Today was spent working on my novel. I had a fellow writer friend call me and it got my juices going, so I pulled out the novel and spent some more time working on it today. As I'd reported earlier, I'd deleted a couple of long scenes and that brought my word count down from 51K to 44K. More, it put me in editor mode instead of writer mode and that nearly derailed me. I'm not going to delete anything else going forward until the first draft is done. *holds up two fingers in scouts honor* I don't want to kill the novel before it's done!
Part of my problem is that I'd ended at a natural breaking point in the story at the end of Nano. My main character is literally moving from one state to another and a whole new cast of characters need to be invented that she's going to interact with. I'd started Nano in November with a solid cast out of the gate and in some ways this feels like I'm starting over in telling the second half of the story.
But that can be good (if I can keep the editor in the closet). So, here's to adding another couple of pages and updating my WIP meter on the side. (I keep playing with the color of the progress bar... which is procrastinating, I know!)
Okay, getting offline so I can plunk a few more words down on the story before I take the clan ice skating. They have one more week of vacation before school starts again.
I hope you are able to enjoy your after-Christmas break. No matter if it's getting a project done that you finally have time for, or finding ways to unwind...
Okay, really closing now.
Sometimes it's nice to see life from someone else's point of view. I am a mother, writer and amateur photographer. This is what the view looks like from where I am standing.
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Friday, December 09, 2011
As writing excuses go...
Okay, I admit it. I've been slacking off on the novel this week. I finished Nano's 50 thousand words and then I let it sit.
Instead I've been sprucing up my blog. I added widgets for tracking my works in progress, I created a few pages, and today I added a Goodreads gadget and I created a new logo picture. *points up* See? I stood in front of the mirror with the camera, white door behind me and took several pictures. (In related news, make sure you've turned the flash off before you do this at home... unless you are going for the whole white-out, solar-flare thing as a fun special effect) Then I loaded them into my computer and chose the one I wanted. Then I opened it in Picasa3, a free image editing software made by Google, and cropped it and filtered it into a sepia tone. Then I added my text with the text editor and played with the font, color and sizing till I had what I liked. Then I saved it as a jpeg file and uploaded it. Viola!
So... now that I've had fun decorating my playground, I'll get back to work on the novel. Which was really what I was going to talk to you about today.
When Nano ended I'd come to the natural breaking point in the story where it changes location and another character gets introduced. My problem is that while I'd sketched her out, I'd not fleshed her in very well. Now that I need her to be onstage, so to speak, I realized I hadn't done a good job of making her real to me yet. The thing is, she's very real to my characters. She's the one responsible, through her decisions from the back story, that changed the lives of all my main characters.
I've been using this down time to figure out how I want to present her. Is she hard and bitter, full of revenge or charismatic and protective - not a selfish character, but one misguided through grief? Once I lock her in and really have her in my head, there's no going back and it will set the tone of the last half of the novel. I want her to be a vibrant character, but I admit that I'm worried that I've given her too much power over my other characters and she'll try to derail me too once she's alive on paper. I know that sounds silly. But silly or not, I've stopped to roll up my sleeves and grab oven mitts before I handle her.
Wish me luck!
Instead I've been sprucing up my blog. I added widgets for tracking my works in progress, I created a few pages, and today I added a Goodreads gadget and I created a new logo picture. *points up* See? I stood in front of the mirror with the camera, white door behind me and took several pictures. (In related news, make sure you've turned the flash off before you do this at home... unless you are going for the whole white-out, solar-flare thing as a fun special effect) Then I loaded them into my computer and chose the one I wanted. Then I opened it in Picasa3, a free image editing software made by Google, and cropped it and filtered it into a sepia tone. Then I added my text with the text editor and played with the font, color and sizing till I had what I liked. Then I saved it as a jpeg file and uploaded it. Viola!
So... now that I've had fun decorating my playground, I'll get back to work on the novel. Which was really what I was going to talk to you about today.
When Nano ended I'd come to the natural breaking point in the story where it changes location and another character gets introduced. My problem is that while I'd sketched her out, I'd not fleshed her in very well. Now that I need her to be onstage, so to speak, I realized I hadn't done a good job of making her real to me yet. The thing is, she's very real to my characters. She's the one responsible, through her decisions from the back story, that changed the lives of all my main characters.
I've been using this down time to figure out how I want to present her. Is she hard and bitter, full of revenge or charismatic and protective - not a selfish character, but one misguided through grief? Once I lock her in and really have her in my head, there's no going back and it will set the tone of the last half of the novel. I want her to be a vibrant character, but I admit that I'm worried that I've given her too much power over my other characters and she'll try to derail me too once she's alive on paper. I know that sounds silly. But silly or not, I've stopped to roll up my sleeves and grab oven mitts before I handle her.
Wish me luck!
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