24 May 2006
Feeling better already
Once I made the decision to scrap the experiment with the new POV character, I immediately felt better. I moved the file I'd been working on to the backup folder and moved the old file into the current folder and got going. For the first time in awhile, I got my day's words without straining too much.
Yay.
No, seriously. I don't like having to strain for my words. It's not something I'm used to. I'm used to being able to crank out the words. In my old days on Forward Motion (admittedly this was back when I had a job and was relatively stress-free) we'd do word wars (where we would be together in the chat room and write and for maybe an hour or two the only real talking would be postings of word counts and the occasional snippet) where I'd regularly do 2k in an hour. So with that benchmark it has been extremely frustrating to only just get my daily goal of 1k after two or even three hours.
I guess that new POV was annoying me more than I realized. As I said yesterday, I've learned something - stick to the outline.
Whoa. I just had a brain-flash. That SF thingy I was outlining last week has four major POV - I wonder if that desire for an extra POV was an early manifestation of that SF idea. Hmm. Anyway, that's out of the way, both of them. Hopefully I can keep rolling today.
Yay.
No, seriously. I don't like having to strain for my words. It's not something I'm used to. I'm used to being able to crank out the words. In my old days on Forward Motion (admittedly this was back when I had a job and was relatively stress-free) we'd do word wars (where we would be together in the chat room and write and for maybe an hour or two the only real talking would be postings of word counts and the occasional snippet) where I'd regularly do 2k in an hour. So with that benchmark it has been extremely frustrating to only just get my daily goal of 1k after two or even three hours.
I guess that new POV was annoying me more than I realized. As I said yesterday, I've learned something - stick to the outline.
Whoa. I just had a brain-flash. That SF thingy I was outlining last week has four major POV - I wonder if that desire for an extra POV was an early manifestation of that SF idea. Hmm. Anyway, that's out of the way, both of them. Hopefully I can keep rolling today.
23 May 2006
Zat's it!
I've had enough. This new POV experiment is driving me batty. *note to self: next time stick to outline and don't go off on wild tangents. If wild tangents are necessary, modify outline and start over. end note*
At least I had the forethought to save a version of where I was back when I got this wild idea. Yay, me. I know in my last post I said I'd give it a week, but I think if I waited that long, I'd lose what hair I had left. Plus what remains of the tattered corpse of my sanity.
I'll just write the book the way it's outlined and if I don't like it when I'm done, then I'll just trunk it and move on and chalk it up to experience and maybe someday I'll come back to it and re-outline it. But let's not be defeatist before we even finish, eh?
ONWARD!
*ahem* Sorry for yelling. You all can put your eyes back in their sockets now, thanks.
At least I had the forethought to save a version of where I was back when I got this wild idea. Yay, me. I know in my last post I said I'd give it a week, but I think if I waited that long, I'd lose what hair I had left. Plus what remains of the tattered corpse of my sanity.
I'll just write the book the way it's outlined and if I don't like it when I'm done, then I'll just trunk it and move on and chalk it up to experience and maybe someday I'll come back to it and re-outline it. But let's not be defeatist before we even finish, eh?
ONWARD!
*ahem* Sorry for yelling. You all can put your eyes back in their sockets now, thanks.
19 May 2006
Purging
The past few days have been taken up by outlining the idea for a new book that just wont leave me alone. I have found in the past that if I outline it, I purge it out of my brain enough so that I can get back to my current WIP. I used to jump around like a skittish rabbit - every time I got a new idea, I would start a new WIP. So right now I have the half-written remains of about a dozen novels on my hard drive. (Hence my qualifying the current WIP as "current" - I have a dozen works in progress, technically speaking.) Ever since I started the outline-purging routine, I have about twenty more novels outlined. I, however, have made much better progress on my current WIP than I would have otherwise. I learned long ago that if I don't purge the idea from my brain, my brain tries to stick it into the current WIP and that does not work at all. Take the current example - I am writing a fantasy right now but the new idea was sci fi. I suppose it works for some people, but putting this particular sci fi idea into this particular fantasy novel would Not Work in such a way that it would end up more a humorous urban fantasy set in the future if that makes any sense.
So, now suitably purged, I am back to work on the WIP. Don't ask my word count, though. Some days it feels like I am two steps forward, one step back. Recent reports to the contrary, the assimilation of another POV is not going so well after all. I am seriously thinking about scrapping what I've done since then and going back to the backup I saved a month or so ago and picking up where I left off on that version. We'll see. I'll give it another week, I think.
So, now suitably purged, I am back to work on the WIP. Don't ask my word count, though. Some days it feels like I am two steps forward, one step back. Recent reports to the contrary, the assimilation of another POV is not going so well after all. I am seriously thinking about scrapping what I've done since then and going back to the backup I saved a month or so ago and picking up where I left off on that version. We'll see. I'll give it another week, I think.
15 May 2006
Happy Mother's Day
to you and you and, yes, you. Never mind that it was yesterday.
Did the requisite "cook dinner for my wife" thing yesterday. Also never mind that I do the cooking 60% of the time these days. She still enjoyed it. We had lemon salmon baked in foil served with dill sauce, lemon teriyaki rice (just a wee bit of teriyaki sauce and even less lemon juice - most of the lemon flavor was from the zest which I rescued from the ends of the lemon that I sliced for the salmon), salad and then Gain Five Pounds Just Looking At It Brownies for dessert. Since yesterday was a special day, I made the brownies with Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate instead of your usual Hershey's unsweetened. No, you weren't invited, sorry.
