Words/Time: 2 hours revising. I have had a growing headache all evening, but I decided to make sure to at least get 20 minutes in. I spent that time getting more major edits from my hard copy into the computer, and then into the shared file we use for the TCSTB. Then I went on to revising a chapter of a Sims story/fanfiction my sister wrote and asked me to beta-read before she was ready to post it. And I just kept going, not realizing how long it had been. It’s soooo much easier to edit someone else’s work than my own.
revision
Daily Challenge Check-in: June 21, 2015
Words/Time: An hour and a half doing all sorts of various tasks. Part of it was going through a chapter of a Sims story/fanfiction my sister wrote and asked me to beta-read before she was ready to post it. I wasn’t sure if I should count it, but working on revision for someone else’s writing is still writing work, right? It’s nice to get a break from my own story(ies) for a while, and could even give me insight into my own writing. In fact, it already has some, because the rest of the time was spent researching character voice, writer voice, filter words, and other things that have come up as I’ve tried to help her with what she feels are problem areas in her own writing.
For anyone who’s paying attention to my daily check-in posts, I’ve been slacking off a lot lately. Originally, that was due to a planned short hiatus as my church had its annual week-long VBS program, which I was a helper for. I knew I’d be exhausted all week, and I was. Though I did actually get some work done early in the week. Then as I was trying to work back into normal days again, my 5-year-old came down sick. We still don’t know what she has, but she had high fevers for days (even up to 106° a couple of times). All day and even a lot of the night, all she wanted to do was be near me, which led to another week of not only having no time, but no energy to work on writing. Even now, her fever’s mostly gone, but she’s starting to have coughing fits that leave her distraught. I say all of this not because I think anyone is going to require a “absence note,” but because in the past, I have taken days, weeks, even months off of what I try to make daily work. This time, though, it’s not just me being lazy, it was life legitimately getting in the way. Today, as I think ahead to my next “Write Every Day” post, and as I help my sister as she tries to be a better writer, it’s fortunately bringing me back to my own writing work. That’s good, because after a few weeks off, it would be far too easy to just keep going and let it go for longer. (Though Camp NaNoWriMo is coming up in less than two weeks, which could keep me from ignoring my work for too long, but it’s not a miracle worker.)
Daily Challenge Check-in: June 16, 2015
Words/Time: 1388 words revising “Pithea” with two of my sisters over Skype. Also known as the 43rd meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book. We got through a little over 4 pages of double-spaced text, ending in a major issue that may take more work than normal to resolve. It’s especially a problem for me, because the issue is related to the first meeting of Missy and Jonathan. Missy being the female main character and Jonathan being really a side character in this book, but not in my mind. He becomes like a brother to Missy over the the next few years, but that doesn’t get to come out very well in this book, not like it had in the original version. As one sister put it, he’s very much like a cartoon character in the story right now, and I don’t necessarily hate that idea, but it probably means I don’t go deep enough with his character. And their first meeting has some huge issues, because I was trying to keep it close to the way it was in the original version, but doing that is what caused me so much trouble in the initial attempt at building this world. So there we left off, and I’m going to have to think about this scene, and the character as a whole, over the next week. Hopefully by next Tuesday night, when we have our next Skype meeting, I’ll have some thoughts to bring to the table.
Daily Challenge Check-in: June 8, 2015
Words/Time: 25 minutes typing new text into the computer for “Pithea.”
Daily Challenge Check-in: June 7, 2015
Words/Time: 32 minutes adding revisions for “Pithea” that were made on paper into the computer.
I am planning for a lighter week this week. My church’s VBS program starts tomorrow, and I’m a volunteer. For 5 days, I will wake up early, transport my two kids and their two cousins to church, then spend 3 hours taking the 2nd & 3rd graders around to the different stations. I did this last year (though with the next age group down) and remember being exhausted all week. So the rest of the evenings this week, I will work on my writing if I am alert enough and have time, but if not, I won’t feel guilty.
Daily Challenge Check-in: June 6, 2015
Words/Time: 1124 words, revising “Pithea.” Naolin’s delusional, sick mind is shown a few more times (wow, not sick in the way that sort of made it sound…like, actually sick–poisoned, in fact). Missy and Drear don’t act so hostilely toward each other now (though I should probably find a place for him to actually tell her his name), and a lot of Missy mixing healing items and giving the unconscious man liquid (since I discovered weeks ago that that doesn’t actually work) has been removed.
