Eureka! The story that would not start has the right beginning...

Perhaps I should have given up at Draft 1, Attempt 3. In all probability I should really have given up by Draft 1, Attempt 7 but, last night, just as I was about to turn the light out (and isn't that always the way?) I finally realised where it should start. I wrote the paragraph before I went to bed - much to the disgruntlement of the two collies and two cats draped around the room - and nodded off relieved that I have a starting point which will hopefully lead to the end point I already had in mind.

The book is nearing the end of its seclusion period. I've got nearly two weeks off over Easter thanks to the profusion of Bank Holidays and weekends so I shall use that time to do the first set of revisions. I'll let it sit for another three weeks or so after that and then do a third pass. Hopefully it will not remain broken when I've finished with it.


Things to do this month:
Outline four shorts that I only have bare bones ideas for
Play with the notes for a couple of novels that I have and see which one's likely to be up next for writing.
Revise the (still) untitled YA Rural Fantasy

The sun is shining in my eyes...

It's almost Christmas Eve and there is snow on the ground! It was a bit dodgy trying to leave my street this morning as we are not blessed with gritters (being unworthy dwellers of a dead-end road) but once the ice of two and a half streets was navigated it was plain sailing.

Although I don't enjoy driving in snow (driving back from Newcastle on Sunday was exciting for all the wrong reasons), I do love snow itself. Chum #1 and I took the dogs out for a walk before bed, as is our wont, and we decided to extend it because the snow was fantastic, the collies were hyper, and it was just a brilliant, cold, and shiny night. I hope that the snow stays until the 24th at least - I've taken the day off work and it would be nice to get a long walk in -- through snow -- before the madness begins! (I have a ham to bake, among other things - oh, God, the WRAPPING!!!)

I have bought a number of books in advance of the holiday, so at some point I will have to structure some kind of reading list otherwise I'll dither and end up re-reading books while I try to decide which new ones I want to read. I also need to get back on the wagon with the unnamed one as that ground to a halt with illness and work being busy. (I am trying to resist my brain's idea of getting back into the flow by writing a short on a mad galvanist that I had a brain-tickle for. Although, amazingly, I did manage to get some articles from the 1800s about galvanism that will help the research. But still, resist.)

I need to clear the workspace downstairs again so that there's room to work, and I also need to update everything on the laptop as that hasn't been done since the 29th of October, just before I went on holiday. Jobs, jobs, jobs. ::sigh::

I've got editing planned for this week; I'm at work on Monday, and then it's writing for the rest of the week and into January. Cobbling together bits from pbackwriter and Jeff Vandermeer's Booklife I've fleshed out a business plan for 2010 as well as looked at breaking things into weekly tasks, and creating a five year plan. I have to say that I found the mission statement idea (from Booklife) *really* difficult to do. Interesting, but difficult, and it still needs work.

So, what about you? Do you do a business plan every year? Do you break things down into small tasks to make them more manageable and trackable? Do you have a different method for organising your life, or do you just go with the flow? Inquiring minds want to know.

Procrastination Station

Just over a week ago I finished part one of the current WiP, full of glee at getting a good 53K words and eager to start on part two. But I found that, having finished a distinct part without making an immediate effort to start the next section, it was difficult to set hands to keyboard again. First I had to re-read my outline and make sure that it fit with the changes I'd made to the outline of part one as I wrote it. Then I had to make a few more notes about things to include, stuff I needed to know. After that I had to add more worldbuilding to my guidebook for future reference. And so a week went by without any new words being written on the actual book itself.

Now, I know that this was all procrastination station.

(a) I've done part one. Yay! [Euphoria]
(b) What if it sucks? [Gloom]
(c) I need to start part two! [Confidence]
(d) What if it sucks? [Gloom]
(e) Oh, crap. I know where part one should have started (and it's not where I did start it). [Gloom]
(f) Maybe I should just tweak... [Gloomy indecision]

Yesterday, I finally broke the deadlock and tapped out 339 words. Not a lot, but a damn sight more than zero, and today I tapped out some more.

On a personal level, I think one of the causes of the inadvertent hiatus was the fact that when I got to the end of part one I just stopped. What I should have done was write something, anything, even just one sentence of part two - just to get the ball rolling so that I wasn't staring at the Chapter 15 heading and a blank page.

How do you deal with coming to the end of one section and picking up another? Do you stop dead at the end of a chapter and start a new one with ease? Do you tease out a few lines of the new section so that when you come back to it you've got a thread to hang the rest on, or do you face down the blank page with ease and bash out the 1812 Overture on your keyboard without a backward glance at your notes?

Have you ever stopped at Procrastination Station? Enquiring minds want to know.

Jollification over. Reporting for duty.

