Right, so...I need to stop making promises.
Seriously.
Hello, everyone. As I'm sure you've all figured out by now, Runic is not going well.
In fact, it's not really going at all.
You see, I apparently have this odd writing quirk where I make grandiose plans, prepare for those plans, promise people that I'm going to follow through on those plans...and then completely switch my plans to work on an entirely different project at the last minute (...or one month past the last minute, in this case).
It's a psychological disorder, I swear. I think I need counseling. :P
So, anyways, I'm not going to be rewriting Runic this semester. Unfortunately.
There are a variety of reasons for this, and I could get into them, but the most important one is this: I'm a lazy, undisciplined, selfish fool. AKA, I'm a bad person. But we all knew that already, so I'm not sure why this is such a surprising revelation.
Back on track with the post, now, yes?
I am writing now. I've switched to another older project: a short story I started last summer but am now expanding into a novel (it needs to be, honestly). It looks like it's going to shape out into a tight, character-focused, five-act tragedy. So...you know, the kind of stuff I've been doing all year, more or less.
In fact, let me share with you a few brief thoughts on the matter that I sent to my girlfriend in a text:
"2,271 words. Reached the end (more or less) of the old stuff. Learned some new things about the characters involved and decided on a way to fit the story into a beautiful 5-act structure. Ready to dive into new stuff tomorrow."
(Too bad it's too long to be a tweet. I like the condensed nature and reporting tone.)
So, yeah, that's what I'm working on right now. As I have said before, hopefully this springboards me into writing other things, but I'm not going to make any promises.
Until next time (whenever that may be).
Showing posts with label revising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label revising. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Runic Progress Report -- Accountability
This is called public accountability. I hear a lot of big companies do something similar: board meetings, voter meetings, earnings reports, etc. Call it what you will. It's a rather ingenious way to motivate yourself. After all, if you know you're going to have to give an account for your actions, you'll likely follow through on goals and promises that you've made to yourself that pertain to those actions.
So that's what we have here.
Two things I want to say tonight:
1. I've "finished" the outline for my rewrite of Runic. Yes, it took way too long. I was travelling during the weekend, as you noticed. Work doesn't happen when I'm travelling.
As far as the outline goes, though, it's looking good. An intriguing opening, a solid enough ending, and a couple twists and developments in the middle. The middle bits will certainly need the most work, of course, but that's always something that I seem to work on during the actual process of writing. So...problem for another day.
With the outline finished, though, I should be almost ready to start in on the actual prose. I'm going to take the rest of this week's writing sessions to work on some much-needed worldbuilding and character development, that way I won't have to bog myself down with on-the-fly creation and/or fact-checking when I'm trying to crank out multiple thousands of words each day.
...which brings me to my second point.
2. My goal is to finish the first draft of the Runic rewrite by the time I leave for midterm break on October 12. That means, if I start writing sometime between Saturday and Monday, I'll have just around a full month to expand my initial concept from the 2009 rough draft into the bone structure for this year's edition. There's at least twice as much story and probably four times as much eventual plot involved in this rewrite. So...yeah, quite a bit to churn out.
That's my goal. This is me being held accountable. Let's see what happens, folks.
So that's what we have here.
Two things I want to say tonight:
1. I've "finished" the outline for my rewrite of Runic. Yes, it took way too long. I was travelling during the weekend, as you noticed. Work doesn't happen when I'm travelling.
As far as the outline goes, though, it's looking good. An intriguing opening, a solid enough ending, and a couple twists and developments in the middle. The middle bits will certainly need the most work, of course, but that's always something that I seem to work on during the actual process of writing. So...problem for another day.
With the outline finished, though, I should be almost ready to start in on the actual prose. I'm going to take the rest of this week's writing sessions to work on some much-needed worldbuilding and character development, that way I won't have to bog myself down with on-the-fly creation and/or fact-checking when I'm trying to crank out multiple thousands of words each day.
...which brings me to my second point.
2. My goal is to finish the first draft of the Runic rewrite by the time I leave for midterm break on October 12. That means, if I start writing sometime between Saturday and Monday, I'll have just around a full month to expand my initial concept from the 2009 rough draft into the bone structure for this year's edition. There's at least twice as much story and probably four times as much eventual plot involved in this rewrite. So...yeah, quite a bit to churn out.
That's my goal. This is me being held accountable. Let's see what happens, folks.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Welcome Back
Okay. So much for the productive summer.
Between class, work, and various social obligations to family and friends, I have not been able to maintain my writing goals during these summer months.
