Today I mostly wrote ... the word count thread. Showing 3,251-3,300 of 4,252

[Pam]

Still editing .... 5 hours today, 5 hours yesterday. Getting there by slow degrees.

[Jim]

yes editing here
Mind you did write a Maljie story as well :-)

[M.T.]

Doing a bit of editing, too, up to 65k now but nearly done, I just have to check the continuity with the later series, which is the most godawful headache, and I'm done.

Cheers

MTM

[Alicia]

Surprised myself: started with about 160 words yesterday, and now have another scene finished and polished at 1100+.

All the prep has made it easier to work through this arc. Easier and faster.

[Pam]

Alicia wrote: "Surprised myself: started with about 160 words yesterday, and now have another scene finished and polished at 1100+.

All the prep has made it easier to work through this arc. Easier and faster."

That's good Alicia. What in particular do you find helpful when pre planning?

Did 5 hours of editing yesterday but sadly had to go out and do real life things which got in the way today.

[Pam]

M.T. wrote: "Doing a bit of editing, too, up to 65k now but nearly done, I just have to check the continuity with the later series, which is the most godawful headache, and I'm done.

Cheers

MTM"
Crumbs I can imagine. I have loads of things to check back on just in one long book!

[Alicia]

Pam wrote: "What in particular do you find helpful when pre planning?"

Have a couple of hours?

The short version:
My planning and plotting are done in Dramatica - characters, themes, relationships - everything was laid out before I began the first time, and then revised after the first draft.

The major steps in the plot I knew when I started - the story came to me as a whole.

So when I tackle the next scene now, I have all of those blocks of text already filled out for the structure.

Then I have a set of detailed prompts for maintaining microtension in every scene - I fill those out right before I write the text.

One of the last parts of the prep is to make sure that the scene itself has an internal structure - and a way to move from a beginning, through one to three beats (rarely four), and a scene ending - much like setting up each scene to be a short story.

Then a rough home for all the individual bits in the internal structure (if a beat is about X, most of the bits I plan to use about X will be in that beat).

And then something happens: all that prep, all the bits of text, seem to do an internal resorting in my brain - and I start with the First Line, keep pulling in what fits as I go, and by the time I get to the scene resolution, the things that I keep have found homes, and the scene feels, in my mind, as if it actually occurred.

I don't know exactly how, but it happens every scene.

Then I clean up the language, run it through AutoCrit for things like using the same word too many times, or letting a cliche go unchallenged, and we're done.

And there is ALWAYS the point where I'm sure it will never work. I've learned to ignore it, telling myself it ALWAYS works, and it does.

Magic!

Sorry - you did ask.

I think I need this process because of my damaged brain - and I'm very grateful at what it produces.

[M.T.]

Up to 69k in the novel today, it’s clearly going to hit about 80 because I think it’ll be done in 5k and I’ve been thinking that since it hit 45k.

Alicia I often have a not going to work point and I do feel that the scenes in my head are incredibly real. :-)

Also wrote a blog post! Woot.

Real life is rather in the way at the moment. I now have to go and sew up a beanbag!

Cheers

MTM

[Pam]

Alicia wrote: "Pam wrote: "What in particular do you find helpful when pre planning?"

Have a couple of hours?

The short version:
My planning and plotting are done in Dramatica - characters, themes, relationship..."

Wow, I'm in awe Alicia.
Afraid I am mostly seat of the pants and if I do an outline I can often veer off massively from it because what I think of when I am actually writing is much better. Do get some false starts that way I must admit. May plan more when I return to doing something new - at the moment, just editing more than one manuscript (don't ask!)

[Pam]

Revised three chapters of a short book to send off to my crit group today. Will get back to the much longer book I am revising next and which I've been working on over the last couple of months.

[Alicia]

Pam wrote: "Wow, I'm in awe Alicia."

I'm laughing, Pam. I have to work this way due to a damaged brain which can only work in small chunks, and thus needs a pointillist approach.

I would never be able to do anything complex by the seat of my pants. What is that they say about making virtue of necessity?

I'm sure all that stuff is part of what makes me slow - so it's a good thing I can afford the time.

[M.T.]

Good going Pam and Alicia!