Mood: Tired
Where: Orthanc

Holiday over - back to the grindstone. (The updating of publications...oh, the glamour)
I had a nice relaxing time off; read a lot, wrote a bit, went and saw Harry Potter (not bad, but it lacked the zoom zoom pace of Order of the Phoenix - bit of a filler, I think.)

Fiona Glass has been doing posts on people's desks up on her blog. Mine went up on Friday and you can take a look at it here.

meta_writer are starting a new series of Back to Basics (of writing) posts today, and these will run until the 28th of July, so go along and check them out/ comment.

The as yet untitled YA urban fantasy is jogging along (although, as ever, it's started in the wrong place, but that's what revisions are for, eh?)



I'm aiming for a first draft finish date of 7th October. We shall see.

The bathtub of perserverance

Interesting post (complete with diagrams) from Brad Torgersen (via jay lake) comparing a writer's persistence and practice with the (slow) filling of a bath.
Good stuff.

Joy, joy feelings...

First draft of Wish Child has been completed and comes in at 9,316 words so I'm pleased with that. I'm away at a Spa tomorrow - sort of a birthday present to myself for Monday - and then I'm down to Bath for jollification on Thursday so while I'm there (in between sight-seeing and eating) I can revise Wish Child in the evenings in the Youth Hostel. Ah, the glamour!

Next up
-- More research for the Georgian novel
-- More worldbuilding for the paranormal YA novel
-- Revising Sokoll's Hawks
-- Fairy tale re-telling of Beauty & the Beast (or Rapunzel - haven't quite decided)

On the (immediate) TBR pile

• Deader Still by Anton Strout (antonstrout ) (this one is actually on my desk at work, staring accusingly at me because the bookmark is still stuck in the back where I put it on Sunday afternoon - my excuse reason for that is that I'm really tired and looking forward to a few days off work)

• Gym Dandy by Storm Grant (storm_grant )

• The Immortal Hunter by Lynsay Sands

• Georgian London by John Summerson

• The Cipher by Diana Pharoah Francis (difrancis ) (a re-read in preparation for The Black Ship)

[Links] Link Salad: Writing

Almost, but not quite, caught up on the blogosphere after having been away at a conference for three days (leaving Cardiff ahead of the Wales-Germany match) and I've come across some interesting / useful links. Which you may have already come across as I'm a bit late to the party. But, hey.

valarltd talks about writing now, rather than waiting for that mythic golden (time) egg to land in your lap

seanan_mcguire talks in a similar vein about managing your time against the time-suck of life (and she has other useful / interesting opinion pieces of which this is #26 out of a proposed #50)

jimvanpelt has an interesting post on dialogue (and a lot of posts generally on writing which are linked at the end of this post)

And Melanie & Steve Tem have a post at Storytellersunplugged about fitting writing in, finding bits of time to write, and also making time for life as well

Progress (& convention)

Another 947 words on Wish Child, which brings it up to 5,454 and we're on the downward slide to the finale. One and a half scenes to go and the first draft will be done! Joy joy feelings!

Also, I plan to 'attend' the LiveJournal online convention FlyCon - take a look at the schedule; there's a fantastic range of panels to choose from (although I may have to cry off some of the early morning ones -- even though they look really good, I'm past the age where I can stay up till 4am, go to bed and then get up at 6:30am and actually be coherent.)

So...Wish Child



Now, off to swimming!

[writing] Progress

Wish Child
Previous count - 1961 words
New count - 4507
New words - 2546
Woo! Except, I was aiming for around 3K - the story isn't finished yet and I'm already 1.5K over my planned limit.
Does this happen to other people? Do you aim for a story of a certain length, go over and then cut? Or do you manage to stick pretty much to the word count you set yourself? I must admit, I didn't plan this story out - no outline at all - but even with an outline I'm prone to exceeding my self-imposed word limit. ::blows raspberry at self::
Ah, well. Time for a bath and then the joy that is...Iron Man! yay!!!

Got a good start on the dark fantasy / horror short 'The Wish Child'



I'll hopefully be able to get some more written (and maybe typed up) tonight as I'm not working late this evening. Yay!


Listening to: Wish you were here by Pink Floyd
Mood: Chipperly productive, dahlinks!

First draft done! (Finally!!)

First draft of Sokoll's Hawks is done, coming in at 13,212 words (as opposed to the 6,000 I was originally aiming for). So that's off to sit in a drawer while I:
~ plan another short
~ take 3's Company out of the drawer for revisions
~ look over Model of Perfection ready to continue with chapter 4

I worked from home today due to excessive ice on the road outside and had a very productive day there, and now I've had a productive evening too! All iz joyful.