That's okay. It was all important stuff. I'm closer to graduation, farther from debt, and I've reconnected with those I've been absent from for the past semester (most of them, at least). Overall, it's a net-positive summer, even if it hasn't been productive for writing.
But now the summer is drawing to an end and it's time for me to buckle down to finish out the year strong.
This coming week I will be attending the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) in Reno, Nevada. It's going to be first con, and I'm really excited. George R.R. Martin will be there, and Brandon Sanderson, and Lou Anders, and Writing Excuses, and Robin Hobb, and Kim Stanley Robinson, and Pat Rothfuss, and so many others. They're going to be presenting on topics of all kinds, from game design, to world-building, to film adaptation, and so on. Oh, and there're also plays, and films, and readings, and signings, and dances, and other shows and stuff.
Wow. I'm excited. Starts wednesday. Goes til Sunday. I return monday; I leave for school on tuesday. Busy couple of weeks here...
Once I return to school, I'll be starting in on three goals, both personal and professional.
On the personal front, I'm going to be reconnecting with the friends I haven't seen since last Fall; and a part of that will be through RPG campaigns. (Side note: I'm really looking forward to these campaigns this year. It's been far too long since I've run a campaign, and they're wonderful social events for me to practice my on-the-fly storytelling.)
On the professional side of things, I need to begin preparing for graduation. Everything should line up for me to finish school on time, and I'm hoping to have a job waiting for me when I'm done.
On both ends, I'm planning to rewrite and revise Runic in order to prepare it for submission to publishers in January. I'm estimating the final length of the book to be between 90k and 120k words. Which means I'll need to write at least 1300 words each day while I'm at school if I'm to get it done at all. If I want time to revise, I'll probably want to write between 2500 and 3000 each day. But we'll see if I have time after fulfilling all of my other daily goals.
I'm confident that I can get Runic ready for submission by January. I just need be consistent in my efforts...again.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this is going to give me enough to finish my year of words (for those of you who forgot, the goal was 500k words). I'm still going to try for it, but...well, my prospects don't look good. And I don't want to exhaust myself or depress myself by holding myself to a commitment that I can no longer keep. *sigh* It's disappointing, but a likely necessity.
One final note, I'm going to be offering frequent updates from my trip this week. Today and the next few days are going to be spent in the San Francisco area here, and then Wednesday through Sunday will be a flurry of fan excitement streaming forth from WorldCon. (Excitement!) Following that, I'll be back at school and back to work. And hopefully I'll be able to continue offering updates then as well.
Until then, thank you for your time.
Between class, work, and various social obligations to family and friends, I have not been able to maintain my writing goals during these summer months.
That's okay. It was all important stuff. I'm closer to graduation, farther from debt, and I've reconnected with those I've been absent from for the past semester (most of them, at least). Overall, it's a net-positive summer, even if it hasn't been productive for writing.
But now the summer is drawing to an end and it's time for me to buckle down to finish out the year strong.
This coming week I will be attending the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) in Reno, Nevada. It's going to be first con, and I'm really excited. George R.R. Martin will be there, and Brandon Sanderson, and Lou Anders, and Writing Excuses, and Robin Hobb, and Kim Stanley Robinson, and Pat Rothfuss, and so many others. They're going to be presenting on topics of all kinds, from game design, to world-building, to film adaptation, and so on. Oh, and there're also plays, and films, and readings, and signings, and dances, and other shows and stuff.
Wow. I'm excited. Starts wednesday. Goes til Sunday. I return monday; I leave for school on tuesday. Busy couple of weeks here...
Once I return to school, I'll be starting in on three goals, both personal and professional.
On the personal front, I'm going to be reconnecting with the friends I haven't seen since last Fall; and a part of that will be through RPG campaigns. (Side note: I'm really looking forward to these campaigns this year. It's been far too long since I've run a campaign, and they're wonderful social events for me to practice my on-the-fly storytelling.)
On the professional side of things, I need to begin preparing for graduation. Everything should line up for me to finish school on time, and I'm hoping to have a job waiting for me when I'm done.
On both ends, I'm planning to rewrite and revise Runic in order to prepare it for submission to publishers in January. I'm estimating the final length of the book to be between 90k and 120k words. Which means I'll need to write at least 1300 words each day while I'm at school if I'm to get it done at all. If I want time to revise, I'll probably want to write between 2500 and 3000 each day. But we'll see if I have time after fulfilling all of my other daily goals.
