Output Archives - Page 5 of 16 - All the Billion Other Moments

Zette Appreciation Day

I missed the fact that yesterday was Zette Appreciation Day, but I’ll try and make up for it now.

In late 2003 I was convinced that writing a novel was much to hard a thing to try. I had it listed in my goals for something to work on by 2008. But then I saw Zette’s announcement at Forward Motion that she would be teaching an online class during which participants would write a novel over a period of two years. I signed up, not sure what to expect. Well it worked. I wrote a novel. It wasn’t polished and ready for submission by the end of the class due to some poor decisions on my part, but I had a completed first draft and some solid ideas for how to proceed. I also wasn’t afraid of writing novels anymore, which is a big one.

When I did start serious revisions I realized that I’d lost the detailed critique Zeete had sent me (which is what comes of replying to auto-generated forum emails without changing the subject). I emailed her in a panic explaining what had happened and what I believed the subject of the email to be and she went through the effort of digging it up and sending it again. It had probably been about a year since she first sent it, and it was a big help.

Zette always seems to want to help. I seem to remember her taking some flak on the NaNoWriMo boards for trying to offer good solid advice to folks about what is considered publication and scams to be wary of. You can’t really help people who don’t want to be helped, but it must be disheartening when they attack you for it. A quick check just now shows that she’s still there offering helpful advice to those who will listen.

If you’re willing, she’ll probably help you someday

To learn more about Zette:
Forward Motion — http://www.fmwriters.com
Vision — http://www.lazette.net/Vision/
Zette’s website — http://www.lazette.net

Sunday Morning Progress

Made some good progress this AM on the manuscript slog. I polished off two chapters before everyone got up (and managed to take a walk in between). My first draft was all from a single characters POV. This was great during NaNo to keep going, but I never intended to keep it that way. Chapter two was the first to change POV, and it went pretty well, but I think it might be a bit short. We’ll see once I get to the type in. Two characters with one line each at either end of the book merged into an all new, and much more fun character with a bit more to do, which was nice. I hope to squeeze some more time in somewhere today, but I’m happy with what I got done if I don’t.

Not Quite According to Plan

I got an early start yesterday hoping to make some good progress on my revisions. Then the kids decided to get up at 6:30. They were a bit of a handful most of the day (the family cold is not bringing out the best in people). Later when I tried again I only managed to squeeze in just under an hour before I was needed. Then I noticed the water dripping into our bedroom. So up to attic I go to find that the central air, which should drain outside, well, isn’t. Joy!

Oh, and I found at least six bee, hornet, or wasp nests on the house, and I only had three mostly empty cans of bee/hornet/wasp spray. Just enough to wake them up when I tried to get them last night.

Today we have a pretty busy day, and on top of it I need to get everything out of the way of the attic entrance. Not sure where I’m going to move stuff too… I’m going to try and get a bit more work on the revision done now, but I don’t have high hopes at this point.

“Miracles” Line for Scene finished

I’ve been pretty quiet lately. Life has been busy, and every spare moment I’ve had has been spend working on the line-for-scene cards for the Miracles revision. The line-for-scene technique is covered in Holly Lisleâ€™s Create A Plot Clinic, it’s also covered briefly on Holly’s writing diary. I finished up this morning with 109 cards (16 green, 36 yellow, 31 orange, and 26 red).

I intend to start the read-through/write-in Friday. I still have a few post-its to stick onto the appropriate cards, and a few notes on some background things that need some shaping up. My goal was to have the type-in finished by July. I’m still hoping, but I’m not sure how exactly I would pull that off.

Thoughts on Pens

I’ve never liked writing with pens. I’ve always preferred pencils, mostly mechanical. My handwriting is fairly attrocious, but I found the friction of the right graphite on paper slowed me down enough to be legible while not so much as to cause me to loose whatever thought I was hoping to preserve.

Recently I’ve found myself trying to find a pen that I can use comfortably. I’m not completely sure what caused me to want to switch to pens after all these years. The fact that pencils have a high tendency to fade over time has something to do with it.

One pen I’ve found I really like is the Paper Mate PhD Multi. Twisting this pen switches it between a pen, a PDA stylus, and a 0.5 mm mechanical pencil. It appears that you can replace the stylus with an additional pen refill, but I haven’t been able to find them in any color but black. Having red ink, black ink, and the pencil would be best for me. I wasn’t crazy about the included pencil leads, but I just replace them with some 2B which is simple enough. I really like the way this pen feels in my hand.

Unfortunately, the PhD is a bit large to stick in your pocket all the time, so I’ve also been using a Bullet Pen from Fisher Space Pens. When caped it’s just over half the size of a standard pen, and the cap isn’t just going to fall off in your pocket. The clip on the other hand, fell off when I breathed on it wrong, but a little Krazy Glue fixed that. It should write underwater or in outer space, and in temperatures of -30° to 250° F, which in New England should be pretty useful. It does clump occasionally, but I know it’s always going to write, even in the strangest situations. I find that comforting somehow.

Holly Lisle’s "Create A Plot Clinic" Available

Holly Lisle’s latest writing ebook, Create A Plot Clinic, is now available. I read an earlier draft and I can’t wait to start using it myself. The book is filled with exercises, tools, and examples to help you develop your stories. It’s divided into four main sections, each covering different phases of plotting.

Back?

Sorry I’ve been quiet for so long. I’ve been busy, sick, or both. The past two weeks have been completely full up. On a good day I had an hour and a half of down time before bed. 2007 is turning out to be a rough year for me so far. Let’s hope it turns around soon. If all goes to plan (and it never does) I hope to get back to my pre-revision work on Miracles on Monday (earlier if possible). I’m not ready to set a firm deadline, but I want to be done revisions by the end of May.

Holly Lisle’s writing clinics on sale

Just wanted to let people know that Holly put her three writing clinics on sale ($2 off each) through Friday (March 9th) at her online e-book shop.

I can personally recommend them, especially the language clinic. I’m currently working on my second language for Miracles and I’m enjoying the heck out of it. The books are clear and concise, and most importantly they make the process fun (and manageable, but fun is more important). If any of this even sounds vaguely interesting you owe it to yourself to check them out (the shop pages contain Table of Contents and excepts):

Prepping for Revision

Parallel Shift changed into something I’m not quite ready to deal with, so I’ve started doing some background expansion for Miracles. I’m currently creating the language for race of creatures that live under the mountains using Holly Lisle’s Create A Language Clinic. It’s going well and I’m surprised by how much fun it is. The language itself won’t feature too heavily in the final product, but the way in which they speak factors in.

Current plan is to do the human language next, to help with using more reasonable names, and then I’ll move on to Holly Lisle’s Create A Culture Clinic. There’s going to be quite a bit of expansion going into the revision, so I want to solidify the background stuff as much as possible at this point.

Whoops

So I ended up not working out a writing plan yesterday. I tried doing it this morning, but stopped when I had twenty minutes left and just started a short story based on a Freemind file I did last July. I wrote for fifteen minutes, which is better than nothing. So the current plan is to finish this story, then write another. We’ll see where that takes me.