Words into This Darkness

My NaNoWriMo Plans

2009-10-26T02:49:00.000-07:00

In the "brag to everyone you know" spirit of NaNo, I thought I'd share this year's plans with you all.

I've not been writing much for the past year and, as such, I'm horribly out of practice just putting words on the page. When I do sit down to write, I'm usually writing only about 200 - 300 words per hour. I will also (hopefully) be moving house during the month of November, and I'll be going into surgery a month later. I know already that there is no way I can try to write a serious novel at a NaNo pace. So I've decided to do my very first truly traditional NaNoWriMo.

Here are my plans:

- At midnight on November 1st (or at the last point I have internet access on the 31st, since R------ doesn't have wireless) I will go to the Dares thread on the NaNo board and look at whichever dare is the first listed. This will be my prompt to start writing on 11/1.
- First thing every morning through the month of November I will return to the Dares thread and look at the topmost dare listed. I will have to include that dare in some form in that day's writing. Passing references count if I have something else specific I want to write that day.
- I will read the daily cards from my No Plot, No Problem Toolkit and follow the prompts given. I'll also email them out daily to anyone who's interested in seeing them but doesn't have the kit. Let me know!
- At some point, the Plot Ninjas will make an appearance in the book.
- I will also include the Travelling Shovel of Death (tm) at some point. (Search the NaNo forums if you don't know what the TSoD is. :p You might use it, too.)
- I will write everyday, even if I only manage 5 words or if I have to include lengthy song lyrics verbatim, dream sequences, extended description, really bad analogies or breaking the fourth wall in order to do it.
- I will take 10 index cards and write the numbers 0 - 9 on them, one per card. Everyday I will draw four randomly and put them down in order. The number given, anything from 123 to 9,876, will be my target word count for that day. I got this idea from R------, who found it on the NaNo board.
- I will post each day's output to my LJ, behind the writing filter. Not that the filter matters, since I'm never going to do anything with this "novel" later, but at least then I won't be spamming friends who aren't interested in my writing and risking their eyeballs melting from the horror of my prose. :)
- If the story stops working and it becomes difficult to keep writing I reserve the right to kill off the main character, switch to a more interesting secondary character and veer sharply into a new story that might excite me more.

I don't have a plot other than expounding on the idea of "anything that can go wrong will go wrong." (After the October I've had, I just want to make a main character go through something as bad.) Partly this is an experiment - Chris Baty swears that a plot will coalesce spontaneously after about two weeks of writing and based on previous novels I think this is plausible. So I want to see if, starting with nothing and using random dares and prompts to keep going, I end up with a coherent plot. For some value of "coherent", anyway.

I am developing the basics of character and setting, but I just started today, so I'm only spending a week on it. I decided I wanted a comedy of errors, a novel completely full of chaos and misunderstandings and characters working at cross-purposes. If anyone has read Connie Willis, I'm kind of hoping for a similar feel to what she puts in her novels, Bellwether especially. Only, you know, a lot crappier. Because of this, I want a whole bunch of minor characters who are almost more scenery than real characters - annoying coworkers, crazy housemates, demanding patrons, panicking family members, bossy classmates and interfering repairmen. I'm probably only going to have 3 - 4 really important characters, but I totted up my general cast and I have 40 characters who will make recurring appearances throughout the book. Now I think I'm insane. (No comments from the peanut gallery, please.)

So at this point I have a title and a first line, and I hope to do some very broad sketches of the recurring characters in the book in the next week. And I think that's enough to be getting on with.

My main goal is threefold: 1) to win NaNo, 2) to get back in practice writing, and 3) just to have a rollicking good time.

Oh - and while doing some basic internet research on stuff I need to know about my main character's job I think I might have, uh, stumbled onto a future career path. Apparently bizarre and unlikely plot twists during NaNo aren't limited to happening only within the stories written. Oh, irony, thy name is NaNo.

So, what is everyone else planning on doing this year?

