A Writer's Fantasy

Happy Valentine's Day

2011-02-15T00:00:00.000-06:00

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone out there who celebrates this day, and even to those who don't! Random fact: today is also Ferris Wheel Day! So hooray for that, as well.

I reached a big milestone in the writing today, and I'm very proud of it. I'm over the 30k hump. roughly 100k left to go. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless. I've also completed a section that was irking me. It was complicated, unique, and one of the big ground-laying scenes. Now the story really picks up from here!

Short Post

2011-02-14T01:35:00.000-06:00

Short post tonight. Here it is:

Egypt and Progress

2011-02-12T15:36:00.000-06:00

It seems fitting that today's post be about progress--most of mine are. But today it's not only about my insignificant progress on my book (yes, I do believe it to be insignificant compared to things happening on a global scale), but about PROGRESS for people. The president of Egypt has stepped down finally. After 30 years or more in power, he's abdicated. This is a huge victory for peaceful protest. This is a huge victory for the world in general. Yes, there are rocky roads ahead for Egypt, because now the military is in control and honestly, who knows how well this is going to go? But it is a step in the right direction, and that can't be scoffed at.

On the insignificant front, tonight is going to be a busy night for me, so I am getting my update done now. The progress I've reached so far might be well surpassed tonight, but you'll just have to wait and find out tomorrow if that's the case. I'm not done working for the day, just not sure how much time I'll have to update later.

Street Fighter IV

2011-02-10T00:34:00.000-06:00

I've had a fun, good, and productive day all in one. Those are rare for me. Usually the days that are fun are not so much productive, and vice versa. It's snowing yet again, which is unusual for where I live. However, I'm not going to complain too much because I've managed to get quite a bit of writing done today. I'm in the midst of what promises to be a long section--probably the longest that I've written so far, and possibly the longest in the book. I would have to get further along before I can decide that. This is going to be a tricky scene for just that reason, though. I'm juggling pretty much every POV in this one, with specific action scenes that go along with each one, and I've got to figure out how to weave them together just right. I'm pretty much done for the night with writing, considering its almost 1:00am.

I spent a portion of my day playing Street Fighter IV--yeah, I know, who plays that game anymore, right? Well, I'm actually pretty damn good at it! I won't bore you with the details of my 18 to 8 winning tally. It's good to take time for the fun stuff in life. It reminds me that life needs to be enjoyed even as I'm writing. Below you'll find today's progress bar.

A New Book and Progress

2011-02-07T22:33:00.000-06:00

I always get excited when I get a new book to read, and today I finally got the next book in the Green Rider series (it just came out Tuesday, so I'm not too late), Blackveil. Expect a review of the entire series so far when I finish it. Which, with classes, a personal life, and my writing, that might not necessarily be the immediate future; I do like to savor Britain's books, so...we'll see.

And now let's see just how far the progress bar has climbed!

Why I Like The Superbowl

2011-02-06T22:43:00.001-06:00

I like the Superbowl simply because that means football is done monopolizing my television time for a few months. Hooray!

Spent some time with the family today, much needed time. It was fun. I should do it a little more often. But before and after this I managed to get some progress done on Shadow Lands, and I'm coming to a close tonight on a pivotal scene between two characters, the content of which is going to be very important for the next little while, so I'm going to call it a night and start fresh on it tomorrow to make sure I can do the scene justice. Here's the word count:

And The Number Is

2011-02-05T23:16:00.000-06:00

I'm tired, so I'm not going to make this post long or anything. Here's where I am today:

A Question of Length

2011-02-05T21:08:00.000-06:00

Length of a novel is probably the most difficult thing for a writer to consider when they are first starting out. This is a message repeated over and over again by some of my favorite authors. Length matters, and is almost impossible to pin down. Michelle West, my all-time favorite author, once projected the Sun Sword series to be a trilogy (and it ended up with six books). Kate Elliott, a writer I respect, made a similar misjudgment with her Crown of Swords series, projecting it to be a trilogy and ending up with SEVEN. George R. R. Martin envisioned A Song of Ice and Fire as a trilogy, too, at one point, and we're now awaiting the release of Book 5.

If you wanna see where this is going, read below. If not, okay.

