Black Candy

I’m sure I had a groove around here somewhere, if only I could find it…

PETERMBALL Works in Progress ,

Before anything else: if you haven’t read XKCD today, you really should. Given that I’ve spent the majority of today writing, the comic promises to be both entertaining and amusing in ways I cannot.

Not much else to report, really. This afternoon was spent trying to reconnect with the Black Candy novel draft in an effort to stop myself from either a) hating it, b) mentally re-writing the plot, or c) actually rewriting things from the beginning in a different POV in an effort to fix the problem. The latter is particularly tempting, but I’m currently placing my trust in the awareness that it’s at least 90% panic-driven. My gut is not to be trusted when writing at novel lengths (at least, not yet). Now I get to head off and do some work on Claw before turning in for the night.

Black Candy Update

PETERMBALL Works in Progress

Black Candy Draft

Projected Total: 80,000
Total Words to Date: 19,345
Words Done in Previous 24 48-hour 12 Days:11,057 (although some of that was scenes I’d pre-written and stitched into this draft)
Deadline: July 23rd

As you may have deduced from the lack of updates recently, this week was full of badness – day job issues, contracts evaporating without warning, and the general financial angst of being marginally employed all combined to ensure that the most productive thing I’ve done for the last three days was pull my lazy butt of the couch and go shopping. Fortunately the ever-awesome Angela Slatter was heading around for a writing session this morning  and I wrote about two and a half new words between cooking lunch, chatting about writing, and eating chocolate.

Interestingly I’m more-or-less on-track when it comes to the plot-to-wordcount layout I had in my head that said twenty-K was the end of the first act (and it is, more or less, although I may have another scene in there). This is effectively the first time I’ve ever worked to plan this far in, but that may be a function of changing my definition of “plan” than anything else.

Black Candy Update

PETERMBALL Works in Progress ,

Black Candy Draft
Projected Total: 80,000
Total Words to Date: 8,288
Words Done in Previous 24 48-hour Period: 2,037
Deadline: July 23rd

Spent twenty-four hours wibbling over what I’d done, trying to work my way into the project. Cut what I’d done for the second chapter (not deleted, just cut away for the moment and set aside until I hit a narrative beat where the events feel more appropriate), then spent the last twenty-four re-starting the chapter from scratch. Much happier this time around, even if it does give me negative progress on the wordcount. I predict this will happen a couple of times in the drafting process for this one – I’m sufficiently clueless about what I’m doing that I’ll happily rewrite and expand upon existing scenes from the novella-length-draft without realising that they shouldn’t be happening yet.