Isaiah, 2YN Week Four: Goals and Conflict

2008-06-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

This assignment was easy for me, as well. I knew what the primary conflict of the story was going to be from the beginning, and since the type of story I decided to write fit most closely with that original concept, I didn't have to change it. Choosing the conflicts was a bit harder, and defining them well enough to put them into a concise sentence was the real challenge. I finally have something I'm happy with, though, and I'm very pleased that I've done two assignments in two days, without feeling like I'm doing a half-arsed job on them.

The assignment is posted here: http://skadhisgydhja.livejournal.com/36328.html. I also included something Zette did herself in this chapter, but which wasn't part of the assignment. It was a basic, three part structure (beginning, middle and end.)

While thinking conflicts out, though, I also jotted down a preliminary timeline so that I could see what I thought would happen when. That's available here: http://skadhisgydhja.livejournal.com/36570.html

This assignment made me realise something else, though, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I write primarily fantasy, which tends to have larger-than-life conflicts. The world is almost always at risk. And I really like that about fantasy. I enjoy reading it, and I enjoy writing it. But repeatedly in my own work, the threat to the world seems like it's always secondary, a MacGuffin. It looks important, but really what matters is the internal conflict of the main character. For example, in this story I'm still not sure who the antagonist is or what's going to be happening (other than in my character's head) at the climax of the book, but it doesn't seem to matter. All that stuff is, really, is a catalyst for the change of the main character, which is the real point. It's like I'm writing introspective fiction disguised as action stories.

Maybe that's just what "character-driven" means. I know I prefer to read stories where what happens to the character is the most important part. While I enjoy plot-driven stories sometimes, if the character's essentially the same, inside, at the end as the beginning I usually don't feel very satisfied. But I worry - does this mean that I don't have enough plot? Am I getting lazy and just not developing the action enough and it really should matter? Am I using this as an excuse for vagueness?

I don't know how to answer these questions. A good story, well edited, makes the events it contains look inevitable. Perhaps it's okay to be unsure at this point, and for the external action to follow the internal action in my mind. These are the kinds of questions and realisations that I was hoping this whole project would bring up, so I'll just be aware of it for now and see where the future exercises take me.

Isaiah, 2YN Week Three: Theme

2008-06-28T00:10:00.000-07:00

This one was easy for me. I love working with theme, and that's often one of the first things, after character, that comes to me. It's the touchstone I use throughout the writing process, and it's just naturally the way I think about what I write.

I didn't already have a theme for Isaiah, but it didn't take more than a few hours of brainstorming to come up with one I like, and that I think works with the plot elements, tone and characters I already have. Which is good - I really don't want this to actually take the whole two years!

So, my theme, in one word, is Faith.
Expanded: Faith is the gateway to the extraordinary.

Edit: Before anyone thinks I'm writing a scary religious book, by "faith" I don't mean religion but the basis of religion - a combination of belief and trust. You can have faith in anything.

Isaiah, 2YN Week Two: Genre

2008-06-27T13:46:00.000-07:00

Though making these kind of big-picture kind of decisions at the beginning of the process has been difficult for me and felt a bit unnatural at first, I think I'm learning to really like the idea. Taking the time to answer these questions - "What's your idea?", "What kind of book are you writing?", "What do you want to say?" - at the beginning, thoughtfully and thoroughly, is making me really analyse things and not just run ahead with an idea that's not as clear as I think it is. I think I'll be able to write a much stronger book because of it.

Asking for other people's opinions on my assorted summaries was an interesting experience. There was no consensus as to which type of story was the best or mose intriguing - in fact, I got one vote for each before I started to get any repeats. So there was no obvious answer, but everyone's reasons why they liked the ones they did, and their suggestions, were very helpful. In the end, #1 won with 3 votes. I was pleased with this because, based on other comments and my own ruminations, I had pretty much decided to go that route anyway, at least in tone and theme, while still pulling plot elements from some of the other summaries.

