Next TALYSMANA chapter done

And, as promised last night, Kettan got to see what Fred was growling at in the shadows in the corner.

AND the police called (though their news isn’t nearly as good as it sounds.)

Got 682 words tonight, got the chapter formatted and added to the mailing list, and it should, in most cases, go out on Thursday.

And I found out the hero’s nickname, and had to laugh when I did. I hadn’t planned it. Kettan, who was embarrassed about it, told me.

How’s your story coming?

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30 responses to “Next TALYSMANA chapter done”

  1. Raven Avatar
    Raven

    I haven’t had much computer time lately, and no computer *writing* time, so I’ve been writing in a notebook. I wrote some today. No idea how many words, other than more than 100 (I think) and definitely less than 1,000.

  2. Nancy Avatar
    Nancy

    582 for the day. Alone in her cell, Deira is visited by either a very interesting hallucination, or some kind of spirit who tells her she just needs to get through the Interrogation by the Purger and all will be well. She interprets this to mean she’ll be saved from being burnt at the stake because the Interrogation will kill her.

  3. Phil Avatar
    Phil

    1165 words today, and the end of a chapter.

  4. Meghan Avatar
    Meghan

    323 so far today. Glad to be back after months of not working on my story. Work, thesis, and pregnancy took over but I’m approaching winter break from school so I plan to write every day during the break. Might get more words tonight after I get my thesis work done for the day.

  5. Gabby Avatar
    Gabby

    about 300 craptastic words. I think the problem is that I am trying to shoehorn the story into what it was originally going to be but it’s just not that story anymore. I’m going to go back to my signposts and see what I can keep and what has to change.

  6. HannaBelle Avatar
    HannaBelle

    Okay, I am hooked. I am enjoying the Talys Mana story and I look forward to the jewelry coming out.

  7. Lisa R Avatar
    Lisa R

    1022 in the opening of chapter 22. I need to put in a lot more emotional conflict for two of my characters. One has lost her child and the other has been raped. I don’t delve into either issues, so that will need to be reworked. I did make some outstanding progress in the healing process that my MC works through when trying to teach her apprentice. I did a little research in the library and have an idea how to make this more entertaining. A very good evening.

  8. Nancy Avatar
    Nancy

    541 on The Crofters for Wednesday. Felt good to get back to this story. Deira is thrown into a cell by The Purger and his acolyte and is asked to confess to her sins. She refuses, and is left to await her fate (torture and death at the stake) in the cold dark silence of her tiny prison.

  9. Peggy Avatar
    Peggy

    606 on Wednesday, plus a lot of thinking about a possible future book. The concept grabs me, but I don’t know if there’s “enough” to it to make it a “Peggy story” yet.

    Today, Chase finishes questioning the man poisoned by ricin and learns that the story is bigger than he first thought.

  10. Larkk Avatar
    Larkk

    After gathering together my four inch binders, my red pen, and printing out 500 so pages of manuscript, Iโ€™m ready. Tonight I start the first read through of my first draft, a prospect made a lot less daunting because, thanks to the H2RYN course, I have a talented and published author looking over my shoulder.
    The course is amazing; the worksheets, the demo, the forums, all of it. Wow! Really, wow!

  11. Kait Nolan Avatar

    Back after a long absence! 269 for the night. I can live with that.

  12. Cayleigh Avatar
    Cayleigh

    Thanks for all the kind words of welcome. ๐Ÿ™‚

    About 1,000 words done today, and a rough outline for the sequel (which I’ll HOPEFULLY be able to right and WON’T realize the first was so terrible that the second can’t possibly work) which I’m ridiculously excited about. I think my History is a little less than pleased though, since I was ignoring her rant to write it out during class. Oh well.

  13. HannaBelle Avatar
    HannaBelle

    I am enjoying the story and watching your process.

    Still no new words, but good scene lists.

  14. Nancy Avatar
    Nancy

    No words Tuesday — Brownie Troop meeting and then out for ice cream with my girl. Back on the wagon again Wednesday, though.

  15. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    KavI: 420
    OFL: 1045
    RFW: 1007
    Making myself stop as SOON as I get over my targets, as faffing around trying to sort out D&DII is proving more time consuming than I’d expected!
    But I want it sorted this week, so I can settle into actually writing my projects. It’ll be the last one I start for a while, until the current crop are written and revised, which will hopefully be around April.