I'm about ... I dunno ... 500 - 1000 words from finishing my book but there is an ocean of admin and cleaning between me and it because we have people round on Sunday with the obligatory one who is allergic to cats, poor bloke, so I have to hoover downstairs very thoroughly and make sure the loo is squeaky clean for everyone too!

Novel now stands at 75,382 so it'll probably drop to about 70 with editing.

Cheers

MTM

[Alicia]

The crazy technique has produced another 1107 words, many of which I will keep. When the robot voice read them back, they weren't half bad. It's a start.

[M.T.]

Yay! Well done! I've finished the long short at 76,065k woot. Means I can do the hideously busy holiday thing without fretting for a week or two.

Cheers

MTM

[Jim]

M.T. wrote: "Yay! Well done! I've finished the long short at 76,065k woot. Means I can do the hideously busy holiday thing without fretting for a week or two.

Cheers

MTM"

by long short, I think you mean 'novel' :-)

[Philip]

Something different, perhaps. I am currently working on a Spanish language version of my book Eileen McHugh - a life remade. I have used deepl for most of the translation and am now reading through to identify idioms, north of England terms, slang, specialised vocabulary etc. I've done fifty pages today. (I do read Spanish quite well, by the way, but as ever it's the talking that's harder.)
I came across a very interesting problem, My character is a sculptor in the 1970s. She's a hippie and into concept art. I have made her create a work with baked bean tins and sticky labels, where the viewers of the work can write slogans on the labels.
Eileen McHugh has started on slogan trail with Support the VC, meaning VietCong! A first translation looked OK. Apoyar el VC. But apoyar is help. Venga is better, I think. So Venga el VC it was. I ran a translation back to English and the result was Live the Christian Life, Venga la vida cristiana. Oh how we must be careful...

[Pam]

Done some more on the edit. Am having to sort out a chronology problem as the book is set in 1994 and some of the dates aren't quite right at the moment but are crucial so am going to have to shift some things around. Just working on the actual words at the moment and making comments so I know where I have to go back to sort that.

[Jim]

I've had one of those spells where all I've done is kept up with blog posts. Keeping too busy :-(

[Alicia]

I'm not exactly sure what to make of it, but 647 words came out of my brain yesterday (after some minor polishing), which is either an unnecessary side track (except for a necessary plot point), or genius because of what it sets up later.

I'm usually not this confused about it.

I've decided to leave it in (unless we get way too long), and say Thanks? to the subconscious which produced it.

I can always reduce it to a much shorter version that covers the plot point only, but it is intriguing.

Do other people get these little gifts?

And it was the only thing yesterday produced. Huh.

[Alicia]

Jim wrote: "I've had one of those spells where all I've done is kept up with blog posts. Keeping too busy :-("

Unlike moi, you have an actual life and a business to run. Hope it was all productive.

[Jim]

Alicia wrote: "Jim wrote: "I've had one of those spells where all I've done is kept up with blog posts. Keeping too busy :-("

Unlike moi, you have an actual life and a business to run. Hope it was all productive."

Hoping so

[M.T.]

So have finished marking up the first lot of edits. Now to add them.

[Alicia]

Another thousand words or so, but more to the point, another full scene completely through the edit/polish/listen/finish stage.

That last bit can take hours, as I have a lazy brain which will offer up the same word in every place it might fit, even if it's not the synonym with the right nuance. Sigh.

[Pam]

More 5 hour sessions this week trying to get one chapter in particular reworked. Some scenes were rewritten from scratch and a new one added. Need to go back and rework the previous chapter now as more things occurred to me, but it will be a more convincing story when completed - I hope!

[M.T.]

Fab going Alicia and Pam. Got some editing on the novel done this week. Not much but just a bit was great.

Cheers

MTM

[Pam]

More editing this week including a session today writing a new scene and doing some knock-on continuity edits.

[Alicia]

Having that rarity of days: went for a trike ride this morning before it got hot, but I'm still getting some writing done! I'll take it.

Finished another chapter - and sent it off to my beta reader.

The next one is well started, and I hope I'm finally getting a little faster. Hate to say it, but the lockdown has kept me focused on the few things I can do, so it would be good to get these a lot farther along before the vaccine becomes available to such as us.