So - my genre will be urban fantasy, using magical elements such as shapechanging and vampirism in modern Reno. My tone/subgenre will be mythical.

Pantoums

2008-06-26T23:12:00.000-07:00

Today was writers' group day, and since our usual planner couldn't make it to the evening group I volunteered to bring an exercise to share. What I decided was to have everyone try writing a pantoum.

A pantoum is based on a form of folk poem from Malay. It doesn't have a metre or a rhyme scheme, but rather uses repetition to give itself form. It is made up of quatrains, and the even numbered lines from each quatrain (the 2nd and 4th) are repeated as the odd numbered lines in the next quatrain. So the structure of line repetition (each number representing a new line) looks like this: 1-2-3-4, 2-5-4-6, 5-7-6-8, 7-9-8-10, 9-11-10-12, 11-3-12-1. As you can see, in the final stanza the even numbered lines repeat from the first stanza, making the final line of the poem the same as the first line of the poem.

They're actually much easier to write (and to read) than they are to explain. The ideal result is that each line should take on a new meaning when it's repeated, because of context, though the words remain identical. And the first & last line should be the most transformed, because of the shift in perspective over the course of the poem.

The folks at the group were unsure, to say the least, when I introduced the idea tonight. However, by the end, everyone had produced three poems they were at least interested in, and seemed to enjoy the potential of the verse form. I enjoy them because they allow you to play with the meaning and context of phrases, and the structure of the poem kind of inherently creates a feeling of importance and depth to the words - a cyclical, nearly mythical tone.

I've posted the three I wrote here: http://skadhisgydhja.livejournal.com/35640.html.

One of Each, Please

2008-06-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

So I finished my summaries, one for each type of urban fantasy I could think of. The only problem? I like them all, and I want to write them all. :) I'm letting them percolate, but I'm also curious to see what you lot think. Let me know which one or ones are your favourites, and, if you like, why.

Read here: http://skadhisgydhja.livejournal.com/35581.html

Exploring Possibilities

2008-06-21T13:40:00.000-07:00

So this week's assignment for the 2YN plan is to determine the genre & subgenre of your story. I know mine's urban fantasy - that's been clear to me from the first blush of the idea - but to me that doesn't narrow it down enough. Should it be truly fantastical - almost mythical - in the style of Charles DeLint or Jane Lindskold's Changer? Should it me more like a harboiled mystery, like Tanya Huff's Blood Ties series? Should it be dark, nearly horror, like her Smoke series? Should it be lighthearted and romantic, like Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries series? Or could I shift the whole thing and make it science fiction, instead?

This had me completely stumped. How the heck should I know? I thought about it for ages (I actually started down this path during the last assignment, while trying to figure out the central conflict, so I was a bit dismayed to find out that this was the next task.) To me deciding what type of novel I wanted to write - genre and theme and plot - was all one huge dilemma, and I couldn't find any loose threads with which to start unravelling the knot. All of the options had potential, and none of them felt exactly right.

Finally I decided that what I needed to do was actually explore all of these possibilities rather than trying to decide which one was the perfect version of the story before moving on. So I'm writing a summary of the story specific to each - what? sub-sub-genre? tone? I'll just go with type - type of story and, at the end, I'll decide which one looks best or like the most interesting to write. It's actually going really well and it's a lot of fun.

This idea is probably ridiculously obvious to those of you who plot ahead of time, but it's kind of news to me. :) I guess that's why I'm doing this whole Isaiah exercise.

A Note on E-Piracy and The Two-Year Novel

2008-06-20T12:14:00.000-07:00

Looking over my blog, DaWG M just remarked that by talking about borrowing a copy of The Two-Year Novel from DaWG S I'm advertising that we violated the terms of sale and have committed piracy. Just in case anyone else is concerned about this, I'd like to clarify things.

