Writing Log: September 28, 2009

Today I rewrote a fairly recent short story called Faerie Circle. I started from scratch, starting the story in a different place and telling it with much more brevity. Right now it is about 2500 words, whereas my most recent draft was more like 4,250 words. Some polishing and I think I'll share it with others and then send it off.

I've been experiencing pain and some numbness in my right wrist for the past couple weeks. This has made it uncomfortable to type for long periods of time. So today I wrote most of the story out longhand and then transcribed it. Not that this helped a lot, but it was somewhat better.

Writing Log & Weekend Wrap-up, Week 3

So this weekend I wrote down notes and ideas about different elements of the setting in a notebook while at home and at the university library. Wrote about 14 pages longhand. Just putting down key ideas, underlining the different terms or names that popped up, and riffing on whichever of those seemed to spark further ideas. Trying to map out the setting in some more detail. Going to mix in writeups on various characters as well.

From that I'm going to try to extract a story, the way I would search for a historical narrative or biography. Working out the plot first doesn't seem to work for me. Working out the characters first has more promise, but I in a setting like this I need to know enough about where the characters come from and what they are reacting against to make progress.

I'm also thinking of writing little vignettes here and there to try to keep getting my repetitions in on the actual prose front.

As for what I achieved in Week 3, I really have no idea on the time or the word count. Probably 1500 words total of actual story, pretty much none of it usable as such as this point. A lot more of setting. At this stage, just writing for myself and trying to figure out how to make a satisfying experience out of it. Not all that enjoyable.

Writing Log: 9-17-09

Tried again to begin the story at Chapter 1. Wrote for about an hour. 715 words.

Still not working very effectively. Running into a conundrum.

In my nonfiction writing, I have pretty clear goals and rules limiting what I can do. For my fiction writing, when I map things out that carefully, I start to lose interest in writing the story. When I don't map things out carefully, I go off on tangents.

Got to think things through a bit more. Might write out some short character biographies that I should have sketched out before. Look over the current outline a bit more, figure out a few more details about where the story is starting now.

Here's the crux of it: if I'm not getting paid, why write unless I enjoy the process of writing in some fashion? The more I try to professionalize my creative writing, the less enjoyable it becomes. Haven't found a good method yet.

Pulled all the "How to Write" guides off my bookshelf and stuck them out of the way. Going to try to figure out what works for me, if anything.

Writing Log: 9-16-09

Nothing today.

Writing Log: 9-15-09

Well, if anything, today was worse than yesterday. Wrote for a little over one hour, starting chapter 1 from scratch. Produced a whopping 676 words. Don't feel really great about them, either.

Two things have happened.

First, I decided that the setting that I was using wasn't quite cool or different enough. I've had some interesting concepts worked out for some time now and I thought that if I was going to write a novel, I should put those ideas to use. Who knows when someone else might incorporate really similar ideas into their own novel? (Don't laugh, it has happened to me before.)

This decision caused a ripple effect, distracting my attention from the story and making me uncertain about how to describe certain details of environment and place.

Second, I came to the realization that stuffing the Awakeners and the city-god Okanos into the first three chapters was overkill when they don't resurface in the story at all. At the same time, the Faerie are mentioned only third-hand, yet a Faerie artifact plays a key role in the ongoing story.

So it makes more sense to slot the Faerie into the scenes that once involved the Awakeners, so that the reader only has to grasp one new culture, not one and a half, and will learn something about a civilization and its magic that matter to the later events of the narrative.

Unfortunately, as I noted yesterday, this means blowing up several already completed chapters. That means that thus far this week has shown negative progress: I've actually dumped more words than I've written.

Possibly as fallout from this, my confidence in the story outline and the story itself has taken a hit. Maybe the smart approach is to try and write short stories, but I just don't think much of the short stories I've already written.

It all comes down to a continuing crisis of confidence combined an ability to come up with ideas that I have trouble applying. I want to write something that really interests me, something that I'm impressed I could come up with. And it's damned hard.

Writing Log: 9-14-09

Well, today counts as an epic fail of sorts.

I spent most of the morning, roughly 9:30 to noon, working on a setting document establishing out and clarifying my most recent thoughts on the matter. It amounts to more than 2700 words so far, but it does not count toward my stated goal of writing narrative.

Then I switched over and spent two hours writing bits in chapters 1, 7, and 8, for a whopping total of 850 new words. Yes, even when I started writing the story I moved at the pace of molasses.

