Busy day, and writing too!

[wyld_dandelyon]

Well, I went to work, and scanned in some artwork, and called to get a replacement for the water reservoir for my CPAP as the one I'd been using broke just in time for the 4th of July (happily I had a spare, so now I need a new spare) and did banking things for my kid, and after work went grocery shopping and got out some old oil primer from the basement to start priming the back stairs, because last winter's snow and salt wore off nearly all the paint on them and I DO NOT want to have to replace them.

After work, but before leaving the office, since A borrowed the car to go get her meds, I started a new chapter on a novel I'll call Shifter for now. 

The first chapter is 2642 words so far, and not finished; it was started quite a while ago and eventually filed with other story fragments.  In the last couple of weeks, I've been writing worldbuilding snippets (story fragments are easier than spreadsheets, though I've got a couple of those too) and working on a plan for the novel; I don't have that finished, but I didn't feel like plotting today.  And the file I did on the computer at home refused to be read by the computer at work.  So I started a chapter instead.

Then, after the painting and dinner, I thought about the LJ community based on the premise that 750 words a day for 90 days is novel length.  Surely, having done a couple hundred today, I figured I could get to at least 750 for the day.  Since there weren't too many things planned for this chapter, I finished the first draft at 1011 words. (-:

I know better than to think I can do this every day, but maybe I can strive for more days than not. 

Now I better run off to bed; if I'm too tired, I won't get any writing done tomorrow!

Comments

[oakwind.livejournal.com]

I am not a planner, it seems, when it comes to writing, nor much of a finisher yet either:/ Curious as to your process in terms of planning and plotting. What genre, if any, do you write in?

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I write fantasy more than science fiction, as well as songs, poetry, and also some essays.

One of my long-standing challenges has been finishing stuff. I’d get partway in, not know where I was going, and get stuck. And life is always busy, so I would then lose the zen gestalt in my head of all that was going on, and find other things to do, and too often, never finish.

Last year, with a deadline, I finished a short story on my original plan of start and see where you end up; that middle and end part were just as hard as always, though I went faster than I’ve usually managed before. So finally I decided to do something I had previously assumed (based on early experiences writing essays for school)—do an actual outline, though not necessarily in formal outline format.

You see, in school, if I did an outline, I felt like I’d already written that essay. I wanted to write a new one now, the old one was boring. And essays written after I’d written and polished an outline for a grade simply weren’t as good as the ones I wrote fresh. (A couple of times, I even wrote the essay and extracted an outline, handing them in in reverse order).

This year I did a short story in record time, having planned the beginning, middle, and end ahead of time. Of course, I decided the end wasn’t really quite the end before I even declared the first draft done, and upon reading it through, the middle was all in the wrong order, so I did a substantial rewrite—but I finished it without that being stuck in the middle thing that has been my writing nemesis.

It’s really rather cool that it worked. I tried it more out of desperation than belief that it worked, but it did, and it was comfortable, so now I’m trying it with a longer story (and actually writing down the plans).

Let’s see; right now I’m doing several things. I’m doing a very informal chapter by chapter outline; I’m not through the book, though I do have some very clear ideas about where it’s going and how it will end. I suspect I will be revising this as I go, so I don’t have to read the whole chapter to see what’s actually in it.

I’m also doing a different outline, or perhaps set of outlines, by what I’m thinking of as “story arc”, with the necessary events to make that subplot work listed therein. For instance, I have two “romance” arcs, since the main character meets two interesting, and very different men at the start of the novel. The town this takes place in and around is having a mayoral race, so there’s a “politics” arc. There’s also a “mystery” arc, and at least one “healer’s” arc, since the main character is a healer, and gets involved while on the way to meet with one of her patients.

So, that’s what I’m trying this time; we’ll see how it works.

[sciffy-circo.livejournal.com]

*wave* spotted you on a friend's LJ, and in passing at Duckon.

Wave!

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Back at you!