The Little Book of Good Intentions

So here is my notebook! When I get stuck in my head, I tape peppy post-it notes to the front. I find that tough-love works best! Doing this has genuinely helped me stop freaking out and blanking badly when I sit down to get going. I started when I came back the the States in February, planning on finishing the 3rd draft by April and stuck in one of the worst ruts I'd ever been in. I couldn't settle on a scene, kept rewriting and deleting again and again... Hence, 'NO BACKTRACKING' and 'JUST GET IT DONE'. I keep it out and at my side whenever I'm writing now, even when I'm not explicitly using it. It's like having a little demon with a tiny whip, pushing me on!

I call it The Little Book of Good Intentions because the vast majority of the scribbles in here won't be used. Most if it's little ideas that catch me off guard, pieces of dialogue, interesting plot point to maybe visit in the future. Writing them down solidifies them in my head and at least influences what I write even if I don't actually use them. 

It's also riddled with scene/chapter/book plans that anchor me at the time but I suck at following guidelines, even my own, so...

It's also filled with pages headed 'Notes from Sarah'. She is the best writing buddy in the world and, whether she's sending me pep or critique or just sympathizing with writerly angst, it all goes in here. We've become pretty well aligned, and everything she says is incredibly valuable. Peppered inbetween are 'Notes on (whichever story I'm beta'ing for her)' When I'm reading for her, or anyone, it definitely helps to take notes as I read, especially if they're stuck on something specific. 

I have been amazingly lucky with my writing buddies!

 Between the covers I keep things that I like :) At the moment, its postcards picked up at the National Gallery in London -- two Monets and a something else -- a postcard drawn and given to me by my wonderful friend Faye (Kowabungadoodles) and a Polaroid that I've somehow never lost and that's stayed with me since it was taken a hundred years ago of me and one of my oldest friends, Ilya, dressed up at Exeter Museum when we were smaller than Hobbit sized. 

It is an A5 sized, page-a-day diary from WH Smith -- chosen for its teeny tiny lines and its terribly convenient size (it fits into the pockets of all my coats and nearly all my jackets) 

Plus it was 60% off, so win win!

Fourth Draft Thoughts

Two days ago I started rewriting again. Right from the beginning. Now, I am very happy with the way the 3rd draft went, content-wise -- the plot is all set and the characters are tight -- I know precisely what happens, when and why, and I have no desire to change any of that. But I am rewriting. From scratch. Again. 

This is mainly because I have made the executive decision to go present tense -- it's where my heart lies, and I think it's where I write best. It also means that I can use my 3rd draft as a guideline, rather than trying to work different bits into the existing text which I find to be  a HUGE headdache. I'd much rather begin again and smooth it out as I go than pile layer upon layer of revision on top of each other. 

As it stands, I have just over 5k. I'm having an 'ugh I hate everything' day today, but beyond that I'm really pleased with the way its going. Everything feels much more solid and a lot less like guess work. I feel like the characters are much more themselves now that I truly do know them inside out. I'm working very closely with my 3rd draft, and it's fun to pick out my favourite bits from that version to put into this one, and I love being able to make notes further along in the story regarding any changes or foreshadowing I'm deciding to make. It really does feel much more like typing up, this time, rather than a whole new story. 

Issues I'm having: It feels very wordy, and I think there's going to be a lot of pruning to be done at the end, and my scenes feel pretty short. Scenes, not chapters. I'm averaging about a thousand words per-scene, and I know there's no standard, but still... I think it's the nature of the story though, and all the different strands of PoV I have. I think if I was writing more linearly, it wouldn't be an issue at all, but because I'm hopping around the house it's kind of necessary? 

Anyway, that'll be something to alert the betas to when they get their hands on it :) 

Will post an excerpt soon (Maybe!)

So, it's been a funny one that's for sure! 

On the one hand I had a super disappointing start, falling completely out of love with a story I'd been really looking forward to, but - on the other - it was an amazing learning experience and I feel like I've achieved just as much as I have in other NaNos, just in very different ways.

As it stands, I have:

40k of 'Shores'

40 hrs of Editing Time

and *drumroll* 4k OF SOMETHING COMPLETELY NEW. I'm very excited ^^ I'm handwriting it and have no idea what it's going to be (although I did some plotting today) and I just love it. It's very different (I think) than what I've written before and... Eeee! I'm so psyched that I can fall in love with something completely new :D It always takes me by surprise! More info to come when I know more :)

And wow! What an amazing Cabin I've been a part of! It's cheesey, and I cringe at the cliche, but I honestly would've fallen to pieces without them. It's been a real pleasure to be a part of Gremubrimcabich, and I can't wait to read what everyone's been working on!

