Words About Writing

Again with the long hiatus from blogging! First, it was because all was going according to plan. I followed a three-step edit process, making notes that change the overall story, then per chapter or scene, and finally noting lines that needed to be fixed. Then I traveled for a while and struggled to get back into the routine of writing and editing. Now I'm back, with a new focus. Still in the WIP from Nanowrimo 2022, but I realized that regardless of all the notes I had made, the overall "feel" of the book was wrong. It was too straightforward. This book should make the reader cringe. I want it to be spooky as hell. It's not my strong suit. A few days ago I saved the whole thing under a new title, so I can do a massive overhaul of it without obliterating the original in case this version turns out worse. Then I deleted a bunch of scenes that seem superfluous or too light. There are a few changes that will need to be made to the story line, so I've begun working th...

I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted. I finished that edit and moved on to beginning the edit of my November WIP. I admit, I forgot what I had already done until I got into my first review! So far, I haven't actually changed anything. I followed the suggestion of "read and summarize" as a way to see if the story I wrote matched the one I had set out to write. I'm not sure what value that action is supposed to carry, but for me, reading straight through without any changes helped me see some scenes that seem to be out of order, or are repetitive. I made notes. As for my "bugaboos"... I go through this every time. And it's Time. The Time-line, specifically. In an effort to make sure things are happening realistically, I need to be sure that the timing fits together. For this WIP, certain chapters are full of a dense couple days of action, while others might cover a longer period of time. And the season changes during the course o...

I'm excited about this step, so must document it. I don't seem to have written about the Nanowrimo Youtube series I watched on streamlining the editing process. It was in 4 parts (or three?), and really helped me focus each step. I started while mid-edit for that last editing project, so it was hard to fit the steps they provided into my Scrivener drafts. (The presenters used a program called Fictionary.) With my recent Nanowrimo draft, I have decided to set it up now in such a way to make the 3 step editing process easier later. And I love it. I did a quick review of the Scrivener tutorial to figure out the best way to set this up. I'm in there, using the Meta-data options to highlight the path of each scene, so I'll be able to see at a glance what needs to be done. Next step (starting today), I'm going to add key words and reference tabs to make it easier to link up different scenes. Part of the hassle of editing, I've found, is when a change in one scene affe...

Draft One of my latest novel is in the bag! I ended Nanowrimo with over 70,000 words! Not all of them will stay, obviously, and I had some issues in the middle with bits that I was working on disappearing, but I'm proud of myself. Today, I went into Scrivener's outline format and checked out the scenes I'd written. I updated summaries for some of them. (Pre-Nano I'd written summary cards for the scenes I wanted to write, but sometimes they ran away from the plan.) I will add this step to all of my first drafts. It will be very helpful later in finding what needs fixing, I'm sure! So that's it for now. Well, that's it for this draft of this book. Now I need to decide what happens next. I need to get back into my last editing work. Hmm... How much time until I pick that up? One day? Three? A week? Or do I fill in some of the blanks that are in this current one? Keep going every day? Next week? Not a week. I need to keep going. 

This year I set myself a daily goal of 2,000 words. If I can do that, at least for a while, then I'll have a cushion when I get to the muddy middle and stall out. I hope I don't stall out. I love watching that graph of my word count on the Nanowrimo website.  It's going extremely well. In fact, today the words are flowing so well that I'm willing to skip all other activities for as long as it keeps up. I've already exceeded 2k words (it's noon), but I'm in the middle of a scene and anxious to see where it goes. I still have the problem of having nothing set up for the ending. I know the ending I want, so maybe I should take a day to focus on that. Write the ending, and that way there's a goal to shoot for when the words won't come. We shall see. Today I'm just celebrating this feeling of success!

(And apparently I'm only blogging once a month these days. Oh well.) Yes! Nanowrimo is just days away. The last week or so I haven't done any real editing on the WIP. Just a little, in preparation to share with my writing group. I got good feedback, but it's harder to integrate than I expected. Most of my time is spent preparing for Nanowrimo. By preparing, I mean, hitting certain word-count targets each day. I'm only doing background stuff, though. To get into the characters and flesh out the relationships, I started with dialog and phone calls and chats. Show the interaction. It's taken off in unexpected directions, I must say. Now I need to have another look at the conflicts and plot points lined up, and rework them. As I've been prepping, most of this dialog seems to be setting up the big issue. I'll need a lot to come after that. I need to double check story arcs, because maybe this is not the standard plot that I expected it to be. It would be nice, fo...

I'm trying to break up my time more specifically between editing the WIP and prepping the next one. The line edit is still very slow, sometimes three days on a scene or chapter, but it is still rewarding when it comes out right. Breaking it up by doing some work on another thing helps boost that "serotonin" that hits after I accomplish something. I've noticed that my books don't have a ton of conflict. An initial conflict of course, and struggles - internal or external - on the way to resolving the main conflict, but I don't tend to "up the ante" as the book progresses. The next work I'm planning will have more of that. I'm lining up what conflict will happen at what point in the book, and trying to do a better job of outlining. A lot of the conflict points are now set. I'm moving on in recent prep-work to focus on the characters. I know who they are, but I haven't yet gotten into their heads. Characters usually come more easily to me...