Or, Why Elizabeth is Looking Forward to Working on a Different Book During Nanowrimo:

1. Length. Too short. Yesterday I worked on the synopsis some more. There's a big gap after a few more scenes. Unfortunately the plot works out nicely if the story just skips from about 30k words to the last several scenes, without 50k worth of more stuff. This problem will be improved by fixing some others, I hope.

2. Setting. A modern-time fantasy world - so both magic and technology work. This is irrelevant to the plot, so it doesn't get explained much. And then I bring in the occult, which is the magic stuff that only supertitious or crazy people believe in. Doesn't actually work, except this is an urban fantasy, so it does work after all. This problem is exacerbated by the next one.

3. Structure. Mostly at the beginning. Chapter 1, mostly from Kara's POV, has a scene from Isri's as well (he gets far fewer scenes than she does throughout the book). It has been suggested that I give Kara a flashback. Chapter 2 is historical - all new characters and a 1000-year-old setting. Chapter 3 is back to Kara and starts bringing up the occult magic.

4. The plot is happening around Kara rather than being driven by her. Seen this problem before. This is not a problem that the nanowrimo-book will have, at least.

Passed 30,000 words. Time for bed. Tomorrow, another character meets an untimely death.

Links:

Paperback Writer lists several name generator sites. I think that's what I'll do for my learn-some-basic-JavaScript project.

WashPost article about devious internet marketing techniques. No mention of LJ sponsored communities.

Worried that Microsoft controls too much of the world? From a support page about system restore points: "The restore point is then deleted because 90 days is the default time to live."

Goals for the week:

Finish the critiques for Context
5 days of exercise four, if the day I exercised twice counts twice.
6000 words on Shadow Play Um, no. Got overly distracted by job-hunting and career-planning activities.

Writing Summary:

Set my goal for 6000 since I did more than that the week before (though I deleted >400 old words, too), and then wrote almost nothing. Job-hunting is useful, but I need to get writing done too.

Context and the writing workshop was great. I met a lot of new people (local writers, hooray) and connected faces to some others. Huge thanks to ccfinlay and the other organizers/leaders.

I got a lot of very good ideas for improving the beginning of Shadow Play, and reactions to the setting were less confused than they were on the previous version. Still have a lot of setting work to do, along with other stuff. But not til at *least* December, possibly much later.

For the rest of October, I'm going to make more forward progress on the book. I'm about a quarter of the way through the first draft, and all but the first 2.5 chapters of that is really rough.

Then in November I'm doing Nanowrimo. I'm signed up as elizabeths, and I'll be writing the sequel to Lost Magic (currently known as Seliveon's book). I plan to make it stand alone so I can sell it without selling LM.

Exercise Summary:

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This week:
5 days of exercise
3000 words on Shadow Play

The downside to working out a word for a bicycle-equivalent using the world's words for "two" and "wheel" is having a student ride around campus on a toro.

(And yes, this book is infested with smeerps.)

This synopsis thing might actually be working.

I have >3000 words of synopsis written so far, with most events assigned to particular chapters. Chapters 1-8 were easy; I've already written them. Chapter 9 was a bit harder; I'm currently writing it and am trying the synopsis because I got stuck. Chapter 10 was a bit harder than that. (That's about as far ahead as my planning process usually goes.)

The end - I'm claiming it's chapters 28-30, based on how long I want the book to be - was relatively easy; I pasted in the events of the previous outline, the one I made while writing the 0th draft. The end, because it deals mostly with the main defeating-the-evil-sorcerer plotline, hasn't changed much in the 1st draft, though I had to change the subplots. Still have a bit of work to do on those.

Chapters 11-27, however, are pretty empty right now. I have one set of scenes that go maybe around chapter 20, and a few ideas for other things. Trying to get it all to connect together is tricky. It'd be nice to get that filled in tomorrow and get back to revising chapter 1 again.

My synopsis, with the detailed beginning and less detailed end and giant hole in the middle, is like the hopscotch pattern some ambitious kids had begun. When I walked by yesterday, they'd drawn a long, snaking rectangle from one house to the house next door, looping up and down a two-car driveway a few times. The beginning was numbered, up to 130 or so. After that, it was just a long empty rectangle, not even any boxes yet, until the very end, marked 200.

Unlike the hopscotch pattern, my synopsis isn't being washed away by the rain.

Writing is such a pain in the rear.

I'd hoped, when I started this book, to save myself from the endless round of rewriting that I had to do on the previous book. No such luck.

This week I finished typing in the revisions I'd scribbled onto printouts of chapters 4-6, then reread the book so far (it ends in early chapter 9). Unsuprisingly, it gets off to too slow a start, so I'll be deleting the last scene of chapter 1 and the second scene of chapter 4. Yay, more rewriting.

