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Daily Writing Check-in: December 16, 2018

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

Words/Time: 1 hour, 22 minutes putting my 2018 NaNoNovel into Scrivener by the scene.

I made some serious progress today! I had to boil down the rest of the scenes in a sentence or so each, and then figure out where all of the “past” events best fit in as flashbacks in the “present” time. It was written all out of order. Sometimes it was obvious where the flashbacks belonged, but in a few places I had to jot down some new things that could happen or be discussed in the “present” time, to prompt a flashback.

I am pretty happy with the layout now, which is basically a new outline. I suspect I will make some further changes when I get into revision, but that’s going to be much later. Tomorrow, I will copy and paste the actual scenes into Scrivener in the order I came up with today, and then I will be moving on from this novel, letting it rest for a while.

After that, I’ll move on to goal #2 in my list of short-term writing goals.

goal tracker 12-16

Definitely not slacking off this month!

Daily Writing Check-in: December 15, 2018

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Words/Time: 21 minutes putting my 2018 NaNoNovel into Scrivener by the scene.

The draft I wrote last month was written in a somewhat complicated way, or at least it will be complicated to sort it out if I wait a long time to do it. I may have forgotten my plans by then. The novel starts in “present time,” then the bulk of the story is told in flashbacks, sometimes even going further back during those scenes. But as the month went on, I added quite a few unplanned scenes to the story, and I don’t have the organization figured out yet. So I put in the first half of the story, the organization for which I knew. And now I have to outline the rest of the scenes and see if I can figure out the best order.

If it turns out to not be doable without writing more, or without too much work, I may actually leave it for later and decide that fresh eyes might actually be what’s best for it someday.

I did not post the previous 2 days, because I did no writing work. It was not out of laziness, however, it was due to working too late. I’m trying very hard to balance family, work, and writing for the first time since starting this job, but an overwhelming project came to a head and I just couldn’t get to my writing work until it was too late, or until I was just too tired. I was very happy to get some work in tonight though.

Daily Writing Check-in: December 12, 2018

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Words/Time: 60 minutes finishing a spell-check on my 2018 NaNoNovel.

I was less than halfway through after starting the spell-check yesterday, but I decided to get the rest done tonight. Fortunately, I had time to do that. Tomorrow I’ll re-start putting scenes into Scrivener. Even just doing a spell-check, I was reminded about how much I really enjoy this story. I can’t wait to dig into the revision, but it really does need to wait.

Daily Writing Check-in: December 11, 2018

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Words/Time: 30 minutes doing a spell-check on my 2018 NaNoNovel.

I removed all of of the junk that I left in for word count that was pepped throughout the draft, and went to start putting scenes into Scrivener, at which point I plan to leave this story alone for a while. However, as I was copying & pasting scenes, I realized that it would be a lot better to fix the obvious spelling mistakes now, rather than doing it by the scene in Scrivener. In 30 minutes, I got through not quite half of the novel. I sure did write this draft fast and messy.

Daily Writing Check-in: December 9, 2018

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Words/Time: 32 minutes removing “NaNo fodder” from my 2018 NaNoNovel.

I have removed all the rest of the junk that I left in for word count. There are still many notes that I wrote myself that need addressed, but with those removed, the official first draft of this novel comes in at 81,000 words.

Next I am working on putting the scenes from this story into Scrivener so I can begin to organize it. I left the order pretty messy.

I’m still tracking my progress this month on the NaNoWriMo site, with a goal of about 20 minutes per day worked on writing. However, I’m not needing that extra push these days. I’m still pretty excited about this story, so it’s easy to make sure to work on it every day, even if only for a short time.

goal tracker 12-9

Daily Writing Check-in: December 8, 2018

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Words/Time: 44 minutes removing “NaNo fodder” from my 2018 NaNoNovel.

I removed 1637 words and got through the rest of the story! However, this time through, I was spotting the places where words needed removed manually. I did a search afterward for the marker I used while writing during November to flag myself later to fodder, and found 95 more instances that I’ll need to go through and get. I’ll do that tomorrow, but it should be all done tomorrow then!

I almost forgot that the rest of #1 on my list of short-term goals is to organize this story into scenes before I set it aside for a while. I’m glad for that, because I didn’t really want to move from it yet. I’m really excited about it (which is saying something for a novel written during NaNoWriMo, especially when it’s still so early in December, and I’m more often thinking back on the novel with disgust still).

Daily Writing Check-in: December 7, 2018

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Words/Time: 20 minutes removing “NaNo fodder” from my 2018 NaNoNovel.

I’m now on pg. 92/132,  and I removed 528 words.

I was doing good to even get to my writing time tonight, because I’m working on a huge project at work that just won’t end. I know I’m going to have to work on it all day tomorrow too, so I figured that the more I could do this evening the less I might have to do tomorrow. Truth be told, I’ll probably still work on it all day tomorrow too, and it still might not be done.

I was tempted to just call off tonight, or cut my time short, but I pushed ahead anyway. I barely feel like I’m making progress getting rid of the NaNo fodder, but at least this is more fun the the work project (on which I also feel like I’m barely making progress).

Daily Writing Check-in: December 3, 2018

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Words/Time: 29 minutes removing “NaNo fodder” from my 2018 NaNoNovel.

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.

I worked on the same thing yesterday, and removed 1000 words. Today I removed 356, and I’m only on pg. 37 out of 134. I did this as an early revision step to my NaNoNovel in 2014, and it seemed to go a lot faster. Then again, I didn’t track my time, but I still got it done in 3 days. Though I only removed 4000 words, and I’ve already removed more than a quarter of that in 2 days. At this rate, it will take me over a week to finish, unless I have time to fit more work in some days.

With NaNo behind me, I want to move forward with revising other works. I have left my writing sit (outside of November) for far too long now. Here are my short-term goals:

1. Remove NaNo fodder from 2018 NaNoNovel, put scenes into Scrivener while I still remember my ideas

2. Make one obvious change to “Pithea” that is not actually a huge change for that book, but will affect future books a lot. Basically, a side character dies for no real reason, and I’ve realized that future books would be much better if he lived. So he’s going to not die, but because his death did allow a minor plot point to happen that still has to happen, I have to first brainstorm how to make that plot point happen anyway.

3. Revise “Pursuit of Power” just enough to be readable by a friend who is interested. I have hefty revisions planned for the structure of that book, but it will take a long time, and they won’t affect the overall story of this world, just what goes into that book. So before I dig into the major work that was part of my recent absence from writing, I want to just make it readable.

4. Even though I did declare “Pithea” finished a few years ago and sent it off to a couple of publishers, writing that I have done since then has led me to make some changes to it already. Changes like aging most of the characters up 3 years. I think that before I can move on to revising the next book, I need to make sure I don’t need to make changes to the first one. Plus, I think it’ll help me get back into the swing of things if the book that starts it all is fresh in my mind. It’s been so dusty lately.

dec 3

Granted, it’s not as exciting as filling the chart in November, but I’m glad to have somewhere to chart my daily progress. My goal works out to an average of (approximately) 20 minutes per day during the month of December.