    1. Gabby Avatar
      Gabby

      wow, so soon you’re up to 4 stories at once? I’d still like to know how you keep characters and plots and all straight. That’s pretty good. (Maybe once I get better at it but even then I’m just not sure how I could do that)… ๐Ÿ™‚

      1. Greg Avatar
        Greg

        I’ve realised I’m slightly out of sync here! Those were Tuesdays words. Wednesdays are:
        KavI: 506
        OFL: 1030
        RFW: 1005
        Were I to be a paid, publishing writer one day (sighs and looks wistfully out of the window!) I don’t think I’d be keeping this many balls in the air. I’d have more confidence in myself, and greater experience. I gave up my comfortable if uninspiring job in our NHS in April 2007 to pursue this dream ‘full-time’. I’d looked into a creative writing degree the year before, but the hike in tuition fees in England put me off, especially with already having a student loan hanging around my neck. So I decided to give myself the three years from work, and learn from books (and Holly!). The reality of ‘full-time’ involved short breaks from writing to earn money to keep me going and I spent a good year taking wrong turns and generally frittering away my time ‘learning’ how to write, rather than actually writing. I discovered when one of my older brothers challenged me to actually show him Chapter 1 that putting down word after word is the best way to learn and got the first draft of KavI finished late summer 2008. The need to work hi-jacked me again until spring this year, and I felt I wanted to make the most of the money I’d saved to get as much done as possible before my self-imposed ‘graduation’ in April 2010. I’ll need a break to work again by then as well. So the words are those of a man with a full day to dedicate to his writing and is in a sense fortunate to have parents who understand/suffer in silence – so part of me wants to have something decent to show them come April as a reward for their patience. So that’s an insight into the motivation. Plot-wise, I tend to take the sentence-per-scene idea a step further, producing a ‘page-per-scene’ (it’s never a full page), that details why the scene matters to the story, who the POV character is and why the scene matters to them ie their goal and conflicts. Depending on the size of the scene I’ll add a few notes about who else is involved, any foreshadowing I want to include, etc. I do this before first draft and find it helps keep me on track. I appreciate to others this may seem restrictive – it’s just what works for me. I develop my main characters beforehand as well, and have their notes to hand. And with having a full day, I break up the different projects with a little chug on my bass guitar, or a strum on my acoustic, or a bounce on my trampoline!
        Sorry for the long post…!

        1. Gabby Avatar
          Gabby

          I appreciate the long post. ๐Ÿ™‚ I’ve oftened dreamed of being able to write full time but it just isn’t possible yet. Maybe if I get published some day… [does hopeful dance].

          It sounds like you are a good plotter. I try to outline but it all seems so boring and dead on the page when I do. I’ve got sign posts but realized yesterday that I need to redo all the ones coming up–things have just changed too much from the original idea.

          Anyway, good job on keeping all those stories going! Hopefully you can sell them soon and won’t have to stop periodically and get Dreaded Day Job. ๐Ÿ™‚

          1. Greg Avatar
            Greg

            I had a similar problem. I got the idea from the Snowflake Method on Randy Ingermanson’s page, but found that doing it his way was excessive – 10 stages of progressively expanding a plot meant that I found I was sick of the story by first draft! So I amended the approach until there was enough plotting for me, and I still felt the excitement from not having been through the story a handful of times already. I think everyone has their own balance point where plotting is concerned; enough structure to get by, enough freedom to feel able to express yourself. I would guess only experience can tell you how much planning you need. Personally, I find it helps to think of each scene as a story in itself once I’m onto first draft, and to relish giving the POV character as much turmoil as I can, shutting out the other 70000 words or whatever that are left in the bigger story.

  16. Khena Avatar
    Khena

    I wrote a little yesterday, about 378 words. It’s terribly hard to get back into a story after abandoning for a month and a half due to Nano. But I made some progress, and it will hopefully get a little easier as days progress.

  17. Gabby Avatar
    Gabby

    Finished the scene last night (well, good enough for rough draft anyway). Not sure if the MCs figured out too much but I can always change things later. But they now have a goal and plan for once they arrive. (I liked my first version better when they were coming to all kinds of wrong conclusions. I saved it, just in case I can make it work later).