Pictures for Akira -- 

Editing The Beast

Well, the pics kinda speak for themselves...

Preliminary edits for Draft 3 = Complete!

(Yesterday)

Mostly consisting of:

REWORK

DO BETTER

NO

and

????

Today was spent going over and answering unanswered questions that I knew needed to be faced, and then consolidating into one hefty tome. 

What you see here is a culmination of three separate drafts (four if you include the practice start to the fourth. Which I do) 

1 NaNo 2013 1st Draft

1 Hand-Written 2nd Draft

1 More-or-Less There 3rd Draft

0.1 Prettified 4th Draft

All smooshed together ready for The Ultimate Draft *bambamdeedam!*

Editing Progress

Hit page 56 today, which marks the end of part 2 and only 80-ish pages to go! I don't think I've ever been so in love with this story. Secrets time: This is the first time I've ever properly edited anything of my own in my life! Usually I can't bear to even look at it. After NaNos, I drag myself through a basic clean up, all the time wishing for a very lare bottle of gin at my side. But I've barely cringed at all, and that is and INSANE breakthrough, and something that I really wanted to achieve. 

I can't really believe it actually. It never quite seemed possible to be really genuinely pleased with something I'd written. I mean, perfection is an impossibility -- that's just something writers have to come to terms with, as we were discussing in the Cabin this morning -- but satisfaction is certainly the next best thing!

I'm also seriously considering going back to my thoughts of present tense. I posted a sample that I've been dabbling in, and the general concensus was that present tense had a much more magical feel to it than past, which is something I want to aim for in 4th draft. I'm just not 100% convinced that present tense will sustain something of novel length? But then again some of my favourite favourite books are present tense, 3rd person? so maybe? And it would be super helpful to have that change in tense for flashbacks, and using flashbacks in the place of hideously long chunks of exposition (of which there aren't too many this time around!) would be good. 

Humm humm. Need to make my mind up soon! 

Birthday & Updates

Hurray for Twenty-Three! I think this is going to be a good year ^^

Had a lovely, relaxing birthday which consisted of Dragon-Cake, a taco feast and (yaaay!) finally getting my NaNo 2014 Winner's Shirt!

Thank you to my mother for the fantastic scarf-blanket that came today! I intend to make it into a full-body wrap when the cold weather comes around again!

In writing-news, I hit 50k today! Well, sorta. By which I mean I've done 40k of writing and 10 hours of edits. The editing honey-moon's over, and I'm just coming up to the parts that reeaally need tearing to pieces. Definitely glad I've got that extra space to brainstorm and work things out! 

Also took the time to finally get my timelines in order -- ages and major events and how they all relate etc. With 12 PoV characters over the series, ranging from 63 to 6... Well, they need to be kept in order!  

Spent the morning digging up wild onions (sooo many wild onions!) prepping the garden for planting. Almost all our seeds have sprouted, despite the chaos brought by the tornado!

Editing Editing Editing!

Feeling obscenely better now I've put 'Eastern Sea' to the side and let myself concentrate on scribbling all over 'Moon Path'. I was quite concerned that I hadn't given myself enough space from it to be able to edit well, but I'm finding that I can tackle it objectively and really rip it to shreds.

It's brilliant!

There have been a few places I've winced at, but I've been able to work them through and sketch out a plan on how to make them un-cringy. Everything can be fixed, right? 

At the moment, I'm on page 86 out of 246 of the initial edit, which basically consists of making comments such as 'awkward', 'rework' and 'cliche!' But I love it ^^ Despite it's (many) flaws, I'm really happy with it overall -- and that's a really good sign. 

I'm loving having it all laid out in front of me. It's so much easier to flick through and make a quick note on continuity than to have to scrowl through the document and search for each instance that it comes up. Good life choice in printing this!

The hard part, of course, will come later when the time comes to transfer the pencil scribbles onto the word document and actually implement all these changes. Hopefully I'll come out the other end with something vastly improved. 

I'm measuring my progress in the traditional way of 1hour = 1k and have added 5k to my Camp score (I've done more but before I decided to use it for Camp) 

Just... feeling good. This story really is my happy place and I am very proud of the progress I've made on it. Even if nothing comes of it, I will always be pleased with what I've learnt and achieved in this process :)

Why Is Camp So Much Harder Than November?

