Writing is about having fun, first and foremost. And it's okay not to write every day; most months I only wrote about 2/3rds of the days, and I still had great wordcounts overall.
So. Tune in tomorrow or the next day for 2010: Looking Forward!
And I hope you all had fantastic 2009s, and will have an even better 2010.
04 January 2010
December in Review
Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had a happy and safe holiday time, and managed to get some rest in amongst all the family and food and parties. I had a lovely time up north in the warm (although some nights were too warm!), and Thursday night we took the boat out on the lake and parked in a convenient location - to be rewarded at midnight with fireworks virtually right overhead, and no crowds :) We did this last year, and it's fantastic.
Also, I conveniently had to buy some books that I'll be teaching when I start my new job at the end of the month. I was totally tragified by the price compared to all the books I bought when I was over in the States, but still - new shinies!!
...Which is all well and good, but now I have another 6 books I'll have to read to get the TBR pile under 200 (GTTBRPU200) by the end of the month :S I am halfway through the two month time period, and over halfway through the book-count though (21 read, 14 to go), so I may make it after all :)
Right. December. What did I do therein? Not much :P I had grand plans to finish off HNOT and HH, and to get HH edited up to lesson 3 of How To Revise Your Novel (HTRYN), which would have meant a total word count of around 35,000. What did I actually achieve?
12,877 words. Less than half :P
HNOT got the flick pretty early on; I wrote 3,998 words on it in the first 3 days of December and then it just... died. Now that it's January, I've picked it up again, but it seems that I usually need December to work on non-braining projects after NaNo and during the Christmas rush season. That's okay; 13k is still a decent month, so it's not like NaNo kills my productivity :)
6,398 of the remaining words were on HH, which I did, in fact finish. Huzzah!! The editing is progressing well, though at a slower speed than anticipated due to week's break right before Christmas. I'm up to lesson 3, though, so only one behind where I wanted to be at the end of the month, and lesson 1 was the big long long lesson :)
The final remaining words were - believe it or not - hand written, which is unheard of for me. However, having the break from the computer really did me good. These 2,481 words were on a combination of a short that I've been flirting with off and on for the last few months, and on Fever and Earth, the next novelette in my planned 'series'.
Aside: The series isn't really a series, since none of the stories will be connected, but just for fun I'm doing at least three and hopefully more (if they get a good response!) anthrofiction novelettes - Hunter Hunted was the first, with tigers; Fever and Earth is the second, with horse spirits. After that comes wolves, and then I think the orcas... :D
So, overall it's been a refreshing and relaxing month brain-wise, which is, really, exactly what I needed.
How was your December? Did you manage any productivity, or did the Black Hole of Holidays totally suck you in? :)
Also, I conveniently had to buy some books that I'll be teaching when I start my new job at the end of the month. I was totally tragified by the price compared to all the books I bought when I was over in the States, but still - new shinies!!
...Which is all well and good, but now I have another 6 books I'll have to read to get the TBR pile under 200 (GTTBRPU200) by the end of the month :S I am halfway through the two month time period, and over halfway through the book-count though (21 read, 14 to go), so I may make it after all :)
Right. December. What did I do therein? Not much :P I had grand plans to finish off HNOT and HH, and to get HH edited up to lesson 3 of How To Revise Your Novel (HTRYN), which would have meant a total word count of around 35,000. What did I actually achieve?
12,877 words. Less than half :P
HNOT got the flick pretty early on; I wrote 3,998 words on it in the first 3 days of December and then it just... died. Now that it's January, I've picked it up again, but it seems that I usually need December to work on non-braining projects after NaNo and during the Christmas rush season. That's okay; 13k is still a decent month, so it's not like NaNo kills my productivity :)
6,398 of the remaining words were on HH, which I did, in fact finish. Huzzah!! The editing is progressing well, though at a slower speed than anticipated due to week's break right before Christmas. I'm up to lesson 3, though, so only one behind where I wanted to be at the end of the month, and lesson 1 was the big long long lesson :)
The final remaining words were - believe it or not - hand written, which is unheard of for me. However, having the break from the computer really did me good. These 2,481 words were on a combination of a short that I've been flirting with off and on for the last few months, and on Fever and Earth, the next novelette in my planned 'series'.
