Words/Time: Almost 2 hours inserting chapters into “Pithea,” in Scrivener, after finishing breaking it into scenes. I’m 3/4 of the way through the story, so I’ll be done soon, and then I can finally proceed with reading through it again. This weekend, my family has enough Christmas-related plans that I may not get much done. And I won’t stress over making sure to do some work every day, if I’m tired in the evening or something. Though I’ll probably finish this chapter thing before I go to bed tonight.
revision
Daily Writing Check-in: December 10, 2015
Words/Time: 1 hour transferring “Pithea,” one scene at a time, into Scrivener. I’m not sure why it took me an hour to only get 2/3 of it done, but it did. I guess there’s more to it than that, as I did a few other things at the same time, like figure out how many words part 1 is, and how many chapters it would be if I averaged 5000 words per chapter.
Either later tonight or tomorrow night, I will finish this and divide the chapters. Then I’ll bug a few people to read it while I also start into reading it again.
Or maybe I’ll go give “The Triangle” another read-through. That’s one I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned on this blog. It’s a novelette-length story, which I hope to self-publish soon. More on that later, maybe.
Daily Writing Check-in: December 9, 2015
Words/Time: 30 minutes revising “Pithea.” I put the finishing touches on the draft that I did declare done a few days ago, but I neglected to remember the few more edits I needed to make. Tonight I call it done. And now I have remembered that I haven’t finished laying out the scenes in order to find the best chapter breaks. I was using Scrivener for that, which was the free trial at the time. I can use my code for winning NaNo to purchase the full version, but I don’t know if I want the Mac or PC version. (My husband just acquired a MacBook, which is our household’s first Mac. And since Scrivener was originally made for the Mac, it has features on that version that it doesn’t on the PC.)
Tomorrow I’ll see about downloading the trial version on the MacBook and work on the chapters there, while also trying to decide which full version I want to buy. I am almost ready to share my novel with some close friends and relatives who I know are wanting, or at least willing, to read it before it’s finalized and/or published, but I feel like chapters would be good first.
Daily Writing Check-in: December 8, 2015
Words/Time: 25 minutes revising “Pithea.” I had a few areas of text I needed to fix after the marathon meeting on Saturday. Minor things that just needed updating based on decision we made, but I didn’t want to take the time to do during the meeting, so we could move on to other areas. Of the 4 notes I made to fix later, I checked off 2 of them today.
I did nothing yesterday or Sunday, hence not posting those days. After a full month of pressured writing, apparently I needed more of a break than I’d expected. Sunday I was actually gone all evening, but yesterday my husband convinced me to just relax and enjoy the evening. I almost skipped today too, but decided to at least get a little work done.
Daily Writing Check-in: December 5, 2015
Words/Time: 11 hours revising “Pithea” with my sisters, for the 61st and final meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book. It was our 5th marathon meeting, and we spent all day (minus some other chatter, and breaks for lunch and supper) working out all of the questions, issues, and last-minute changes to my very first novel.
This means that draft 4 is officially finished! My plan now is to read through it one more time at a more even pace, since draft 4 was done in a somewhat disjointed way by 3 people who didn’t always agree, over the course of a year. I’ll read through it, not looking to line edit or rewrite, but just to enjoy it and to watch for disrupted flow or something that just doesn’t sound right.
After that…I might just be able to declare it ready.
Daily Writing Check-in: December 3, 2015
Words/Time: 45 minutes revising “Pithea.” I started with writing the letter that will probably be the last text of the book. I’m not sure about it, because it was really hard to write, being a bit out of character for the person writing it, and I’m not so good with emotional stuff. I’ll let my sisters tell me what they think at our editing session on Saturday. The rest of the time was spent putting in some details about a character’s nervous habit that I didn’t bother including until we were near the end of the draft. I found a few places to sprinkle it elsewhere in the story.
My list of things I need to do before Saturday is really shortened. I may take tomorrow off of any writing work, so I can rest from NaNo. I don’t feel like I’ve gotten much chance to do that yet. And Saturday I’ll be doing writing work for probably 12 hours, so I think that should more than make up for a day off.
Daily Writing Check-in: December 2, 2015
Words/Time: 35 minutes revising “Pithea.” One character isn’t from Pithea, and he’s meant to have a slight accent. While that’s difficult to write in text, especially when the accent is vague, my sisters and I decided that we should at least make sure he chooses words differently than what seems normal for the rest of the characters. (It’s also not meant to be a particularly strong accent.) Every time he appeared in part 4, we neglected to go over his dialog in this way, so I was going through and finding some possible changes to make.
I’m putting off what I really need to do, which is to write an emotional letter that will probably be the very end of the book. I need to have it ready for Saturday, when we’re going to go over some final notes and fixes for the story. Maybe I’ll write it tomorrow… it won’t even be very long, it’s just…emotional.