Last year, I put it down to busy-ness and trying to rewrite without any direction. This year, all the factors were in my favour -- I have time, I have drive, I have a story that I'm excited to write... But my god! This month is *hard*. 

It's partly due to the chaotic start, perhaps -- although, tbh, I did my most productive days during that time -- and it could be that my head is still firmly fixed in The Moon Path, but if they're to play any part in it all, it'll only be minimally. 

The fact of the matter is, I'm trying to treat April Camp like November NaNo and it simply isn't. All around me, everyone's doing different things and working towards different goals and -- whilst the social aspect of Camp is brilliant -- it lacks the cohesion that is so driving during November. I love the competitiveness of the Cabin, but we have word-goal from anything between 50 to 500k, with only a couple of people doing anything similar to me. We're doing super well overall, but it's just *different*. If I do July, I'm going to stick to revision rather than doing another first-draft. I'm still not quite sure how to measure the progress of an edit, but Camp needs to have a different purpose to November. 

I'm struggling to really connect with my story too. I love exploring the lives of these characters, but that's all it is -- an exploration. It isn't cohesive. There isn't a beginning/middle/end. I started too early and I'm rushing too much and I just don't *care* as much as I usually do.

It's frustrating, but it's interesting. I know I'm going to win by hitting my word-goal, but it's not going to feel like a proper NaNoWriMo Victory. But, then again, in a way it will be a victory because I'll have perservered and pushed through some impossibly hard days, and something is always better than nothing. 

A couple of days ago, I got Moon Path: Draft 3 printed up and spiral bound at Office Max ($15 for 123 pages!) so I'm rewarding myself for getting my words in with a few pages of editing. It's great seeing it all spread out in frot of me and just take a pencil to it and work through the issues (soooo many issues!) I think it's going to turn out well :)

Camp NaNo -- Week 2

So, wow, what a week!

It's been an insanely stressful few days but, after having a bit of a breakdown on Friday, I gave myself permission to completely take the weekend off and it did me the world of good. So much, in fact, that I succeeded on one of my challenges for this month -- to write 10,000 words in one day. I started at 7:30 yesterday morning and hit 5k by midday, 7,500 by the time we left Starbucks and -- after 3-4 hours at the hospital -- whacked out the last quarter in the couple of hours before bed.

And it feels. So. Good. 

I've found that, with breaks, I can regularly write 1k in half an hour and sustain that relatively easy over a day. A good thing to know about myself ^^

I'm enjoying my story a lot -- it's incredibly rough and almost completely exposition! But I love it, and it's great fun to explore the wider background of this world! 

So, Camp isn't as consistent as I'd've liked, but it's a wild ride and I'm having fun with it in a different way to November. 

Day 2

My word count, as it stands, is 9,054, 7k of which were written yesterday. My goal for today is to write 5km bringing me up to 12k. I had hoped that I'd get in a 10k day before Easter but circumstances are such that it's been impossible. My father-in-law went in for a small procedure a couple of days ago, following some worries about his heart. It turns out he had to have quintuple bypass surgery. It's been a stressful few days, but I think we're through the worst of it *touchwood*. Needless to say, we haven't been sleeping at all well an today I feel more dead than a zombie. 

10k ain't happening. I"m trying not to put pressure on myself -- I'm still above where I need to be -- but with going away for Easter weekend, I know it's going to put me behind again and I hate that. 

Anyway, it's going well. It's really fun writing something lighter and branching out to a wider cast again (I"m so glad Moon-Path is finished!) so I'm just having fun with it. It's a big glorious mess! 

Being in the wonderful cabin that I am has really escalated my competitivness -- which is also not helping the thought of falling behind! -- and all but two people have made a brilliant start. Even without their contribution we made our combined daily word count yesterday (44,008) so that's fun to see! 

And So it Begins!

Happy Camping everyone! 

Despite the jitters and being wrtingly knackered from yesterday, got up early today and blasted through the beginning to get it out the way, coming out with 1,691 in the hour-and-a-half before breakfast. 

A good start! 

It was weird going from 3rd draft writing back to NaNo-draft, but I'm just letting myself enjoy the splurge of the words on the page. The story I'm working on is purely for my own amusement so I'm writing completely without pressure, which is delightful!

Here's my cover, made by the wonderful Qoalaka!

I'm working on a sort of prologue to my current series, focusing on the parents -- their lives before each other, how they became attached and the subsequent deterioration of their relationship. Haha it's a lot lighter than it sounds!

Anyway, aiming for 80k this month so better run and get some words down!