Update

I'm a bit behind in the cumulation of my daily goal of 2.5 pages a day minimum (although, in making up for not writing at all for four days I did manage to crank out 9 pages yesterday as well as doing some longhand afterwards (while watching the Dark Knight which my DVD player didn't want to let me see the last 10 minutes of ::grrrr::), so it's not all bad.)

I went swimming despite the cough that will not go away and I also did a load of laundry and swept the upstairs carpet, so I'm feeling productive in one sense, anyway!

I'm looking forward to properly light mornings, though. I can't quite get into the joy of getting up when it's pitch black outside and wazzing it down with rain. It just makes me want to curl up under the covers for another couple of hours - even the dogs don't want to get up when it's like that.

Anyway, past time for day jobbery. Onwards and upwards.

Update

Word count for today achieved - it's brought me back up to where I want to be; I skipped a few days so had to make up for that. 10 1/2 pages so that's good. I know it's technically Sunday, but as I haven't been to bed yet I'm still classing it as Saturday!

And now to bed, for there will be early rising tomorrow and the shopping of staple foodstuffs. (We haz no rize) ::mopes::

And then there will be the consumption of stew which was gorgeous. Nom nom nom. The collies thought so, too. Had to fight them off with my elbow while I ate. Tsk.

Anyway. Night night. Time for bed, said Zebedee.

Goals for 2009

I've done a new plan for 2009, looking at the goals I want to achieve, so:

Complete Model of Perfection & revise (novel)
Edit & revise 3's Company (novella)
Complete Kieran's Kiss (novella) *
Do Sokoll's Hawks (short story)
Do Phelan's Fate (novella)**
Do Rapunze (short story)
Do Stranger at the Door (short story)

* & ** - it may be that these two can be blended into one novel, rather than two novellas with Kieran's story being at the forefront. I'll have to see when I re-outline K'sK and outline P'sF

And, as a new endeavour goal, I want to work on haiku and see what I can produce.

2009 got off to a good start with 3,301/ 6,000 words on Sokoll's Hawks done. If tomorrow goes well I may be able to complete it before I go back to work.

New Britwriters Blog post up

Just a quick recap before I head off for lunch! I'll try and post more later.

I've just done a new post for the Britwriters Blog. It's on outlines, and my use of them. So have a look here and post a comment. Also, if you have a(nother) spare minute - check out the previous post on Birmingham's influence on Tolkein, by Fiona!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend! (I had rain)

Idea

A new story idea came to me last night (while watching Medical Investigations over dinner bizarrely enough) The investigators were searching for pathogens in the ocean that could be causing an illness in humans and seals, and I thought 'how would you deal with that, if it was actually in the ocean? What if it spread around the world (and you had no other world to escape to)? How would you combat it without killing everything else? What would it be like if you didn't care if everything else (in the water) died and you ended up with a dead ocean? What could happen after that?' Basically it moved on from there. I've got some notes to get down and flesh out, see where they take me; and I have a picture in my head of what it will look like. I'll work on that while I'm on holiday (1 1/2 days to go!) and see what happens. I'll also have to do some scientific research on oceans & specifically how the loss of plankton etc. would affect things.

Model of Perfection got paused briefly as the day job has been insanely busy and brain-draining with finishing off phase 2 of a project. Now we just need to hand it off so that the rest of the work can be incorporated into everyone's normal day job activities and roles.There'll still be some steering from us, but we can devolve a fair amount of the work to relevant people. Term starts in another month so when I get back from my leave I'll have a few last minute things to finish - presentations and the like. And then we'll be ready to rock for at least 3 weeks of utter madness and hectic (possibly even frenetic) activity, before things slow to a more manageable level. Yay.

Now I have a stabbing pain in my head when I cough - yay, lergy. So I'm going home to lie down. My life. It is full of speshul exzitement.

It's hot! Damn hot!

Well, it's another day in paradise. NOT!
It's insanely muggy (and it seems to have worsened in the last half hour or so). There was a rumble of thunder this morning, but all attempts at stormy weather have ceased and we just have mugg instead. I have a headache of muggness. Not happy.

Also, my chair in office no.2 is not comfy and my tailbone keeps locking, so every time I stand up I walk like Long John Silver for the first couple of minutes. ::pouts::

Model of Perfection is jogging along. Not as quickly as I'd like, but it's forward motion so not to be sniffed at. It's at 4,459 / 20,000 words which is around 22% so it's getting there. I've fleshed out the later sections of the outline, so I've a better idea of what will happen when, I just need a block of time to sit down and crack on. I should get some tonight when I go home (checks watch: 1 hour to go!) and on Friday. Saturday I've got the house to myself, but may go over to m'mother's and use her laptop instead as she has an incredibly comfy office chair and a bigger garden for the dogs to play in. Choices, choices.