This is not an illegal copy of the book. I am currently using the only extant copy of this ebook acquired through the original purchase. The terms of sale state "No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means..." We did not reproduce the book except, perhaps, in the most technical sense. DaWG S attached the book to an email to me and then deleted her copy. I will be returning it to her when I've had a chance to try it out for a bit - without keeping a copy - and, if I've found the book helpful, buying my own copy then.

I don't want to deprive anyone of the income they've earned by producing and selling a good product. However, money is tight for me, as well. I don't have the ready cash to purchase every ebook I think I would like or use. Trust me, I'd have a lot more books by now if I could. :) Though I enjoy the convenience of ebooks and am aware that it's the only cost-effective way for some books to get into print, I strongly believe that publishing in an electronic format should not make it illegal for readers to preview or borrow books.

I'm not doing anything unethical. Whether I'm doing anything illegal is up to Lazette Gifford - but I hope she'll at least email me before she sues.

Isaiah, 2YN Week One: Idea

2008-06-19T00:17:00.000-07:00

Wow, two posts in one night? How'd I manage that? Head for the bunkers, folks, the world's obviously about to end.

This was a whole lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I thought I had a solid idea, but when I tried to put it into words it became painfully obvious that I only had half of an idea, at best. I didn't have a central conflict or even a clue what kind of novel I wanted to write. I mean, I knew it was a fantasy, but dark? Romantic? Mystical? Hardboiled? I had no idea. I spent days trying to come up with something - anything - that gave me some insight into the basics of what this novel was about.

In the end, though I made some progress, I'm still not really sure. But rather than get hung up on trying to figure the whole novel out right now (which this whole having a plan to follow for developing the book thing was supposed to avoid, anyway) I decided to keep the idea a little vague, still, and hope that future exercises will help me figure it out.

I'm not sure I'm completely happy with it, but it's a starting point. I've posted it here: http://skadhisgydhja.livejournal.com/35247.html.

It's a private post - you will need a LiveJournal account and to be on my writing filter in order to see it. If you'd like to included on that filter, comment on my journal here: http://skadhisgydhja.livejournal.com/35026.html and I'll add you.

Calgon, Take Me Away!

2008-06-19T00:09:00.000-07:00

So today, after the second person nagged at me about doing this plotting exercise (Isaiah) instead of "finishing what you've already started" - and I almost bit their head off about it - I got to thinking.

I'm currently juggling six seperate jobs, though only three of them pay anything at the moment. Writing is one of them. But after I've spent all day focused on my other jobs, pounding out the stuff I have to do, I need writing to be a bit more of a fun time right now. And it's not like this project is completely self-indulgent - I am hoping to learn quite a bit from it. I'm almost done with my current freelance web design project and with my current software configuration project, and once those are over (provided I'm not too stressed over being broke to deal with anything else) I'll likely have a bit more energy for headway on my works in progress.

Until then I'm happy with escapism, thank you very much.

Isaiah, It's a Bit Early for Trouble, Innit?

2008-06-17T19:53:00.000-07:00

So, the first step of the 2YN project is to come up with a sentence that describes the basic idea of your book, and then expand it into a 50 - 100 word paragraph. Every sample in the book is plot-based, and all I have so far is a character and a half and a vague scenario. And though I know it probably doesn't have to be a plot-based summary, "So there's this guy, and he meets this other person" just doesn't seem good enough somehow. :P So I'm trying to flesh it out a bit and come up with a general idea of what kind of book I want.

Which is all well and good, but in the middle of generating ideas for the plot I managed to question and possibly rearrange two major components of the parts I'd already decided on. Which, as I already mentioned, weren't exactly in abundance to begin with. Having since thought about it a bit more, I think I'm going to stay with my original idea for the characters (I was considering switching the genders of the two main characters) but an event I was assuming would occur long before the start of the book probably needs to happen during.

Anyway, all that and I'm still not sure what's actually going to happen in the book. I'm still hoping to have the assignment done by tomorrow sometime.