Aside: The series isn't really a series, since none of the stories will be connected, but just for fun I'm doing at least three and hopefully more (if they get a good response!) anthrofiction novelettes - Hunter Hunted was the first, with tigers; Fever and Earth is the second, with horse spirits. After that comes wolves, and then I think the orcas... :D
So, overall it's been a refreshing and relaxing month brain-wise, which is, really, exactly what I needed.
How was your December? Did you manage any productivity, or did the Black Hole of Holidays totally suck you in? :)
01 December 2009
Fuzzled Like A Fuzzly Thing - November's End
Wow! It's December! Can you believe it? I can't. The year has gone so unbelievably incredibly fast that it's almost too much to contemplate. So today that means we're due for a November wrap-up :)
I do apologise for my lack of posting on Friday and my late posting today. The last five days have been made of sheer insanity, what with training new people at work, spending a day making gingerbread houses, engagement parties, birthday parties, bridal showers and so on and so forth.
The good news is it's all over and everything went well, huzzah :)
So, back to November and the Ultimate Question: Did I, or did I not, win Nano?
A theoretically simple question, with a complicated maybe-maybe not answer. How can it be complicated, you ask? Well, it goes like this.
In November, I wrote 50,894 words. Of that:
* 1528 were on Hunter Hunted;
* 49332 were on HNOT; and
* 34 were on Jess. Yes, 34. That's right :P
Soooo. We can look at this in three ways.
1) The total word count for November is 50k+. Win.
2) The November wordcount for HNOT is less than 50k. Lose.
3) I actually wrote 686 words of HNOT before November; the total wordcount for HNOT is 50k+. Win.
Personally, I decided that the extra words in 1) made up for the false addition of words in 3), and entered HNOT for a win :D I squeaked in with (according to their count) 3 words and 5 minutes to spare, after an insanely busy day wherein I did a whole bunch of stuff plus wrote nearly 4700 words - my biggest day ever!
I do hope you all don't think too badly of me because of this :D hehe. To celebrate, I did a wordle of the manuscript so far.
So, what did I learn from the process this time around? Mostly that 1600 words a day is really Not That Bad any more. This time, I mostly didn't struggle at all to keep up with the wordcount (though having 2 days off per week helps; mind you, I had that in '07 as well). The first time I did NaNo the word count nearly killed me; I was writing an average of 175 words a day in 2007, peaking at 391 words/day in May.
This year, I'm averaging 376 words/day, peaking in September with 667/day. In effect I'm writing double what I was two years ago on average - which is actually quite a nice thing to know. Huh. *pleased* :o)
Aside from sheer wordiness, this NaNo has been a really squeeful experience for me in terms of writing progress. For the first time ever, a novel is flowing properly for me, and it's been absolutely fun to write. I always knew writing a novel was supposed to be fun; but now I know how that feels. Thanks to techniques I learned in How To Think Sideways and learning to really listen to my characters and let them direct the plot rather than forcing them into a mould, the book has been practically devoid of middle-of-the-book blues, and interesting things keep happening. It's all terribly, terribly exciting! :D
Where to from here? In December I hope to finish HNOT (another 20-30k required) and also pick up HH again, which I haven't touched since November 8. I'd really like to finish it this month if I can, and given it only needs another 5k-ish, that should be do-able.
Also, I'm taking Holly Lisle's How To Revise Your Novel course, so I plan on working through that with Jesscapades :) Who knows? Maybe this time next year I'll have not only 4 complete novel drafts (TBAEO, my first nano; Jesscapades; HNOT, this year's novel; plus a draft for next year), I might have two edited drafts, too! (Jess & HNOT) Fingers crossed, and here's hoping :o)
So. How was your month? If you entered NaNo, did you win? What was the most exciting thing you learned? And what do you plan to do in December?
