Being too tired does not do great things for the words. I plugged along on my scene tonight, doing a bit of character development, tossing in some plot, and a bit of conflict… and I scrouged for a bit more information on the Minoans. It’s hard to come by.
I got what I needed, and the writing went well from a technical standpoint, but I’m way too tired to know if I’ll like what I got tomorrow or not.
Going to go to sleep.
I hope you’re having fun and getting good stuff.
by
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907 words today bringing my total to 9,709 – edging towards 10k!
A rude encounter for my MC today and she’s currently stranded with no idea where she is. I might rescue her tomorrow if I’m feeling generous!
I hope you have a nice sleep Holly.
Good luck for tomorrows words everyone, hope they come smoothly. 🙂
I’ve been slacking. Got sick and I think somewhat heat exhausted the past week/week and a half, so I haven’t done much by way of writing. Did several edits on some projects, but nothing really serious. However, yesterday I did manage 1922 words on a collaboration project and I’m pretty proud of the outcome. Haven’t gotten to my writing today, but I certainly will. Will post word count then.
And did a mere 236 words on one of my two projects. But I got some out, and that’s better than nothing. I’ll get further tomorrow.
I got caught up in noting down some more background-details which popped up in my head during work today.
In addition to that I suddenly knew how my bad guy is going to kidnap my female MC and cast some bad light upon the side-kick of my male MC. This constellation had been a little problem till now, since I just could not figure out how it all could work hand in hand.
So, at the end of the day the puzzle of my world’s background has some new pieces in their right places … and I wrote down 285 new words.
520 words for me for Wednesday. Cricket has spoken to more storytellers and… they’ve given her the exact same advice. Two things: don’t find them, and to find them go to the seashore. So she’s going to the seashore.
523+some that got lost, I don’t know how many, when I got the blue screen of death. Am dealing with massive computer virus. Not cool.
I feel like such a slacker.
I wrote today- over 1000 words- all travel writing. Which is great, of course, but I didn’t touch my WIP. It’s open right now, and the next scene that I had summarized…well, the summary doesn’t work now, and I kind of worked on revamping it. But no word count. And it’s late.
I’ll make up for it tomorrow, though!
I haven’t been good about writing the last couple weeks, but today I wrote 863 words. N’tal has accepted his new post as the commander of an elite force and he’s furious with Vallion for making the post so hard to turn down. I’m looking forward to writing tomorrow, so I think I’m back on track.
Welcome back to the track!
357 words. I am also very tired. One of the woman quit at work, so I am doing two jobs instead of one. I also have company at home and we have hit full blown football chaos at the house with my two boys. The scary part is the daughter hasn’t yet started soccer or theater. Oh, this will be a hectic fall.
However, after a frustrating day at work, I went for a walk up on the mountain. The first half of the walk I tried conquering the steep incline. In the middle, I was walking through a very wooded area. I could invision my MC coming across a scary character and ideas for a scene started coming. It was wonderful. Now to find the time to write it!
3400 words for me today. It always amazes me how the subconcious works. I always had in my mind that my MC would know something about the antagonist that she shouldn’t, but had no idea what it would be. It’s been in square brackets in my notes for ages and I’ve just avoided it. Today it seemed obvious and answered a whole load of other things. That’s what I love about writing – it always surprises you.
528 last night, with my brain giving me more depth to a relationship between the mc and a minor character. The things I find out about my characters while I’m merrily typing away. 🙂
No words. DH caught 1 walleye, 2 bass and a sunfish. It was a beautiful day to be on the water! I still felt like I was rocking when I went to bed – probably why I slept so well!
Unfortunately, I think I’m going to have to backtrack a scene (but only 1 scene) because it doesn’t feel like it’s going in the right direction. Currently, it introduces a thread about a senator’s son who is trying to frame the military General. The senator plays a minor role later. But I can introduce him a different way and the focus should be more on the military cutting off supply routes to the city.
752 words on my WIP and 1795 on my translation. Also, we got 8 cubic meters of split wood for our stove today, so I’ll be busy putting away logs for the next few days. I’ll call it my sportive challenge 😉
Work is still kicking my butt, pretty much owning me right now. But I did manage to go over and lightly edit the chapter I was working on before the sky started falling and then wrapped up the chapter. Only a measly 124 word net gain, but at least I still love the story and can’t wait to get back into full swing once the Dreaded Day Job slows down.
I feel your pain. I’m grateful for the work and my clients, but dang it – work gets in the way! ;c) I’m glad you still love your story!
731 words. It feels good to be writing again.
503 words and another 393 in an email to myself at work, when another piece of the puzzle suddenly fell into place.
I wrote somewhere between 1k and 1.5k last night. Accidently deleted a section and couldn’t get it back =< Not horrible, but irritating, so I forgot to check my wordcount.