Creative Income

2008-06-17T07:17:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a lot of books on writing lately (I rediscovered my local library) and doing some exercises. I think I've read too many in too short a time to really be able to review them, though. I got a book called A Passion for Narrative that I was hoping would give me a set of exercises that would help me develop Isaiah, but while the exercises were interesting and set up to fully develop a story, they required that one work with specific story elements rather than letting one develop one's own original work. When I mentioned that I was looking for a set of exercises that would help me develop a novel, DaWG S let me borrow her copy of The 2 Year Novel by Lazette Gifford. It looks good, so I'll be using that for awhile to see if it works for me.

I've been learning, though it's all still in the stage of bubbling around messily in my head rather than coalescing into anything I can express. Between BayCon and this I've really been focussed on absorption rather than production for the last month or so. I think I'm about ready to turn that around and start writing again.

Changing Rhythms

2008-05-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

Well, I did okay on Story-A-Day for awhile - by the 12th I'd got six stories done and a couple more started - but then I burned out. That's still more short stories than I've written in the past decade, though. :) Despite feeling creatively exhausted by the end, I think it was worth it.

I had two realisations about my writing, though. The first was that I'm trying to balance three full-time things - work, writing and the farm - and I really only have time for two. This was depressing. Then I realised that wasn't exactly correct. The farm work is seasonal (and right now is the busiest time of year) and so my writing needs to be, too. In April and May, and then again in October and November, I need to focus on the homestead and let my writing kind of take a back seat. The rest of the year the property and stock only need basic maintenance and I can spend more time on my writing. I think I can be happy with that kind of seasonal flux.

I'm going to Baycon this weekend with M--------. I'm really looking forward to the mini-vacation, and to some of the fascinating panels they have, many of which are specifically about creating fantasy and science fiction.

Bootstrapping My Writing, or Trying To

2008-05-02T15:08:00.001-07:00

I'm taking a break from my projects, for now, and doing two new things to help get myself writing again.

The first is taking a new idea and experimenting with planning a book the organised way - from detailed character sheets to charting out my plot completely to determining my themes to blocking my scenes with all pertinent information - all before I start writing. For now, I'm calling the project "Isaiah" after one main character. I tend to be a largely organic writer, so I want to try this kind of process and see what I can learn from it. I'm also planning on blogging the process as I do it, so that I have a record of it later.

The second is a challenge on Forward Motion, a writing community started by Holly Lisle and maintained by Lazette Gifford. It's called "Story-a-Day" and, as the name implies, involves writing one short story every day for the month of May. You have to use the prompt generators given in the challenge, and every story has to be complete and over 500 words. I don't know if I'll manage to do it, but I think I'll have fun trying. If you want, you can read my stories as I post them here. You have to log in to the Forward Motion site to see them; this is because of rights protection. If you don't want to join Forward Motion but still want to read the horrid stories as I produce them this month, let me know and I can email them.

I did write a story last night, in my evening writers' group, and I've posted it as my first story. It's not great - it's really a partial scene from a longer work surrounded by summary, and it's written awkwardly because I was under a time limit - but I think the idea has some merit. I may actually end up using it as a seed for a longer work one day.

I'm Not Dead, but My Muse May Be

2008-04-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

Well, NaNoEdMo was a spectacular failure. :D I have a new job and new livestock and all of that seemed to throw my life into enough chaos to keep me from writing for awhile. Now that I'm settling into my new routines and trying to write again, I can't seem to find the words. Even my fun writing seems to be fighting me, though I am managing some role-playing.

I am exploring one aspect of writing, though, and that's theme. Holly Lisle has been including a series of articles on theme in her newsletter, lately, and they got me thinking. Now, there all sorts of definitions and explorations of theme out there, especially among the literary crowd, and even more theories on whether and how to include them in your work as a writer. To me, though, theme is just a fancy way of answering the question, "Why do I care enough about this story to write it?" From there it can be used for a whole lot of things, from character development to tying subplots together to generating motifs, but at its essential core it's just there for me, to keep me focused on what the story means to me. I do it without even realising it - even my fun writing and my role-playing characters tend to have themes when I stop to think about them.

