Words: 782 revising “Adventures in Pithea.” Jarrett gets a bit more of an intro that will hopefully work better than the jump to Naolin being suspicious of him with no transition.
Daily Writing
December 4
Words: 1693 total. Most of it was several pages of “Adventures in Pithea” I got through revising. (Missy has been corrected in her accusation toward Evan, though he still found a way to be a jerk.) The rest of it, though only a measly 135 words, was original writing, and requires a longer explanation than 135 words probably should.
In October, my husband and I went to a con in Ohio called Ohio Valley Filk Festival. It was our first con. We were only there for one afternoon, and it was a small con. However, in the dealer’s room, there was a wide selection of books. We spent quite some time there. I came away with a book that has already changed the way I think about plotting, creating characters, writing, and even sleeping. It is called Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror and inside are “lively and practical insight and exercises, straight from the top speculative genre writers working today”.
Now that NaNoWriMo is over, I have decided to start going through the exercises in the book. Not all of them actually pertain to me (most of the horror-related articles, for example), so I’ll skip those. But I plan to try to focus on one article per week, and see how that goes. This week’s article involved using random images as story seeds, forcing two images together and developing a story idea or even new story world from those. This morning, I wrote with that in mind, with two images I’d generated a few days ago. It didn’t produce quite what the exercise was expecting, but I do already have an entire world I’m writing in. It was still an interesting idea I may pursue in one of my storylines someday though.
December 3
Words: 998 deleted from NaNo ’14 manuscript (“Pursuit of Power”), and I have now removed all of the “NaNo fodder” as I call it now. I am done with all of the words, phrases, paragraphs, or scenes that I had kept in for word count but marked to delete later. I will now most likely be going back to revising “Adventure in Pithea,” perhaps maybe still thinking through some of the bigger plot/character problems in “Pursuit of Power” when I need a break from the other story or something.
December 2
Words: 1936 deleted from NaNo ’14 manuscript (“Pursuit of Power”). Also, nineteenth meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book (revising last year’s novel, “Adventures in Pithea”).
December 1
Words: 1124 deleted from manuscript. It’s not as quick as it sounds. I have to find the areas where I’d marked words for deletion during NaNoWriMo, then figure out what words exactly need deleted. I didn’t just strike through everything I didn’t want to keep, because it takes longer. I put an end bracket to mark a spot and moved on. So now I have to figure out where the bad words start so I can delete them. This is probably a confusing explanation, but the point is, it’s a lot of searching and then some reading. It’s the first step in revising my novel, and possibly the only one I will do for now.
2014 – November 20
Competition is one of the best driving forces of NaNoWriMo! I’ve watched two ladies from my region leapfrog each other on word count, and the verbal sparring that goes along with it on our Skype chat makes everyone laugh. They are driving each other forward, and it’s great!
Errol: One day, I should just make user accounts for Jen, Rob, Victoria and Dave. That would be fun. I think. Give it a more transmedia kinda feel. ^_^
And yes, I haven’t been using my Kari Maaren card. 😦 I really should, if only I would get these done earlier than the night before at 10pm.
Oh! And did people see my selfie photo collage? All the selfies I took at Night of Writing Dangerously! ^_^
October 28
Time worked: 3:00
Work done: Thirteenth meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book. We got through 3 1/4 pages, which wasn’t looking good for a while. Then we got past an issue that took us a while, and just flew through the next page and a half. I also spent an hour in the morning working on the TCSTB shared document in preparation of tonight’s meeting.
October 27
Time worked: :30
Work done: Working on synopsis and character profile for “Pursuit of Power,” which is the story I’ll be writing for NaNoWriMo, starting this weekend.
October 21
Time worked: 2:30
Work done: Twelfth meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book. We got through just over three pages, and were pretty happy with it.
I have decided not to push myself to continue my individual revision of “Adventures in Pithea,” in anticipation of NaNoWriMo. I don’t want to burn out on the daily evening grind before November even starts. However, I would like to take some time in the next 10 days to write up a story introduction for “Pursuit of Power,” as well as at least one character introduction from the story, all from Drear’s POV (the narrator). We’ll see how that works out.
October 14
Time worked: 1:30
Work done: Eleventh meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book. We got through two and a half pages, and made a few notes for things to come back to later.
I haven’t posted in a week, and that is thoroughly reflective of the work I’ve done in that time. Actually, that’s not completely true. I did go over my outline for “Pursuit of Power,” the story I plan to start writing for NaNoWriMo in a few weeks. The busy season at my work has reached its conclusion, with the last show we have to go away for happening last weekend. I’ve been tired, cranky, busy, and just generally unable to focus on writing. The once-over I gave my outline happened in the evening at the show, but it was all I could do the whole weekend. These weekly meetings are wonderful, because I know that no matter what, I’ll still be brought back to my story every week. I truly can’t say what my plans are for the next two weeks until NaNo starts. I feel I should keep going forward on my revision for “Adventures in Pithea,” but at the same time, I’m not sure it’s worth dragging myself back into that story, just to completely switch gears to a new story when November hits. But I also don’t feel like it’s good to do absolutely nothing. So we’ll see.
A Journey of Words 