As for my dear mother...well, I wished her a Happy Mother's Day over the phone on Thursday. (She called.) Haven't given her a card yet seeing as how she's currently in transit somewhere and I have no idea where to send the card. She's supposed to set foot in ScribbleSilent land sometime around June 1st at which date I'll give her the card. (My folks do the Travel Around The Country In A Bus Masquerading As A RV thing. Yes, even now in the Time Of High Gas Prices.)
To all you other mothers out there, hope you had a good day. That goes for you, too, PBW. I don't care what you say, there were two pretty ladies in that picture on your blog, not just one. So just hush. ;)
Did the requisite "cook dinner for my wife" thing yesterday. Also never mind that I do the cooking 60% of the time these days. She still enjoyed it. We had lemon salmon baked in foil served with dill sauce, lemon teriyaki rice (just a wee bit of teriyaki sauce and even less lemon juice - most of the lemon flavor was from the zest which I rescued from the ends of the lemon that I sliced for the salmon), salad and then Gain Five Pounds Just Looking At It Brownies for dessert. Since yesterday was a special day, I made the brownies with Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate instead of your usual Hershey's unsweetened. No, you weren't invited, sorry.
As for my dear mother...well, I wished her a Happy Mother's Day over the phone on Thursday. (She called.) Haven't given her a card yet seeing as how she's currently in transit somewhere and I have no idea where to send the card. She's supposed to set foot in ScribbleSilent land sometime around June 1st at which date I'll give her the card. (My folks do the Travel Around The Country In A Bus Masquerading As A RV thing. Yes, even now in the Time Of High Gas Prices.)
To all you other mothers out there, hope you had a good day. That goes for you, too, PBW. I don't care what you say, there were two pretty ladies in that picture on your blog, not just one. So just hush. ;)
11 May 2006
All Hail The Emperor of Baurne,
the mendacious little git.
I had a lot of fun creating this character so it was great to finally get to use him in the novel. So much fun that I didn't even realize it had been a whole week since I last blogged. Whoops.
Baurne is an Empire that somewhat borders my MC's home of Imbriul. If I ever get this series published, you'll see on the map what I mean by "somewhat." Suffice it to say that even though both political entities are HUGE by medieval standards and thus have borders of many hundreds of miles, they only abut along a short stretch of their respective borders. At any rate, Baurne's Emperor is a 15 year old twit of a boy who is a habitual liar and has actually created a post wherein the person who fills that post is responsible to keep track of who he told what lie to. As you can see, I'm having a lot of fun -- not only with the Emperor himself, but also with the poor guy who keeps track of all the lies. I haven't come up with a name for the post itself, though, so in my manuscript it simply says "lie-tracker" but I definitely don't want to leave it at that.
I had a lot of fun creating this character so it was great to finally get to use him in the novel. So much fun that I didn't even realize it had been a whole week since I last blogged. Whoops.
Baurne is an Empire that somewhat borders my MC's home of Imbriul. If I ever get this series published, you'll see on the map what I mean by "somewhat." Suffice it to say that even though both political entities are HUGE by medieval standards and thus have borders of many hundreds of miles, they only abut along a short stretch of their respective borders. At any rate, Baurne's Emperor is a 15 year old twit of a boy who is a habitual liar and has actually created a post wherein the person who fills that post is responsible to keep track of who he told what lie to. As you can see, I'm having a lot of fun -- not only with the Emperor himself, but also with the poor guy who keeps track of all the lies. I haven't come up with a name for the post itself, though, so in my manuscript it simply says "lie-tracker" but I definitely don't want to leave it at that.
03 May 2006
Cold Granite
Just bought "Cold Granite" today for a belated birthday treat. Finished reading it already and all I can do is curse Barnes and Noble for not having "Dying Light" yet.*
Seriously, though...I highly enjoyed CG. Has a lot of slang but not so much you get overwhelmed. Logan is rather likable in a "he's a real human being" sort of way. The kind of realness I struggle to give to my own characters, frankly. And you really do get the sense of what Aberdeen is like. (I've been to Scotland twice although the last time was in the late '80s.) Nice descriptions, neatly sprinkled throughout the story so that by the time you get to the end you have a pretty good mental picture. Rather as if you'd taken a eyes-on tour of the city instead of glomming your eyes on the whole thing all at once via Google Earth. (The Google Earth bit would be more apropos if a description of the city had been handed over to the reader in one large infodumpish gulp. Which I hate, btw.)
All in all, well done Stuart.
*Of course, "Dying Light" isn't available here in the States until August 8th, but that's neither here nor there.
Seriously, though...I highly enjoyed CG. Has a lot of slang but not so much you get overwhelmed. Logan is rather likable in a "he's a real human being" sort of way. The kind of realness I struggle to give to my own characters, frankly. And you really do get the sense of what Aberdeen is like. (I've been to Scotland twice although the last time was in the late '80s.) Nice descriptions, neatly sprinkled throughout the story so that by the time you get to the end you have a pretty good mental picture. Rather as if you'd taken a eyes-on tour of the city instead of glomming your eyes on the whole thing all at once via Google Earth. (The Google Earth bit would be more apropos if a description of the city had been handed over to the reader in one large infodumpish gulp. Which I hate, btw.)
All in all, well done Stuart.
*Of course, "Dying Light" isn't available here in the States until August 8th, but that's neither here nor there.
