Words About Writing

Over a week later, and all the files are moved into their new home. I've matched up the comments as best I can, and I'm okay with that. A lot of the comments were notes to "delete this" or "use a better word" so they could be anything and I didn't stress too much about them. I'm still 6,000 words short, but they're there somewhere. Or, they would have been deleted anyway. A word count is a flexible thing. I'm not bothered too much. I want to play with the timeline a little and see if I can come up with a format I like. I got busy recreating the novel and forgot to pull out timing information. So I'll do a little playing with that part of it these next few days and then... FINALLY jumping into the book my reader had. It's been turned into a shared file, so I can start with the notes that are there and just keep going as they finish the task. I'm looking forward to that. It gives me motivation. 

I was doing great.  As planned when I last posted, I was working on a timeline for my magnum opus - going through scenes to find the timing of everything and dropping the information into a gantt chart, making minor changes to the text. That's been my last ... four days. Then yesterday I set up and turned on my computer, went about my normal "getting ready for the day" routine, casually passing my computer and opening scrivener, then the file, and saw it open to where I had left off the day before. Fine. No problem. I was doing something in a different part of the house (no one else was around) and when I came back, my computer was asleep (of course). No problem. Tap it to wake it up. Scrivener is still open, but the document I was in was blank! No words! I clicked on the document above it in the manuscript folder. Blank. The next one - blank. So I panicked and closed Scrivener. I opened it again and thought, "Maybe it's a visual thing." The project still sh

It's no good.  This dead girl story is wrecking me. Until my other draft comes back from my reader I need to change my pace. I'm going to pick back up my "magnum opus" (as I call it).  This is the one that I worked on last winter. It's very big and needs a lot of work. Of course, I don't want to get too deeply into it, because I must edit the one from my reader as soon as it comes back. I'll open it, and maybe I'll start to work on the timeline and characters a little. I recall that while I was writing the story more characters were coming into play that did not get a character sheet. Doing it during a writing contest meant all my words went into the document, not the background information. One thing about this current challenge being time-driven: I've worked on the character sheets and been adding to them as things come up. It is actually helpful to have them right there when I want to decide who will do what in a scene! So it will probably help

Do any of my fellow readers get caught in the emotion of the story they are working on? I think that might be part of my problem with this one. It is SO dark, and I'm writing about heavy stuff that I kind of know nothing about, I think that it is sapping my energy. These last few days, I want nothing more than to sleep. I need to write 2 hours a day (average that, at least) but as soon as I'm vertical I just want to lie back down on the bed and read or play games on my phone. I have no energy. I think it's all going into this book that will never see the light of day.  I'm exhausted. But I'm writing. I finally asked my reader, and they admitted that they were only working on it "in spurts". So I pushed for a commitment to finish before the month is out. I need to get into that one. There's joy, and illumination, and friendships in that one. This current WIP is the loneliest thing I've written. Of course, I'm the creator, so I'm filling my t

woof. 2 days into Camp Nanowrimo and ... It's actually going well. But not as I expected. I am working in the nightmare torture work I mentioned previously, and am diverted from pressuring my volunteer reader about the WIP they are reviewing for me. On day one, after writing, organizing, and filling in blanks about characters, I had what was either a startling revelation or a passing flicker of thought:  This might be better as a different genre altogether. It's not going to change my direction for now. I'm just passing time and keeping my creative juices going. Besides, this book will never see the light of day, so it's just for me. Still, later - today, in fact - it occurred to me that this novel could be my "play" novel. Play around with changing a book from one thing to another, just to see how well I can do that.  Maybe. Doubtful, because that seems like a lot of work for something no one will read, but maybe.