I do apologise for my lack of posting on Friday and my late posting today. The last five days have been made of sheer insanity, what with training new people at work, spending a day making gingerbread houses, engagement parties, birthday parties, bridal showers and so on and so forth.
The good news is it's all over and everything went well, huzzah :)
So, back to November and the Ultimate Question: Did I, or did I not, win Nano?
A theoretically simple question, with a complicated maybe-maybe not answer. How can it be complicated, you ask? Well, it goes like this.
In November, I wrote 50,894 words. Of that:
* 1528 were on Hunter Hunted;
* 49332 were on HNOT; and
* 34 were on Jess. Yes, 34. That's right :P
Soooo. We can look at this in three ways.
1) The total word count for November is 50k+. Win.
2) The November wordcount for HNOT is less than 50k. Lose.
3) I actually wrote 686 words of HNOT before November; the total wordcount for HNOT is 50k+. Win.
Personally, I decided that the extra words in 1) made up for the false addition of words in 3), and entered HNOT for a win :D I squeaked in with (according to their count) 3 words and 5 minutes to spare, after an insanely busy day wherein I did a whole bunch of stuff plus wrote nearly 4700 words - my biggest day ever!
I do hope you all don't think too badly of me because of this :D hehe. To celebrate, I did a wordle of the manuscript so far.
So, what did I learn from the process this time around? Mostly that 1600 words a day is really Not That Bad any more. This time, I mostly didn't struggle at all to keep up with the wordcount (though having 2 days off per week helps; mind you, I had that in '07 as well). The first time I did NaNo the word count nearly killed me; I was writing an average of 175 words a day in 2007, peaking at 391 words/day in May.
This year, I'm averaging 376 words/day, peaking in September with 667/day. In effect I'm writing double what I was two years ago on average - which is actually quite a nice thing to know. Huh. *pleased* :o)
Aside from sheer wordiness, this NaNo has been a really squeeful experience for me in terms of writing progress. For the first time ever, a novel is flowing properly for me, and it's been absolutely fun to write. I always knew writing a novel was supposed to be fun; but now I know how that feels. Thanks to techniques I learned in How To Think Sideways and learning to really listen to my characters and let them direct the plot rather than forcing them into a mould, the book has been practically devoid of middle-of-the-book blues, and interesting things keep happening. It's all terribly, terribly exciting! :D
Where to from here? In December I hope to finish HNOT (another 20-30k required) and also pick up HH again, which I haven't touched since November 8. I'd really like to finish it this month if I can, and given it only needs another 5k-ish, that should be do-able.
Also, I'm taking Holly Lisle's How To Revise Your Novel course, so I plan on working through that with Jesscapades :) Who knows? Maybe this time next year I'll have not only 4 complete novel drafts (TBAEO, my first nano; Jesscapades; HNOT, this year's novel; plus a draft for next year), I might have two edited drafts, too! (Jess & HNOT) Fingers crossed, and here's hoping :o)
So. How was your month? If you entered NaNo, did you win? What was the most exciting thing you learned? And what do you plan to do in December?
11 November 2009
Er, Bye, October!
So, in all the fun and excitement of time-travelling last week, I realise now that I can do an October farewell! Huzzah!
...
What, you're not excited? Pah. Tough. :P
Sooo. In the glorious month of October, in which one relative had a heart attack, another surgery for a brain tumour which turned out to be cancer, another went missing and was found drowned, another whole circus were shouting death threats at each other, university was finished FOREVER, five interviews were undertaken and two jobs successfully attained (woot), a long weekend camp caused my feet to be cold and wet for three days straight and ingrained in me the desire to purchase some gumboots when they come back in season..... With all of that, what did I get up to writing-wise?
(Yes, I kid you not: all of that happened in October. o.O)
Apparently, writing is therapeutic: even with all of that rubbish going on, I managed to write a hair short of 16,000 words. Go me!
