David R. Michael's Blog, page 15
March 19, 2012
Writing Progress Report
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, March 12, 2012.
Writing Project
Words
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Total
0
Project Total: 64459
YTD Total: 62313
Reading List
Business Around A Lifestyle (First Step: How To Dream Your Perfect Lifestyle, Then Go Get It!) by Jim F Kukral.
Double Dead by Chuck Wendig.
Related Posts:
9 Months of Indie PublishingNow Available – "The Perfect Hiding Place"Now Available – "Insanity"
March 12, 2012
Writing Progress Report
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, March 5, 2012.
Writing Project
Words
Monday
Gunwitch2
1629
Tuesday
Gunwitch2
Updated Gunwitch2 outline.
812
Wednesday
Gunwitch2
763
Thursday
Gunwitch2
5
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Total
3209
Project Total: 64459
YTD Total: 62313
Reading List
Mort by Terry Pratchett.
Related Posts:
9 Months of Indie PublishingNow Available – "Insanity"Now Available – "The Perfect Hiding Place"
March 7, 2012
Some Chapters Are Longer Than Others
Not only do I sometimes look at the next chapter in my outline and realize "I already wrote that" and cut that chapter from my outline, but sometimes I discover that the chapter I'm working on–a chapter that steadfastly refuses to end–was actually two chapters.
Dropping a chapter is less work. Sure, I have to make sure that all the story/plot/character elements the chapter was intended to convey are conveyed elsewhere in the text, but that's typically not too hard. Find a convenient paragraph, and hang a lampshade on it.
Splitting a chapter, though, can be more involved. This is the opposite of "tightening", which is what dropping a chapter feels like (and might even be). Just splitting the chapter into two consecutive chapters makes no real sense, most of the time. Why bother? Just leave it long. So splitting means that at least one other chapter, possibly already written, possibly not, will be inserted between the two chapter halves. And that has implications on story pacing, reveals, and so on.
All of which to say, yes, I spent yesterday splitting a chapter and rippling the changes throughout the updated outline. I ended up adding 2 chapters to the outline, bringing the total for the book back up to 25. One of the new chapters won't be especially long, but I think it will give me a chance to provide more interaction and maybe even some hints of backstory. So it's all good.
I'm reasonably certain that I will not be finishing this novel by 31 March, my first deadline for 2012. Right now, I'm estimating mid- to late-April to type "The End" on the first draft. I'm also estimating the completed manuscript to be about 115K words, about 15% longer than my original planned length. Of course, those are just estimates, and could be way, way off, one way or the other…
-David
Related Posts:
Nano – Day 8Nano Day 15More Planning Than Writing
March 5, 2012
Writing Progress Report
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, February 27, 2012.
Writing Project
Words
Monday
Gunwitch2
Edited GoSH1 chapter 15.
1038
Tuesday
Gunwitch2
Edited GoSH1 chapter 16.
1110
Wednesday
Gunwitch2
882
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Edited GoSH1 chapter 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.
Sunday
Total
3030
Project Total: 61250
YTD Total: 59104
Reading List
Discover Your Inner Economist by Tyler Cowen.
Shotgun Opera by Victor Gischler.
Related Posts:
9 Months of Indie PublishingNow Available – "Insanity"Now Available – "The Perfect Hiding Place"
March 3, 2012
Editing is Not Work
Not the way I do it, anyway.
What I call "editing" is reading through my work and doing one or more of the following as I go:
Correcting typos
Fixing word choice
Excising extraneous, unnecessary verbiage
Clarifying the prose
And, on the final read-through-edit, addressing issues brought up by first readers
Note the lack of "story fixing" in that list. I don't consider that part of editing. Getting the story right is writing, and that happens long before editing.
This process takes time, and a bit of effort, but I don't consider it work. It's actually fun. Almost relaxing. I'm reading something I wrote and (usually) happy with how much it doesn't suck. I'm enjoying my own creativity while I make it slightly better. How could that be work?
What I call "line editing", though, is not fun. It is very much work. I run the draft, a chapter at a time, through the Serenity Editor software and review its line-by-line recommendations. It's tedious as all hell, but it catches the bulk of the remaining typos and tightens the prose.
Today I finished primary editing of GoSH1. Which means it's all work-work-work from now on. Next week I'll start the line editing. After that, the formatting for ebook and POD.
Have a great weekend!
-David
Related Posts:
Learn to Edit Your Own WorkGunwitch Editing BeginsPublishing Seemed Less Work When I Didn't Know Any Better
February 29, 2012
The Wall
Marathon runners and other endurance sports participants talk about "hitting the wall". The wall is the point where the exhaustion becomes overwhelming and continuing becomes a matter of will.
I think I've found my own wall, at least for novels. It's around the 60,000-word mark. I have enough novels behind me now that I can see the pattern developing.
The cure for hitting the wall (and, really, for avoiding the wall) in sports is proper diet during the event (lots of carbs, for example) and a reduction in intensity level.
I think for writing, the only way past the wall is … well … willpower. You either continue or you don't.
The wall in writing novels doesn't have the physical component, of course. And I haven't exactly been pushing that hard with a target of 1000 words per day. But after 59 consecutive days of writing (in addition to working 5-6 hours/day on The Journal), I'm beginning to feel the strain of continued effort.
I'll get past it. I always do. Eventually.
That said, I'm seriously considering (read that, "99% sure") letting my streak come to an end on Friday and taking the weekend off. Because a short rest is another way past (or around) the wall. And I haven't had a weekend off all year.
-David
Related Posts:
Writing Short Stories Considered UsefulWhy I Keep Bringing That Up…Lookit! I Did a Cover!
February 26, 2012
Writing Progress Report
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, February 20, 2012.
Writing Project
Words
Monday
Gunwitch2
Edited GoSH1 chapter 9.