I also have to rewrite chapter 8, since I made a big change in chapter 7 to keep all my characters from getting killed.

Would anyone like to loan me a new writing process? This isn't as tedious as poring over the thing trying to add more description, but it'd be nice to write a scene and not have to rewrite it, or delete it, later. (My cuts files already have two chapter's worth of words in them, and that doesn't include the old version of chapter 1 or stuff that only got heavily rewritten. That means I've cut nearly 20 percent of what I've written. Fantastic.)

Anyway, today I am going to whip chapters 1 and 2 (now called chapter 1) into shape, and then write more of chapter 9. (I finally started writing new story again on the airplane [1]. It's been ages. (I will probably cut it again later.))

Yesterday I did no work on this book but did a million other things. Including making Peach Tapioca. That wasn't what I wanted to make (I need to hit the grocery store), but it was pretty tasty:

Peach Tapioca

1 15 oz can peaches, undrained
enough soy milk to make 1 c of liquid
~2 TBSP quick tapioca
cinnamon and brown sugar to taste

Mix everything in a saucepan and let it sit for several minutes. Bring to a boil, stirring occassionally. Turn off heat and let sit for ~20 minutes.

[1] This would have been easier if I had a non-wireless keyboard for my Palm. I had a laptop, but it seemed too much trouble to drag it out for the short Chicago-Detroit hop.

In the interest of not sounding so grumpy, here is a list of writing-related happy things over the past month:

* Finished everything I wanted to do in June, early.
* Wrote an actual short story, only the second one ever that I've liked enough to revise, and which might actually be salable, and for which I got critiques that did not complain much about character or setting.
* Got several compliments on the characters in the early chapters of the theater book.
* Have figured out what my secret evil society is up to with their sigils.
* Figured out the next chunk of theater-book plot.
* Worked out several bits of setting to make the world seem more real.
* Made the very interesting discovery that perhaps one reason people seem puzzled by the setting is that it's rather unusual to write an urban fantasy set in a made-up world. That makes me happy, because it will help the book stand out.


So really, sucking at world-building is only a minor detail. It frustrates me off and on, but it's not as if I expect to be good at everything right away, or to never improve (I used to suck at characterization much worse than setting), or as if the occasional frustration is going to keep me from enjoying the rest of the process. And I do not take critiquers as gospel and if they say my writing sucks, my feelings are hurt for maybe a millisecond and then I either laugh at them or learn from them (or both).

This has been a public service announcement. You may now return to admiring the thunderstorm.

I thought of a great way to get my setting across to the reader: enode it in a chip on the book cover, so when the reader touches the book, nanobots pass through their skin into their brain, rewiring it to reveal the world as they read.

Unfortunately, I'd still have to write the book properly to work out the setting clearly enough to get it onto the chip.

Among other problems.

What would really help, other than telepathy, would be my remembering that not everyone reads with the same defaults and protocols that I do. Not necessarily on the first draft, but remembering that before I get critiques would save me a lot of aggravation.

I will say more (sorry) when I'm not so tired.

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This post is brought to you by Kara, Jonas, and Marc, who need unusual names to signal that this is not Earth. And by Jonas's new T-shirt, the one with the map of the solar system with "You Are Here" and an arrow pointing to the second of the seven planets.

Revised chapter 5 (which is much shorter and in better shape than chapter 4 was, so took a lot less time).

Also figured out the next little chunk of plot, which I can now cross off my June goals list, which until today was looking rather incomplete. Now my characters have something proactive to do that will not get them insta-killed.

Unfortunately, I thought I had decided why the Talysians are putting sigils up around campus, but I can't find my notes. Maybe I didn't decide. There are a couple options, but none of them feel quite right. ( blah blah Talysians blah )

Goals for the week:

Work on the theater book every day. almost

Writing Summary:

Realized I have to completely change something that happened in chapter 6 or my characters all get killed in chapter 8. That would be sad.

So I have some rewriting to do, mostly in chapter 7, and I've thrown out a bunch of words. The villains simply have much more information at this point in the book; my guys are barely starting to realize what's going on.

Book stats:
Made-up Deadline: 12/31/06
Current Wordcount: 17789 (last week: 19267)
Percentage (of 100k): 18
Words per Day Needed to Meet Deadline: 386 (last week: 370)
Current Average: 66 (last week: 70)
Projected Completion Date: 10/25/2009 (last week: 7/30/2009)


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Exercise Summary:

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June Writing Goals:
This is going to be a busy summer, so I'm trying to set achievable goals:

1. Do something 6 days a week.
2. Figure out the next chunk of plot.
3. Get through one rough revision of chapters 4-6.
4. Two reviews on OWW.

Mostly nice and ambiguous, and light enough that I might be able to do everything even if disaster strikes.

This week:
6 days of work on the theater book
three days of exercise