Currently reading The Fall of Hyperion, the award-winning sequel to the award-winning Hyperion. I’ve come across at least a couple “As You Know Bob” moments in the text.
Continuing to chug away at deadlines. Got a couple items off my plate, so I’m feeling pretty good about that. This week will be mostly dedicated to clubbing my stuff before I send it to Mr. Gunn for the workshop.
Now, have some honeydew.
At the Wayward trying to write this morning, but having trouble focusing. Figure I’ll review my to-do list and see what needs my attention.
Part of what I’ve been doing is just hitting some low hanging fruit just to get things off my plate. So, taking stories that are damn near done and getting them done done.
I’ll italicize the items I’ve updated.
I’ve been meaning to write a post-NaNo reflection. This is not that post. Between the hectic schedule of NaNoWriMo and the hectic travel schedule we’ve had, I haven’t had much time to blog. But here’s a quick recap of where I’m at with my writing.
– With November 30th come and gone, I’m taking one-month a break from the novel. In a couple weeks I’ll get back on the horse, but I haven’t decided what I want to do. Finish the novel I was writing? Go back to one of my earlier unfinished novels? There’s also the possibility that I could write more shorts, though I’m a little leery of that. I spent last year churning out shorts for Crossed Genres, some good some not so good. In the end it killed my ability to work on the novel. Some of it was just “busy with other stuff.” Some of it was that I didn’t have as rigorous a writing regimen as I do now. We’ll see.
– I finished the first draft of a short story for their “Any Previous Genre” issue. I’d started out trying to write humor with a dash of folklore. It seems a bit more serious than intended, so it may be “folklore with a dash of humor.” More on this later.
– I’m also mulling around ideas for their “Eastern” issue. It’s dedicated to “Eastern cultures.” I have two ideas for stories, both with Buddhisty themes. One is a bit stronger in my head but is not as strictly Eastern as the other one. Not sure what I’ll do.
– Sometime next month, my short story “A Necessity of the Present” will be available at Wily Writers. It will be available in both text and audio format. Both are free, but there is a donation button.
– I sent off the revised contract to Seraphim Guard for the game I wrote for them several years ago. I think it will appear sometime next year, barring misfortune. (There’s a reason it hasn’t seen the light of day yet.)
Ummmm… I think that’s it.
Oh, wait. I think it should be *ding*.
I technically hit 50K Saturday night. But we were in a cabin out in Neah Bay that did not have the free wi-fi it theoretically had. (We didn’t realize there was supposed to be Wi-Fi until we checked in, but were extra frustrated that we couldn’t seem to find this free wi-fi.) And apparently Verizon is the only cell carrier that works that far northwest in Washington. Which meant our snazzy iPhones were pretty useless in terms of telecommunications. =(
When we finally got on the internet again, holed up in a tiny coffee shop in Port Angeles, handling email was more a triage issue. I didn’t bother posting to LJ.
I have thoughts on what I learned this year, but I won’t post them just yet. I have a stack of stuff to wade through, like a recap of AmberCon Northwest over at <lj user="defconone">.
Currently at 35,588. By the end of today I should be at 40,000. Didn’t get as much writing done over the weekend. Feeling increasingly sort of unsure about whether I’m on the right path, which is making it harder to focus on writing. I’ve been getting closer to 1000 words a day than 2000. And I need a bit over 2000 a day to get through.
Part of my problem with plot has to do with me revising my outline last minute on 10/31 and not being entirely finished. So I had lots of good plot hooks early on that need more chapters later on that weren’t on the outline. I’ve also learned that my chapter summaries were a little too brief and narrow for what I needed for a full chapter. Blargh.
The other challenge? Part of my story involves a sort of comedy of errors involving people in love with someone that doesn’t reciprocate their feelings. (It’s less of a love triangle and more of a love Z.) And it takes place over the span of about 20 years. Which I guess can happen, but on a certain level feels like, “Really? Are they all that belligerently stupid?” So I’ve veered off of my original plan a bit. We’ll see how it goes.
I am apparently a filthy liar. I’d told people I’d be blogging about my progress with NaNoWriMo. And I haven’t. And I’m half way through November. Yowzers!
Life’s been something of a zoo. It was this way in October, but it’s even worse now that I’m in November. Work’s been a zoo, writing has been a zoo. Having a feline medical fiasco in the middle of this also hamstringed (hamstrung?) my time. So what time I’ve had to write has been dedicated to the novel. I don’t know when I’ll have a sec to do my post-con report.
But I’m taking a few minutes before I start hammering away at the novel again to recap the last couple weeks.
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The last couple weeks have been a zoo. I’ve been trying to prep for AmberCon Northwest the last couple weeks.
Additionally, I’m taking a new route with NaNoWriMo this year and doing an outline. In year’s past I’ve belligerently refused to make an outline, instead drawing off of the mad androgynous man in the back of my head that claims to be a muse. I would point proudly at the likes of Raymond Chandler, Roger Zelazny and Phillip Pullman, three excellent authors who did not bother to use an outline. And there’s a power that comes from sitting at the keyboard and having a story pour out that even I don’t know the ending to, in which the story has a life almost independent of me.
But this year I actually have a story arc I want to handle, and that means looking at things in advance. Otherwise I see myself getting painted into a corner around point B and not knowing how to get to point C.
I don’t know that this will be a long-term commitment to the outline. But I know that when I went through a period of GMing heavily structured games for a while, it really helped me get a sense of narrative flow so that it helped me GM by the seat of my pants. So I think having this new approach this year will probably help a lot.
In other writing news, I finished off two short stories that might appear in small print-on-demand anthology chapbook thingies. I’ll post more about those when I know more about those.
I also have cool news to share on Sunday.
First, gratuitous icon post. Saw this on the nano_icons community and had to have. It’s like the 21st century answer to Hemingway’s great white bull.
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