Still thinking about marketing plans that are appropriate for someone writing indie mainstream literary - slowly. Have some ideas, which I just realized are opposite of what everyone else does - I'll see if that works, because I can't do what everyone else does, write fast and publish frequently and pay big sums for ads on the assumption they'll pay back more than they cost.

Some of the people who advocate that path are spending huge amounts - and getting back double what they expend. The first part of that terrifies me, because what if you DON'T get double back?

My writing is in a niche that is far less common with indies, so it makes sense that general recommendations are less likely to work for me.

Suggestions welcome: I would really like more UK readers, and readers from other places outside the US where English is read.

Thanks!

[M.T.]

Pam wrote: "More editing this week including a session today writing a new scene and doing some knock-on continuity edits."

Nice going Pam!

Alicia wrote: "Having that rarity of days: went for a trike ride this morning before it got hot, but I'm still getting some writing done! I'll take it.

Suggestions welcome: I would really like more UK readers, and readers from other places outside the US where English is read..."

I can only suggest a few things that have worked for me.

1. The mailing list is everything. A lot of visibility is pay to play a mailing list is great, especially if you set up some automatic ones that tell everyone about your writing.
2. It is like pushing a rock up hill until you have more than 12 books out although it gets easier once you hit about nine. This is why my latest batch of books are shorter.
3. Look up the one thousand true fans theory. A small core of people who are devoted fans is better than a big pool of disinterested ones.
4. As AI and other stuff gets better and faster it will level the playing field between writers who are quick and writers who aren't so we slow ones have to look around for other ways to engage people, deluxe hard backs and stuff like that.
5. Write a short story involving your characters specifically to give away to your mailing list and make it a list exclusive.
6. Remember that a lot of the people churning out books at high speed are calling 40k a novel or writing shorter things. Not all of them, but a lot of them.
7. Sell your book absolutely everywhere you can and go direct with the big retailers where possible.

Joanna Penn's podcast is brilliant

I hope that gives food for thought.

Cheers

MTM

[Alicia]

M.T. wrote: "Pam wrote: "More editing this week including a session today writing a new scene and doing some knock-on continuity edits."

Nice going Pam!

Alicia wrote: "Having that rarity of days: went for a t..."

I will have been dead about 100 years before I have 12 books, so that's not going to fly. Frankly, by then I won't care.

Today + yesterday: 4863 words of prep, of which 131 are likely to end up in the scene. Typical for me.

Thanks for the suggestions - I finally had some ideas that might work for my kind of slow. I had a few readers when I serialized PURGATORY, a new scene published every two weeks. I have a lot of finished material for NETHERWORLD, and it may work for that kind of treatment, because I could send people who signed up frequent new material. I'll see if it works for me.

I meant 'suggestions for UK readers'; the ones you listed are mostly what they recommend here already - and most of which I don't have the energy to do.

Is the UK reader of mainstream or literary fiction similar or very different from the US one? Are they used to getting their recommendations - and novels - from traditional publishers, and unwilling to consider independent self-published writers?

Hope your audiobooks are starting to give you the returns!

[M.T.]

Alicia wrote: "Having that rarity of days:..."

I wrote a huge long reply to this Alicia! Heaven knows where it went. I must have been distracted before I finished and not posted it. The short answer was that I think serialising some of your work might be good and also if you have deleted scenes, or just cut and paste some of the stuff here about your process.

The audio is going slowly but I’m experimenting with ads and the like. That said, I’ve done nothing much this week. In the holidays, pretty much all I have to write is a blog post.

That said, I did do a surprise 1057 words yesterday, which was jolly!

Cheers

MTM

[M.T.]

Ah and I forgot, I also did a blog post.

https://mtmcguire.co.uk/2020/08/08/th...

[Pam]

Nothing today due to catching up on Goodreads reviews and other matters, but managed a 7 hour stint yesterday on the edit.

[Alicia]

Managed to get about 2/3 of the next scene, 1300 words or so, dragged into existence over the past two days.

Then I listened to it, and it wasn't half bad.

