Tag: Process Notes

So I wrote a long post this morning, all of which seems to have vanished into the ether when I failed to save the diary update after entering the first writing session of the day. I’m slightly irritated by this, since it means I’m going to be going from memory when it comes to working out today’s writing time, and I’ve done so much cutting on the manuscript that I no longer have a solid gauge of today’s word count. Session 15.1 and 15.2 So, from memory, session one and two were about a half-hour long and involved writing about 600 words apeice based upon my best guess (and a quick word-count of the scene that only started this morning). I then cut about 3,500 words from the manuscript ’cause they were part of a first chapter that no longer really applies. Some of them may find their way back in again. Session 15.2 (8:21 PM – 8:56 PM) Word

Today I tried to open up a web browser on Odin the Desktop about thirty seconds after I sat down. Disappointing, really, since I’d almost broken myself of that habit (I still wanted too, but I usually remembered that Odin is internet-free and therefore not much good for web browsing). One of the interesting parts about doing this diary is seeing how my process actually works. It’s an inexact science – logging word-counts doesn’t really tell me much about the content or how many times a scene gets rewritten – but it’s already proving informative. For instance, I would have spent years telling people I was a get it done kind of writer, at my best when I just sat down and slogged my way through a manuscript for hours at a time. At the start of this year I actually set up my workflow around that assumption, sitting down to hit set word-counts every day (they varied from day-to-day;

So I didn’t get online a lot between Friday and Sunday, for a whole variety of reasons, so this is going to be a pretty truncated entry that covers the last four days. Strap yourselves in. Day 10 Things I did today: woke up on the Gold Coast and had breakfast with my parents; drove to Brisbane and worked for a few hours in the QWC office; had lunch with co-workers; came home and went through a couple of options for the Tooth and Claw Whispers reading on Saturday; do some prep work for the next Year of the Author Platform course I’m teaching in a few weeks; watched NXT with the Flatmate. Things I didn’t do today: write anything on the novella. Total Daily Writing Time: 0 Daily Word Count Total: 0 Day 11 Session 11.1 (11:43 PM – 12:28 AM) Word Count: 600  Mostly revision on the first chapter.  Trying to streamline things a bit. Total Daily Writing Time: 45 minutes Daily

I hate this chapter. I hate this book. I hate this blog series and wish I’d never started it. I hate the mornings. I hate the fact that I have to the Gold Coast this evening. I hate the fact that there is so much of the book left to go. I hate the fact that it’s getting longer. I hate the fact that I’m not able to just finish this fucker and go on to the next thing. I hate the fact that I didn’t finish my PhD. I hate the fact that I’m behind on pretty much everything at my day-job. I hate the fact that I slept badly and woke up late. I hate the fact that I’m already behind. I hate…I hate…I hate… And really, all that happens more or less on time. Nine days in and this is no longer fun. Must ignore that and keep writing. Session 9.1 (8:15 AM – 8:49 PM) Word

Another lazy day with a lot of time away from the keyboard. Most of it was spent writing other things, some of which were work, some of which was not. Kept thinking I should go write some novella now, then didn’t. Watched some Arrow. Watched some new sci-fi show put together by SyFy channel in the US, whose name escapes me. Made an attempt to watch the Painkiller Jane series that was put out by the Sci-Fi channel before they changed their name to something that sounds like an STD. My Flatmate recommended PJ, but I’m not really clicking with it. It’s slow. The voice-over irritates me. It gets bonus points for having two female characters on the special government task-force team, who actually like each other and get along. Session 5.1 (10:49 PM – 11:25 PM) Word Count: 675 Lots of ground-word type stuff for chapter two. Most of it is wrong. What I’m writing now is framework kind

Went and delivered a library presentation for work this morning, which is one of those things that’s both awesomely fun and enormously draining. You’d think, after eight years doing the teaching thing at university, I’d get over the pre-presentation nerves and post-presentation crash, but it still happens every single time. Once again, I didn’t end up kicking off my writing day until very late in the evening. Once again, having to post this diary is probably my saving grace, as I stuck with things a little longer than I would have if I wasn’t posting here. Session 4.1 (11:36 PM – 12:20 AM) Word Count: 723 And so the end of Chapter One is reached. Dead character is now dead. All things considered, I’m giving myself the rest of the night off. Total Daily Writing Time: 44 minutes Daily Word Count Total: 723 Total Manuscript Writing Time: 4 hours, 58 minutes Total Manuscript Word Count: 4,338

The big plan for today: finish Chapter One and nail the sucker down. This’ll mean a lot of focus on the final scene in the chapter, plus some whole-of-chapter revision once that’s done to knock off the worst of the rough edges, take out the narrative tics that creep in (my characters spend a lot of time shrugging), and plug in any missing sensory/setting information. This is so not the way you’re meant to write, according to all the conventional wisdom, but my process is what it is. I’ve learned the hard way, over the years, that the words-at-any-cost, you-can-edit-later isn’t the best approach for me. I do not edit well. Once I stop working on a draft, I cease carrying the story around in my head. I remember seeing an old interview with Douglas Adams where he talked about the creation of the random improbability drive, which came about based on the judo principle on using an attacker’s momentum

Here is my morning routine on days that I am heading to the day-job: the alarm goes off at 7:00 AM. I check my email and social media on my phone, go through my morning ablutions, shower, and breakfast. Ordinarily I’m front of a writing computer by 8:00 AM, which gives me an hour of writing time before I have to jump in the car and drive to the State Library of Queensland where the QWC offices are housed. I like this routine. Kicking the day off with writing – particularly if that’s not what I’m going to be doing for the majority of my day – is good for my psyche. Today is not a day-job day, so that routine goes out the window. Its 7:46 AM when I sat down to start writing this and I am not yet out of bed. The odds of me being at the non-internet computer by 8:00 AM are pretty slim. Partially