25k and rolling
Nov. 13th, 2011 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanateNext week is going to be a bit hectic, so I got myself caught up and then ahead on the wordcount this weekend. (And then bought myself a ridiculous number of things from sock dreams. Soon there will have to be a culling, so that the socks do not take over the world. Um, again, that is.)
My computer is presently living on the table in the sewing room, which is more useful than my desk by virtue of the displacement from ordinary concerns, if nothing else. Beside it, I've got a kitchen timer set to 26 minutes (I was going for 25, but it's the kind where you have to punch in each minute manually & leaving it at 26 was easier than going back and starting over.) which gives me roughly half-hour writing blocks, and I've been doing surprisingly well with pressing "start" and then working through the whole time block with scrivener on "full screen." It's not quite as focused as 15 minutes of write or die style typing, but I also find that this gives me a little more space to think, and don't end up going off on subconscious-driven tangents if they don't actually belong. (There's a nice long one in the middle of last year's effort that probably needs to go.) I've also been keeping a quarter-sheet of paper (the normal size for my miscellaneous scrap of paper obsession) between the computer and my tea, on which I scribble revision notes and things to look up later-- it's almost full, but I'm already rolling a bunch of them into the bits I'm writing now.
And then when the timer goes off, I finish the rest of what's presently in my brain, check wordcounts, and get up and walk away from the computer. It's working pretty well; one block will get me between 400-500 words, so three or four half hours makes a day's word target. And I have permission to do the dishes, or go outside and plant absurd quantities of daffodils.
The book... well, when I began, Mara had regressed into the grief & isolation she started off with in the last book she was in (not unreasonable) but it took me a bit too long to drag my head out of that.sartorias pointed out that one of my VP submissions spent an awful lot of time very far outside the heads of the characters, and thinking about it I realize that I do spend a lot of time on that line between standard 3rd person and objective. This is all very well for little fairytale short stories (though I *may* have gotten some kind rejection letters from editors who didn't care for it...) but theoretically this book is supposed to be YA. And it's totally about a girl who's lost just about everything and still has to work out her peace with that so she can save the world. Which is a perfectly good YA storyline if I pay attention to the fact that she's 18 and lonely, and then have her actually talk to people. So, I'm working on that. If I'm particularly lucky, I won't run out of linear storyline before I hit 50k, so I won't have to go back and redo the earlier bits (probably at least a third of the eventual novel) before this NaNo thing is over. But we shall see.
My computer is presently living on the table in the sewing room, which is more useful than my desk by virtue of the displacement from ordinary concerns, if nothing else. Beside it, I've got a kitchen timer set to 26 minutes (I was going for 25, but it's the kind where you have to punch in each minute manually & leaving it at 26 was easier than going back and starting over.) which gives me roughly half-hour writing blocks, and I've been doing surprisingly well with pressing "start" and then working through the whole time block with scrivener on "full screen." It's not quite as focused as 15 minutes of write or die style typing, but I also find that this gives me a little more space to think, and don't end up going off on subconscious-driven tangents if they don't actually belong. (There's a nice long one in the middle of last year's effort that probably needs to go.) I've also been keeping a quarter-sheet of paper (the normal size for my miscellaneous scrap of paper obsession) between the computer and my tea, on which I scribble revision notes and things to look up later-- it's almost full, but I'm already rolling a bunch of them into the bits I'm writing now.
And then when the timer goes off, I finish the rest of what's presently in my brain, check wordcounts, and get up and walk away from the computer. It's working pretty well; one block will get me between 400-500 words, so three or four half hours makes a day's word target. And I have permission to do the dishes, or go outside and plant absurd quantities of daffodils.
The book... well, when I began, Mara had regressed into the grief & isolation she started off with in the last book she was in (not unreasonable) but it took me a bit too long to drag my head out of that.
sartorias pointed out that one of my VP submissions spent an awful lot of time very far outside the heads of the characters, and thinking about it I realize that I do spend a lot of time on that line between standard 3rd person and objective. This is all very well for little fairytale short stories (though I *may* have gotten some kind rejection letters from editors who didn't care for it...) but theoretically this book is supposed to be YA. And it's totally about a girl who's lost just about everything and still has to work out her peace with that so she can save the world. Which is a perfectly good YA storyline if I pay attention to the fact that she's 18 and lonely, and then have her actually talk to people. So, I'm working on that. If I'm particularly lucky, I won't run out of linear storyline before I hit 50k, so I won't have to go back and redo the earlier bits (probably at least a third of the eventual novel) before this NaNo thing is over. But we shall see.