I did it. I reached the goal of 50,000 words in November. They all settled into their somewhat correct places, although I’m sure that will change once I start the editing process.
But first, I need to finish the story. I thought I knew where it was going and how it was going to get there, but thanks to a surprise murder (accidental, but probably unforgivable) and the introduction of a couple new characters (manuscript crashers), the end was pushed another 20 – 30k words down the line.
Once I finish this rough draft, I’ll let it rest while I pick up last year’s endeavor and give it a good polishing. When I’m as satisfied with it as I can get, I’ll work the second one into a more readable pile, then start submitting the first. My plan is to get someone interested enough in a potential series of books so I can keep working with these same characters for a while.
This year’s piece wasn’t quite as easy to write as I’d originally thought it would be, mainly because I was opening more doors to the main characters’ pasts as well as bringing back some minor characters from the first book and giving them bigger parts.
FYI, blue dragons (in my world, anyway) are not shy, nor do they claim to be in the least bit modest. Keeping them clothed in human form can be a challenge.
Last year, the story was new, as were the characters. There was action, romance, and a few surprises.
This time? This time I was able to explore more of each main character’s personality and past, which created a few surprises of my own. For instance, I thought that one particular character was going to be a regular badass, but she’s turning out to be…something a bit different. Oh, she’s still a badass, but she’s willing to help others… as long as it fits with her own agenda.
So, my goal is to finish it (by “it” I mean the rough draft of this manuscript) by the end of December, then jump back into work on the first story and get it to where I’m happy with it by the end of January.
After that?
It will look pretty much the way this one has gone, only I’m hoping it will go quicker than the last one. I’d like to have the second done and polished when NaNoWriMo ’10 rolls around.
Oh, stop laughing…
Now, what are YOUR writing goals for the coming year?
November first rolled around and I was very excited at the prospect of working on my new NaNoWriMo project. I’ve been compiling notes for it for months now, little scraps of ideas and plot points that I didn’t want to forget before I could use them.
Writers depend on their computers for lots of things, not just their writing work. For instance, I have all my digital photographs on my computer, photos that I would hate to lose because unlike film, these may be easy to store, but they’re easier to lose permanently. I don’t print out my photographs very often, it’s too expensive and I’d also have to find a place to keep them.
I also don’t print out my documents very often, pretty much for the same reasons: expense and storage.
This means, important things are stored on fragile electronic equipment that could, at any given moment, decide to go away. Forever.
Which is what I thought happened when I turned on my computer this morning. Something was causing it to hang and not fully load. The keyboard wasn’t sending signals, and the mouse would move the cursor, but I couldn’t click anything.
This meant I couldn’t do a proper shut down, so I had to go to the last resort: a hart boot. When I started it up again, it began making the same sounds and my heart nearly stopped. Unable to bear the thought of having lost photographs of my son in his first tux, or the latest version of my manuscript, OR my employment documents, I wandered into the bedroom where my roommate was starting to wake.
“Good morning,” she said.
“No, not really.” I could feel something on my face and when I went to brush it away, it was wet. Evidently I was crying. Her concern was immediate and together we went back to the office to see if there was any change. Fortunately, things were moving, albeit slowly.
As soon as it was all done with its routine, I grabbed a disk and made a backup of anything that had been added since the last one…in FEBRUARY!
So, I’ve decided that I will keep a copy of my current mss on a flashdrive until the end of the month, when I will once again backup my system and put the disk in a safe place.
Let this be a lesson to all of us! Backup! It may take a while to get it all done, but the peace of mind you get when it’s over is well worth the wait.
It used to be called the Northwest Bookfest, but thanks to corporate sponsors who could no longer sponsor, the bookfest went the way of rotary phones and analog television…or whatever.
Anyway, after being allowed to miss the event due to it not being there any more, a group has picked up the slack and brought Seattle Bookfest to life. This was the first year, and a writer friend and I decided to attend. As an aside, my forays into Seattle are infrequent for the main reason that I get terribly lost in, and rattled by, big cities so I tend to stay in my relatively quiet neck of the Puget Sound.
