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 …
Tag: Clarion West Write-A-Thon 2007
Things You Learn Surfing the OED
Here I am, looking for a K-word to complete an acronym for a Superhero Teams Control Board — the Shoopah Units Control K_______ — and what do I find? A beautiful new word: kakistocracy “The government of a state by the worst citizens.” That’s just begging to be used in a title somewhere. There’s a story I’ve long wanted to write, about a mailing list meltdown I experienced once, long ago. I always wanted to write something of an allegory about it set in a space station, or a generation ship, or something. This word will be in the title …
Write-a-Thon, Week 2
Well, I’m off to a slow start — I got not much writing done today, but a lot of reading/research and planning. Of course, I have NO idea what’s happening next, as well as having a strong feeling I may need to skip ahead to Book III and come back to work on Book II once I have a better idea what goes on later in the story. I think the main problem is that I’m so close to the research right now that I’m having a hard time being imaginative enough. A lot of the stuff I’m writing is …
Write-A-Thon, Week 1 Complete
Well, I’ve filled my quota for week 1 of the write-a-thon. Today’s totals are as follows: McWar: 1300 words (current wordcount 7363 words, but remember I began this piece before the beginning of the write-a-thon) To the Happy Country…: 2050 words (current wordcount: 10,986 words) Daily Total: 3350 Weekly Total: 15,679 The big news is that a lot of rearrangement has happened in To the Happy Country… I realized that the prologue I was writing wouldn’t actually work as a prologue, but most of it could be rewoven into the body of Book II of the novel, so I did …
W-a-T Update
I’m starting to think the daily update might get tedious, so I’m going to keep updating the one-post a week and go with that. So: Wednesday’s progress is as follows: McWar: 1,381 words To the Happy Country: 1,129 words Daily Total: 2,501 words Total words Week 1 (so far): 10,304 words The tough thing, of course, is that progress is going much better for McWar than for To the Happy Country…, but To the Happy Country… is the main project, and the first draft of McWar should be done in a day or two, so I shall have to well-and-truly …
Tuckerizations
So I need to work out a list of my sponsors to be Tuckerized into my story, and names to use. Some are very easy, some less so, since my story is set in Korea and most (but not all) of the characters will be Koreans, followed by Chinese and Japanese, with a few Americans thrown in. So if there’s an Asiatic-sounding name you prefer, feel free to specify it. (I’m also working on short stories as I go, so I could always work some of you westerner-types into one of those.) You don’t need to leave a comment here, …
Write-a-thon Update
I did some conversation exam midterms — the air conditioner in my office was broken, and it was HOT until it was fixed in the afternoon — and when I got home, I suddenly slept until darkness fell. I am still exhausted, but besides grocery shopping, I got in 1,403 words (426 on “McWar,” with a nasty, gross breakthrough, and 977 on To the Happy Country…). I was hoping to do some reading tonight — more on North Korea and all that — but I’m exhausted still, and I can’t complain, since I did finish Cormac McCarthy’s depressing/beautiful/horrible/damned-good novel The …
Write-a-thon Day 2
Things are proceeding nicely. I’m at 2900 words for today, and I may or may not get more done tonight, but Lime and I have a dinner meeting, and I think I’ll go climb the mountain and grade a little in the three hours until then. As for the breakdown, it’s pretty round in terms of numbers: I put in 2300 words on To the Happy Country… and 600 words on what I’m currently calling “McWar” (though I suspect it’ll have a new name when I finish it). I’m not sure why, but working on both things — something very …
Write-a-thon, Day 1 (Wordcount total: 3400)
Well, I’ve reached the end of my writing day, Day 1 of the write-a-thon. I churned out about 2900 words of the novel I’ll be writing this summer, which is an expansion of my Korean superheroes novella “Jjangguk and the Madman of Pyongyang.” That’s good time: I’ve committed to 15,000 words a week, and at this pace I should be able to do it in five days a week, with two days off. However, it’s good for me to bank some words in, since I have midterm exams for much of the day on Tuesday and Thursday, and on Wednesday …
Pushing Hell and Sponsor-Fishing
I wasn’t going to post the Postcards from Hell schedule, but I see that some others have, so what the hell, right? Get it, hell? August 4 – Wilted Lily by Henry Gee August 11 – One Thumb Up by Nick Mamatas August 18 – Dickey Size It by RJ Sevin August 25 – Dyscrasia by Gord Sellar Sept 1 – Footprints by Ann Leckie Sept 8 – Fitness is Its Own Reward by John Platt Sept 15 – One Step at a Time by Billy O’Calaghan Sept 22 – Ten by Kathryn Eason Sept 29 – The Cabinet of …