I really should have gotten the setting work done over the weekend, but once again the weekend was a forced march with little time or energy for creative pursuits. I've got to say it's an odd sensation to be looking forward to Monday. The fact that I continue to be fighting either a really bad case of allergies or a lingering cold doesn't help matters; my thinking feels fuzzy at the worst times.

I fell into an old trap today by getting caught up in thinking about the setting. The truth is that it is very hard for me to shift mental gears from setting mode to story mode, particularly when the setting ideas are fresh. The two modes play off of each other but often it takes a while for ideas to percolate and take coherent form.

The other big problem that surfaced today is that I think my current outline is simply trying to do TOO MUCH in the opening chapters. I have too many different cultures and elements appearing and having to be reconciled.

So I'm going to simplify and streamline. I'm getting rid of one of the three big cities that appears in the first part of the book, because while I think it is awesome, it adds too much ground to cover. I will think of a way to bring it into play, perhaps in the next novel. In getting rid the city, I'm also getting rid of the culture that spawned it, with the same caveat about hoping to reintroduce it later.

Unfortunately this decision means completely canning one chapter that's already been written and revising a big portion of a second and a little bit of a third. On the other hand, I won't be writing one or two other chapters. Got some outlining to do tonight.

Writing Summary: Week Two

Wrote for total of roughly 16.5 hours in Week 2, writing on five days. Wrote for 15.25 hours in Week 1, writing on all seven days.

My total wordcount at the end of Week 1 was roughly 13,000 words.

My total at the end of Week 2 is roughly 27,000 words, for a net weekly gain of 14,000 words and a similar rate of productivity in terms of words per hour.

Since I've exceeded my targets of writing for 15 hours and producing 10,000 words for the week, I'm going to take the weekend off from writing chapters to recharge my creative batteries. I expect to do some drawing and to probably sketch out some ideas for what I want to start writing on Monday. (Oh, and I'll be reading a friend's manuscript.) Ideally by Monday I'll be itching to get started again.

I've also reorganized all the chapters in Scrivener. Right now it looks like the total will be 20 chapters for Part I. Shorter chapters are coming in at around 3,000 words and longer ones at closer to 5,000 words, for a rough average of 4,000 words per chapter. That puts me at an estimated wordcount for Part I of 80,000 words, give or take, which is significantly more than I first anticipated. Hopefully this is all the result of recognizing how things need to be fleshed out and explored rather than simple writing bloat.

Anyway, at my current pace it's conceivable that I might have Part I done by the original ideal goal of October 9th (50K + words in four weeks!), but I doubt that everything will fall into place to make that happen. I'll just keep plugging away one day and one week at a time and logging my progress.

Writing Log: 9-11-09

Blew a rare chance to get a really early start today but recovered well enough to get about 4 hours of writing in, starting in earnest around 10 am.

Did a little tidying up at the end of what is now Chapter 9. Roughly 300 words and the first draft of this chapter is mostly complete. First part of chapter now split into its own chapter. Each one is a bit shorter than average right now.

Then wrote the first draft of Chapter 17(!) That's right, I jumped ahead eight chapters to write a scene that I felt ready to write. The rough draft of this chapter is done and it is roughly 3410 words, for a daily total of about 3700 words.

No real new observations on the writing process for today.

Writing Log: 9-10-09

Late start today after some morning commitments and grocery shopping. Started around noon, wrote for about 2.5 hours.

Worked on Chapter 4, Scene 4. Wrote 2500 new words for the chapter. Left a couple blank spots where transitions need to be written. Might split this into two shorter chapters.

Definitely need to map out the revised plan of chapters this weekend instead of discussing them in the now-outdated chapter/scene format. At last count I think I had basically doubled the original 9 chapter plan to 18 chapters of shorter average length. My original plan for Part II had about 25 chapters. Hopefully that does not double to 50 when I start writing. That still wouldn't be out of bounds for a lot of paperback fantasy and science fiction novels, however, as it would equate to about 725 pages or so and a lot of novels seem to come in at well over 600. It would just take a lot longer to write.

(I'm not even thinking about the issue of selling the manuscript at this stage, just finishing one that I'm happy with.)

It is definitely easiest for me to write dialogue and hardest for me to write descriptions of places, with action scenes falling somewhere in between. (I don't find action scenes that hard to write to my own satisfaction, but I think I tend to make them too long for other folks, so they take more editing.) I can't say at this point how well the internal dialogue of my characters is working.

I wonder if there is a market for people writing really, really long screenplays or graphic novel scripts with a lot of talking. Maybe audio plays? :-)

Writing Log: 9-9-09

Started writing around 9:30 am today.