I used all of these examples to say that when a story is just in the realm of your mind, it might seem nice and short or it might seem light a HUGE monster to wrestle with. This is how Shadow Lands seemed to me at the beginning, and I put a (for me) ambitious word count on it: 160k. Part of the hugeness of the story, for me, was in just NOT KNOWING what was going to be happening in some of the middle segments, but after a lot of time and a lot of questions from others and from myself, I think I've figured out those gray areas, for the most part. And in figuring things out, I think I can manage to make the story a bit more tight than it would have been before. By this I mean that I'm confident that I can reach the end of the story in about 130-140k, 20-30k shorter than it was going to be originally. I could turn out to be wrong, and this could still be a lengthy tome, but my hope is that it is a much more manageable one!

Oh, and tonight's word count coming later on. More work to be done.

That Feels Better!

2011-02-03T22:38:00.001-06:00

So I actually got some work done today! I just wrapped up a section that I have a feeling is going to be giving me some trouble in the rewrites. Its the first section that I've finished, looked over and thought "Eh" about. I don't like thinking "Eh". All of the elements are there, and the section is a necessary one, but where it's at it feels awkward and stifled. The scene should be a big showcase of one of the characters, and I didn't quite deliver that in this draft. We'll see. I'm just glad I'm done. Wrestling with that monster before I got sick was a reason things were going so slow. For now I at least have a working skeleton to use later on. Which means on to easier and more character-driven things. The last few sections have kind of skimped on character by necessity, but the next few are going to do the exact opposite, I believe, so I'll see how I like it. I'm not QUITE done tonight, though I am winding down because I have an early morning tomorrow, so here's the current progress bar--God it feels good to see it crawl forward again!

Muddling Through

2011-02-03T12:04:00.000-06:00

Okay my bout of illness is just about over now, thankfully. In fact, I felt better yesterday, but today I am finally putting my nose back to the grindstone and getting some serious work done. At least, that's my hope. There's still some tightness and muscle discomfort in my back that's come from nowhere--literally, it started yesterday and I'm not entirely sure why I have it. It does make sitting down to actually write a little bit of a pain--no pun intended. Okay, maybe slightly intended. However, I am a trooper, and I am going to toss back two advil and get on with the day of writing!

Fighting the Illness

2011-01-31T20:36:00.000-06:00

I've been sick the last two days, to the extent of not having the energy to move much less get work done. I slept most of the day yesterday and haven't managed to do more than remain in a upright position. I'm hoping that by tomorrow I will be feeling much better, and can once again get some good progress underway.

Weekends, Heh

2011-01-29T22:05:00.001-06:00

Weekends are not good times for me, progress -wise apparently. I've made some progress today, but its not what I would have liked, and progress is being delayed by events with friends--but that is certainly not something I would complain about. I've made some progress, so let's be happy the bar is moving at all.

Ugh and Ooh!

2011-01-29T12:56:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a bad day for me on a personal level and I'm not entirely sure it's showing any signs of improving any time soon. For the purposes of this blog I'm not going to go too deeply into detail about my personal life--really, this is supposed to be about the writing--but sometimes those details are necessary because they impact the writing. Suffice it to say I added very little to the manuscript or the first draft yesterday. These days happen, but hopefully they are few and far between, otherwise writing a tome as big as Shadow Lands is going to be a bit on the difficult side. I won't bother with a word count meter right now, because it's made such minimal progress--I hope to make up for that over the course of the day.

But on a good note, I am excited about the upcoming release of Kristen Britain's Blackveil, book 4 in her Green Rider series. It is a wonderful series of epic fantasy, and if you haven't read them yet, go out and get Green Rider, First Rider's Call and The High King's Tomb, the first three books in the series in preparation for Blackveil.

I. DID. IT.

2011-01-28T02:03:00.000-06:00

Dead. Have class tomorrow morning. Won't be pleasant. Despite alcohol, fun, dinner, and trips places that don't need to be talked about, I hit the 20k mark--10k in 5 days. Now to hit 30k in the next five days. If you don't mind, I'm passing out now.

Today

2011-01-26T23:57:00.000-06:00

So sue me. Didn't get much work done today--a fact that irritates me, to be honest. It's my fault along with circumstances. My fault: I have classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, which immediately means less time to work on the book. Add to that the fact that my brother had surgery today, and that's even less time to work on the book. That doesn't mean I got NOTHING done; I actually managed to put about 900 words to paper today, but it's a far cry from my usual progress. But that's not to be helped. Tomorrow is a day with no other obligations, which means work can progress as normal. Come hell or high water I WILL be breaking the 20k mark tomorrow!

