I’ve decided to start a new post for each day of the four remaining days of the write-a-thon, because it’s only four days and because, hee, I’m excited. Today, especially, I have reason to be excited. I drafted one and a half scenes and I stopped at a scene break, thinking, “I know what happens next, maybe that’s a good time to stop, so I have something to start with tomorrow. (That’s what Vernor Vinge said he does, and it seems to have been working for me this week.) Anyway, I added up the words and got a nice little …
Category: WRITING
Write-a-thon Week 6: An Early Start!
Well, to date I’ve been giving myself Sunday off for each week of the write-a-thon, and being sadly unproductive on Monday, at least during the last few weeks, but today, my mind was still deep into the question of geomantic warfare from where I left off last night, so I continued on today, and actually got to an ending I’m semi-confortable with… at least, it’s better than the ones I was working towards before today. “Geomantic warfare” makes it sound like a story full of exploding volcanoes and earthquakes, but that’s not what I ended up writing. In fact, I …
Week 5 — Completed!
Well, that’s five weeks down and one more to go! As of dinnertime today (which was 9pm), my writing stats for the day were: “The Broken Path”: 3600 words (by 9:00pm) Weekly Total: 13,664 words Write-a-thon Total: 77,761 words I added another chunk of writing to “The Broken Path,” in what seems to be my pattern for the story — draft ahead of where I know what is happening, until I’ve gone down the wrong plotline far enough to know where I need to go back to and fork off from there down a new plotline. Anyway, todays stats are now: “The Broken …
Write-a-thon, Week 5
Another slow-starting week. Monday, I had an appointment in Seoul, and then some things to do. After a tiring day of errand-running in Seoul, I returned home and slept for a incredible 13 hours, though I was woken by Lime for a short while so I could eat something. Needless to say, I got no writing done on Monday. Tuesday… ….was a little more fruitful. I managed to draft a non-working, but perhaps fixable, ending for “The Truth About Mughals.” The end is a bit deus ex machina, but I think if I play with it, it might be less …
Write-a-thon Week 4, Completed
Saturday Update: The Innsmouth Fatwa: 895 words (draft complete at 5,515 words) The Truth About Mughals: 5,340 words Weekly Total: 15,076 words Write-a-thon Total: 64,146 words I’m not sure how far I’m going to get with To the Happy Country. I’m beginning to think it’d work better to draft the thing as five or six separate novellas and then stitch them together. However, in the meantime, I did bang out the end of The Innsmouth Fatwa (which I rethought during my mountain hike and expanded a little, though, yes, sometime it shall endure a thousand cuts, though hopefully not the …
Write-a-thon, Week 4
Slow day today. Lots of scratching in the dirt, not much progress. Tomorrow, I’ll be back to the novel. Here are Monday’s stats: “Jing the Quae”: 749 words Weekly Total: 749 words Write-a-thon Total: 49,170 Very slow day for me, mostly because Jing the Quae is almost as stalled as it was when I set it down a few months ago. We’ll see what I come up with tomorrow, when I turn my attention back to To the Happy Country…. But, on the other hand, I did hit the gym. Tuesday & Wednesday Updates: Tuesday stats: I didn’t get around …
Write-a-thon Week 3 Completed: That’s Me In The Corner, Overachieving
Not really, but it’s hard to keep up this rate of production. I worked hard on Saturday, but of course, my Internet connection was dead all weekend so I’m only able to post about it now. And now that I’mposting, it looks as if I’ve outdone my own foolishly naive overachieving goals to a moronic degree. To the Happy Country: 2967 words “The Empty Slough”: 3206 words (to finish the draft with with a total of 5346 words) Weekly Total: 17576 words Write-a-Thon Total: 48421 words I’m not sure I’d feel right banking words, though if I, were, I think …
Write-a-Thon Week 3
Off to a good start this week, in a way. I decided to take a break from To the Happy Country for today, and I started work on a new ghost story set in my home province of Saskatchewan, called The Empty Slough. It’s meandering, but that’s fine: I fully expect to draft it to roughly 5000 words and then cut 30-40% of that in the end. It’s a weird ghost story, but I’ll say nothing more about that until I find out whether it works or not, since the “twist” in the story is metaphysical, and by “metaphysical” I …
Write-a-Thon, Week 2 Complete
Whew. I just ran right to the end of the stuff I thought up yesterday and today, and I have a vague idea what’s coming next, but I have some time tomorrow to think it over and plan it out. Plus a lot of time in the next week to work on it. Here’s my wordcount update. Saturday, June 30th, 2007 To the Happy Country…: 4418 words Weekly Total: 15166 words Writhathon Total: 30,845 Four more weeks to go, and Lime’s laughing at me for finally figuring out that, yeah, my goals and quotas were a bit, well, optimistic. But …
Pimping Hell
Postcards from Hell is a new fiction venue that sends you little stories on little postcards. It’s a new market, which is a rare bird in SF these days, and the start of something big… maybe. But for it to be that, it has to pay for itself. That depends on how many people are willing to pay a little chunk of money for a subscription. 13 weeks, 13 stories, and the cost (for subscribers in the US) is $6.66. You gotta love that. And anyway, it’s a cool idea. I thought it was a cool idea as soon as …