Worked on Chapter 1, Scene 2 (wrote about 1750 words)

Moved on to Chapter 4, Scene 2, got about 1250 words written for that.

Total writing for the day: roughly 3,000 new words in 3 hours 15 minutes.

I think I ended at a decent point. Need to brainstorm about the current scene outlines a little tonight to be sure that I have some fresh ideas to write about tomorrow. I think the process of getting the basic action and dialogue down and then going back over it to expand or refine the descriptive details of place has been working pretty well so far.

This weekend I think I may update some of the document Notes in Scrivener for each chapter. My goal is not to write for the chapters or scenes themselves, but to come up with ideas and think through some scenes so that I can start with renewed enthusiasm on Monday. Five straight days of steady writing makes for good progress but I don't want to burn myself out. Wanting to get going at the start of each day's writing session is a big part of making the process successful.

Writing Log: 9-8-09

Started writing at 10 am

Really heavily revised Chapter 1. (Reader friends are undoubtedly rolling their eyes, but really, I'm making progress and have other chapters written this time!) Much, much happier with it now. I think I've fit in a lot of backstory and character stuff in a fairly interesting and amusing way. Well, at least I amuse myself.

(Today I read the entire first chapter out loud, making some corrections and modifications as I went, trying to get the cadence and the timing of the language and dialogue right. I haven't done that for a long time. Fortunately I was alone, so it didn't feel quite as silly. But a useful exercise.)

Then chapter 2 should start the ball rolling a bit faster with the action and plot.

Moved a big chunk of text out of chapter 1 into Chapter 2. Wrote roughly 4,200 new words for Chapter 1, completing the Ch. 1 first draft. Got notes down for Chapter 5.

Wrote for four hours today. Even though I'm getting an unpleasant head cold of some sort, today was a good writing experience. Lost track of time, forgot to eat, felt quite involved in the process.

(Another thing I did last night and this morning was jot down some ideas for specific bits of dialogue or description as they came to me, always with an eye to where they would fit into the narrative structure. I didn't use all of them, but just the act of doing that helped prime the creative pump, as it were.)

Writing Log: 9-7-09

Started Writing at 10 AM

Began with some additions to the text of Chapter 3. 360 new words. [Still need to describe the desert itself with greater skill.]

Then expanded on some of the descriptive material in Chapter 1, Scene one. 300 new words.

(It has been very helpful to have all the reference books I've collected at my side during this whole process. In the past I've spent too much time trying to decide certain details BEFORE I began to write, which made the reference material both distracting and burdensome, something I used to put off writing as much as to help me with the process.

What I'm finding now is that once the framework of a scene is established, it's helpful to go back to the reference material to flesh out or improve some of the sparser or less effective descriptions.

For example, I have three different books, two in color with lovely plates, detailing Arms and Armor. In this instance I created a composite influenced by the lamellar armor of Mongolian horse archers, the gaudy decorations of the German Landsknecht mercenary bands, and the beekeeping outfit I borrowed from my neighbor.

On an earlier day I used an illustrated historical reference on cities to combine certain elements of Carthaginian cities with those of early Islamic cities in North Africa to help me describe a street scene and some architecture.)

Moved on to Chapter 4, Section 1. Wrote 1775 new words for that section (which is now its own chapter), completing the first draft of it.

Totals for the day: wrote for 3 hours spread across two different stretches. (Including a slight interruption to deal with a disconnected hose that partially flooded the utility room.)

Wrote 2,435 new words today. Satisfied with the effort and productivity.

Writing Log: 9-6-09

Another busy day with a lot going on; tough to find time to write.

Got a brief chance to write from 5:45 to 6:15

Went back to the start of Chapter 1, revised opening paragraph and expanded on first scene with a few details that had occurred to me earlier. Added 275 new words.

To be honest, just pretty tired today. A good day overall, but I've got a bit of a headache with a shift in the weather.

Might end up deciding that having one day off from writing is not a bad thing as long as I THINK about some of the writing issues. Giving the subconscious some time to process information can be useful. I'll just have to see how the next week goes.

Weekly Writing Roundup

Well, the first week of writing has gone pretty well.

By my rough count, tallying up the times noted in the daily logs, I wrote for about 15.25 hours.

The net word count total for the week (i.e., the words that are still on the page after revisions, not the number of new words I wrote each day) came to 12,987 words.

Frankly, that's better than I expected, especially for the first week. Putting it into perspective, the monthly writing word count goal for National Novel Writing Month (which unfortunately takes place in November, a terrible time for me to write due to holidays, birthdays, and all the time the kids have off from school) is 50,000 words. Four weeks at this pace would put me over that goal.

