I’ve mostly stuck to my goal of writing 20 minutes per day, though I did skip Friday. However, I made up for it with an extra 20 minutes on Saturday, so I didn’t get behind.
I’m still working on the character interview with one of the major characters from book #4 in the Pithea series (currently titled “Morano”). in the section of the story I’m most uncertain about. I can’t pretend that it’s not starting to feel like I’m stalling with this interview, dragging it out so I don’t have to figure out what do to next, but I’m still walking through the storyline and getting some great insight, so I’d definitely call it productive. I also use the double session yesterday to do some freewriting (something I haven’t done in a while), which started out rocky but ended up being a peek at the later life of a character in Outcast (book #2) that I really enjoyed getting out.
While I wait for my beta-reading sisters to read “Power,” book #3 in the Pithea series, I’m starting to work on book #4. I wrote the first draft during NaNoWriMo in 2020 and haven’t touched it since then, so first I have to figure out what major changes need to be made and how to go about making them. I spent all of this week doing a character interview with one of the major characters in the section of the story I’m most uncertain about. It has been very helpful so far, and I’ll continue it this week.
I’ve stuck to my goal of writing 20 minutes per day, even with a few days this last week where I didn’t feel much like doing any work. It’s easier to push myself when the work ahead of me is a character interview, though, because it really doesn’t feel much like work.
For three years, I have posted book reviews almost exclusively on this blog, which started as a place to keep myself accountable while working on my writing. I used to post every single day that I did writing work, lowering that amount to weekly when I didn’t need the daily accountability anymore. Then I stopped writing consistently for a while. Though nothing new (I’ve had gaps in my daily writing before, both long and short), when I did get back to writing again, I didn’t get back to posting. It’s time to remedy that. So I’ll dive back in with a brief update of what I’ve recently accomplished in my writing.
I finished draft 6 of “Power,” book #3 in the Pithea series only a few days ago, the last draft that I will work on alone. I have asked my 3 sisters, who helped me immensely with the revision of book #1, to read it and give me feedback—as vague or as detailed as they want to or have time to give. I’m not putting a deadline on them, though, since they’re all busy and it’s important enough for me to get their feedback before I publish it. I figure it’s been long enough since book #2 was published, what’s a little longer?
In the meantime, I’ve turned my attention to book #4. I wrote the first draft during NaNoWriMo in 2020 and haven’t touched it since then, so I’ve been taking it slow getting used to the story again while I start to work out where the first major changes need to be made and how to go about making them. Right now, it’s mostly reading and brainstorming. And I plan to do some freewriting this week, since after so much revision for so long, I really want to do some actual writing, which still isn’t needed with the first draft done of the next book.
I’ve done a pretty decent job of sticking to my goal of writing 20 minutes 20 days out of the month. This month, I’m pushing it to 20 minutes every single day (and if I miss a day, I’ll make it up). This is how I’ve maintained a pretty steady habit for several months now. Plus, I often write with my daughter (working on different projects, but at the same time, usually sitting at the same table), so we kind of spur each other on to write most days.
I’m not really the craftsy type, but when my sister showed me a picture she’d found online of a clear ball Christmas ornament filled with miniature “books,” I really wanted to try to make my own. It turned out to be fairly simple, even for someone as artistically challenge as me.
The picture below is the final project, but scroll down to see details.
Though this is easily the kind of project that I might normally think about and never do, I set to work on a list of books I’d want to include. I went through my reviews and narrowed it down, not just to books I’ve rated the highest, but books I know I’ll re-read someday (or already have). Books I bought after reading them because I liked them so much. Books that were the biggest parts of my childhood. (My own books, of course, as well as the book my daughter wrote and we got printed a few years back.) From series that I enjoyed, I included either the first in the series or my favorite of the series. In the end, I had 49 books.
I found clear, empty ornaments at Walmart and got 2 different sizes, not sure what I would need, and started with the smaller one. I also picked up a sheet of thin, flexible craft foam. I measured the opening of the ornament, which was 3/4″, and started a spreadsheet of 3/4″-wide columns, with thin gutter columns in between. I already knew where to find cover images that could then be shrunk down and printed. When possible, I chose the cover image that actually represents the version I read/own. Each book cover image I inserted was then shrunk to fit the width of the cell, so the height of each cover varied based on the original size of the cover image.
After printing the file on card stock, then came the easy, yet time-consuming task of cutting out the little covers. I did it all by hand, because I didn’t trust my paper cutter to be precise enough and didn’t want edges cut off. Covers that were really light or had white backgrounds were the hardest, because it was difficult to make sure I was staying along the edge. Using small adhesive squares, rather than dealing with double-sided tape, I attached one image at a time to the edge of the craft foam, using an X-acto knife to cut along the edge of the image. I had 2 copies of each cover, so both sides of the foam would be the front cover. That way, no matter which way faces up inside the ornament, you see the front. For long books (like the full LOTR trilogy, seen near the bottom of the in-progress picture on the left below), I attached two pieces of foam together to make the little book thicker.
I’d made less than half of the books before I realized that they weren’t all going to fit in the smaller ornament that I started with. And I definitely couldn’t get them back out through the small opening without hurting them. I had to cut open the ornament to get them out and move them to the larger one. Good thing they were only $1 each.