Here's the breakdown:
* 1825 on the Jesscapades rewrite, which is still mostly on hold because I know I don't have the skill I need to make this book what I want it to be yet;
* 1539 on Sanctuary, the YA fantasy; I've finally nailed the voice on this one, which is fantastic;
* 6704 on what is fondly known as 'the tiger novelette';
* Short stories from scratch now out on submission: The Cinnamon Shark (now called Calm) and Dear Santa;
* Short story from scratch, needs editing: Dragon Tuesday
* Plus various words here and there on the following shorts: Afterwards, "the velociraptor one", Rays of Time and Space, "the other Powers one".
What did I learn this month?
Mostly, that writing keeps me sane, that I write faster than I used to, that I don't need to beat myself up if I skip a day or two of writing because it'll balance out in the end. I only wrote 19 out of the 31 days in October, and I still pulled off an above average wordcount; this whole learning-to-lighten-up-on-myself thing is working really well :)
But here's the big thing I learned: I can, actually, be patient.
See, when you start writing you're filled with this obsessive drive to write-write-write, push-push-push, must-get-published, quick-quick-quick. Time matters, because even if it takes most people five to ten years to start earning 'real' money from their writing (ie, not the $5 you make from the occasional short story), so what? You're better than that, and you can do it faster!
Guess what?
Faster doesn't actually matter.
Yup, I wanna write. Yup, I am writing, and I'm writing and planning for publication and a career in writing. But I'm happy to take my time with it, and not rush it, and let my writing blossom as it needs to rather than forcing it into premature bloom that will fade rather than endure. I don't want to make the mistake that so many impatient new writers do, and send my work off before it's ready. I'll know when it's ready, when I'm ready, and I'm not yet, and I'm cool with that.
Phew. It's kinda nice not to be constantly beating up on myself for not pushing hard enough, you know? *grin* And I think my last two months' stats have shown that this shiny new relaxed attitude is actually better for my productivity than stressing over more-more-more.
I'll learn what I learn when I learn it. More than that is out of my control.
...This is all coming out ineloquently, and doesn't quite hit on what I mean precisely, but think of it like this: Act One has come to an end. Everybody, wave hello to Act Two in my writing life ;) :D
Do share: Anyone else have exciting (or boring, either way) revelations about their own writing this month? What did you all get up to? Speak to me!
And yes, I will go back and respond to all the comments I haven't responded to yet *blush* Sorry about that. O:)
...
What, you're not excited? Pah. Tough. :P
Sooo. In the glorious month of October, in which one relative had a heart attack, another surgery for a brain tumour which turned out to be cancer, another went missing and was found drowned, another whole circus were shouting death threats at each other, university was finished FOREVER, five interviews were undertaken and two jobs successfully attained (woot), a long weekend camp caused my feet to be cold and wet for three days straight and ingrained in me the desire to purchase some gumboots when they come back in season..... With all of that, what did I get up to writing-wise?
(Yes, I kid you not: all of that happened in October. o.O)
Apparently, writing is therapeutic: even with all of that rubbish going on, I managed to write a hair short of 16,000 words. Go me!
Here's the breakdown:
* 1825 on the Jesscapades rewrite, which is still mostly on hold because I know I don't have the skill I need to make this book what I want it to be yet;
* 1539 on Sanctuary, the YA fantasy; I've finally nailed the voice on this one, which is fantastic;
* 6704 on what is fondly known as 'the tiger novelette';
* Short stories from scratch now out on submission: The Cinnamon Shark (now called Calm) and Dear Santa;
* Short story from scratch, needs editing: Dragon Tuesday
* Plus various words here and there on the following shorts: Afterwards, "the velociraptor one", Rays of Time and Space, "the other Powers one".
What did I learn this month?
Mostly, that writing keeps me sane, that I write faster than I used to, that I don't need to beat myself up if I skip a day or two of writing because it'll balance out in the end. I only wrote 19 out of the 31 days in October, and I still pulled off an above average wordcount; this whole learning-to-lighten-up-on-myself thing is working really well :)
But here's the big thing I learned: I can, actually, be patient.