Now, when I've tried my hand at NaNoWriMo, I've never felt that the manuscript I produced was very consistent and I've never been able to build off of it toward a finished novel. I hope that I come out of this effort with more confidence in the results.

I've got to say that taking the time to outline each chapter and the key scenes in each chapter, particularly thinking about what I wanted each scene to achieve in terms of developing character, setting, and plot, has been very helpful. I have enough options so that if I get stuck I can jump to something else. For me that's been very helpful.

Also helpful has been trying to follow the advice for quitting just before you are finished with all the writing you wanted to do. That way you start the next writing session with some goals already in mind.

Looking at the overall productivity and the time spent writing, I'm thinking of setting a daily goal of three hours of writing for Monday through Friday when I don't have a freelance contract. On some days, such as when I volunteer or go the grocery store, that will be a bit more challenging to achieve. But it should still be doable, especially if I'm able to get some writing done at one of the library locations.

Anyway, if I can hit that time goal and a minimum word count goal of 10,000 words, I think I can safely take the weekend off from writing and use that time to work on pondering some of the writing issues that arise, as well as for drawing.

Writing Log: 9-5-09

Well, it's Saturday, so it is a bit harder to find time to write on the weekend with the kids around and chores to do.

But my wife was gracious enough to give me a chance to get some time in as evening approached.

Started Writing at 5 pm
Returned to Chapter 4, Scene 1 and continued to build upon it. Rewrote several sections in addition to writing new material. Got 1,000 new words in. Wrote for one hour and 15 minutes.

So far the writing seems to be going fairly well. Chapters 2 and 3 are mostly done. Chapter 4 is about 2/3 done and Chapter 1 is maybe halfway finished. Of course I plan to go back through everything one more time to look at the language and particularly the descriptions of place.

It is looking like I won't be adding as many new chapters as it seemed at first blush. Now I'm guessing that the total will go from 9 chapters to perhaps 15.

Writing Log: 9-4-09

[Dropped off kids, gassed up car, got some art supplies, set up irrigation water, went over some setting notes, wrote up some other blog entries]

Started Writing at 10:45 am

Finished first draft of Chapter 3, Scene 1 (now its own short chapter of just under 3,000 words). Wrote 1200 words for that.

I incorporated bits and pieces of scenes 2 and 3 into this scene, spread some other bits elsewhere, and am just leaving some stuff out for the time being, uncertain of how necessary it will be to add in. As a result, this chapter is shorter than expected at this stage, but I think it achieves the goals I had set forth for all three sections.

Continued writing with Chapter 4, Scene 1. Moved some material originally planned for Chapter 4 scene 2 up to the opening of this chapter to provide more descriptive color and set a mood. Wrote 1570 words for this.

Daily total was about 3 hours writing total and 2770 words.

Writing Log: 9-3-09

(Got a very late start today. L needed to use my computer to work at home for a bit and I had to mow the lawn. But otherwise I just procrastinated.)

Started writing at 11:30 am

Finished first draft of chapter 2, Section 3 (which is going to be its own chapter at this point). 1180 words

Got most of the way through first draft of Chapter 3, section 1 (also likely to be a short chapter). 1785 words.

Wrote for roughly 2.5 hours overall.

All in all, another productive day. Lots of dialogue in these two chapters. Got mixed responses on my dialogue at the workshop. Not sure if it bogs down the pace too much or not. But I like it, so for now it stays.

I've noticed that aside from specific, very colorful descriptions of people and places that pop into my head and get written down quickly, for the most part I write out the dialogue and/or action for any given scene with little regard to the physical surroundings.

I expect to go back over the first draft and add in bits of description to flesh out the full environment that the characters are operating in.

I'm pretty happy with the style and imagery of those color descriptions, but less comfortable with how well I describe the look of more generic places. I think that as a person I really just do not notice a lot of mundane physical stuff in my own environment and I don't actually know a lot of the words that people use for different types of clothing and architecture. I suppose I notice things mainly when they are unusual or I'm consciously trying to relax and just soak in my surroundings. Otherwise I'm either watching people or lost in my own little world. I've tried to collect some useful references, but it is too tiring and distracting to keep checking these as I write. So I hope to go over the rough draft with this sort of thing in mind.

Writing Log: 9/2/09

[Dropped off kids and went grocery shopping.]

Writing Start time: 10:30 am
Wrote for 2.5 hours, got 3,000 words.

