Morano

Weekly Writing Update: 12/20

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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.

While I work on continuing the series, if you’re interested in reading where it all starts, Pithea is available on Amazon as both an e-book and paperback (it’s also on Kindle Unlimited).

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Weekly Writing Update: 12/13

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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.

While I work on continuing the series, if you’re interested in reading where it all starts, Pithea is available on Amazon as both an e-book and paperback (it’s also on Kindle Unlimited).

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Weekly Writing Update: 12/6

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

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.

While I work on continuing the series, if you’re interested in reading where it all starts, Pithea is available on Amazon as both an e-book and paperback (it’s also on Kindle Unlimited).

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NaNoWriMo Day 30

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The Words: 1187 words total for the day.

Still feeling less than stellar today, I did a lot of reading, playing, watching, and just generally nothing productive today. But I kept in the back of my mind that I needed to write, knowing that it wouldn’t take me long to finish the draft. I finally got to it at around 9:30 pm and took about 20 minutes to write the final scene. And I broke 75k words, which amazingly enough was my estimate of word count for this draft!

The Story: The final scene jumped ahead several years from the rest of the story. Part of me wonders if the scene is worth including in this book, but I like how it provides this mystery for the reader, since it shows the villain in a completely unknown place. It’s a teaser for a future story arc, but I’ll still have to decide whether to keep it or not.

FINAL word count: 75,082

Enjoy today’s NaNoToon from this day in 2009!
The final episode of the NaNoMusical is perfect for the final day of NaNo. Be sure to watch the wrap-up!

NaNoWriMo Day 29

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The Words: 1278 words total for the day.

We kept the writing time short today, just a couple of sprints, partly because I’m close to the end of the book, and partly because our whole family just feels crummy right now. At least I was healthy most of the month, which allowed for another great NaNo!

The Story: I got a little too…technical, and also very dark, with the explanation about what the villain gets up to in this book. I really didn’t like it, and probably won’t use any of it. I’m not sure, then, if the best thing to do is to continue to be vague about what she’s doing, or if there’s a way I can just make it sound better. And less dark, because I don’t want to suddenly go down that rabbit hole when the rest of this series is, at least generally, not quite so dark.

I have one scene left, and frankly, I can’t see how it will be very long. Tomorrow will probably be a very short last day of NaNo, unless I’m feeling much better and feel like rewriting some of the scenes from the beginning (an idea I held in reserve in case the draft came up too short and I needed more to write about to finish out the month), because I realized after I wrote them that they were from the wrong character’s POV. But we’ll see what happens tomorrow.

Total word count: 73,895

Enjoy today’s NaNoToon from this day in 2010!

NaNoWriMo Day 28

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The Words: 2023 words total for the day.

I had to spend some time today doing last-minute changes and formatting work on Outcast, because it’s release date is Tuesday. So my daughter went on writing without me and reached her YWP goal of 20,000 words! But she still did a couple of sprints with me later, which gave me my words for the day.

The Story: Today was a meeting between this book’s villain and a future book’s villain, which was interesting. Though I think the conversation was a bit too calm and civil. Not that it can’t be calm, it just didn’t seem in-character for the current book’s villain, so I’ll have to work on that in editing.

I stopped writing when I moved onto a new scene, because I only have 2 scenes left in the draft. Neither of them do I anticipate to be any longer than 2500 words, so it seems that the best way to reach the end of the draft right at the end of the month is to write one of those scenes tomorrow and one on Monday.

Total word count: 72,617

Enjoy today’s NaNoToon from this day in 2010!

NaNoWriMo Day 27

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The Words: 2433 words total for the day.

My whole family (that currently reside in the house) was ready for a day of laziness today, and I almost didn’t want to write. But that was all the more reason to insist that I get some words in. I shared with my 10-year-old daughter, who’s done much of this year’s NaNo alongside me, that days like this I like to do a stretch of writing, then take a break for something more lazy like reading or watching a show, then do another stretch of writing. So we did that, and a couple of sessions of writing produced a daily count I was happy with.

The Story: I’m quite pleased with how I powered through the section that I was concerned about slowing me down. Not that I love what I wrote, but that I got through it quickly and moved on to something a little less difficult to write. A major villain of the series is setting herself up in the position that allows her to wreak major havoc on the rest of the country. The scene coming next should be a lot easier to write, and then there are only 2 more planned scenes until the end of the draft!

Total word count: 70,594

Enjoy today’s NaNoToon from this day in 2010!

NaNoWriMo Day 26

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The Words: 971 words total for the day.

I had less success than I normally do trying to get some writing in during the Thanksgiving festivities, even with my Neo. But I got home earlier in the evening than I normally do after family holidays too, so I was able to get a little bit of writing in before midnight.

The Story: I’m heading into a very rough section, with a lot of darkness and violence. But it’s also a scene I wrote a very long time ago, before this story world and series of stories took the shape they have now. A lot of what happens in this scene can still happen the same way, but while I’ve learned from experience that it’s still better to rewrite something that I already did as writing practice or something, just in case it comes out better in the draft or in case something is different and needs to incorporated as different, it’s still incredibly hard for me to write it quickly. I am slowed down by trying to remember what happened before so I can do it the same way again, even though I tell myself not to do that. So basically, I’m glad I got as many words as I did.

Hopefully I’ll be able to power through it tomorrow so I can pick up the pace again and finish the draft in the next 4 days.

Total word count: 68,161

Enjoy today’s NaNoToon from this day in 2010!

NaNoWriMo Day 25

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The Words: 2575 words total for the day.

I managed to hit my personal daily word count goal of 2500 today, despite not having all of the extra time to write in the afternoon like I thought I’d have. I had only managed to get 800 words by the time evening came on and thought I might just have to stop there.

Fortunately, I did end up with some more time to write and caught a 30-minute sprint on the @NaNoWordSprints Twitter feed (also known as a #1k30). That got me only a couple hundred words away from my goal, so I wrote for a couple more minutes before calling it a day.

I don’t expect to get many words tomorrow, but hopefully the amount of days left this month and the amount of story in my outline will line up okay.

The Story: I probably shouldn’t have put this storyline off for last, considering that the MC in it is so far out of my comfort zone. But I’m doing what I can, looking in at key parts of her life leading up to the events surrounding the big battle around which all 4 storylines are focused. I got all the way up to a key turning point in her life, and next will have to write about the consequences of that event.

Total word count: 67,190

Enjoy today’s NaNoToon from this day in 2009!

NaNoWriMo Day 24

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The Words: 1801 words total for the day.

I didn’t have as much time to write this afternoon as I’d hoped, with some pre-cooking to do for Thanksgiving and other housework to catch up on. But I made sure to at least get normal par for the day, and hope (for real, this time) to have a lot of extra time to write tomorrow afternoon.

The Story: I finally finished the 3rd storyline in the series and started on storyline #4 today, the final one (none of this denotes the actual order these storylines will be in the book, by the way, just the order in which I’m writing them).

Total word count: 64,615

With 6 days left of NaNoWriMo, be sure to check out episode 5 of the NaNoMusical, where the stresses of the month catch up to the characters in my favorite song of the whole thing!