See, when you start writing you're filled with this obsessive drive to write-write-write, push-push-push, must-get-published, quick-quick-quick. Time matters, because even if it takes most people five to ten years to start earning 'real' money from their writing (ie, not the $5 you make from the occasional short story), so what? You're better than that, and you can do it faster!
Guess what?
Faster doesn't actually matter.
Yup, I wanna write. Yup, I am writing, and I'm writing and planning for publication and a career in writing. But I'm happy to take my time with it, and not rush it, and let my writing blossom as it needs to rather than forcing it into premature bloom that will fade rather than endure. I don't want to make the mistake that so many impatient new writers do, and send my work off before it's ready. I'll know when it's ready, when I'm ready, and I'm not yet, and I'm cool with that.
Phew. It's kinda nice not to be constantly beating up on myself for not pushing hard enough, you know? *grin* And I think my last two months' stats have shown that this shiny new relaxed attitude is actually better for my productivity than stressing over more-more-more.
I'll learn what I learn when I learn it. More than that is out of my control.
...This is all coming out ineloquently, and doesn't quite hit on what I mean precisely, but think of it like this: Act One has come to an end. Everybody, wave hello to Act Two in my writing life ;) :D
Do share: Anyone else have exciting (or boring, either way) revelations about their own writing this month? What did you all get up to? Speak to me!
And yes, I will go back and respond to all the comments I haven't responded to yet *blush* Sorry about that. O:)
05 October 2009
So Long, September!
Wow, another month down. Is it just me, or is time really speeding up these days? I swear I just did a monthly review... o.O :D
Anyway. Accomplishments.
Regular Reader may recall that back in June, I set myself a challenge: Once Jesscapades was finished and I had a shiny, complete draft, I would give myself permission not to focus for the rest of the year; I could write whatever I felt like writing at the time, without worrying about progressing on any set thing.
Regular Reader will also know that sometimes I had a hard time remembering that, and tried to stress over it.
But! All this aside, this month has truly been the month of Write Whatever I Feel Like. And you know what? The pot theory actually works. This has been my best non-nano month ever. *grin*
Here's the stats:
Total Wordcount: 20,021 (whee!)
Main Works:
Jesscapades 2.0: 6,258
The Hunter Hunted (aka 'the tiger novelette): 5,857
Quest to Rebuild Jerusalem (aka 'the Pathfinder play): 2,439.
Other Random Miscellania:
Borderlands: 25 words. Yeah. I know :P hehe.
Short stories written from scratch: Forget (flash); Adam, Be A Star (flash); Dragon Tuesday (~2400).
Of those, Forget was revised and subbed.
Other random shorts tampered with this month: In Death (ending rewritten, then slashed down to make it flash); Festival of Souls (did a few hundred words and decided that this is going to be a themed collection of shorts); Afterwards (a short idea that's been lingering for a while - I wrote the beginning); Understanding (mainstream story from university; figured out how to fix it and started the rewrite).
Also, on the very last day of September I was reading through the blurbs for some of my stories-in-waiting, and stumbled upon this, which made me go squee:
Mercury, youngest-but-one of seven siblings, went to Evil Overlord school to be different. After all, her parents are accountants, her other siblings are all sickeningly good - and she had to get attention somehow.
Shame, then, that her parents seem to have forgotten all about her.But that's fine. Mercury will show them. Armed with her ferret familiar, Bystar, a stolen Key of Power, and the brains that got her this far, Mercury sets out to graduate at the top of her class so she can take over the city where her parents live.
And even if the invasion doesn't catch their attention, virtually exploding the world when she gets a bit too close to an Eye ought to do it...