I absolutely love the result! Directly below is the image my sister originally showed me, and pictures of my finished ornament are below that. I like it so much that I will probably not put it away with the rest of the ornaments after the season ends and plan instead to find somewhere near my desk to hang it instead. And most likely, at the end of every year, I’ll add new favorites from that year’s reading. After finishing mine, I even made an equivalent for my husband with board game boxes (see picture at bottom).
How about you? Have you done anything to make your holiday more bookish?
I’ve started to focus more on revision again finally, after the slump that started around the holidays. I had a conversation with the younger sister of Leahna, one of the main characters of book #3. Somehow that ended up involving the sisters’ brother too, and in the end, I had so much more insight on both of these two side characters, especially the sister. And then I finished one of the brand new scenes that I’ve slated to add into the story, all of which focus on Leahna and her family, a group of characters that were sorely under-represented in the previous drafts.
Over the next week, I will probably continue to work on the new scenes, saving my new full revision until after all scenes I’ve already planned are done. Then I can start at the beginning and get an idea of how things are flowing so far.
I didn’t do much of any revision work during the holidays at all, and only just finally managed to get back into it. So far, all I’ve done this year, mostly during this last week, is a character interview with one of the main characters of book #3, Leahna. She’s one that I always thought I had a decent handle on, but has always been in the background. Now that I want to bring her to the front more, of course I realize that my understanding of her is far too shallow. So I spent some time fleshing her out a little.
I did learn some details that I think will give her a lot more depth in the book. I also realized that I need to conduct another interview, though, with Leahna’s sister. Though the sister will only be in the book a little, I’m noticing how much she has to do with the Leahna’s background and her dynamic arc. I’ll work on that this coming week, and hopefully take some time to finish writing the first new scene for the book that I’ve started on for this revision, but didn’t get very far with due to Christmas-related activities taking so much time in December.
I’m not even going to pretend that I did much work on book #3 in the series this last week. I put the new order of scenes that I came up with the week before into Scrivener, and then I started writing one of the new scenes I have planned. I didn’t even get that scene finished, as various things, mostly related to preparing for Christmas, took up much more of my time than I’d expected. Plus, I’ve been having headaches more often lately, which makes focusing on writing difficult.
This coming week, of course, will hold even more Christmas prep, plus the day itself. I will attempt to spend at least a little time in Pithea, even if it’s not official revision. I have a character interview in mind, so maybe I’ll do that in little snatches of time throughout the week.
I worked on book #3 in the series this week, and I think I have figured out the best way forward. I’ve cut off the last 15k words from the previous draft to be part of book #4, which basically means I’m going to be making the main story goal for book #3 different than how it’s been for many years now. This means that I need to revise a lot to make sure the new story goal is coming out enough. It also means I can put back in some longer scenes that I’d removed to shorten the story and to allow the old story goal to come to the surface earlier in the book.
Actually, this book has been giving me trouble for quite a while. I always worried that the last 1/3 of the book was such a different plot from the rest, and that the plot that is set up in the first 2/3 sort of goes nowhere. But I kept moving forward, thinking I just had to live with it. Then when I had the sudden realization that those 15k words would be better off as part of book #4, it gave me the chance to fix all of that. It’ll be a lot of work to fix, though.
So I started by doing something that helped me a lot during revision of Outcast earlier this year–putting all of the existing scenes onto little slips of paper, color-coding them by story arc, and then filling out new slips for new scenes I think should be added.
This allowed me to play with the order of the scenes and move some forward when I realized a plot arc was getting started too late, and that starting it sooner could help avoid monotony in the earlier scenes. Now it’s pretty much time to get to revising, which I think will start with a read-through to refresh myself on the story, cutting down bloated scenes and writing the first draft of some new scenes along the way. I’ll also need to make the scenes flow in the order I’ve changed them to, but I’m not sure if I’ll do that now or later.
Now that NaNoWriMo is over, I’m back to other writing work. Well, sort of. I spent most of this week doing preliminary work on my NaNoNovel before filing it away for now. Sometimes I’ll spend the first few days after November ends doing a quick clean-up of what I wrote–mostly removing things I marked as NaNo fodder and at least doing a quick spell check. This is usually better to do while the story is still fresh, and then it’s good to let it sit for some time.
I did start on revision of book #3 in the series today, but didn’t get very far. I have some large structure changes to figure out, but first have to decide how to figure them out.
I have finished the revision I was doing with one of my sisters, and any further revision of “Outcast” is up in the air right now. I may be completely done with revisions, but it’s difficult to know, and I’m not in a huge hurry to make that decision. I have started on line edits, though, because I don’t anticipate any large revisions from here forward. By the end of this month, though, I think I’ll know for sure what I have left to do, and be able to set a publishing date (or know if I need to push it back a little instead). I don’t like being so up in the air at this point, but such is the life of a self-published author with no budget.
NaNoWriMo starts in a week, and I think I’m as prepared as I’m going to get. I finished the character interview I started last week, and though it didn’t lead to any wild “Aha!” moments, it still helped me get a firmer handle on a character that has only been in one book so far, but will have a prominent role in what I’m writing for NaNo (first draft of book #4 in the series). I also got my outline, which had been only in the notes sections of Scrivener, into a printable form, so I can have it with me wherever I may write next month. I’m ready and excited to start!
A Journey of Words 