Dream, plan, write…
This has been my motto for the last year. I have tried to make sure every day contains at least a little writing work. For me, this can take more than one form:
Dream – This is the part where you ask, “What if…?” and “Why?” What if space were filled with vampires? What if the guy was the one who needed rescuing? Why would a British royal guard be camping in the woods of Montana? How different would the world be without shrimp? There are ways to force these ideas out of your head, but just as often, they just come on their own. When you’re driving, washing dishes, showering, even sleeping.
Plan – This is where you take that idea, that seed, and run with it. Meet and flesh out the characters. Decide on the right time and place. Start plotting. Not everyone does this step; some skip right from dreaming to writing. That’s okay too. But for the rest of us, it’s important to spend some time in the planning stage.
Write – This is the most self-explanatory stage, but often the most difficult to do. It is helpful to set goals along the way. Also important is saving the editing for later.
Revise – This is my absolute least favorite stage, but it has to be done. The question, though, is how to do it and how much to revise. My own mindset on revising has changed a lot in the last year, and I think I’m hating it less than I used to.
These different stages are often mixed up. Currently, on any given day, I may be working on revising one of two books, plotting another one, writing for a shorter bit that has no real plans, or who knows what else. And I’m always dreaming.
I’ve come to realize recently that, though I am not a published author, I have a lot of experience as a writer. I’ve been writing with some seriousness for 10 years and have grown a lot in both knowledge and skill. I’ve finished the first draft of two novels, which I’m told is an accomplishment in itself. And just in the last two years, I have learned a lot about all of these stages of writing. This blog has always been focused on my writing progress, but I have decided it’s time to branch out. I want to start sharing some of what I’ve learned, even extending to areas outside of those I mentioned above (like finding the right writing atmosphere). Hopefully someone will find some usefulness in my words.
I won’t try to say when or how often these posts might come out, because my family life is too unpredictable. The first post, about the “Dream” stage, will be shortly following this introductory post though.
Daily Challenge Check-in: June 5, 2015
Words/Time: 992 words, revising “Pithea.” I’m going to go into more detail on the actual story than I normally do here, so bear with me. The book I am working on right now is a full rewrite of 5 shortish stories that I wrote as fanfiction around 10 years ago. They were fanfiction based on a video game that had very little plot of its own, so the plots and characters were completely my own invention.
Cut to more recent years, and I’ve built a new world of my own that will mostly accommodate those stories, yet be different from the game (in some ways, very different). The original stories were written as third-person limited POV, while this book is actually first-person, but told from a side character who is only in the second half of the book (and even then, somewhat sporadically). The part of the story I am working on now is when the main character meets the narrator character for the first time.
Originally, it went that Missy (the MC) had already seen Drear (the narrator) from a distance, and he’d kind of creeped her out. So when she found him later, bent over her sick friend, she assumed the worst. And that led to situations in which she mistrusted him, and it made perfect sense.
In the rewritten book, I tried to keep that mistrust (and the mystery about Drear being the brother of that sick friend). But basically, Missy has to break into Drear’s house and then act indignant. Drear’s identity being a secret is really forced, and his subsequent reveal is just clumsy.
So, though I’m very used to these scenes being one way (Drear doesn’t identify himself and Missy has good cause to think he’s untrustworthy) for 10 years, I am now finding that I have to almost completely re-plot what happens from this point forward. There’s no reason Missy can’t know right away who Drear is (he introduces himself at the beginning of the book and says he’s the brother of that other character), so I’m basically going to be rewriting the next several chapters. Which is kind of nice, because I’ve been missing the actual writing lately.
Daily Challenge Check-in: June 4, 2015
Words/Time: 1059 words, revising “Pithea.” Missy’s first meeting with Aeldrim and Selunya is less awkward and forced. I hope. I went back to the original version from years ago to find the parts that I liked and hopefully it flows better now.
Daily Challenge Check-in: June 2, 2015
Words/Time: 1155 words revising “Pithea” with two of my sisters over Skype. Also known as the 42nd meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book. We finished the section on Pithean history that we started last week, which is a between-parts chunk of exposition. In the end, we felt pretty good about the whole thing, even though exposition is often thought of as boring. We do have a question about a really big issue that we will have to discuss further that will potentially break some of my world, but hopefully we can come to an answer that we like without ruining a foundational mechanic in my story world.
A Journey of Words 