I'm confident that I can get Runic ready for submission by January. I just need be consistent in my efforts...again.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this is going to give me enough to finish my year of words (for those of you who forgot, the goal was 500k words). I'm still going to try for it, but...well, my prospects don't look good. And I don't want to exhaust myself or depress myself by holding myself to a commitment that I can no longer keep. *sigh* It's disappointing, but a likely necessity.
One final note, I'm going to be offering frequent updates from my trip this week. Today and the next few days are going to be spent in the San Francisco area here, and then Wednesday through Sunday will be a flurry of fan excitement streaming forth from WorldCon. (Excitement!) Following that, I'll be back at school and back to work. And hopefully I'll be able to continue offering updates then as well.
Until then, thank you for your time.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Myth-Busting with Dean Wesley Smith
So... this is going to more a self-serving post. I've recently read through all of Dean Wesley Smith's posts on "Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing," and there are a few I want to keep track of as I begin to make intentional strides toward getting myself started in this business (and yes, it is a business).
Overall, I found Smith's articles on the publishing to be thought-provoking and informative. His ideas certainly challenged long-held beliefs of my own and they have encouraged me to learn a variety of new things and to never stop learning, regardless of the subject.
A few of his thoughts appear, currently, to be a bit over-the-top. However, I am certainly not going to challenge him on what has worked for his career thus far.
More to the point, there are over a dozen articles that I found especially helpful and applicable to my situation and set of assumptions about the writing/publishing business. These are deep-rooted concepts that have guided me in my attempts thus far and seeing them challenged is painful, enlightening, encouraging, and all manner of other emotions in between. Thus, for my benefit (with the hope that some of these things might interest any of you as well), I am compiling them here in an order that makes sense to me.
Here we go:
Making Money Writing Fiction
The Myth: Can't Make Money in Fiction
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=607
The Myth: Only 300 Writers Make a Living
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=1121
The Publisher's Perspective
The Myth: New York Works as a Quality Filter
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=2251
The Myth: You Can Only Sell What's Hot
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=1793
The Myth: Follow the Rules to Get Published
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=956
The Act of Writing
The Myth: Writing is Hard
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=576
A Note: Speed
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=310
The Myth: Writers Don't Need to Practice
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=931
The Myth: Rewriting
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=329
A Note: Not Rewriting Does Not Mean Sloppy Writing
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=1826
The Myth: Researching Fiction
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=1053
The Career of Writing
The Myth: Rejections
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=1088
The Myth: Self Promotion
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=398
The Myth: Self-Publishing is a Bad Idea
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=2013
The Dangers of Agents
The Myth: Agents Can Help With Careers
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=816
The Myth: Agents Take Care of Your Money
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=909
A Note: Agents and Contracts
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=1213
A Note: Agent Agreements
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=740
And Finally
The Myth: "You Have It Made When..."
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=2525
I just want to say, once more, that I think the entire series is worth reading. These here are just the ones that stand out or really speak to me, personally, as a writer and a person. By all means, let my sample here interest you. But I hope that it encourages you to read the rest of the series if you have any interest at all in the writer's life, the business of publishing, or the potential livelihood of a loved one who may have chosen this profession. Mr. Smith here may not know everything, but he knows enough to paint a stark picture of what this career holds in store for those who seek it.
Until next time, then.
EDIT: 13 Feb 2011 -- I was poking around the "Writing Excuses" website earlier today, and I found an episode the guys did responding directly to Dean Wesley Smith's series of articles on agents. It's an excellent counterpoint to Smith's extremism. The comments, as well, are well-reasoned and insightful. Definitely worth a listen and a read if you're more interested in this ongoing debate about the worth of agents.
LINK: http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/01/31/writing-excuses-4-4-agents-do-you-need-one/
Overall, I found Smith's articles on the publishing to be thought-provoking and informative. His ideas certainly challenged long-held beliefs of my own and they have encouraged me to learn a variety of new things and to never stop learning, regardless of the subject.
A few of his thoughts appear, currently, to be a bit over-the-top. However, I am certainly not going to challenge him on what has worked for his career thus far.
More to the point, there are over a dozen articles that I found especially helpful and applicable to my situation and set of assumptions about the writing/publishing business. These are deep-rooted concepts that have guided me in my attempts thus far and seeing them challenged is painful, enlightening, encouraging, and all manner of other emotions in between. Thus, for my benefit (with the hope that some of these things might interest any of you as well), I am compiling them here in an order that makes sense to me.