Still dreaming about Contraband. I will crack that sucker on the head. I refuse to let it beat me. It's going to sit to one side for a while until I decide where the beginning really is, and then I shal attack it. Again.

3's Company is to one side and is due for its 2nd revision in August. I'm on holiday the week of the UK Bank Holiday so I may leave it till then - I'll see how I go on the other projects first. I know I won't be able to get anything done when I'm at my dad's except a little long-hand writing when I go up to bed, so I can strike 4 days off (with possibly a 5th for travelling - depends on the traffic) but I'll have the rest of the week to go through it. 37K shouldn't take too long, eh?

Interesting posts I've read today:

David de Beer's looking at flat-fee vs. by-the-word payment for shorts, and is looking for feedback

Orson Scott Card gives matociquala a headache

Apex Digest Online are looking for a slush wrangler and an editor

And, Stacia Kane is up to part nine in her 'Be a sex-writing strumpet' writing series

Also, don't forget to check out Paperback Writer's site for the Left Behind and Loving It series of workshops. Not only includes her own workshops, but also links to posts/ workshops offered by other people on a huge range of topics.

Where has all the time gone?

It doesn't seem that long ago that I was planning out my weekend, and now another week has gone by (pretty much in a blur) and another weekend is almost here. (Driving up to see my Dad tomorrow lunchtime so that will be nice)

Work has started on Model of Perfection, although I am (naturally) altering the outline as I go along to try and increase the heat level a bit earlier. I don't know if it will work, but I've built in enough editing/ revision time that I can change it to the earlier outline scenario if it doesn't feel right.

I've been putting down some thoughts on the m/m military short I'm thinking of doing - how it's going to kick off and then progress. I'll get MoP out of the way first and then start work on that.

I had joined the Forward Motion July/ August Dare, but if I don't pull my socks up I won't be reaching the target word count of 62K for the two months. Spent too much time sleeping when I got home!

To do list - high priority
Continue with Model of Perfection (needs 16k by the end of the weekend)
Think/ plan more of military short
Plan more of paranormal novella

Research to read
Lascivious Bodies : a sexual history of the eighteenth century by Julie Peakman
Notes on Spetsnaz

The weekend's nearly here...

Plans for the weekend:

Working tomorrow until around 2-ish, so I should get home at about 3 o'clock, maybe a bit earlier (note to self: remember to take sandwiches).

Once I'm home I've got a number of things to do:

• Get my teeth into the write-up of Model of Perfection (* & **)

• Delve into the bottom-most collapsible crate in my bedroom to rescue the fantasy/ dark fantasy books that have been languishing there for the past year and move them onto my re-organised bookcases

• Hoover / laundry

• Visit chums - may have to playstation on Saturday rather than tonight, as I'm working tomorrow. Can't turn up to work all sparkly if you didn't go to bed until 03:00hrs!

• Visit the Mater

*I've estimated 7 chapters and I've outlined up to chapter five, scene three. I'm hoping that the ending will come to me as I approach it. I've estimated I need a minimum of 1333 w.p.d. to get it done and leave me with enough time to revise and edit. The outline is quite detailed (in some cases down to specific bits of dialogue / action I want, so this will (should!) aid the smoothness. If I've done it right.

** The title's a bit trite, but I couldn't think of one I really liked and didn't want to work on Short ER WIP # 'x' so I can use this one as a filler and hopefully come up with a better one around the same time I find out what the ending is.

Progress XXXI

Good, but also not good.

Good: have typed up over 12K of 3's Company. Based on the original first draft total I'm 49% in, so only 51% to go, right? Wrong!

Bad: I've added just over 5K of new words so far, which means I'm not 49% through the hand-written version. On the 5K alone I'm over the 30K maximum and I imagine I'll be adding more new words as I'm editing as I go. There will be cuts, my pretties, oh yes!

Also, yesterday (when I should have been writing, gorammit) I caught up on all of the feeds (and oh, God do I mean all) in my feed-reader and ended up looking at editorrent's Redlines articles (go to the site, scroll down to labels and click on the redlines link). There is some good stuff there and in the other articles, on things to look out for in your writing and so on.

However, what I should have done was saved the entries and then looked at them after the type-up, during second edits. Why? Because I found that immediately after having read some of the more pertinent posts (pertinent to my own writing) I began to self-correct what I was transcribing/ editing. Not a bad thing necessarily, but I do need to get this transcribed onto screen (which will make editing easier) so speed is important in the first instance.

The articles are very good and interesting though--as are the comments--and I'd recommend people have a look at least!

News: I have bought a book on punctuation. Why? I have 'comma diarrhea' ::mopes:: 'S true. And embarrassing.

Mood: Full. Nice sarnie. Nom nom nom

Music: Snow White Queen - Evanescence