The scene I've been working on has topped 3k, making it my longest so far. I really hope I can finish it up today =)
No words this time around, but my time was spent equally as productive on a sketch of Ryan. For the first time I ever draw a portrait I am amazed at the results! The simple sketch (I got a photo reference of someone that looks kinda like him, but the actual drawing turned out different anyway) turned into a full fledged drawing! I simply can’t stop staring at it, because that is exactly how I picture Ryan in my head, and it couldn’t have turned out any better! 😀 Maybe I’ll post a link to it when I scan him in so you can see him. If you’re interested of course. 🙂
If I had to draw my characters they’d run screaming from the pages. (Thank goodness for random image searching online, LOL). Anyway, I’d love to see your drawing!
Lol, thank goodness for internet pictures for sure, especially websites that you can search for particular characteristics you want to find (it’s a site for models, and really helpful when you know what your character looks like). When I finish the sketch, because I’m still not quite done with his hair, I’ll scan him in and post a link. Thank you for your interest. 🙂
For the longest time I wanted to draw him, but I’d never drawn people before (I usually stick to drawing monsters and still life) so I was scared that I would get it all wrong and be so disappointed I give up. But I just had the urge to drawn him all of a sudden, and Ryan sketches a lot, so it almost felt like he was the one drawing a self portrait instead of me, kinda like how he is writing his own story (he keeps a journal).
1925 words for me. I think it really helped that it wasn’t as hot yesterday as it has been.
2393 for the day. Ended Ch. 29!
After a two week hiatus, I am getting re-organized. I went through my written pieces and found that I have scenes or starters for about 18 scenes, some are almost whole chapters. I went back to my Chapter and scene list, and reworked it a bit. There is still a big hole between first half and the ending, but I love that I now have a list to work with AND 18 pieces to rework into the whole.
2333 for me. The thing is moving again, so that’s good. For me, the words don’t start to flow easily until I’ve written about 500 of them. So I always feel like my scenes start off somewhat stilted and awkward, but wind up much better. My daily goal for WC is 1000, but the last two days have seen much more. I’m happy, because I’m moving forward,
1086 words. Pure revision.
Finished up the scene where my vampire thief scares the crap out of the bad guy he wants to question and lets the assassin bad guy go because of an earlier kindness. The assassin bad guy, injured and trying to find his way back to a more populated part of the city, runs into a petite foreign woman. He tells her to run because there’s a vampire roaming the alleys. She shakes her head, says he knows too much, and ends him.
In the meantime, our vampire thief tortures the bad guy until he gets the name of the guy who hired the vampire thief for the job that got him turned into a vampire. And then kills him. Brutally.
And then our vampire thief, trying to get away before the police show up, runs into the petite woman and gets his A kicked.
Not many of the original words stuck even though the story remained much the same.
I like all the twists in your plot, but also that they are always part of a bigger picture. I totally want to read the story when its done!
Anyway, I’m curious, since you are working on a revision, do you work from your new plot cards only, refer to the first draft while you’re writing or work directly on the first draft itself (deleting, adding the words there)? Or some combination of these?
Aw, shucks. Thanks. I totally want to read this story when it’s done, too… because… that will mean I have finally finished it. 🙂
I started working on this story a long time ago even before I seriously gave thought to writing a novel. And I was about halfway through it (for the third time) when I started HtTS. HtTS helped me get through the first draft but in the revision process, I realized there was a gaping hole in its basic premise. If I had started it with HtTS, I wouldn’t have had this issue.
So, this is a MASSIVE rewrite. Almost the entire Sheriff storyline were new or radically rewritten plot cards. Up until the past few days, the Thief storyline was new or totally rewritten plot cards. But the past few days, I’ve finally started getting into the meat of the story that translates from the old to the new.
When I’m working with this, I’ve got two screens open: on one side, the old scene and on the other side, the new scene. I’m not just copying and pasting the text over. I’m reading from one screen and typing into the other. I will frequently diverge from the old text and go off in a new direction or do new things or blend in new information. I also cut a lot of the stuff that doesn’t work anymore.
In my normal writing process, when I start writing the scene, I have a blurb of what the story is; I used to have Sentence Lite’s but I’m using a dumbed down version of that. Then right before I write the scene, I open a “Dossier” in LSB that has the following prompts:
Sentence:
Main Character and Need:
Opponent and Need:
Setting:
Twist:
Goal:
Conflict:
Resolution:
Emotion:
Thought:
Decision:
I fill out the majority of those (or at least those that apply, the Emotion/Thought/Decision are primarily for Sequels instead of Scenes.) And after I get that information, THEN I write the Sentence Lite. And then, while the Sentence is fresh in conception, I sit down and start writing. I’m doing this even for the rewritten scenes because it keeps me focused.