Here we go:
Making Money Writing Fiction
The Myth: Can't Make Money in Fiction
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=607
The Myth: Only 300 Writers Make a Living
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=1121
The Publisher's Perspective
The Myth: New York Works as a Quality Filter
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=2251
The Myth: You Can Only Sell What's Hot
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=1793
The Myth: Follow the Rules to Get Published
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=956
The Act of Writing
The Myth: Writing is Hard
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=576
A Note: Speed
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=310
The Myth: Writers Don't Need to Practice
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=931
The Myth: Rewriting
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=329
A Note: Not Rewriting Does Not Mean Sloppy Writing
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=1826
The Myth: Researching Fiction
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=1053
The Career of Writing
The Myth: Rejections
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=1088
The Myth: Self Promotion
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=398
The Myth: Self-Publishing is a Bad Idea
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=2013
The Dangers of Agents
The Myth: Agents Can Help With Careers
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=816
The Myth: Agents Take Care of Your Money
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=909
A Note: Agents and Contracts
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=1213
A Note: Agent Agreements
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=740
And Finally
The Myth: "You Have It Made When..."
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=2525
I just want to say, once more, that I think the entire series is worth reading. These here are just the ones that stand out or really speak to me, personally, as a writer and a person. By all means, let my sample here interest you. But I hope that it encourages you to read the rest of the series if you have any interest at all in the writer's life, the business of publishing, or the potential livelihood of a loved one who may have chosen this profession. Mr. Smith here may not know everything, but he knows enough to paint a stark picture of what this career holds in store for those who seek it.
Until next time, then.
EDIT: 13 Feb 2011 -- I was poking around the "Writing Excuses" website earlier today, and I found an episode the guys did responding directly to Dean Wesley Smith's series of articles on agents. It's an excellent counterpoint to Smith's extremism. The comments, as well, are well-reasoned and insightful. Definitely worth a listen and a read if you're more interested in this ongoing debate about the worth of agents.
LINK: http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/01/31/writing-excuses-4-4-agents-do-you-need-one/
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Journey to 500K Update -- A Thought on Lost Memories
I'm well on my way to 500,000 words for the year. I haven't quite settled into a routine of writing a bit each day, but I've written during a clear majority of them and have exceeded my word count expectations almost every day that I sit down.
That being said, it's time to pick up the pace. I gave myself an easy January in order to ease into things and allow time for me to work on outlining and world development. That bit isn't quite done yet, but I can't allow it to impeded my progress.
40-50 thousand is the goal for February. It's over twice as much as I had planned for January. However, I exceeded my goal for January, so I am confident that I can do so again for February.
In addition, ideas are brimming over left and right from my head right now, so I shouldn't have a problem finding material to write throughout this month. The biggest trick will probably be preventing me from distracting myself with other writing projects.
That brings me to my real musings for today: amnesia.
See, I'm well past the first act (of seven) in the novel right now, but I'm having significant difficulty making it all click together. Oh, sure, I know what's supposed to happen next and all that. Events have seldom ever been my problem. Instead, as usual, I'm having a problem convincing the characters to be people and gel with the rest of the world and story.
More specifically, my problem is with the protagonist. At the beginning of the story, I introduce him to the reader as having no memory. Shortly after this, we meet some of his allies from the past and they begin to fill him in on a few of the important bits, but never so much that you really understand his past (and neither does he).
This makes it really difficult to give the man a personality; and even more difficult to convey that personality to the audience.
Naturally, I'm going to be revealing the truth about his past at various points throughout the book (the nature of truth and memory and responsibility are all important themes in the story). But I can already tell from my outlining that these revelations are going to be spaced out quite thinly, and we're going to be in a dry patch here for most of the second act.
This is an issue. I know that I haven't established this man as a character effectively yet, so the majority of his character development in acts two and three, and then the subsequent revelations planned for acts four and five, are going to be relatively meaningless because the reader doesn't care.
I need to fix this.
But then the question becomes when do I fix it? I could try to work in some of the revelations to be earlier in the outline, but I'm trying to convince the audience that he's a certain way before dropping paradigm shifts into the story. It's kind of the core focus of the book -- I don't know if it's going to work, but I want to at least try.
I could, instead, try letting him keep pieces of his memory from the start. That would give him a much more definite personality, and it would present a multi-layered mystery (what has happened in his past, as he sees it; then, later, what actually happened in the past, etc.). I like this idea a lot.
The only problem there, then, is that I've already passed up the opening of the book and have established him as being this confused amnesiac. I know a number of authors talk about "breaking" their story halfway through by changing character personalities and introducing concepts that had otherwise gone unmentioned. I like the idea, but I've never been very good at it. Especially when it comes to characters.