I'm thinking about starting to make myself daily exercises, or possibly daily stories. If I do, I may post them on my LiveJournal as locked posts, since I don't see any way to restrict access to my Blogspot posts. It's remotely possible that I may end up using bits of those exercises in works I'd like to publish, and I don't want any issues with rights.

So here's hoping I start writing again soon, and then make some real progress on my projects.

Already Quite Behind

2008-03-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

Well, so far I haven't been doing great at NaNoEdMo. I've only managed 4.32 hours since I signed up - and I should be at 16.17 hours.

Last week I did manage to focus on RoB&F when I got any writing done at all. I'm editing in chronological order and am currently done with 13 of 49 scenes. I will be adding a whole lot of scenes before I'm done, so my scene total should change along with my progress.

There are 21 days left in the month. To win I need to spend 2 hours and 15 minutes a day editing. That shouldn't be hard if I can actually make myself focus.

Progress Update

2008-03-04T01:29:00.000-08:00

I've been bad at posting lately, but partially that's because I haven't been making as much progress as I want to.

I've come to the conclusion that E&L is just a slower book to write than RoB&F was. It's a much more complex plot, deals with more difficult themes and takes place in a much more detailed world. It's my "drama," as opposed to RoB&F, which is more of a "romantic adventure." (These are in quotes because they're actually both fantasy - these are my own, random ideas of what subgenres I'd categorise them as.) I'm going to have to adjust to only managing about 500 words an hour or less. But I am making some progress on it, however slow.

I'm not writing down much for TAWS, but it's definitely percolating. I've got a very good grasp of the themes of the books and the interpersonal conflicts the main characters will struggle with. What I need is the actual plot. Well, really, a MacGuffin. The plot so far is very literary and I not only want a primary conflict that will suit a fantasy setting better, but I want the characters to deal with this personal conflict in a pressure cooker of other crises - I want the intensity of a huge threat to motivate them and I want the pressure of a deadline. That way they're not just sitting around moping about it or finding ways to avoid it, which I would find very boring to write or read. I did share what I have so far with the Word DaWGz, which was really fun. I'm very secretive about my work overall, since if I let myself talk about it I'm less motivated to write about it, but this project is still early enough in development that it doesn't feel dangerous to share it. They seemed to really like the idea, which was heartening.

My main focus right now, though, is RoB&F. I realised today that it's March and that's National Novel Editing Month, a spin-off of National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to spend 50 hours editing in 31 days. I was already thinking about doing it, and since I've been needing some motivation lately, I signed up. I'm not going to kill myself to "win," but if I do manage to get 50 hours done that should get me most of my way through the first revision pass. In good news, the more time I spend with this book (so far) the more I like it.

Inspiration

2008-02-15T00:14:00.000-08:00

I love Thursdays. It's great to spend all day talking with other writers. And tonight I wrote some stuff in Ordinary Dreams & Writing (my evening writers' group) that I really, really like.

I love it when I come away from something with that giddy, thrilling feeling of "I really am a good writer!"

Progress

2008-02-13T18:39:00.000-08:00

I haven't done any writing today, but I did manage to apply for unemployment payments, so I should hopefully be able to pay my rent for awhile. I also may be able to work freelance for a bit, which would give me more writing time. And yesterday, in addition to getting laid off, I managed to finally get E&L to a point where I can really start writing it and got 897 words written. It's a start.

So Much for My Writing Schedule

2008-02-12T17:01:00.000-08:00

So today I got the news that my hours at work will be reduced to nothing and I need to find a new job. Things could be worse - I shouldn't have to worry about money too much while I job-hunt - but I'm a bit worried about my writing goals.

With this job I worked part-time, flexible hours at home. I somehow doubt that I'll be able to find another situation like that. Once I'm working full-time and commuting, finding the time and energy to write is going to be a lot harder. Right now I'm scheduled to write 20 hours a week and I've been managing to be productive about 10 - 15 of those hours. I'm kind of scared to do the calculation of how much time I'll have to write once I'm out of the house 60 hours a week or so.