Having some medication problems - trying to write with thick brain fog isn't very productive, but I'm determined to keep at it anyway. As I keep telling myself: I'm getting to the good part. The end of the middle book in the trilogy is a doozy.

[M.T.]

Nice going peps! I managed a little editing yesterday but I need to get started on the new, slightly more commercial series. I say commercial but I guess I just mean that some people will actually read it voluntarily rather than having to be forced at gun point.

Cheers

MTM

[Alicia]

When you have a niche audience, it takes a bit of digging.

[M.T.]

Alicia wrote: "When you have a niche audience, it takes a bit of digging."

That it does and they are very niche.

[Alicia]

I'm niche not because there are few readers, but because they have taken to tarring all indies with the same brush, and won't even try anyone not traditionally published.

They think that if you are not vetted by a publisher you are automatically bad, rather than that you might have actually chosen not to submit.

[M.T.]

Nothing much written this week. I’m having a bit of a crisis as to whether I’m asking for too much suspension of disbelief. But I want a canal boat chase because two vehicles with a top speed of 4mph engaged in a chase to the death is funny.

Also wrote a blog post in the record time of one hour!

https://mtmcguire.co.uk/2020/08/22/me...

[Jim]

I still think the canal boat chase has to happen :-)

[✿Claire✿]

I've finally managed to get into the right headspace to do some more editing. Mum and Dad have both read my current WIP and liked it so that's spurred me on a little bit to get it finished.

[M.T.]

Yay! Go Claire.

Jim ... yeh. I do like the idea, I'm thinking that maybe if it was dark it would be more difficult for the airborne pursuit, or I could have a fog coming up off the water and they just gradually disappear, then they turn off the motor and scull it or something. At the moment our hero very obviously disappears off with the thing they're after, drawing off the airborne pursuit.

They can't leave the boat because it's also their home and they would be forsaking everything they own. I think I can get round it by just having a scene where the baddie says that, remarks that they've nowhere to go and that they can head them off at the locks up river where the final scene takes place.

That way everything else works and because we're not guessing at the bad guy's rationale it all looks sensible ... I think ... although the extra bad guy action might take it up to 80k which is getting ridiculously long for a K'Barthan Short.

Cheers

MTM

[Jim]

Or you could make the canal boat chase a short in itself
Then you could work into it the fact that the one legged baddie (perhaps with parrot and crutch) wasn't going to get out of the boat and chase them :-)

[M.T.]

Jim wrote: "Or you could make the canal boat chase a short in itself
Then you could work into it the fact that the one legged baddie (perhaps with parrot and crutch) wasn't going to get out of the boat and cha..."

Mwahahahahrgh!

[Pam]

Well finally wrote a blog post today for the first time in a huge while - whoops - and did two critiques for my crit group.

[Pam]

Revised two chapters of the big book - now need to go back to the start and address the various notes on it to sort out queries.

[Alicia]

Good job, Pam.

I may finally be over the brain fog that bedeviled August.

Meddling with medications won't be happening again any time soon.

I actually wrote tons of notes yesterday; maybe today I can handle fiction.

[M.T.]

Well done Pam And Alicia. Another week for me when I had time to do about ten minutes of editing and the blog ... And that was it.

Week after next things may settle.

Cheers

MTM

[Alicia]

Tickled pink: the brain fog finally lifted, and the scene I've been trying to write since August 2nd came together, got finished, got polished - and is DONE! 2019 final words.

I really should add one more, shouldn't I?

Pray I'm over the worst. I've already started the next scene, plus figured out a new technique to get them done a bit more efficiently, and can't wait to see if tomorrow I will still have a brain.

[Pam]

That's good Alicia.

Have had to spend a few days doing crits for my online group and now need to prepare the next extract to send them, but will get back to the one I'm working on after that.

[M.T.]

Well done Alicia and Pam, it's all writing right? I've managed about 2k this week. I so want to finish the correct draft of edits and start on my new series but I keep having to do other marketing stuff instead.

Had a productive day today though. Did updates all the audiobook pages on my site. I need to add a section for audio on the ritzy main section though. That will take time and doing CCS.

Also wrote a blog. Woot.

https://mtmcguire.co.uk/2020/09/05/we...

Cheers

MTM