The I'm Writing Thread.... Celebrate your pages written etc

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I think I have the changes in #1 thrashed out, over a really amazingly good dinner out yesterday evening.  Three or four new chapters at the beginning, moving some stuff forward from later in #1 to smooth the flow (not having to stop mid tense scene to explain a bit of how something works, always good) and a bit of business that's currently in the start of #3 moved back to #1 for character purposes.

[shades of grey]

Flow is good.  It's what I struggle with.

After a small hiatus 500 words written.

[Paynesgrey]

Veered off of WiP this week, need to have a few things gel before the next scene works.  So I took an 8K section and worked it into a standalone short that weighs in at 9.5K and then yesterday took a 300 word bit of "milestone to use later dialogue" and built that into a 3.5K short I'm going to submit monday.  All of them work as back-story for the WiP, so I'm not cheating on my baby, so much as thinking of her while I make out with her sister.  I'm trying to keep it so every side-project is part of the same universe and will either tie in to or support the WiP.

[trboturtle]

12,000+ words for the week on several projects, so small asdvances on several different stories and novels.....

Craig

[belial.1980]

3400 words in the past four hours. The climax happened, the protagonist has beaten the antagonist, and now he's about to find that his life is only going to become more complicated and dangerous as a result. Happy days!

After today the manuscript is up to 113,000 words total. It is first draft material though, which means it's first draft quality.  But hey, it's better than a bunch of blank pages. So, it's a step in the right direction.

[o_O]

and a bit of business that's currently in the start of #3 moved back to #1 for character purposes.

Interesting.

[gatordave96]

Up to 229,000 words this evening.  Being distracted by the temptation to plow through the rest of "A Memory of Light" by Jordan/Sanderson.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Interesting.

The implications of working with someone who was a war hero a long time ago and has been using his reputation to keep himself in the field long after he should sensibly have moved to a staff job, in ways which are a pain in the behind to people with him, recomplicate interestingly when there is the setting's equivalent of a huge blockbuster movie about the character in question; lots of people know his name, and even more people have heard of him but think of the actor from the movie instead.

Now combine that with a context where moderately famous actors often licence their image for androids, and where some security forces are very keen to use known images that people will have positive associations with.  (Imagine if two-thirds of the security guards in your local mall were Bruce Willis.)

This is going to be fun. Particularly when I get far enough into the series that the characters have to deal with people making movies of the earlier books, though in the current plan that does not happen until #5.

[Snowleopard]

If a bunch of security people in a local mall looked like Bruce Willis - I'd run
for the doors.  To paraphrase a line - "You have a hunch and Insurance companies go bankrupt!"

[o_O]

The implications of working with someone who was a war hero a long time ago and has been using his reputation to keep himself in the field long after he should sensibly have moved to a staff job, in ways which are a pain in the behind to people with him, recomplicate interestingly when there is the setting's equivalent of a huge blockbuster movie about the character in question; lots of people know his name, and even more people have heard of him but think of the actor from the movie instead.

Ah so.  I have a  " Vulcans making a movie about Kirk just as he's about to find out about Khan"  image here.

Now combine that with a context where moderately famous actors often licence their image for androids, and where some security forces are very keen to use known images that people will have positive associations with.  (Imagine if two-thirds of the security guards in your local mall were Bruce Willis.)

I actually went with Chalker's Vals here, and Liam Neeson's face, but it does sound like fun.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Ah so.  I have a  " Vulcans making a movie about Kirk just as he's about to find out about Khan"  image here.

Kind of sort of.  Except with having to actually deal with Shatner's Kirk the age Shatner was in Undiscovered Country when everybody's expectation is that they'll be getting Chris Pine.

(The thought of Shatner and Leonard Cohen being alumni of the same high school, which is on the way between my apartment and the centre of town,  still boggles me.)

(No, I'm not doing my setting's equivalent of Leonard Cohen. I know my limits.)

[Lord Rae]

So I think I found out a way around the block that's been holding me up for months.... well the block plus procrastination. But I'm in the process of changing my story from Third Person limited to First person. Once I eliminated the non-main chapters and changed a few things around it is starting to fall into place. Although at 14000 words it's still daunting to go through and change. I'm about a third of the way through... but it should make writing the rest of the story much easier. I hope. 

[meg_evonne]

So I think I found out a way around the block that's been holding me up for months.... [[[[[super!]]]]]]  well the block plus procrastination. But I'm in the process of changing my story from Third Person limited to First person. [[[[ARGH the agony... Been there, done that. So frustrating. Story is written but you have do the whole damn thing over again.... My sympathies.}}}}}  Once I eliminated the non-main chapters and changed a few things around it is starting to fall into place. Although at 14000 words it's still daunting to go through and change. I'm about a third of the way through... but it should make writing the rest of the story much easier. I hope.  [[[Just celebrate that the work wasn't finished when you decided to switch POV. hang in there!]

As always, I am so impressed with everyone's word count and how we manage to write our way out of corners or through road blocks. As for me, I had to reopen an old work for a conference. Actually querying etc. *sigh* My recent WiP had some issues, as in the main character wasn't changing. I'm one of those writer's who needs that. It was something major I simply overlooked like a rank amature. Wait, after reading the Hunger Games series perhaps I was influenced by her. I mean have you ever seen a character NOT change one smidgen like that main character?

So I'm off on another tangent and leaving behind the YA sci fi and the urban fantasy completely. It's an interesting twist for my writing, but I am now remembering why I don't like standard YA. I really don't like writing about high school. LOL. Coming up with ingenious ways to make the day to day normal life of a mundane human entertaining is really making my brain snap. It's working though and it's good for me and my writing skills.

I continue to average 1000 words per day, which is my standard to write from 6:30 to 8:30 every morning. I am amazed at the output you guys can get out there!

Best wishes, good writing, and hang in there everyone. Meg

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

The rework continues.  2265 words of totally new first chapter, seems fairly solid, 1200ish of incomplete totally new second chapter; the third will be what used to be chapter 6, I think.  Only real issue is that it's involving dropping a lot of names for people my POV character knew in the recent past who have not been alluded to at all before and will need to be salted in throughout.

Incidentally, in this setting cats are extinct.

[belial.1980]

Bam! Current draft finished. Total word count: 119,110. I stared in the middle of August and it looked promising. Then, in October, it just crashed. I could not, for the life of me, make all the pieces work together. I realized that it had too many moving parts, so to say. Too many subplots, too many POVs, too many themes, and too much going on to fit into the framework of the story. I felt like I was watering down everything in order to fit it all in.

I decided to take a new approach and keep a little "tighter" scope of events. Conflicts became more personal and I got the chance to explore certain things a lot more intimately. Overall I think it worked out well. It's still really rough but it finally ::works:: this time around. So I'll pat myself on the back and take off the rest of the afternoon.

Of course, I'll be back bright and early tomorrow morning, brainstorming for the next installment.