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so close, so far
Well, I was never gonna get 7500 words done today, and in the end I decided to make it a usual not-writing day because I have 3 writing days coming up and trying to kill myself getting it done today just seemed dumb. So much as I wanted it to be, the book is not done today. OTOH, this is because it’s heading in for 20% over its projected length, not because I didn’t write as much as I hoped to. 61K this month, and about 105K for the year, which makes me very happy. That’s more than half of what I managed to write *total* last year.
Honestly, a big part of why I wanted to get the book done in March (besides the projects listed below) was that I came up with the idea about mid-February and I really kinda wanted to go from conception to completion in 6 weeks. Well, I guess it was 7 anyway, looking at the dates, so 8 will be close enough. :)
April’s (ideal) projects: finish this book, write 2-4 short stories, add 3-5 chapters to MAGIC & MANNERS and…finish my nephew’s book. Bahahahah. Right. That’ll get slotted into May, then, eh? Yes, well. Perhaps I can also get that map done for that other project and get the ball rolling there, at least. (That other project was going to be May’s project. Not so much, apparently.) And I can get enough revisions done to this project to send it to the agent, which would be really good, actually. It would make pushing the other project into the summer less dismaying. So.
Going to go watch something or read something and collapse into bed early because OMG tired.
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this book is giving me fits.
I have to revise something. I don’t have to do it now, because it’s not structural for the book, but rather for the series. But the damned book is giving me fits, and I wish to hell it wasn’t.
We had a quiet day today, only going to the Citadel again to do some souvenir shopping. I ended up with a bunch of pottery, which is really my favorite thing for mementos. :)
At the local bakery today I encountered an American woman speaking increasingly loudly, in English, to the staff. “Spoons? Do you have SPOONS? WELL THEN HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO EAT THIS?”
Well, you embarrassing excuse for a countryman, you could have bought something that didn’t require goddamned utensils, if you didn’t have any of your own.
I did my best to order everything in French after that. Given that I learned French from Gambit, this … went slightly better than you might expect, actually.
I have gotten a Fitbit. I forget if I’ve mentioned that, but anyway, I quite like it. If you’ve got one and use the Fitbit site and want another fitness friend, you can send me a friend request at cemurphyauthor at gmail dot com (I refuse to connect it to Facebook).
41368 / 70000 words. 59% done!
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unstuck. i think. i hope.
If this was actually Nanowrimo, I would be THRILLED. Instead, well. At least I think I’m unstuck now.
40035 / 70000 words. 57% done!
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Meh.
I still wasn’t feeling the love on this wretched book, and said so to Ted, and explained where I was in the story. He said, “No, have X show up doing something X isn’t supposed to,” and I stared at him and went and deleted another 3300 damned words, and after a 4K day, I am just about 500 words past where I was yesterday. Mghglhghgl.
35500 / 70000 words. 51% done!
Clearly this is not going to be a draft by the time we leave on Friday. It’s not even likely to be in the region of 50K, which is aggravating, but hopefully it will be THE RIGHT STORY. Jeez.
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process is always a revelation
So I got up to work this morning but still wasn’t feeling the love. There are scenes in this book that I suspect are snowstorms, which–
–years and years ago, my writing partner Sarah/
and I wrote a book together. I wrote a wonderful snowstorm scene. It was a chapter long. Sarah cut it to two pages. Then it got cut to a page. In the end, it was two sentences. My beautiful snowstorm! So: in writing terms, a snowstorm is a scene (often a travel scene, as the snowstorm was) that doesn’t really need to be there. And I fear I have snowstorms in this book. Now, I’ve left them in place because removing them won’t change the structure of the book, but because I’m spinning my wheels I thought, well, crap, I’d better go have a look at the whole manuscript and see if I really can cut those.
I was talking to Michelle Sagara/
about it before I got started, and she only cuts things from a WIP if it actually changes the structure. But I realized as we were talking that this may be about *pacing*, for me. I need to know where I really stand with wordcount, so that I can keep the book’s pacing right. This isn’t something I think about consciously, but I suspect it’s what’s happening in my hind brain. It’s also why, when I reach the end of a book, I tend to have a pretty solid draft: I’ve usually already gone back and done most of the revisions that *I* can see need doing, because if I leave them to dangle, my pacing is off. Huh. Process is always a revelation.
Today’s process revealed 2K worth of cuts and fixing the last line of the last chapter I’d written. The last line was probably the biggest part of the problem, but oh well, the snowstorm stuff needed cutting, and perhaps now it all moves a little more quickly. Which, with a book aimed at 9-12 year olds, is important.
35018 / 70000 words. 50% done!