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.
Tag: Novel
“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 Lisle’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.
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.
“Miracles” First Draft Completed
I finished my first draft this morning. I’d been having a hard time writing the past few days and I wasn’t quite sure why. This morning I was able to turn my inner editor back off and just write, and to my surprise I had reached “The End”. My goal was to make sure I finished this draft by the end of the year, so I’m rather glad that I’ve gotten it out of the way now so I can enjoy the holidays more.
I don’t think I’m going to revise this draft using One Pass, but instead I’ll write an expanded second draft after this one has cooled for a bit. When I started I had some ideas for what to do with a short work, but since I wrote this book with very little description I want to add the missing detail in and see where that puts me. I also want to take some of the new ideas about the world and work them back into my other worldbuilding note before starting the next draft, so things seem a bit less nebulous.
NaNoWriMo 2006: I did it!
Yesterday I was ready to stop writing for the day, so I calculated my word count and was a surprised to see I was within 300 words of the 50,000 word finish line. I decided to keep going and ten minutes later I checked again and I’d crossed the line (not by much, but that’s not the point).
So 50,000 words in 26 days. That beats anything I’ve ever done before. Is it any good? I think it is. Maybe not right now, but with a bit more work. Of course the novel isn’t finished. I’m guessing it’ll be about 60,000 by the end of this draft. It’s a very rough draft, but it’s nearly finished. My last novel had over 100,000 words in the first draft, but it took me about a year to write. At my current pace I’d have that done in two months.
So what have I learned? Continue reading “NaNoWriMo 2006: I did it!”
NaNoWriMo 2006
Sorry about the lack of updates. If you’ve been wondering where I am, you haven’t been paying attention. I’ve been participating in NaNoWriMo, meaning I have until the end of the month to complete 50,000 words of a novel. I doubt I’ll be updating much during that time because if I have time to post then I should be working on the novel. Things should return to normal once I’m finished.
1-Pass Day 34 (79370/90351)
Didn’t get a lot of days in editing this week, but I think I made up for it today. The ever shrinking type-in pile is looking pretty short. I’m hoping next week is it.
1-Pass Day 33 (71519/93173)
Made some more progress last night. I’m feeling pretty ready to be done now. If anyone has some spare time they can lend me, I’d appreciate it.
Totally unrelated, but I found this pretty amusing. Oh, and if anyone wants to buy me one of these, I wouldn’t complain. I have just the spot for it in the yard.
1-Pass Day 32 (68501/94126)
This morning I had a great momentum going, and had life allowed it to continue I may have finished the whole thing today. Still, not a bad day all said.
The next scene is very fast paced and covered with corrections, and my eyes are crossing, so I think that’s it for tonight.
1-Pass Day 31 (60138/96439)
60138/96439
Not too bad. I hope I make some good progress this weekend.