Nearly completed Chapter 2, Scene 3. I significantly altered my original conception of the scene, though not its ultimate purpose and conclusion. In the outline the scene was resolved with violence, but I turned it into an extended conversation/negotiation that also provided a nice hook for revealing some more information about Dahvo's character as well as kick-starting his quest. Pretty happy with it for a first draft and this is much more the writing pace I was hoping for.

I think if I mull over a few things tonight I will have enough ideas percolating to get another good start tomorrow.

I'm also realizing that most of what I had outlined as scenes within chapters are more likely going to expand into full-fledged chapters. This means I'm going to have a lot more chapters than I originally planned and that most will be shorter than I anticipated. This probably pushes the totals for Book One toward 20 plus chapters instead of 9 (!), but the resulting word count is likely to end up increasing by only about a third to a half.

If it holds up, that change will also balance out the length of the first and second books in the novel significantly. I could be looking at anywhere from 450 to 500 paperback pages in total, which seems reasonable enough for a novel in the genre.

It also skews my original plans about deadlines quite a bit. But I'll just have to see how that goes; if I make steady progress toward a better manuscript, I will be satisfied. I think.

Writing Log: 9/1/09

Started at 9:30 am (dropped kids off at school, set up irrigation water)

Sketched out a basic map of the City in Chapter 1 and some ideas for a later Illyrian city.

Writing delayed (moving hoses, Lisa had to purchase football tickets online)

Writing Started 10:15 am
Started revising Chapter 1 opening based on notes from last night. Much improved. Wrote roughly 1300 new words for this.

Moved on to Chapter 4, Scene 1. Wrote about 350 new words for this scene.

Wrote for about 3 hours today.

I have to say that at this early stage I'm disappointed in my daily productivity. The words just aren't coming as smoothly and freely as I'm used to. Still getting adjusted to the change in the schedule and having an outline with fairly detailed goals for what each scene should accomplish (even if it lacks a great deal of specifics as to what each scene should contain).

I'm particularly frustrated that I haven't been able to focus on writing for much more than an hour at a stretch without an interruption and that writing in the evening seems so difficult. I'm also starting about a half hour later than I anticipated each day. This trend will continue as I have to do the grocery shopping tomorrow morning.

Then again, the first chapter is already in a better place than where I started yesterday and I feel I can move forward with what I have and avoid further backtracking until I have made more overall progress.

I just have to find a balance between striving to reach my ideal goals and being satisfied with steady progress.

Writing Log; 8/31/09

Started at 10 am (dropped kids off at school, loaned lawnmower to neighbor, cleaned up a bit)

10 am to 10:30 am: Created a Scrivener file for Illyria novel, creating placeholders for chapters and scenes, accompanied by synopses. For each scene, included notes describing how that scene is intended to advance or provide information about character, setting, and plot. Noted weak areas in current conception. Most of this process involved reviewing, copying and pasting content already created my master outline for Book One of the novel.

Wrote on and off from 10:30 am to roughly 2:15 pm
Got in about 2.5 hours of writing, give or take. Wrote roughly 1850 words, spread between three scenes. Would like to improve to at least 3 hours of writing in this time frame, more words on the page. But this is a start.

In some cases these scenes may expand into short chapters, but the general sequence of the outline will probably hold up.

The bulk of the writing was in Chapter 1, scene 1, and it was very shaky. Descriptions too flat, pacing uneven, didn't have a good visual image of the surroundings or a clear enough feel for the scene. A few good ideas crept in, will need some revising. Too much emphasis on setting, not enough character development taking place along with it. (Going to pick up the kids at school, came up with some ideas of how to start the scene differently and have the protagonist, point-of-view character interacting immediately with other characters to jump-start things.)

Fortunately, laying out the framework for the first nine chapters, including placeholders and synopses of the planned scenes, made it relatively easy for me to jump to a different scene and keep working with a noticeable improvement in quality. Wrote a decent chunk of Chapter 4, Scene 1, using one of the versions of chapter 1 for last year's failed caper novel manuscript as a welcome inspiration.

Also wrote a couple hundred words for the opening of Chapter 5, Scene 1. Just a little visual description of a setting element, but another detail came to mind as I was writing it and I like the results so far.

So I ended with a much better feeling than I started with. I think I will continue tomorrow with more of Chapter 4 and perhaps move to some other scenes that I have a better feel for before I go back and try to hammer out Chapter 1 again. Need a better image of what that city looks like, a lot more little descriptive details to color in the background, and a stronger presentation of Dahvo's character.