(no subject)

[dr_pretentious]

Despite a real-live emergency that necessitated ten hours of driving from Jersey to Maryland and back again, I stole time from my wonderful family and friends to write 776 terrible new words.

I'm now completely certain my opening chapter is off the rails. If it weren't Nanowrimo, I'd cut and paste the offending passages into a new Word document and then tuck it into the Half-Abandoned Bits file. As it is, I'll just be flagging them with [TO BE CUT] and [END CUT HERE] signposts, and an alternate opening will go into the same document. If, on 30 November, all I have to send for Nanowrimo's word count verification is 37 versions of the opening chapter, that's actually just fine. I have my eyes on a bigger prize than Nanowrimo.

In zero draft mind, I'm quite content to write ugly sentences, fatally flawed subplots, excessive exposition, etc., but if I know I'm lying to myself about who the characters are, that brings everything to a crashing halt. I can misunderstand the characters, but not misrepresent them.

To get back on track, I'm reverting to my old two-shift work rhythm: a late morning to early afternoon longhand shift, during which anything goes, and an evening writing shift to type up and refine the first shift's longhand stuff. I've tried skipping the longhand step and composing directly onto the laptop over the past couple of months, to see if it was any faster. Weirdly enough, it's not.

2,153 / 50,000 (4.3%)

Comments

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

Real-life emergency? Hope everything's alright.

Wow. You're able to go back and look at what you wrote without seizing up. :::Impressed:::

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

One of my oldest friends is in the process of losing his father. My job was easy--I just had to make a bunch of phone calls he didn't have time or brainspace for, and be good company over dinner. He had the hard part, dealing with hospitals and relatives and so forth. Things are dire, but not directly for me.

Oh, and that was me seizing up. I looked, and thought the chapter would Have To Be Fixed Immediately. Panic! Turns out, not so much, on further reflection.

[shakti-lemaris.livejournal.com]

Real life emergency? Hope everything turned out ok.
I agree with vgnwtch. I'm impressed you can go back and look.
p.s: just read your War of Wheatberry Year segment. Amazing how much wealth, how many layers you manage to cram into nine pages. Is this part related to what you're working on, or is it against NaNoWriMo rules for me to ask that?
Also, if responding to me cuts back on valuable writing time, we can talk about it in December!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The emergency's big and bad, but it's not really mine, so I'm okay. No worrying allowed.

"The War of the Wheat Berry Year" was a sort of trial run for the protagonist of The Traitor of Imlen, and I got my first look at some of the other characters while I was writing it, but when I get around to the Battle of Joaarsiell again, it's going to look completely different. The short story was written in response to a call for flash-fiction epics, so it's insanely compressed. Also, I had to fudge a lot of the magic and politics in order to avoid bogging the story down in the exposition that would have been necessary to maintain some kind of worldbuilding consistency with the longer series. Now that I'm getting to know all the characters better, Trebin's looking less curmudgeonly, and Gallirrim is starting to resemble Simon Bolivar. Surprise!

[reynaud.livejournal.com]

Like many things in my life, I alternate. There was a time when I could only write on a computer: I felt I needed the spell checker. But now I find most of my writing starts off longhand.

Don't take away time from writing, but how long do you spend on these sessions?

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Right now? Since I shipped the big ms out to the agent, it's been hard for me to stay focused for longer than 90 minutes in a single session, though sometimes I've been managing two or even (very rarely) three sessions a day.

While I was working on the big ms, a four-hour writing day, divided irregularly and unpredictably among the three main types of labor (longhand generation of new material, longhand markup of hard copy, and entry of longhand material into my word processor), was probably about average. A good day would be a four-hour longhand session, followed by a several-hours break for employment, housework, and spousal hanging out, followed by a two-hour writing session at the computer. Ten hour days were not the norm, but not rare, either.

And once, there was an insane 20-hour, 33-page day. My wrists were wrecked for a while after that, and I'm not in a hurry to repeat the experience.

Some days, I had to settle for producing a single sentence, or marking up a few pages of hard copy. I've only taken two days entirely off since May 17, 2003, though. I don't care for days off. Don't believe in 'em. They make me a little crazy. More than a little crazy. (Right now, you're thinking, Sarah, you're already more than a little crazy, if you're planning on writing 50000 words in 30 days. No, really. It can get worse.)

[reynaud.livejournal.com]

Dr. P., I know who you hung out with in college. You have a ph.d. I've known you to be a little crazy for some time now...