    So lost about 1500 words and rebuilt them to about 1800… so net gain of about 300/400 words. And, best news, I can move on to next scene. I guess that’s the most important thing anyway. ๐Ÿ™‚ (no going back to polish, no going back… MUST make actual progress today).

  18. Peggy Avatar
    Peggy

    Net gain of 58 words on Tuesday. But I did delete about 200 or so and replace them with more accurate words — getting the symptoms right was necessary — so I probably wrote more like 250-300 new words.

    And got the fairly disgusting scene done, and that was no small feat.

    Today, Chase gets to interview the poor schmuck. In the hospital. Maybe in full haz-mat gear. I haven’t decided yet.

  19. Jessica Avatar

    470 completed Cait’s arrival scene. I started with the storm, her fall, and someone tripping over her. She gets back on her feet, people are shouting everywhere. Forward: the backwall of the storm is closing in on her. Back: she narrowly escapes capture by someone. Forward: she’s swept up into a dune, counting how long she can hold her breath and disoriented. The dune falls away, the storm is passed. Standing over her, a soldier places her under arrest. Cait curses.
    Skip to a future scene, midway: Cait is being held prisoner by the Speaker. They’re playing a dangerously fun game of verbal antics.

    When I type it up, it’ll be going in chronological order. But this definitely helped free up my brain and brought such a relief! It doesn’t HAVE to be perfect, I don’t HAVE to write 1000 words a day, it doesn’t HAVE to be in order. ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Holly Avatar
      Holly

      When I type it up, itโ€™ll be going in chronological order. But this definitely helped free up my brain and brought such a relief! It doesnโ€™t HAVE to be perfect, I donโ€™t HAVE to write 1000 words a day, it doesnโ€™t HAVE to be in order. ๐Ÿ™‚

      Congrats. And … amen.

  20. Cat (from HtTS) Avatar

    I finished my NaNo project and will now return to revising the one before that in HtRYN. After NaNo, I needed a few days off. I did write but no fiction (HP updates, blog posts, comments on other blogs, non-fiction, x-mas letters for sending out later and other stuff like that). Also, I took my middle girl and her birthday-party to the cinema where we had a lot of fun. I’ll return to writing tomorrow or the day after.

  21. Leah Avatar
    Leah

    nothing today. ended up doing a thousand errands. christmas is right around the corner, and sending things from Japan takes planning. still, thought about my next scenes.

  22. The Pencil Neck Avatar
    The Pencil Neck

    722 words.

    The Princess hands out guns to the prisoners she freed. And tells them that she created a fake order for all the rebels to meet on a specific deck. And then she locked them in there. So the prisoners (mostly nobles and policemen) take the guns and head out that way. She starts to follow but the Bodyguard pulls her back. They get into a big argument. She wants to free this base from the rebels and uses it in a counter-revolution. But The Bodyguard tells her she’s not thinking straight. The so-called “rebel” forces aren’t Balthazari, they’re from a nearby Empire. And this base is indefensible, freeing it will just get them killed later. So, she’s sad because she thought she did such a great job freeing him. But he’s going to use the chaos of the fight to try to get them off the base. But she doesn’t want to send those guys to their deaths, she wants to try to stop them, to warn them. But the Bodyguard won’t let her. He tells her to think of them as pawns. Crying, she replies that she hates chess.

    This brings me to about 23,000 words on this one and I still haven’t gotten out of what I consider the first act. I’ve also gone through about 5 chapters of the last novel with the first lesson of HTRYN. It’s really good to see the old Sheriff, Mage, and Thief again. And I’m finally shaking this cold. I can’t wait to get back into the gym.

  23. Teri Avatar
    Teri

    Looking forward to the next TalysMana scene. ๐Ÿ˜€

    1,044 words today, and in the evening I got properly started on HTRYN. I’ve gone through the first 5k, and had so few notes to make that I’m wondering what I’m missing. It feels too good to be true.

    1. Holly Avatar
      Holly

      During the next seven lessons, you’ll find out if you’re missing anything. ๐Ÿ˜€

      1. Teri Avatar
        Teri

        That’s the plan! ๐Ÿ˜€

        I’ll go through the first chapter again when I get to the end and have a better idea of what I’m doing. The red pen is getting more of a workout in Chapter two.

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