Outline finished!

2008-02-11T18:25:00.000-08:00

I finally buckled down and did it, and I finished the outline for RoB&F yesterday. I'm using a nifty free program named yWriter to organise my editing notes; I've never used any writing software before and am finding yWriter to be helpful, at least for this project.

I did all the prework for this novel in about an hour. Seriously. The project I'd had lined up for last year's NaNo wasn't working, it was day 5, and I decided to scrap everything and start with a whole new idea. Amazingly, the project worked. But it does mean that I have more work to do in the editing stage.

I also figured out and wrote down the theme, summary, character arc for the main character and a few other important bits, the way Holly Lisle recommends in her One-Pass Revision Workshop. I did it a bit backwards from her - I outlined the book and made editing notes before I figured out the theme. That was largely because after 50,000 words in 30 days (actually, I wrote the last 30,000 words in about 6 days), written without an outline, I needed to get an overview of the work before I could verbalise out what the book was about!

Next I'm going to go through, scene by scene, and make the changes I've noted. After that it'll be time for a read-through and to send it out for others to look at. I meant to only deal with major structural revisions on this pass, but I think I'll end up dealing with all the problems I see right now, and hopefully minimize future passes.

Today I managed to finish the bulk of the pre-work for E&L as well. I can't see anything else I need to figure out before I start writing, at least. I'm going to start writing and see if I get hung up again.

Weekly review

2008-02-10T12:40:00.000-08:00

This wasn't a great week for progress on my goals. I did a lot of writing for an unproductive week - 7 1/4 hours and 4,773 words - but that was all on a "fun" project, not anything publishable. Other than that I managed to outline 2 scenes on RoB&F.

I did have a great meeting with my writers' group, the Word DaWGz, though. (I know, the name will never gain us the respectability of something like the Elks Club. It's short for Daytime Writers' Group.) My whole plan for this year was to have three primary projects, one in each major phase - development, writing and editing. And I thought I'd managed it, but I'm really not quite there yet.

I am developing TAWS, which is what I'm supposed to be doing for that novel. But I'm supposed to be writing E&L, and when I tried I realised I needed to almost completely change one of the main characters, add a whole new subplot and move the beginning of the story back significantly. So I'm actually developing that one, too.

And RoB&F, which I'm editing? Well, it's currently right around 50,000 words. In order to make it publishable I need to add about 30,000 more words. Which is actually fine; there were a couple of places in the story that I skimmed where I want to develop it more and I left a huge opportunity for an early, unsuccessful confrontation with the antagonist that I didn't use. But that means that, in figuring out where the spots that need more writing are and what I'm going to do with them, RoB&F is really in the development stage right now, as well.

So what I'm going to do is focus on one project until it's out of the development stage - probably E&L, because I think it's closest. Then I will work on E&L (writing) and RoB&F until I have RoB&F out of the development stage. And then I'll be able to add in TAWS and I'll have a project for whatever mood I'm in. And one of the people in my group, E--, suggested that I block out time for each project instead of waiting for inspiration to strike about which to work on, so I'll be trying to do that as well. And I'll be using my fun project as a reward - I'll only allow myself to work on it if I've met my daily goals.

The Plan

2008-02-07T00:05:00.000-08:00

I think I've figured out how I'm going to handle my blogs. I'll be using this blog as my writing blog, and my LiveJournal account (http://skadhisgydhja.livejournal.com/) as my personal journal. I'll be trying to post at least a little bit to each every day.

It's My Mum's Fault

2008-02-06T13:12:00.000-08:00

I had to create a blog here, as well, so that I can comment on her blog. My primary blog is at http://skadhisgydhja.livejournal.com/; I'm not sure yet how I'm going to handle cross-posting.

I need a spreadsheet to keep track of all my web presences. *sigh*