Writing Diary

Novella Diary, Claw, Days 10 to 13

PETERMBALL Works in Progress , , , ,

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 Word Count Total: 600

Day 12

Session 12.1 (12: 38 AM – 1:08 AM)
Word Count: 547

Taking my “get work done early, so you can slack off a little later in the day” habit to its logical extreme. Most of this came from doing rewrites of the first scene, and I figured I’d squeeze a few couple of minutes in ’cause I wasn’t actually sleeping all that well and Sunday…well, Sunday was looking like it’d be a write-off.

Which, turns out, it was. Rather grateful I got this done when I did.

Total Daily Writing Time: 30 minutes
Daily Word Count Total: 547

Day 13

Write club. AKA the day when I catch-up from the slackness of the weekend. Arrived at Chez Slatter, nattered about writing for a bit. I have hit the bit of the manuscript where I’m forced to engage the Kress protocol – I’m stuck, very stuck, so I’m going back and to the point where the story made sense to me and rewriting from there, doing slightly different things in order to send the story flying off in a new direction. There will be lots of rewrites in this write-club.

Session 13.1 (11: 55 AM – 12:25 PM)
Word Count: 1,097

Wrote a new opening scene. Deleted a bunch of older scenes that now seemed kinda superfluous. Productive in its own way, but it dropped the overall manuscript wordcount back a couple of steps.

Session 13.2 (12:36 PM – 1:07 PM)
Word Count: 735

Session 13.3 (1:50 PM – 2:00 PM)
Word Count: 273

Did a whole bunch of scene tinkering between the last session and this one. Wrote maybe a paragraph or two of new words, but mostly just tightened the language or inserted some information into the scenes. I don’t ordinarily count this as writing, unless I’m actively trashing a scene and re-writing it from scratch, so the count started again once I hit the point where it was time to start a new scene.

Session 13.4 (2:43 PM – 3:20 PM)
Word Count: 1,016

Some work on the new chapter. Manuscript is starting to look… unwieldy.

Session 13.5 (3:55 PM – 4:32 PM )
Word Count: 866 

Finally hit a version of the first scene that will work.

Total Daily Writing Time: 2 hours, 25 minutes
Daily Word Count Total: 3,987

Total Manuscript Writing Time: 15 hours, 12 minutes
Total Manuscript Word Count: 15,471

Novella Diary, Claw, Day Nine

PETERMBALL Works in Progress , , , ,

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 Count: 749

I’m laying good odds that this will be it today. Packed day at work, which means it’s unlikely I’ll steal time at lunch. Drive to the Gold Coast in the rush-hour traffic. Hit the awards dinner for the Josephine Ulrick awards as the QWC representative. Eat. Drink. Be merry. Head to my parents place. Sleep.

Session 9.2 (12:11 PM – 12:23 PM)
Word Count: 297

Against all odds, I finished lunch with twelve minutes to spare. Bam. Writing time. Wrote enough that I can see the shape of the fourth chapter, and where it ends.

Also, hit the 1k mark for the day. Expected to get maybe half that done, so I’m calling it a win.

Final note: Ulrick awards were awesome. Caught up with some people I haven’t seen in a decade. Got to meet a bunch of talented young writers who were coming through the Griffith writing program. Remembered, briefly, how the Gold Coast ‘could actually be a nice place (if you tell anyone I said this, there will be trouble).

‘Course, it also finished as late as I expected it too, which makes me really glad I squeezed in the lunch session.

Total Daily Writing Time: 46 minutes
Daily Word Count Total: 1, 046

Total Manuscript Writing Time: 11 hours, 32 minutes
Total Manuscript Word Count: 11, 242

Novella Diary, Claw, Day Eight

PETERMBALL Works in Progress , , , , ,

Late start today. For reasons.

Actually, no, I owe you a better explanation than that. So here’s the thing: I’m going to the Gold Coast tomorrow night for an awards ceremony. It’s a work thing, and I’m going as the work representative, and it wasn’t something I’d planned for. This is bugging me. Not in an “I don’t want to do this and work is stupid” kind of way, but in a “why can I not do the things that I want to do” kind of way.

And this happened on the day that I realised my estimates for how long this book is going to be will be out by about 10,000 words. I can tell, ’cause I’m eight thousand words in and I haven’t yet hit the end of the forth chapter. The forth chapter is an anchor point. When I set out to write something like this, even if I’m pantsing it, I divide the word-count into quarters and mentally tag them: first act, race to mid-point, away from the mid-point, last act.

Things happen at the end of the first act. They haven’t happened yet, but they should at the end of Chapter Four. Ergo, given that Chapter 4 will push us over 10,000 words, I’m figuring my estimates are out.

I get derailed by stupid shit.

Session 8.1 (8:13 AM – 8:36 AM)
Word Count: 639

So this was a weird one. Started writing a scene based on a set of assumptions regarding the dynamic. Reached the end of the scene and realised it would be more fun if I set up a different set of character dynamics. One that’s more antagonistic, and is predicated on the antagonist being a bit dodgy, but if I do it it’ll justify a whole bunch of scenes that I’d written earlier where certain characters come on stage and do stuff ’cause I need them on-stage.

So now I’m going back and making a note of the places where those changes need to happen, ’cause it’s going to have an effect on every single scene in the story thus far.

Session 8.2 (12:08 PM – 12:19 PM)
Word Count: 327

Eleven minutes spare during my lunch break at work. Turns out I can totally rock eleven minutes of writing time.

Session 8.3 (7:58 PM – 8:19 PM)
Word Count: 438

We were meant to be gaming tonight, but people couldn’t make it, so I ended up with a free evening of writing that I hadn’t really planned on. Considering tomorrow night is going to be a wash in terms of getting stuff done, it’s a welcome reprieve.

Session 8.4 (8:36 PM – 8:52 PM)
Word Count: 502

Second half of the online Writing Race we run through work, whereby a bunch of people gather online and write for an hour.

Didn’t quite hit the end of chapter 4, but that’s only because it’s turning into an unwieldy mess. Going to leave it here for the evening and see if I can create a plan for rewriting things a little, if only so I can block out the scenes and figure what goes where.

First, though, I must load the dishwasher, iron shirts for tomorrow, and collect the washing.

Total Daily Writing Time: 1 hours, 11  minutes
Daily Word Count Total: 1, 906

Total Manuscript Writing Time: 10 hours, 46 minutes
Total Manuscript Word Count: 10,161