Ps: On the plus side, the bar did go up 1 whole percent! :-)

Tonight

2011-01-25T21:48:00.000-06:00

So I'm done with adding new words to Shadow Lands, at least completely new words. For the night. The current word count is at a respectable number, as you'll see below:

I believe, with those numbers, that I can reach the 20k mark tomorrow, thus matching my earlier progress of 10k words in 4 days.

I'm not done for the night, however. At least not yet. I'm going to do some more work on transcribing the written work to the computer (aka the first draft), hoping to catch up a bit with the point I'm at in the rough draft. The work goes on!

The Pesky "-ly" Adverbs

2011-01-25T18:20:00.001-06:00

As a writer I'm always seeking ways to improve my craft, to better my work. I recently came across an article about adverbs being signs of weak writing. At first I was like, really? Is that truthfully what it does? (ha, notice my use of the adverb there). And then I went back and used the EDIT-FIND option in my word processor. In the 40 pages that I've gotten typed up (with a lot more written) I found a lot of instances of the "-ly" adverbs. I took the advice of the article's writer, attempting to rewrite the sentences. I found that sometimes (more often than not) it did indeed make my writing better, while other times it created something unnecessary, a sense of awkwardness in the flow of the writing. Here's the example I have for one of those times:

“We’re a lot alike, I think,” Stane commented conversationally.

This was the original sentence. Short, sweet, descriptive enough. Here is the way the article would have suggested it be done:

“We’re a lot alike, I think,” Stane commented in a conversational manner.

It just seems stilted to me, breaking up the flow of the writing.

There were times when I like the change better than the original. Here is one of those examples:

“Was there a reason you wanted to see us, or did you just wanna stare?” Puck demanded, arms crossed over his broad chest, foot tapping the creaking floorboards impatiently.

This was the original sentence, and here is the rewritten one:

“Was there a reason you wanted to see us, or did you just wanna stare?” Puck demanded, arms crossed over his broad chest, foot tapping the creaking floorboards with undisguised impatience.

A bit more descriptive, a bit more prose-like. There are times, I feel, that the "-ly" adverbs are a cop-out, a way of avoiding description when I might not know what else to say. Overall, replacing these adverbs does make for stronger writing, but sometimes the adverbs ARE necessary in strong writing. Say something as simply as possible, is what I've heard from published authors and editors.

Oh, here's a quick progress update:

There will be another progress update later tonight, I'm sure.

The Four Day Challenge

2011-01-24T21:30:00.000-06:00

I seem to be in competition with myself. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing actually. When I compete with myself I find that I do better--make much better progress than I normally do. Not so sure I'm going to live up to my own standards here, honestly. In four days I managed to reach 10k words, and that was on Friday. Technically tomorrow is the next fourth day, and I have not yet reached 20k. I'm about 5k behind. Which means I need to get 5k written tomorrow. A daunting task. Well, I could say Sunday was my off day and count WEDNESDAY as my fourth day, meaning I have to get 2,500 words in 1 day. Much more doable. So Thats what we shall do.

I don't necessarily feel bad when I don't get a certain number of words done on the manuscript, because even when my word progression isn't a high number I'm still working, be it brainstorming, transcribing (and thus adding more words; the word count I'm listing only shows the rough draft version of Shadow Lands; the transcription (first draft, see last post) is just under 1000k ahead of where I am at that same point in the rough draft (confusing, I know; you don't have to understand). I still like to meet my own challenges. I think of it like trying to match your own high score in a game or something. Below you will find a word count that shows where I'm at so far. Might be more later on; I'm at a section (chapter) that I'm excited about. However, am exhausted (bad sleeping patterns combined with class--yes, I do have a life) and am starting to develop a headache (possibly from the incredible amount of writing I've been doing). They might go up, they might not.

In the near future I'm going to begin character introductions on here, so you can get to know the characters you'll hopefully be following in Shadow Lands when you hold the book in your hands. But for now, a bit of rest.

9.53%

My Writing Process

2011-01-24T16:48:00.000-06:00

So today, before my normal progress update tonight, I'm going to write a little bit about my writing process for this book, which I am currently calling Shadow Lands. The writing process for me is going in like 3 stages to read more, click below.