So of course, I started writing that, too. I think I'll use it for my nano this year; appropriate, since it's book one (How Not To Take Over The World - HNOT) to the book two (To Be An Evil Overlord - TBAEO) I wrote for my very first nano in '07 :)
Submissions:
8 this month, 3 of which were either new subs or substantially reworked subs. Huzzah! This is my best subbing month yet B-)
Finally, Random Trends of the Month:
Souls. As in Festival of Souls (dead souls collect in the Tower every year until the Festival, when four people are chosen to lead them to the top of the Tower and to peace), Jesscapades (the souls in the glasses which smash and indicate to the Shards who their next target it), Afterwards (possession of souls - or not %-)), Dragon Tuesday (sharing souls, inter-dimensionality of souls) and random miscellaneous worldbuilding for my over-arching universe.
Voice. Lots of great voices coming through from my characters this month, including the MC from Forget, the girl Chay in Dragon Tuesday, Mercury from HNOT, and finally, Selene in Understanding.
YA. Not necessarily what I've written, but definitely what's been attacking the fringes of my mind recently.
So there you go: that's my random month! How was your September?
Anyway. Accomplishments.
Regular Reader may recall that back in June, I set myself a challenge: Once Jesscapades was finished and I had a shiny, complete draft, I would give myself permission not to focus for the rest of the year; I could write whatever I felt like writing at the time, without worrying about progressing on any set thing.
Regular Reader will also know that sometimes I had a hard time remembering that, and tried to stress over it.
But! All this aside, this month has truly been the month of Write Whatever I Feel Like. And you know what? The pot theory actually works. This has been my best non-nano month ever. *grin*
Here's the stats:
Total Wordcount: 20,021 (whee!)
Main Works:
Jesscapades 2.0: 6,258
The Hunter Hunted (aka 'the tiger novelette): 5,857
Quest to Rebuild Jerusalem (aka 'the Pathfinder play): 2,439.
Other Random Miscellania:
Borderlands: 25 words. Yeah. I know :P hehe.
Short stories written from scratch: Forget (flash); Adam, Be A Star (flash); Dragon Tuesday (~2400).
Of those, Forget was revised and subbed.
Other random shorts tampered with this month: In Death (ending rewritten, then slashed down to make it flash); Festival of Souls (did a few hundred words and decided that this is going to be a themed collection of shorts); Afterwards (a short idea that's been lingering for a while - I wrote the beginning); Understanding (mainstream story from university; figured out how to fix it and started the rewrite).
Also, on the very last day of September I was reading through the blurbs for some of my stories-in-waiting, and stumbled upon this, which made me go squee:
Mercury, youngest-but-one of seven siblings, went to Evil Overlord school to be different. After all, her parents are accountants, her other siblings are all sickeningly good - and she had to get attention somehow.
Shame, then, that her parents seem to have forgotten all about her.But that's fine. Mercury will show them. Armed with her ferret familiar, Bystar, a stolen Key of Power, and the brains that got her this far, Mercury sets out to graduate at the top of her class so she can take over the city where her parents live.
And even if the invasion doesn't catch their attention, virtually exploding the world when she gets a bit too close to an Eye ought to do it...
So of course, I started writing that, too. I think I'll use it for my nano this year; appropriate, since it's book one (How Not To Take Over The World - HNOT) to the book two (To Be An Evil Overlord - TBAEO) I wrote for my very first nano in '07 :)
Submissions:
8 this month, 3 of which were either new subs or substantially reworked subs. Huzzah! This is my best subbing month yet B-)
Finally, Random Trends of the Month:
Souls. As in Festival of Souls (dead souls collect in the Tower every year until the Festival, when four people are chosen to lead them to the top of the Tower and to peace), Jesscapades (the souls in the glasses which smash and indicate to the Shards who their next target it), Afterwards (possession of souls - or not %-)), Dragon Tuesday (sharing souls, inter-dimensionality of souls) and random miscellaneous worldbuilding for my over-arching universe.
Voice. Lots of great voices coming through from my characters this month, including the MC from Forget, the girl Chay in Dragon Tuesday, Mercury from HNOT, and finally, Selene in Understanding.