So, for now, I'm just going to push through to the end (or as far as I can get this year) and keep a record of all the things that aren't working and/or need to change. Then I'll go back and have a better idea of what I'm doing on the second draft. (Yeah, sounds like a tedious process, I know. Maybe I'll talk about multi-draft writers versus outline-based writers in a future post.)
Anyways, that's where I'm at right now. If you'll excuse me, I have to go save my protagonist from the mind of a crazy circus gnome.
Current Word Count for the Year: 23,214/500,000
That being said, it's time to pick up the pace. I gave myself an easy January in order to ease into things and allow time for me to work on outlining and world development. That bit isn't quite done yet, but I can't allow it to impeded my progress.
40-50 thousand is the goal for February. It's over twice as much as I had planned for January. However, I exceeded my goal for January, so I am confident that I can do so again for February.
In addition, ideas are brimming over left and right from my head right now, so I shouldn't have a problem finding material to write throughout this month. The biggest trick will probably be preventing me from distracting myself with other writing projects.
That brings me to my real musings for today: amnesia.
See, I'm well past the first act (of seven) in the novel right now, but I'm having significant difficulty making it all click together. Oh, sure, I know what's supposed to happen next and all that. Events have seldom ever been my problem. Instead, as usual, I'm having a problem convincing the characters to be people and gel with the rest of the world and story.
More specifically, my problem is with the protagonist. At the beginning of the story, I introduce him to the reader as having no memory. Shortly after this, we meet some of his allies from the past and they begin to fill him in on a few of the important bits, but never so much that you really understand his past (and neither does he).
This makes it really difficult to give the man a personality; and even more difficult to convey that personality to the audience.
Naturally, I'm going to be revealing the truth about his past at various points throughout the book (the nature of truth and memory and responsibility are all important themes in the story). But I can already tell from my outlining that these revelations are going to be spaced out quite thinly, and we're going to be in a dry patch here for most of the second act.
This is an issue. I know that I haven't established this man as a character effectively yet, so the majority of his character development in acts two and three, and then the subsequent revelations planned for acts four and five, are going to be relatively meaningless because the reader doesn't care.
I need to fix this.
But then the question becomes when do I fix it? I could try to work in some of the revelations to be earlier in the outline, but I'm trying to convince the audience that he's a certain way before dropping paradigm shifts into the story. It's kind of the core focus of the book -- I don't know if it's going to work, but I want to at least try.
I could, instead, try letting him keep pieces of his memory from the start. That would give him a much more definite personality, and it would present a multi-layered mystery (what has happened in his past, as he sees it; then, later, what actually happened in the past, etc.). I like this idea a lot.
The only problem there, then, is that I've already passed up the opening of the book and have established him as being this confused amnesiac. I know a number of authors talk about "breaking" their story halfway through by changing character personalities and introducing concepts that had otherwise gone unmentioned. I like the idea, but I've never been very good at it. Especially when it comes to characters.
So, for now, I'm just going to push through to the end (or as far as I can get this year) and keep a record of all the things that aren't working and/or need to change. Then I'll go back and have a better idea of what I'm doing on the second draft. (Yeah, sounds like a tedious process, I know. Maybe I'll talk about multi-draft writers versus outline-based writers in a future post.)
Anyways, that's where I'm at right now. If you'll excuse me, I have to go save my protagonist from the mind of a crazy circus gnome.
Current Word Count for the Year: 23,214/500,000
Monday, December 20, 2010
Return and Updates
Okay, so it's been a while since I've been able to post anything and it's been even longer since my last update. I'm done with finals, back from school, and all rested up. So it's time to return to work. So let's go through a quick rundown on both and talk about this year's projects in preparation for next year's prospects.
Declaration -- NaNo 2010
This project is done, as I said. At this point, I'm waiting to hear back from some alpha-readers about what they think. I may return to it for some revision later on in my career. For now, though, this project is done. It was good practice and an enjoyable experience. Unless I have some particular nugget of wisdom to share about it or I receive an especially entertaining comment from my alpha readers, I'm going to put this one to rest for a while. You shouldn't be hearing about it at all in the coming year.
Godslayers
As I've mentioned before, this was my semester project for the Fall. It went well, I had a good run that brought me through about half of my prepared outline. Unfortunately, it has since stalled out a bit for a number or reasons. I'm trying to finish off another story arc before the end of the year, but my progress has been slacking. I'm still really excited about this project, but I think I need to sit down with what I have in order to redevelop some of the initial world-building and character development. In any case, this is probably a project that will be put away for most of the new year. I may return to it during the summer or revive it for my Fall project next year, but for the time being I'm intending to keep it under wraps.