And if that’s not more info than you ever wanted…
That is exactly what I want to know, and the list of prompts for each scene should be especially helpful. I am awaiting Holly’s course for the full revision 🙂 (and talk about good timing!) but in the meantime there are some parts that really bug me that I want to tackle. Now I have a way to try this. Thanks for taking the time to write such a comprehensive explanation of your process!
And I think I know what you mean about finishing…
Bit sluggish yesterday, but got through 523 on D&D, and 1017 on OFL. Got to a dramatic scene in D&D, so hopefully words will come quicker tomorrow.
Horror of god-awful horrors- my brand new computer mega crashed! The Apple people are not sure they will be able to retrieve any of my work…so, I may have just lost 11,000 words of my new book. Oh…a punch to the gut.
I went home from my pointless trip to the coffee shop ready to brood. And instead, I outlined a new short story and wrote the first scene and a half! This is something I would never have done before the positive input of HtTS. Thanks again, Holly!
A day that could have been ruined came out 1304 words ahead!
Whoa.
I hope your Mac comes through all right. Congrats on the story 🙂
I, too, hope that they will at least be able to recover the files. On the other hand you learned that you need to backup at least once a day on a separate medium (at that time a disc was all we had).
I used to teach my kids this lesson in a very “unfair” way when I was still a teacher of Computer Science: I told them that it’s time to save their work and do a backup and fine minutes later I’d shut down the main electricity line. I only needed to do that once to teach them what it’s like to loose an hours worth of programming.
Sure, it’s the hard way but it’s also a lesson well learned. I bet one of your next investments will be a USB-stick or an external drive. 😉
I hope you’ll be able to get your book back.
I’m glad something went right after that bad news.
Oh, NO! I’m so sorry to hear that! I hope they manage to rescue your words, but either way you deserve major credit for pushing ahead. Congrats on 1304 – you’re my hero!
Just a thought, but I tend to work between a laptop and a desktop and keeping track of everything can be more than a pain. Also, I’ve done NaNoWriMo, and let me tell you backing up a going to be 50k novel becomes a chore. So what I do now is email to myself a copy of whatever I’m working on so therefore I have a copy always at hand. It’s worked out really well for me. Also, if I ever have questions like “what did I delete from this chapter again?” I can just hop into my email and download an earlier copy so I know what I’ve done. It’s just a thought for you for the future.
And I’m REALLY impressed with you hopping right back onto the writing wagon and getting out those words! Congratulations!
Minus 900. I had to scrap two days’…. no, let’s put it even more dramatic, I had to scrap my weeks’ work because the “more challenging” turn I took turned out to be dead boring, but the “everything *seems* to be fine” turn feels just right and oh so exciting.
Definitely follow the line that gets you excited. Its good you made that decision before 9000 words, though, right?
Yea 🙂 I’m easily bored lately, so it’s kinda easy to spot weak scenes.
I feel your pain today – stayed up far too late last night reading a book. I hope you get good sleep tonight!
I tend to write better when I’m tired though…not as much “brain static” going on, I guess. 413 words tonight, and good, solid dialogue/action for the most part. I’m quite pleased. Now I’m off to bed too.
Holly, I really hope you get some sleep. I know what you mean by being so tired.
Move-in at Chapel Hill and band camp, all between 4am and 10pm, wore me out. I’m off to bed, hopefully to return tomorrow (after another rousing 12-hour day of band camp) with some words. :]
489 words finished the first scene in chapter eight.
The party of adventures decided to continue on with their mission despite the dangerous forces at work against them.
I also went back and added some background details that I completely missed yesterday.
Lots of dialogue so it was a very smooth, and easy, writing day.
Ah, yes. I, too, had to stop and do some research. Actually, I’d already done the research at one time, but couldn’t find my notes. How annoying! So I had to do it over again to write the next scene. 843 words tonight and I feel really good that I got that many.
A good day here! Added 404 words on my edit for WIP#1 and another 535 to WIP#2. I even finished the first scene in #2 – woo hoo, LOL!
I was about to ask if it doesn’t get confusing when you work on two projects at the same time … but then I remembered that I get some of my best ideas for my stories while I am quite busy with my job.
Under ordinary circumstances, it’s probably not confusing. But editing the first chapter of one and writing the first chapter of the other – both in the same town and both involving the same characters, although different MCs – gets dicey. I sat confused for a full five minutes last night because I couldn’t figure out why I’d written something and realized I was looking at the wrong file, LOL. (I was soooo tired – a definite cue to go to bed!) Normally I just read back a few paragraphs and I’m instantly in the zone, and that’s true for not only the two fiction projects but the nonfiction I write all day long. I have five clients right now and the projects are ALL so different from one another. I’m constantly switching gears in that respect.
I have to agree with you, though. The best ideas always seem to come when I can’t work on them!
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