YA. Not necessarily what I've written, but definitely what's been attacking the fringes of my mind recently.
So there you go: that's my random month! How was your September?
06 September 2009
A Late Farewell To August
Yeah, my brain isn't functioning too well right now. Last weekend, I slept 15 hours on Friday night, was up for and hour and a half, and had to go back to bed for a nap. This weekend, I'm even more tired - only it's been insanely busy, being Father's Day and all, and I haven't had the chance to sleep quite so much. So brain is enduring much fuzziness.
All this by way of apologising for the lack of posting last week.
Anyway, August. It's gone! Over! Wow. Is it just me, or is time speeding up? o.O
Not sure I had any specific goals for August; I knew that three weeks of it would be consumed by prac, and I predicted (quite correctly) that I wouldn't be able to do much writing during prac this time. However, goals and wish-I-dids aside, this is what I've actually done this month :)
Total word count was 11, 255, which I must say is pretty good. August last year I only wrote 7,569. Although I've only been keeping stats for nearly three years, it's really interesting: I seem to have a pretty consistent writing pattern. Namely, writing nothing in January, have a peak in Feb, then go back to nothing in March, write really well from April through to July, have a dip from August through to October, spike in November for nano, and collapse again in December.
I wonder what it is about first semester that means I can happily write through exams and assessment and all such business, when I apparently can't do the same in second semester? (First semester in Australia being Feb-Jun, and second semester Jul-Nov) Tis all very puzzling, and it will be interesting to see if the pattern continues next year, when I have a full time job. It could go either way: on the one hand, I'll have a full time job. On the other hand, I'll be teaching, so my life will still conform to the same semester pattern. We shall see...
Anyway! Enough about me and my random patterns O:) :D What did I actually write?
* About 1200 words on The Dragon Stone, a story that's been hovering in my head for about a year; it finally connected that the beginning of a short story that I had lying around was actually the beginning of this novel o.O
* About 2300 words on the Jesscapades edit/rewrite. Yay! Feedback from alpha readers has been very positive, so this is great :D
* About 6,600 words on the Jesscapades synopsis/outline. I feel like it's totally cheating to include this in my word count for the month, but I made the executive decision that I'd feel happier having a better word count and cheating a little than I would if I didn't cheat and had a miserable word count :D
* Miscellaneous work (nothing over 1k) on: Sanctuary (the MG fantasy from nano last year); Secret Breaker (a gothic-crime-urban-fantasy novel, first in a series); Borderlands (my next wip; post-apocalyptic dystopic fantasy); Love's Shadow (a literary-style fantasy short); and my Travelogue.
Totally random.
But hey, I Wrote Words. Words is good, right?
For September, I'm shooting for 10k again, and I'm debating whether or not to include the 2k of words I wrote this morning typing up an awesome dream that I had that's to be the basis for another novel - and, oh-my-goodness-I-can't-believe-I'm-admiting-to-this, it has zombies. Argh.
Prac finishes Sept 18, and then I have two weeks of 'holidays' (ha; hear me laugh hollowly, as I survey the 9 assignments that are due in the following four weeks...) - so I should be able to hit 10k.
I'm planning for most of that to be on Jess, but I know random things will sneak in there too. I want to get a synopsis for Borderlands done, I think I owe church a play, and I'd really like to get some more shorts finished so I have something new to sub.
And that, dear readery-ones, was August!
Tell me - how did you go?
All this by way of apologising for the lack of posting last week.
Anyway, August. It's gone! Over! Wow. Is it just me, or is time speeding up? o.O
Not sure I had any specific goals for August; I knew that three weeks of it would be consumed by prac, and I predicted (quite correctly) that I wouldn't be able to do much writing during prac this time. However, goals and wish-I-dids aside, this is what I've actually done this month :)
Total word count was 11, 255, which I must say is pretty good. August last year I only wrote 7,569. Although I've only been keeping stats for nearly three years, it's really interesting: I seem to have a pretty consistent writing pattern. Namely, writing nothing in January, have a peak in Feb, then go back to nothing in March, write really well from April through to July, have a dip from August through to October, spike in November for nano, and collapse again in December.