Runic
Lots of potential here. That's all I can really say about it right now. I've had a number of conceptual breakthroughs on what to do with the story -- where it's at, where it's going, what I need to do to fix it, etc. -- but I'm still only at the read-through stage. I haven't been able to examine it structurally or develop a working outline for it. I haven't been able to nail down any more of its world-building or character development. When am I going to get around to all of these things? I don't know. Right now, I'm just wanting to produce a large quantity of works in order to develop my techniques, styles, and voice as a writer. I want to explore a number of different situations, characters, themes, genres, and ideas before I dedicate two years of myself to polishing up one project. So yeah, right now Runic is on the background, but it's going to get it's proper treatment one of these days.
Other Projects
My goodness, so much I haven't directly worked on, yet has received tremendous boosts of inspiration from this semester. I'm getting much better at conceiving, hatching, and developing a concept, and I'm really excited and (dare I say it?) proud of some of the ones I've found this semester. Maybe I'll do a whole post on that sometime. Sure, it'd make for an entertaining way to follow my own mind from "oh-my-goodness-fantastic" excitement over an idea through "I-can't-believe-I-thought-this-was-good" disappointment over an idea until it reaches "okay-I-think-I-have-something-workable" acceptance of an idea.
Cool.
Alright, that's all for now. Tomorrow (next time?) I'm going to take a minute to think back on the school semester and see if I can't identify a few things I've learned.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Runic Progress
Okay, so not an insightful rambling, but still wanted to mention this.
I finished my reread of Runic today. First step of editing: complete.
Now it's time to go through it all over again, but this time with the intent of taking judicious notes.
So yeah, this is exciting for me. Runic is the first novel I ever finished. It's not good, but I think it still has potential. So now it's going to be the first novel I ever revise/rewrite.
Truly, it is an exciting day.
Still, though, I'm kind of disappointed. I had initially planned to read through this text during my first couple weeks back at school, but now here I am about to enter Finals week and I'm just now finishing the read-through.
Oh well. It's not a big deal. And with all the other progress I've made this semester (finishing NaNo, writing so much of Godslayers, reading Way of Kings, etc.), it's hard to be disappointed with what I've accomplished. It's also not surprising that I was a bit too ambitious and that some things had to fall by the wayside during all of this productivity.
From here, it's going to be an even greater uphill climb. I write very sloppy first drafts. Characters are flat, settings are underdeveloped, plots are paper-thin, etc. I generally seem to have a solid concept of structure and theme, even if those things don't always make themselves apparent until the end.
I'm confident of my ability to rework this thing (and if I'm not, I'm still going to fake it for the sake of trying). It's just going to take a lot of effort.
But hey, I knew about that when I signed up for this job.
Back to work now.
I finished my reread of Runic today. First step of editing: complete.
Now it's time to go through it all over again, but this time with the intent of taking judicious notes.
So yeah, this is exciting for me. Runic is the first novel I ever finished. It's not good, but I think it still has potential. So now it's going to be the first novel I ever revise/rewrite.
Truly, it is an exciting day.
Still, though, I'm kind of disappointed. I had initially planned to read through this text during my first couple weeks back at school, but now here I am about to enter Finals week and I'm just now finishing the read-through.
Oh well. It's not a big deal. And with all the other progress I've made this semester (finishing NaNo, writing so much of Godslayers, reading Way of Kings, etc.), it's hard to be disappointed with what I've accomplished. It's also not surprising that I was a bit too ambitious and that some things had to fall by the wayside during all of this productivity.
From here, it's going to be an even greater uphill climb. I write very sloppy first drafts. Characters are flat, settings are underdeveloped, plots are paper-thin, etc. I generally seem to have a solid concept of structure and theme, even if those things don't always make themselves apparent until the end.
I'm confident of my ability to rework this thing (and if I'm not, I'm still going to fake it for the sake of trying). It's just going to take a lot of effort.
But hey, I knew about that when I signed up for this job.
Back to work now.
Monday, December 6, 2010
NaNo 2010 Novel Complete
Well, that's that. The beast is dead.
Even though I "won" NaNo about a week ago, the story wasn't quite finished, so I had to keep it up for about 10k more words.
Today I put the final (optional) finishing touches on the draft. It was quite an experience to actually do NaNo right and finish it out through to the end. (I'm curious now as to how far my other efforts reached and if they would breeze by as easily as this one did now that I have some practice. Maybe we'll see some day.)