In order to make this as easy as possible, I decided to take the new light rail to the event. While there were strong similarities to a trip to Germany in that adventure (i.e. running for the train, and not having a clue as to what I was supposed to do next), the best part was the broken PA system announcing such Wonderland stops as “Puppet Nation” (Othello Station), and “Archimedes” (Columbia City).
But the Bookfest was wonderful, and the contacts made there were inspiring. I even met a local English teacher who also happens to have a publishing company! Woo-hoo! There is another publisher who may be interested in my mainstream fiction piece, which would be a wonderful thing to finally submit somewhere.
Attending this event renewed my resolve to get my work out there. It is something that every writer should do to keep inspired and enthusiastic about their art.
What do you do to keep those creative juices flowing? Where do you find that gentle nudge when you need it?
I can tell NaNoWriMo is getting closer, because I’m getting more difficult to be around for any length of time. Sitting still is impossible, simply because I start fidgeting and tapping my fingers and talking about my project.
It is an insane time. Better yet? I have friends joining me! Selma and Heather, to name two. It makes it a lot more fun when you have friends slogging through the words with you.
Frequenting the NaNoWriMo site is another favorite thing, and now my email inbox is bulging with replies from the forum posts I’ve made. Wandering through the forums is like being at the world’s most fabulous mall and you have unlimited cash to spend wherever you want.
Ok, the cash is actually time, and no, mine is not unlimited, but you get the picture. It’s an “every gift-receiving holiday when you were a kid” kind of time, in my opinion.
Of course, two years ago, it wasn’t quite like this. Two years ago, I was trying to coerce Amantha and Hector to go about their business and make it entertaining, when, well, it wasn’t. However, do not despair over their fates. They will be back, only things will be a little different for them. Hector will still be a runaway prince, and Amantha will have to deal with her hair, but they will have a better purpose, they will have a destination. They will go into the desert at the top of the world! (on their world, that desert isn’t cold, it’s quite warm. Oh, come on! It’s fantasy, and I can do it like that if I want!)
I suppose, even fantasy has to have some sense of realism in it, or it becomes a little too fanciful and therefore boring as heck. But when it comes to my world, it will have a nice warm desert at the top, thanks in no small part to magic.
This year’s project will pick up where the last one left off, and if I can keep it up, there will be many more years’ worth of writing for some of these characters and the worlds where they live.
And I can’t wait. Thanks for letting me natter on about this. My family is relieved they didn’t have to listen to it all over again.
Are you going to join us?
NaNoWriMo is coming in a few weeks. I can’t recall ever being so happy that Halloween was on a weekend so I could stay up and start writing one minute after midnight. I don’t do that when November 1st falls on a work day, although unless my hours change soon, it won’t matter. I don’t have to be anywhere until noon. But, I digress.
Yes, NaNo is coming and I’m excited. I’ve been plucking sentences and phrases out of the ether and sticking them into files on the computer for the upcoming month. I’m culling old files for more information, and gleaning bits from the first manuscript of this series that didn’t make that first cut. I find that simply deleting things from stories goes against everything in my entire being, unless I’ve used them elsewhere. That’s the only way I’ll delete them, and only when I know for sure they’re suited for the new position. Then, they’ll be deleted. Sort of deleted. I’ll put a strike-through over them so I know I cannot use them again.
Since I’m continuing with the next installment of the manuscript I wrote for 2008, I have plenty of fodder for the word mill, but there are lots of ideas I haven’t yet discovered, but they blip in and out of my brain, taunting and teasing. I’m trying to ignore them, but they’re on to me.
I’m also pestering my roommate for information and driving ideas past her to see what she thinks. Right now, I believe she thinks she lives with a lunatic.
I believe she lives with a writer.
If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, how do you prepare? Do you get your plot in mind and allow it to steep in bits and pieces of scratch paper and tiny files on your computer? Do you wait until the first day and hope something hatches? When inspiration strikes, can you keep it fresh until the event starts, or do you anchor it with some written words?