I wonder what it is about first semester that means I can happily write through exams and assessment and all such business, when I apparently can't do the same in second semester? (First semester in Australia being Feb-Jun, and second semester Jul-Nov) Tis all very puzzling, and it will be interesting to see if the pattern continues next year, when I have a full time job. It could go either way: on the one hand, I'll have a full time job. On the other hand, I'll be teaching, so my life will still conform to the same semester pattern. We shall see...
Anyway! Enough about me and my random patterns O:) :D What did I actually write?
* About 1200 words on The Dragon Stone, a story that's been hovering in my head for about a year; it finally connected that the beginning of a short story that I had lying around was actually the beginning of this novel o.O
* About 2300 words on the Jesscapades edit/rewrite. Yay! Feedback from alpha readers has been very positive, so this is great :D
* About 6,600 words on the Jesscapades synopsis/outline. I feel like it's totally cheating to include this in my word count for the month, but I made the executive decision that I'd feel happier having a better word count and cheating a little than I would if I didn't cheat and had a miserable word count :D
* Miscellaneous work (nothing over 1k) on: Sanctuary (the MG fantasy from nano last year); Secret Breaker (a gothic-crime-urban-fantasy novel, first in a series); Borderlands (my next wip; post-apocalyptic dystopic fantasy); Love's Shadow (a literary-style fantasy short); and my Travelogue.
Totally random.
But hey, I Wrote Words. Words is good, right?
For September, I'm shooting for 10k again, and I'm debating whether or not to include the 2k of words I wrote this morning typing up an awesome dream that I had that's to be the basis for another novel - and, oh-my-goodness-I-can't-believe-I'm-admiting-to-this, it has zombies. Argh.
Prac finishes Sept 18, and then I have two weeks of 'holidays' (ha; hear me laugh hollowly, as I survey the 9 assignments that are due in the following four weeks...) - so I should be able to hit 10k.
I'm planning for most of that to be on Jess, but I know random things will sneak in there too. I want to get a synopsis for Borderlands done, I think I owe church a play, and I'd really like to get some more shorts finished so I have something new to sub.
And that, dear readery-ones, was August!
Tell me - how did you go?
17 August 2009
Smarter Than I Thought Week
Two weeks ago, I was in a bit of a funk. I was chatting online with a friend. She asked me for some photos that I knew I had in an old post on this blog, and I started browsing through my own archives. And you know what? I'm smarter than I thought :)
So many things I've learned, so many things I've explained - and I'd forgotten all about them. So this week, to celebrate the things I've learned, the lessons I've discovered, I'm going to revisit some older posts.
Today, something I really needed to hear that day when I was poking through my archives - and something I constantly need to remind myself: Always Do Something.
PS Never fear: The series on Editing Jesscapades will continue next week ;)
If you're looking for one more reason to do Nano, here it is. In their book Art and Fear, Bayles and Orland discuss the principle of quantity over quality. The relevant bit is quoted on the webpage, and goes like this:
"The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay. "
Right now, I'm struggling through a first draft. I HATE first drafts with a passion that sometimes makes me wonder why I'm doing this whole writing thing. First drafts SUCK because they are never, ever, EVER perfect - and I'm a perfectionist.
When we're stuck in the quagmire of an imperfect first draft - or caught in the death grips of editing, for those of you that hate that bit of the process - it's so easy to lose sight of what we love about writing. It's so easy to fall back into the default position - everything I write is terrible, I'm no good at this, I think I'll quit.
Don't. Quit.
Every word you write, every sentence you think, every scene you bash your head against the desk over - everything you read over later and wonder what you were on at the time... It's Something. It's Practice. You're Learning.
Quantity. To improve, you must practice. And practice means volume.
Go. Write. Do something.
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