Words/Time: 55 minutes, revising “Pithea.” I have come to a scene that lines up with “Pursuit of Power” and thus spent most of today’s time reading through PoP to verify some differences in the scene, and make sure they needed to be changed in “Pithea.” I also compared what little I had written of the scene for PoP and picked the best bits from both stories to compile the new scene. I’m really itching now to get into PoP and change things that I still have notes about, and then boil down the scenes so I can see the whole thing from a distance. But I’m so close to finishing this revision of “Pithea,” which would leave me with not a lot left to do for it to be ready, that I certainly can’t change tracks now.
Month: August 2015
Daily Challenge Check-in: August 19, 2015
Words/Time: 35 minutes, revising “Pithea.” I have a little more of the new scene I’ve been working on left to do, but I decided to just do regular revising past that part tonight. So I had to work on a fight scene tonight, and I hate fighting scenes. Even worse for this scene is the heavy reliance on Power, and I haven’t even 100% figured out how Power is going to work offensively. So there’s that. When (if?) I finally have all of that smoothed out, I’ll have to revisit this scene. For now, it’s just making sure that what does happen is worded in such a way to be clear to readers. I’ll know better on that front when the TCSTB gets to that part.
Daily Challenge Check-in: August 18, 2015
Words/Time: 3957 words revising “Pithea” with two of my sisters over Skype. Also known as the 51st meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book. We got through 12 1/2 pages of double-spaced text. Despite it being about an hour shorter than our normal meetings, we got through quite a bit. We’re into part 4 now, and while there’s still plenty left, it scares me a little. When we’re done, I’m going to be faced with the fact that I will soon need to make a decision about how to proceed with my attempt at publishing this thing. I’m also aware that there are more issues to address, and I’m worried that I’ll start to slack off too much after we’re done with regular meetings.
Daily Challenge Check-in: August 17, 2015
Words/Time: 610 words, revising “Pithea.” Still working on the same scene, but getting close to the end. If this was November, I’d have blown through it by now. There’s no good reason it’s taking me so long to write this, it just is. On the other hand, this is exactly what the 500 Words Challenge is for–to keep me working even if only a little bit per day.
Daily Challenge Check-in: August 16, 2015
Daily Challenge Check-in: August 14, 2015
Daily Challenge Check-in: August 13, 2015
Words/Time: 19 minutes, revising “Pithea.” I tried to push for 20, but when it was after 11 and yet another distraction came up, I gave up. During that time I started writing a new scene that would encompass everything else I wanted to include in part 4 but hadn’t found a spot for, everything that was important enough and would flow into the same basic scene, that is. I didn’t get very far though.
Daily Challenge Check-in: August 12, 2015
Words/Time: 45 minutes, revising “Pithea.” I’m brainstorming what to include in part 4 before the real bulk of the subplot takes over. I’ve finished the “here’s what happened in the year-ish of time since part 3 ended,” and now I want to introduce/solidify some characters and give Missy and Naolin time to have one last conversation before I split them up to go to their separate conflicts for the rest of the book. I have two characters that I really want to actually see in the book, but I think I’m going to have to settle for mere mentions. Though I keep forgetting that one of them does have a big part in Naolin’s half of the rest of the story, so that’s probably okay.
It is very difficult sometimes to have characters I’m already very familiar with, and an original version of this story that I’ve always loved, and then try to make it work in this new world and new story. Sometimes it makes me sad.
Daily Challenge Check-in: August 11, 2015
Words/Time: 3 hours revising “Pithea,” 2/3 of that with two of my sisters over Skype. Also known as the 50th meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book. We got through almost 7 pages of double-spaced text. Earlier in the day, I also spent some time putting revisions from the hard copy into the computer.
Daily Challenge Check-in: August 9, 2015
Words/Time: 2:48 hours, doing a hodgepodge of things writing related. I spend about an hour doing typical revision work for “Pithea” late last night. This afternoon, I was ready for a break from all of that, so I tried out using story cubes to spawn a story. (There will be more detail on that in a later post.) Then I spent nearly an hour working on getting scenes from “Pithea” into Scrivener in my quest to organize chapters.
All of this was during the last day of my writer’s retreat. I came home in the early evening, spent some time with my family, and looked forward to diving back into a normal revising routine in the evenings. That didn’t happen tonight, though, as my husband and I ended up binge watching the rest of the penultimate season of Parks and Recreation. Still, my weekend away helped me push past the looming section of revision that was causing me to lose all desire to do any work, and I do expect to be back to work tomorrow.
A Journey of Words 