Overall, the experience was highly validating. Which I realize is the point; the NaNo organizers put on this show every year (with all its fantastic support) for the sole purpose of boosting the confidence of thousands of budding (and some experienced, no doubt) writers. And that's a great service to the writing community.
For me, this year it was simply a crazy gamble. About three days before NaNo started I thought, "You know, I'm kind of reaching a dry spot on my current project, I could probably use a break from it. Why not NaNo?"
So there I was, three days to prepare and about to leap off into a whirlwind of production unrivaled by anything I've done before. Sure, I've been writing consistently almost every day since the semester started, but this? This was borderline crazy. November is always one of the busiest months of the school year, especially for English majors. I had to be batty to think that I could triple my word count per day for an entire month, especially November.
Low and behold, the first day came and I produced well more than the required word count. I even had some energy left to go on, but I figured I should do the responsible thing and actually work on that homework I was so worried about.
The first week was fantastic, setting me on track to finish by the 25th or something.
Week two was rough as anything. The momentum from exploring the world and the characters and their interactions was starting to slow and I was having to let them do stuff, like make mistakes and drive the plot forward. (Note to self, something to work on: Allowing characters to drive plot.)
Week three came and I was barely on track with my word count and way off track with my outline. The sci-fi military heist thriller I thought I was writing had turned into a corporate mining drama somewhere in the middle of week two and now week three was devoted to living through the ramifications of that shift in tone.
Week four started out strong, but somebody decided to have NaNo in the same month as Thanksgiving, so I lost a whole day there. Once that was over I was able to get started on the word counts again and, with a little help from the buffer that I hadn't quite exhausted from earlier in the month, I hit 50k by the end of the week. NaNo was over.
...but not quite. I was still trying to pull off my sci-fi military heist thriller, after all, and I was going to get my action-packed ending come hell or high word counts!
So I hunkered down this past week to produce what I estimated would be 5k words to finish off the story and ended up being 10k (of course). But now that's it. The story is told. It's put to rest. It's sent off to friends and family who are clamoring to read it (surprisingly), and now I can turn my attention back to other projects (and homework).
So, a quick forecast before signing off.
"Declaration -- NaNo 2010"
This is finished. It's still in draft form, obviously, but it's a full story, so I'm going to put it to rest.
"Godslayers"
This will be my main project for the rest of the month. I'm hoping to reach another milestone in my outline before the end of the year, but as I'm easing back into it, I'm wondering if a month was too long to take off. I'm a little disoriented and the characters' voices are a bit thin. On top of that, we ended at a major milestone before NaNo and I'm not really sure how to deal with the fallout from those events. (Two things I learned from the NaNo: 1. Letting your characters guide the story is quite an exciting ride of emotional discovery, but I am horribly inexperienced at it. 2. I have difficulty filling the "slower" bits in between the major plot twists.) I'm going to hold myself to a modest word count for the rest of the month and I'm going to focus that word count on "Godslayers" here, but I'm probably going to have to read through it again and do another month or so of development and outlining before I can really make some significant progress. That'll probably be my project for the summer.
"Runic"
I've only got fifty pages left to read on what I had hoped would be my semester-long revision project. Well, plans go awry. I would like to at least finish reading through this time here and (hopefully) identify some structural concerns so I can start outlining the second draft for me to write over the summer.
Class Projects:
Shakespeare presentation and paper due within a week. Lord of the Rings presentation and paper slightly overdue, but I talked to the professor. I'm hoping I don't botch these up like I sometimes do with final papers, because I really like these classes and I'm actually interested in the topics I'm researching (especially the LotR one).
Development:
This is going to be the big one. I need to start developing one of my larger stories to be my writing project while I'm in England. I want to do something that I've been "working on" for a long time. One of those peripheral ideas that I keep holding off on, even though I keep doing bits and pieces of worldbuilding, because I don't think I'm ready or whatever. I want to take the stuff I've learned this semester and attack this project head-on. Unfortunately, that means I need to decide what project it's going to be within the next few days here so I'll actually have time to develop it before diving into word counts for January.
Phew. Alright. Kind of a heavy load. But that's okay. I'm looking forward to it.
I think tomorrow I'll take some time to talk about an author I admire. This one was far too much about me.
Tune in on the 25th for some fun news about next year.
Even though I "won" NaNo about a week ago, the story wasn't quite finished, so I had to keep it up for about 10k more words.