Once the first rewrite is done, I always feel accomplished and rather full of myself. I might go strutting around the house, full of the knowledge that I wrote a complete story, one that I want others to read.
It’s kind of a rush.
Then, First Reader gets her mitts on it, and that’s where I see the chinks in my writing armor. Oh, and most of those chinks are comma shaped. I seem to REALLY love commas.
And wordiness. There were entire sections with red ink on them, which startled me at first, then after I read them it was clear that her suggestion tightened up the passage and made it click. Lighten the load and your reader can go farther with the story.
Anyway, the 2nd rewrite should be finished in a couple days, then I’ll be sending it out (with permission) to some folks who HAVEN’T been subjected to the manuscript already, and get their feedback. Once that’s done, I’ll go through it one more time (maybe outloud) to polish the last little bits of grit from the flow, and…and…
probablyletitmolderonmyharddrivebecauseI’macowardlywriter.
ahem.
But, that is a few weeks in the future. In the mean time, I’m still in my safe zone of rewriting. I’ll worry about the submission on Scarlett O’Hara’s favorite day: tomorrow.
_____________
UPDATE:
The 2nd rewrite is finished. Now for the hard part… waiting for the next readers to finish… maybe I’ll work on the outline for the next installment.
I am an undisciplined writer. I have a love-hate relationship with the pen (or keyboard). Those of you who read my blog will know that I am never short of an idea for a story. As a child I was characterized as having an incredible imagination. I won awards for my creative writing all the time. But where has that gotten me?
Pretty much nowhere.
You see, I am undisciplined.
I am all about the genesis of an idea and run a mile when it comes to the follow-through.
I am very hard on myself regarding what I see as laziness, apathy, extreme procrastination. I have all these novels that are dropped after the first or second draft. Let me tell you, there is nothing sadder in this world than a half-written novel.
You would think that feeling that sadness would be enough to motivate me to finish them off. Nuh-uh. You can’t tackle a lack of discipline with a case of the guilts – at least not in my case.
But now I think I know how you do begin to tackle that lack of discipline.
By looking at where it came from.
I met up with an old friend yesterday. Bron works at the university. She is doing a PhD at the moment.
Bron brought up an interesting point that has come up in her research. It’s to do with the tradition of oral storytelling. She noted that it wasn’t the storytellers themselves who started writing everything down but the listeners. They loved the tales so much they wanted to remember them. In some ways the listeners could be described as historians, for without them, many wonderful traditional tales would have been lost.
I come from a family of storytellers. On both sides. It goes back generations. I remember as a young child sitting around the hearth hearing my grandmother, my great grandmother, my great aunts and uncles telling stories. These stories weren’t the usual embellishments one hears at family gatherings; the stories we’re all used to hearing.
Like the one that got away from Uncle Ronnie on his ill-fated fishing trip. Or how cousin Mary almost met Tom Jones that time he played the London Palladium in 1965.
These were real stories. Fiction. Stories I have never heard anywhere else. Stories that I am sad to say have been lost because no one ever wrote them down.
I do it too. Tell stories around the dinner table. I’ve done it since I was a kid. Bron thinks I am the last generation of a family of storytellers. She says because I am the last one I need to learn to write things down and follow them through to completion. That I need to change the way I look at the process and come to regard the rewrites and editing, not as a chore, but as the finishing touches to the gift of the story.
That I owe it to myself as well as the story, because when the family is gone and the hearth is cold, oral storytellers still need their stories to be heard.
I know that she is right. And surprisingly enough, it is making the whole process a little easier. Breaking with tradition is not as hard as I thought.
The first draft has been rewritten and sent to the First Reader. While there is a definite sense of relief, I already miss the adventure, and I’m looking forward to finalizing it. I hope that’s a good sign.
In the mean time, I’m going to do a little guilt free web surfing, and plotting out the next manuscript of this series.
Yay!
