Friday, May 17, 2002 :::
It is truly amazing how much crap one can cram into 50,000 words during the space of a month.
I sat down with "Vigilance", my NaNoWriMo novel, last night, and boy do I have my work cut out for me. Huge gaping holes, in both the plot and the story, flat characters, painful cliches, stunted, painful dialogue and exposition, mind-boggling errors in the sequence of events (I still can't figure out how I did what I did with that one whole section). And that's after I cut out about 6000 words back in December. And yet... There is a lot of really good stuff in there. Serious conflicts, some great images, potentially strong characters, interesting, complicated and painful relationships, and hopefully some unexpected twists. Among all the bad, there is the solid skeleton of a good novel in there.
Even though I cringed reading through some (okay, much) of it, I still like this novel. A lot. And that makes me a very happy little camper.
::: posted by Julie at 9:25 AM ::: 0 comments
Tuesday, May 14, 2002 :::
I changed the link to blogger on the sidebar, so y'all shouldn't be bothered by a page extolling the virtues of Blogger Pro. ;) Still looking into the Netscape issues.
::: posted by Lisa Nichols at 10:03 PM ::: 0 comments
Ah, figured out a way round it (the pay thing, that is). Still having to use IE, however (grumble, grumble, says resistant-to-change me).
Work (Real Life Work, that is) has intruded, so any word count I've produced has plummeted. However, work (writing work) is not completely dead. As for my goal of building a world, things are moving along. Slowly, but moving nicely. I played around with some action sets for Photoshop that will create random world maps. They look pretty cool, but they do have some flaws (anyone interested in the sets, let me know. Gotta have Photoshop 5.5 to run 'em, and they're also not for the faint of memory). In the end, I did what any sensible person would do:
"Honey, would you be interested in drawing a map for me?"
Actually, she was very insistent about the idea. So, the map of the local area is currently contracted out. To keep myself occupied until she finishes, I'm writing a language for the world. Keep in mind: Tolkien I ain't. This is the language of the former empire (or similiar large kingdom that once held sway in these parts) and is going to be spoken about as often as Latin is today. It will be a useful source of place names and the like. Anyone in need of advice on such an unusual activity, I recommend http://www.zompist.com/kit.html/ . I've also used a few other sources I'd be happy to share, if anyone's interested. Hey, I'm having fun.
::: posted by Jon Hansen at 4:49 PM ::: 2 comments
Admin note: I changed to Blogger Pro, so you may notice some changes in the interface when you post.
On a non-administrative note, my first reader for The Host finished reading, and had some amazingly positive comments for me. She also gently pointed out the flaws she saw -- I definitely have my work cut out for me. Those of you that have edited novels, how did you go about it? Did you break it down chapter by chapter, or what? I'm really not sure where to start this, when I do start, which will be next month sometime.
::: posted by Lisa Nichols at 10:46 AM ::: 5 comments
Monday, May 13, 2002 :::
Got some good work done tonight on "The Charlatan's Creed". Not as much as I wanted, but it was solid and moved the story along. I'm shooting for a minimum of 500 words a night, since I seem to be able to hit that goal more easily than trying to set aside an hour. Usually I end up writing more than that, which often ends up being at least an hour, so it all sort of works out in the end.
Also going to start reading the novel draft this week.
::: posted by Julie at 11:04 PM ::: 0 comments
Sunday, May 12, 2002 :::
Hey all. It's been a crazy couple of days. Lots of non-writing adventures were had, like our pet greyhound going missing for 2 days before he showed up again -- he's banged up but okay -- and fence-painting and sunburns and reading on the beach.
But I did some revising tonight to a story that could be published by an interested editor. I'm almost done with all the fixes, and I hope to send it out tomorrow.
And also, I sold a story to Gothic.net! Yeehaw! Look for my story "Visions of Suburban Bliss" on their website on May 27th.
See ya! Hope everyone's doing well!
::: posted by Michael Jasper at 9:54 PM ::: 2 comments