December 1, 2015
NaNoWriMo is over, but I just have a few more things to say. This year was different than past NaNo experiences for me in multiple ways. It was full of a lot of highs and lows. My first write-ins, my first word crawls, a new writing buddy, and the 25k on day 1 all made this a November to remember. I also wrote a full novel and probably 2/3 of another, which was new for me. One thing I learned is that I’m better not pushing for a huge word count in a single day. If it happens, then I’m probably in the right mood for it, and great! Otherwise, I risk burning out, and I really did teeter on the edge of that during the rest of the first week.
I just have to say a huge thank you to my husband who gave me everything I needed this month–time and encouragement to work, but also a reminder that I don’t have to overachieve if it’s just not feeling right. Oh, and lots of fun and relaxation right when I needed it. And to my sister who came to the write-in with me, even though it was so far from where she lives. It was so much fun doing that, and we were even in the paper!
I keep saying that the community and mutual encouragement of the community is what makes NaNo so amazing, and it really is true! I felt a lot of that when I was having issues this month, from fellow bloggers, people in my region, and just from finding new ways to be inspired on the NaNo forums. I will always love this event and the people who are involved!
One last time for 2015, make sure to check out the final NaNoToons – 2015 December 1st
And since I apparently forgot to post any more episodes of the musical, here is episode 5. There’s one more after it, and I think it’s linked at the end of this one. I wanted to get to episode 5 specifically, because it contains my favorite out of all the songs.
Now onto the non-NaNo part of the post, today’s daily writing check-in:
Words/Time: 25 minutes organizing notes for “Pithea” in anticipation of the next (and probably last for a very long time) marathon meeting of the TCSTB. We’ve left a lot of things to work on later through the 100,000ish words of this novel, so I went through and found all of the issues, questions, or whatever, and made a list of what we needed to work on.
Writing Highs
I did something late Friday night that I want to share. The first novel draft I ever finished, “Pithea,” which I mostly wrote during NaNo 2013 has been undergoing revision for almost 2 years now. After I’d had some time alone with it, I started into a process with 2 of my sisters, wherein we’d meet every Tuesday evening on Skype and work through their notes on my revised draft. It’s more than just the writing we’ve been working on; the story is set in a fantasy-type world, and they’ve helped me work out the elements of it. As time has gone on, the story has gotten better, characters have gotten stronger, and the mechanics of the world I’ve built are clearer.
It’s been just over a year since we started these weekly editing sessions, and most of my writing time has been spent reading ahead of them and making more of my own revisions. We’re basically working from a 3rd draft, which I’ve been creating as we go. Hopefully this makes some sort of sense.
Anyway, Friday night, after I’d done my NaNo writing for the day, I sat down to get more revision done, more of “draft 3” ready so that we can work on it this coming Tuesday. And I got through the last 8 pages of the draft, which means that on Tuesday, we’ll probably finish the last pages of the draft too. Which means this revision, the most intensive one it should need, will be done!
Now there are still some things that need worked on. During our revision sessions, we passed over bigger issues that we knew would just slow us down. There were big, world-related questions that came up that we decided weren’t important to solve just yet. We will hopefully have an in-person, all-day meeting in the next month or so to hammer all of these things out. But after that, I’ll be one huge step closer to be ready to publish this thing. It’s actually scary to be so close and still have no idea what I’m doing. But it’s still better than doing nothing.
And in the time since then, other exciting things have happened. I finished the first draft of this year’s NaNoNovel, only halfway through the month. I was in the local newspaper (front page) with other area Wrimos, and the article even included a link to my blog! (See more about that here.) My region’s ML today shared the crocheted octopus she made for me, as a reward for being one of the first in our region to donate and contact her about it. And my NaNo winner’s shirt is on its way!
This weekend was definitely a high for writer-me.
Daily Challenge Check-in: October 27, 2015
Words/Time: 2761 words revising “Pithea” with two of my sisters over Skype. Also known as the 60th meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book. We got through just over 9 pages of double-spaced text, which was all of what I had prepared. It was also more than we’ve been doing lately, so I’m really happy. There are only 16 pages of the story left to go through for this draft, which is really exciting and also scary! As long as I make some time to revise ahead of the editing group while NaNo is going on, we should be done in two weeks, three at the longest. After that, I’ll wait until I’ve had a chance to recover from NaNo, and dive into what I hope will be the last full revision. I know it will be quicker, at least. I think that’s also when I’ll be looking for another person or two to read through and give me more of an overall impression of the story (rather than detailed notes).
Now, with 4 more days until NaNoWriMo starts, I will be hitting my prep work hardcore the next few days. I haven’t even started my outline. Fortunately, I’ve done some timeline work that will make the outline a little easier to create.
A Journey of Words 