Words: using my normal format, 8000 (in the form of 4 hours) doing various tasks. I started a plot outline for one of two stories I may write for NaNoWriMo this November in Scrivener. Yesterday, I used Scrivener to organize a novel that’s already written and being revised. I still didn’t finish getting it all in, and I’m not sure it’ll do me any good if I do. But in my pursuit of finding out why I should use Scrivener, I thought it would be good to look at the other end of the creative pursuit–plotting a new story, rather than working on a written one. I even did shallow character sheets on 6 characters, and got just a bit of insight into some more minor ones than I’d had. The story isn’t fully plotted, as there is a big gap before the climax, where the investigating and learning the truth and such need to happen. But it was a really good start. Of course, the real test of the program won’t happen until it’s time to use the outlined scenes to actually write, but that won’t happen until November. Given the 30-day limit on the free trial, I’ll need to have made my decision by then.
writing
Daily Challenge Check-in: May 8, 2015
Words: 3000 (in the form of 90 minutes) setting up Scrivener. I’ve heard about it a lot, but hadn’t tried it yet. I thought it was too complicated and not necessary. I’m still not sure it will work for me, after playing with it for an hour and a half, adding chapters from “Pithea.” One feature I was looking forward to isn’t available on the Windows version, so that was disappointing. I’ll keep using it for now, since the trial lasts 30 days, and see if it’s enough of a benefit to keep going with it and maybe even buy it.
Daily Challenge Check-in: May 7, 2015
Words: 2000 (in the form of 60 minutes) revising “Pithea.” My hard copy is a mess with all of the scene shifting I’ve been doing. I’ll probably work on getting it transferred into the computer tomorrow or Saturday, while it’s still fresh in my mind. Meanwhile, Missy has had all of her visitors and is in the process of meeting Jonathan for the first time. He’s amongst my favorite characters (and that’s considering I love most of them). He’s supposed to be from a different country–in fact, from a country no one in Pithea would really have heard of. So I tried to have him talk a little differently, but it just came out southern hick. So I’m toning that down for now and hope I figure out a way to make his speech stand out a bit.
Daily Challenge Check-in: May 6, 2015
Words: 2500 (in the form of 75 minutes) revising “Pithea.” There are several scenes at the beginning of part 3, as Missy deals with a personal tragedy, that I’m realizing as I go through it now are all mixed up. They make much more sense in a different order. That’s what I spent over an hour working on tonight. Now Leahna tells Missy more about her friend Alexander, but not until after Missy’s had a bit of a meltdown and calms down again. Also, I’d left out any indications of the time of year, as it’s nearly winter at this point in the story, so I made Missy a little colder.
Daily Challenge Check-in: May 5, 2015
Words: 2104 revising “Pithea” with two of my sisters over Skype. Also known as the 39th meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book. We got through about 6 1/2 pages of double-spaced text. That’s definitely on the higher end. At one point, it was noted that we had gone through a lot of pages without being slowed down by anything. Shortly after that, we did end up spending a lot of time on something we couldn’t see eye-to-eye on. Still, I’m happy with the end result. Right near the end, we came across an issue that could have really screwed up some parts of the story that I really like. We have a solution that should work, but I will have to do some rewriting to fix those parts.
Daily Challenge Check-in: May 4, 2015
Words: 2000 (in the form of 60 minutes) revising “Pithea.” Missy’s outburst with her mom has been moved to a time that makes more sense. Also, the reader is getting a bit of foreshadowing regarding the dangerous Lost Gresnorte, and I remembered it’s nearly winter in the story and plan to make that more clear.
Daily Challenge Check-in: April 28, 2015
Words: 1574 revising “Pithea” with two of my sisters over Skype. Also known as the 38th meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book. We got through about 4 3/4 pages of double-spaced text. We felt like it should have been more than that, but we deleted whole paragraphs at one point. One of the members said we should consider today’s session more like 5 3/4 pages, so really, more like 6.
Something to note for anyone reading this, I’ve been getting back into my writing lately. I’d slacked off for maybe 2 months, and had looked forward to Camp NaNo bringing me back into it. Then my family had a minor crisis on March 31st, and during the first week or so of Camp, I just couldn’t get my head in the right space. In the last few weeks, I’ve been doing more work again, which means I should be posting here more regularly. But I haven’t been, I think because I still feel like it’s not regular enough. Camp ends in 2 days, and hopefully I will find myself with a more regular writing/revising pace afterward. We’ll see.
Daily Challenge Check-in: April 21, 2015
Words: 1978 revising “Pithea” with two of my sisters over Skype. Also known as the 37th meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book. We got through about 7 1/4 pages of double-spaced text. A good chunk again! We lost almost an hour of working time at the beginning of the meeting, too, so that means we really flew tonight. I’m trying not to think about how much we would have gotten through if we’d had that hour at the beginning.
Daily Challenge Check-in: April 14, 2015
Words: 1966 revising “Adventures in Pithea” with two of my sisters over Skype. Also known as the 36th meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book. We got through about 7 1/2 pages of double-spaced text. So much tonight! There was a lot of skipping over whole paragraphs and resolving questions quickly. Being the one who wrote the original book, it makes me happy when a lot of my sentences are left alone. It means I did something right! (Okay, so I don’t mean to imply that the book as a whole needed a ton of revision, but we tend to get stuck on some areas, and we didn’t do that much tonight.)
Also, a breakthrough in the lack of a real title happened, and it was much simpler than I was making it. I have spent so much time looking for some great title that would sum up the expansiveness of this book, or that would philosophically show Missy’s journey, and nothing was clicking. Everything sounded too pompous or vague or just wrong. I brought up that issue tonight, and one sister threw out some ideas she’s had. They were all much simpler than the directions I’ve been going, and one of them was simply “Pithea.” I’ve thought of that before, but worried it’d be too vague as well, because no one will know what Pithea is (it’s the country in which my book is set). However, I think it makes a lot of sense to call it that, because this book is in many ways an introduction to Pithea. Thus, from this point forward, this book will be known as “Pithea.”
Daily Challenge Check-in: April 7, 2015
Words: 1647 revising “Adventures in Pithea” with two of my sisters over Skype. Also known as the 35th meeting of the Tri-County Sisterhood of the Traveling Book. We got through just under 6 pages of double-spaced text. We made a lot of progress and were thrilled!
A Journey of Words 