1514
Tuesday
Gunwitch2
Edited GoSH1 chapter 10.
1005
Wednesday
Gunwitch2
1532
Thursday
Gunwitch2
Edited GoSH1 chapter 11, 12.
601
Friday
Gunwitch2
699
Saturday
Gunwitch2
Edited GoSH1 chapter 13, 14.
1004
Sunday
Gunwitch2
655
Total
7010
Project Total: 58220
YTD Total: 56074
Current Streak: 56 days [ties previous streak record]
Reading List
Soul Music by Terry Pratchett.
Related Posts:
9 Months of Indie PublishingNow Available – "Insanity"Now Available – "The Perfect Hiding Place"
February 22, 2012
Talking to Myself Blindly in the Dark
Anyone who's read any of my blog posts is almost certainly aware that I outline my novels first, then write them.
It sounds so simple. So clean. So organized.
I outline, then I write.
I assure you, though, the process is anything but simple, clean and organized. OK. It's a little organized. And it's not that complicated, I guess. And I do take my shower before I sit down to write. But all of that is beside the point.
First:
I. This
II. Is Not
A. How I
1. Outline
Hell, no.
The outline usually begins with me typing something like this in The Journal:
"So, yeah, I think I'll write me a new YA book."
Seriously. That's the first thing I wrote when I started taking notes for GoSH1 in December 2010. (Yes, I'm chatty with myself in my journal.) And that was all I wrote for 5 days. All I knew then was that I wanted to write a novel for my daughter (who had just turned 9).
After that, over the next couple months while I finished the first draft of Gunwitch and did some more indie publishing, I came back to my GoSH1 notes and added ideas and images. I do this in a way that is a lot like talking to myself.
For example:
"What if the first book really is 3 separate storylines? The girls only see each other in passing, interact only a little bit, until the end, when they see they're all working toward the same end. They don't reveal what they can do until the end. They are trying to keep their abilities secret. They will each fail unless they join together."
It's kind of interesting (to me) to go back and see where I started and compare it to the final story. Because that example has almost nothing to do with the final book. There are ideas in my notes that I have forgotten, but that helped me on the way. Some of the ideas might be worth pursuing in a future GoSH book, or maybe in a very different book or series. The same thing happened in the storystorming process for Gunwitch2. My earliest notes have very little in common with the outline I'm using now.
In the early part of the process, in a form of brainstorming, I write everything that occurs to me. I'm talking to myself, and at the same time jotting down notes about the glimpses of setting and character that I see. I'm experimenting with story structures and poking around at backstory. Everything is fluid, and I seldom delete anything I've written. If I decide something doesn't work, I just leave it as it lays and move on.
This goes on for DAYS.
I usually have thousands of words of notes before I take my first stab at a high-level outline (of sorts). By that time, I've made decisions about characters and setting and I've started to get a feel for both. Seeing even an abbreviated outline for the story exposes flaws and holes. So I go through draft after draft of outlines, copy-and-pasting so I don't lose anything, then editing from there.
And that goes on for DAYS, as well. Sometimes weeks. You can see an example of this in my notes for the short story, "Secondhand Coffin".
Ultimately, I have an outline that I figure is a good enough guide to start writing from.
I'm wrong, of course. I'm always wrong. The outline will change as I write, but usually not in large, storybreaking ways. Hell, the outline for my current project is now on Draft #6–and I started writing with Draft #3. Over the weekend, as I started a new chapter, I realized I didn't need that chapter at all. It had become mostly redundant. And what parts of it were still needed could be threaded into the chapter I had just finished.
I'm OK with being wrong about my outline, though, because even in its imperfect state it has served its purpose. Which is to help me find something visible and tangible within the empty, amorphous darkness that surrounded me when I started.
-David
PS I was inspired to write this post after reading Camille LaGuire's latest post. It's sort of my long comment to her post.
Related Posts:
I Can Haz Story?Planning (Almost) FinishedA Story Emerges
February 20, 2012
50 Days
Today marked the 50th day of my current writing "streak". 50 consecutives days of writing *something* every day. The day with the largest word count, so far, was 6 February with just over 2000 words. My two lowest days have been below 400 words, but most days I'm hitting around 1000. Which isn't dreadful considering I have to share my days between writing, developing software, and family life. But it's a bit off the pace I thought I would be setting at the beginning of the year. I might miss my first deadline (31 March) for the completion of Gunwitch2. But I still might not. That's still 6 weeks away.
50 days makes this my second longest streak ever (and it's still growing). I had a 41-day streak in 2006, and a 56-day streak in 2011. I expect to set my own personal streak record by next Monday. Which will be cool, if hardly celebratory outside of a very small group of people. =)
-David
Related Posts:
A MilestoneApril WrapupThe Approaching End – My Goals and Deadlines for 2012
February 19, 2012
Writing Progress Report
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, February 13, 2012.
Writing Project
Words
Monday
Gunwitch2
Edited GoSH1 chapter 1.
1035
Tuesday
Gunwitch2
Edited GoSH1 chapter 1, 2.
1019
Wednesday
Gunwitch2
Edited GoSH1 chapter 3.
1025
Thursday
Gunwitch2
Edited GoSH1 chapter 4, 5, 6.
1422
Friday
Gunwitch2
Edited GoSH1 chapter 7.
1080
Saturday
Gunwitch2
Edited GoSH1 chapter 8.
779
Sunday
Gunwitch2
Updated Gunwitch2 outline.
382
Total
6742
Project Total: 51210
YTD Total: 49064
Current Streak: 49 days
Publishing/Marketing
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Reading List
Into the Wild by Erin Hunter.
Related Posts:
9 Months of Indie PublishingNow Available – "Insanity"Now Available – "The Perfect Hiding Place"