Stage 1: The Rough Draft. In the rough draft my goal is to write out the story, to get the details on paper. As you will see from the images below there will probably be some scribbling out, some name changes, moments where section titles become different because I feel there should be a different focus (also, as you'll see from the second image below, I like to doodle) (sorry al of the images are sideways)

Lots of Scribbles at the bottom of that page--sometimes pages have none, sometimes they have a lot.

The title of this particular section changed a lot.

As you have no doubt noticed, I write the rough draft in pen in notebooks (yeah, 160k...its gonna take a lot of notebooks. oy). When I do the first draft, I write one day in black ink and the next day in blue to provide myself a good idea of how much progress I have made.

Two separate days: the first half is written in blue ink, the bottom begins the next day's work in black.

I won't lie, at first the idea of writing by hand turned me off. But when I would set in front of the computer, I would be distracted, and that was not conducive to progressive writing. So I began writing by hand, and I could not be happier. Knowing myself as well as I do, in the first draft I'll have about 160k words. I have a very strong opinion over how much progress I make in a day--if I don't meet my own standards, I feel bad. I try to fit in as much writing time as possible--even carrying my writing notebook so that I can get writing done in small periods of downtime throughout the day.

Stage 2: The First Draft. This IS different than the rough draft. This is the draft that consists of me taking sections of what I've hand written and transcribing them to the computer. This is where the first level of editing begins. What is written in the notebook and what is typed into the computer are similar, but definitely different. In stage two of the draft I also tend to add about 500 words to the sections (so far) meaning the first draft will likely be about 169k, so longer than the rough draft.

Stage 3: Beta Reader Draft. This draft is taking place, or at least being prepared, as I complete the first draft (which is also being done as I complete the rough draft, its sort of flowing). What happens is this: my dear friend, who is my beta reader, being the person who sees the work in progress, will read it, find continuity errors, or moments of confusion, or places that the story isn't quite making sense, etc., and make her own demarcations. She might catch grammatical and spelling errors that I miss as I'm typing it. She gives it to me, and I use the first draft along with her edits and comments to create the third draft form of the story. This draft will probably remain at the same word count of the first draft, more or less.

Stage 4: Final Draft. This is where the story tightening happens. I will seriously read it, looking for all the errors that were to have been spotted in Stage 3, finding sentences, words, paragraphs, maybe entire sections, that don't belong or that don't really contribute to the telling of the story. This is when I hammer this hulking monster into more or less the form it should be. The word count here (this is all tentative of course) will probably go to between 160 and 165k.

Plotting 1: Idea Pad. An important part of my writing, that doesn't fit into the process, really, is the idea pad (which you will see pictured below). On the idea pad I jot down ideas that I have--plot points that come to light, concepts that need to be fleshed out and addressed in the story, and sometimes ideas and thoughts about the next book (gotta get through the first one first!). Using the idea pad, for instance, really helped me flesh out the middle content of Shadow Lands.

Idea Pad

Plotting 2: The Q & A Conversation. I can not stress enough the importance of this section of plotting and brainstorming. While I might have a general idea of the layout of the story, the land, the characters, and how things work, it is in the Q & A Conversation with my beta reader that everything gets fleshed out. I might know why a character is doing something, and she might ask "Is that because of this?" and the answer might be "yes, actually--insert more detail" or "No, it's more of a insert more detail". These questions about character dynamics, motivations, etc., all help make a more complete and realized story.

Okay, that's enough about my personal writing progress. Can't put it off any longer: I need to get back to writing; there's about 1000 more words I want to get done today to feel comfortable! Later!

Okay Then

2011-01-24T00:48:00.001-06:00

Okay then, it's time to make myself serious about keeping a blog. I think it will help my writing process a lot. Having a blog sort of feels like I have someone to be accountable to. I'm still not sure what exactly the content and context of this blog will be. There will probably be posts about the writing process, about what I'm writing, about my writing progress, all of these things. And then there will be tidbits of personal things worked in--for a writer, how can you possibly separate the two? The one has such a profound impact on the other.

I promise the next post will be longer. For now suffice it to say I'm working on a WIP which has a tentative title of Shadow Lands, but I'm not sure that will stick this early in the process. I'm only about 13k words into what's likely to be a 145-160k word manuscript. This is a big undertaking. But I love the characters, and I love the path they are taking me down. I know the beginning (because I've written it) and I have an idea of the ending, but the middle...that's uncharted territory. This is going to be a lot of fun! I'll be posting the occasional progress meter below so I can keep an eye on what I'm doing and HOW I'm doing.