Today I put the final (optional) finishing touches on the draft. It was quite an experience to actually do NaNo right and finish it out through to the end. (I'm curious now as to how far my other efforts reached and if they would breeze by as easily as this one did now that I have some practice. Maybe we'll see some day.)
Overall, the experience was highly validating. Which I realize is the point; the NaNo organizers put on this show every year (with all its fantastic support) for the sole purpose of boosting the confidence of thousands of budding (and some experienced, no doubt) writers. And that's a great service to the writing community.
For me, this year it was simply a crazy gamble. About three days before NaNo started I thought, "You know, I'm kind of reaching a dry spot on my current project, I could probably use a break from it. Why not NaNo?"
So there I was, three days to prepare and about to leap off into a whirlwind of production unrivaled by anything I've done before. Sure, I've been writing consistently almost every day since the semester started, but this? This was borderline crazy. November is always one of the busiest months of the school year, especially for English majors. I had to be batty to think that I could triple my word count per day for an entire month, especially November.
Low and behold, the first day came and I produced well more than the required word count. I even had some energy left to go on, but I figured I should do the responsible thing and actually work on that homework I was so worried about.
The first week was fantastic, setting me on track to finish by the 25th or something.
Week two was rough as anything. The momentum from exploring the world and the characters and their interactions was starting to slow and I was having to let them do stuff, like make mistakes and drive the plot forward. (Note to self, something to work on: Allowing characters to drive plot.)
Week three came and I was barely on track with my word count and way off track with my outline. The sci-fi military heist thriller I thought I was writing had turned into a corporate mining drama somewhere in the middle of week two and now week three was devoted to living through the ramifications of that shift in tone.
Week four started out strong, but somebody decided to have NaNo in the same month as Thanksgiving, so I lost a whole day there. Once that was over I was able to get started on the word counts again and, with a little help from the buffer that I hadn't quite exhausted from earlier in the month, I hit 50k by the end of the week. NaNo was over.
...but not quite. I was still trying to pull off my sci-fi military heist thriller, after all, and I was going to get my action-packed ending come hell or high word counts!
So I hunkered down this past week to produce what I estimated would be 5k words to finish off the story and ended up being 10k (of course). But now that's it. The story is told. It's put to rest. It's sent off to friends and family who are clamoring to read it (surprisingly), and now I can turn my attention back to other projects (and homework).
So, a quick forecast before signing off.
"Declaration -- NaNo 2010"
This is finished. It's still in draft form, obviously, but it's a full story, so I'm going to put it to rest.
"Godslayers"
This will be my main project for the rest of the month. I'm hoping to reach another milestone in my outline before the end of the year, but as I'm easing back into it, I'm wondering if a month was too long to take off. I'm a little disoriented and the characters' voices are a bit thin. On top of that, we ended at a major milestone before NaNo and I'm not really sure how to deal with the fallout from those events. (Two things I learned from the NaNo: 1. Letting your characters guide the story is quite an exciting ride of emotional discovery, but I am horribly inexperienced at it. 2. I have difficulty filling the "slower" bits in between the major plot twists.) I'm going to hold myself to a modest word count for the rest of the month and I'm going to focus that word count on "Godslayers" here, but I'm probably going to have to read through it again and do another month or so of development and outlining before I can really make some significant progress. That'll probably be my project for the summer.
"Runic"
I've only got fifty pages left to read on what I had hoped would be my semester-long revision project. Well, plans go awry. I would like to at least finish reading through this time here and (hopefully) identify some structural concerns so I can start outlining the second draft for me to write over the summer.
Class Projects:
Shakespeare presentation and paper due within a week. Lord of the Rings presentation and paper slightly overdue, but I talked to the professor. I'm hoping I don't botch these up like I sometimes do with final papers, because I really like these classes and I'm actually interested in the topics I'm researching (especially the LotR one).
Development:
This is going to be the big one. I need to start developing one of my larger stories to be my writing project while I'm in England. I want to do something that I've been "working on" for a long time. One of those peripheral ideas that I keep holding off on, even though I keep doing bits and pieces of worldbuilding, because I don't think I'm ready or whatever. I want to take the stuff I've learned this semester and attack this project head-on. Unfortunately, that means I need to decide what project it's going to be within the next few days here so I'll actually have time to develop it before diving into word counts for January.
Phew. Alright. Kind of a heavy load. But that's okay. I'm looking forward to it.
I think tomorrow I'll take some time to talk about an author I admire. This one was far too much about me.
Tune in on the 25th for some fun news about next year.
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