The Re gang. They are not my favorite writing partners, but without them, I would only have garbage on my pages. At the very least, I’d be the only one who would understand what I was trying to write.
Who are the Re’s?
For me, the first up is generally a Re-Write. Usually, I’ve been getting the ideas down, knowing I’ll have time later to fill in the blanks. It’s that “filling in” part that can drive me insane. Especially if I’ve reached a point where I know the story takes a twist, but I’ve written myself into a first-draft corner, and it will take a lot of work to get me out of it.
It also helps to make a list of important plot moments for each chapter, so I can remember when and where certain things happen, and even more importantly, HOW LONG THESE THINGS TOOK MY CHARACTERS TO DO. Um, emphasis is for my own benefit, since I apparently had them doing some major time traveling.
But the first re-write sifts through that mess and the tangles are combed out into some semblance of order. It’s also where most of my spelling errors are caught, you know, the ones that spell check doesn’t catch because they really ARE words, just not the right ones.
Next up is Re-Read. While the words that tumble directly from my head to the page are in some kind of order, when I’m writing quickly (like during NaNoWriMo) I don’t always pay attention to petty details. Even the important, petty, details. Without re-reading my work, I would have characters sitting down, then sitting down, then finding a place to sit down, aaand, sitting down. All within a few paragraphs, AND without getting up between the sits.
Details that give us enough information to bring us into the scene are often found missing during a re-read. Oh, and reading it out loud, especially to someone who isn’t afraid to say, “um, how many times are you going to have her sit down?” or “just how many clothes is that woman wearing? You’ve gotten her dressed three times in as many paragraphs.”
I would have caught those myself during the re-read, but my victim was much faster at mentioning it.
Re #3 is Re-Write. Again! All I can say is, WHAT A PEST! Didn’t I just write this manuscript? Didn’t we already drive over this cliff? Yes. Now I have to go through everything again, just to fix the stuff caught during re-reading.
It can take a long time, but one way I’ve learned to make it seem faster, is to break my work into chapters. These chapters are logical stopping points for certain actions. By putting them in smaller chunks, not only can I see some progress, but it helps me keep, and find, details that I may need to refer to later.
And, guess who’s back! Yes, Re-Read. Out loud, or sent to a reading friend, this is where you really find your missing details. Some writers find it better if they put their work away for a little while, then go back to it. Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to have that experience, simply because I end up dragging my writing out for so long, by the time I’m ready to start a new piece, I need to focus on finishing the old so I can give undivided attention to the new. Someday, I hope to find a way to put that technique to the test.
In the mean time, I rely on honest friends to read my work and tell me what needs to be changed.
That’s when Revise comes to play, and the entire manuscript is tweaked and greased until the squeaking stops. All commas, apostrophes (should there be an apostrophe there?), spelling glitches, timelines, and, oh my very favorite, JUST WHO THE HECK IS TALKING HERE? (I love writing dialog, but because I hear the characters talking in my head, I forget that my readers don’t have that luxury and need some cues to know who is saying what) all need to be put in order.
Once revise is done, there is another read-through, then it needs a query letter and a long list of potential agents/publishers to visit.
Or, it can just join the other “finished” manuscript on my hard drive where it can collect virtual dust waiting for my courage to show up and drop it in the mail.
Who are your writing nemeses?
Please pardon my absence the past week or so. I’ve actually been busy…WRITING!!!
Yes, my NaNo project has been occupying a lot of my time, and progress has been made. So far, in the past three days, I’ve managed to rewrite three chapters. This is huge, my friends, huge. It’s the first rewrite, so I’m having to put down a LOT of details, as well as make some changes in order to keep things logical and all flowing in the same direction.
Once the full manuscript has gone through a complete rewrite, I’ll do it one more time, then hand it off to some patient friends who will make sure it makes sense outside my head.
In my opinion, this first rewrite is the worst, and by far the hardest part of writing a manuscript.
What about you? What is your least favorite, or what you feel is the hardest part, about writing? (oh, and I’m not even counting the submission part, because… GAH!!!)
