Results of Ruminations

As the (most likely) last post of the year (woot? It's kinda like, "Oh, last one of the year!" and then, when the new year comes, it's really just a continuation, so what's the hubbub?) I'll make this one relatively brief...I think. Today's writing went off well, then not so well, then embarrassing, then it's time to go home. In order: I got to the library pretty early, and the first chapter that I wrote came across all right. I'm not one hundred percent disappointed in it, but, while it began well, the chapter seemed to drag for all 2800 or so words. The problem came from the same issue that I really struggled with in Words of the Silence  (and I may have reference in an early post): I pack so much exposition into dialogue that I just don't know what to do with myself. I amn't pleased with the way that my chapters tend to do one thing or another--people either sit around and talk a lot, or they get in fights. Like, really, that's all...

I wrote unexpectedly today, which is always nice when it happens. I have to admit, though, I would've preferred my typical routine to what I went through today. Because of scheduling hiccups, car troubles, and holiday hours at UVU library, I ended up doing my writing at the in-laws' house. Normally, I really enjoy being with my in-laws. They're incredibly supportive of me and mine, and my mother-in-law's a great cook to boot. But writing with the little boys scampering about is, generally, a losing proposition. Mix into that hectic mix trips down to the dealership (car troubles), skipping lunch (scheduling hiccups), and an overall difficulty in keeping my quiet corner quiet (holiday hour lamentations), it's a small miracle I produced as much as I did. Today, instead of progressing the story forward--which, after pausing over the Christmas weekend, now has a bit of direction--I decided to move back to the approximate middle of the story and give some extra detail...

I'll be brief today: It was 'productive' in that I produced almost 3,100 words. It was a chapter that I am extremely disappointed in, and it marks the crucial juncture of having run out of track that I lay in front of the oncoming train and the oncoming train catching up to me. I have no idea where to go from here, and the conversation that my characters just went through for the last 3k words is not that worthwhile. This happens to me frequently. I remember this occurring during Words of the Silenced  when I sent the main character down south to investigate the scene of the regicide. It sidetracked by about, oh, six chapters I think, before I pulled it back and reasserted it. Then, in the second draft, I further axed the scene, shifting it from the south to the east and modifying other aspects as I went along. The current version definitely works better, though there are still some glaring issues with that book, few of which have to do with what I'm talking about her...

Today and yesterday proved surprisingly productive in that I was not expecting to produce anything, so what I did put out was completely unplanned. Yesterday's work came thanks to a fortuitous double nap that the boys performed in the middle of the day. I had the tickling of a scene--nothing truly developed, and, because of that, nothing truly remarkable--that I had considered as being worthwhile adding in. I decided to provide a flashback for Nicomachus that stretched back all the way to when he and his brother, Dalinus, were young. Because I hadn't planned on writing, it wasn't rendered quite as well as I would have preferred, but I squeezed it out and slapped it in. Fiddling with yWriter 5 (my writing program of choice; see below), I dropped the flashback into an already overloaded chapter, thinking that it wouldn't make too big of a difference. After doing that, I immediately regretted the choice: The chapter was over  6,000 words. (I know giving a word count i...

Quick report today, as there's a signing that Brandon Sanderson 's doing at Barnes and Noble nearby that I wanted to go to. Anyway, today was only 3,400 words, which is about average, though I've been so productive with some of the past few weeks that it actually feels a little shallow. Fortunately, I'm wearing my new writing shirt that I got from my writing group. See? So that makes me remember that 3,400 words ain't that shabby. I don't know why the shirt reminds me of that, but it does. Anyway, the exciting thing about the whole day was that I took the current problem that they're dealing with and put the conversation in a different character's point of view. (This is chapter 60 in the first draft.) See, I was listening to one of my earlier books on my Kindle , Words of the Silenced , and I realized that I had done something in the neighborhood of 7 straight chapters of pretty much just dialogue. There was action--the characters did things and ...

Nearly 6,700 words done today. This is about as high as I get, in terms of output--between six and seven thousand. I was only able to get this much 'done' today, though, because I had almost an entire chapter already written that finally fits into the story. I do that whenever possible, since I will write snatches of scenes--sometimes entire chapters--that occur chronologically later in the book than I am at that particular moment. It's not ideal, as it often requires a lot of tweaking to get the 'old chapter' to match up with the story when they finally merge. Nevertheless, I find it worthwhile. It often gives me a guide so that I can fit things together more smoothly. All that being said, I still don't know how this story is supposed to end. There's some really interesting analyses that I mentioned before; I need to do that more carefully with my characters and with the story. Once that's done, I should be able to see where I am going with this book....

There is a definitive finality to the last words of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows : "All was well" (759). This is a finality that gives a positive echo to Hamlet's last words, "The rest is silence" (Hamlet V.ii ), the kind of echo that comes because the journey's result and its actual process are fully finished. The purpose of our presence in Harry's world is come, and there is no reason to remain. And yet, the Boy Who Lived lingers like a scar, indelibly marking those who traversed the 4,100 paged odyssey. The cicatrice is, like all the best always are, a double-edged souvenir; we seem to ache as much with the ending as we thrilled with the beginning. When the first humble words--written in the singular point of view of Vernon Dursley--dribble across the page, we have little to set this story apart from the rest. In fact, the series begins rather poorly, as many of the characters commence with their contribution by being stiff antitheses to H...

I am kind of disappointed because today's writing didn't quite go the way I wanted it to. I had a great idea for a chapter that would've fit in--irony, character development, world building...in short, everything that a chapter really ought to have--but, when I was thinking about it more carefully, I realized that it wouldn't work at this point. The reason was simple: The character I needed in it was in traction, basically, because of getting beaten down a few chapters earlier. So...Euranthedes was unavailable at the moment, what with the fact that he's probably in a quasi-coma at the moment. The idea is still a good one, but I don't know if I'll be able to fit it in. Still, I put down 3800 words, which isn't too bad. My goal of 250k by April will be easily accomplished, I think, if I keep this kind of consistent output going. I'm quite hopeful that I can! Violence Today's chapter had a prison break out, which gives me two problems: Repetiti...

New Goal I had a week off from the story last week by helping a kid in the ward with his Eagle Project. This week, even though that was going on again, I totally spaced it until I was at UVU to start writing for the day. I will confess, I barely had a twinge of regret. In selfish disclosure, I felt like I had helped him a great deal the week before, and I couldn't countenance going another week without some time at the keyboard. I don't regret it, though I do regret not being able to do two things at once. (Of course, if I could do two things at once, I would have so many books written and read it isn't even funny.) Anyway, I decided that, by the time my birthday rolls around in April, I'd like to have 250,000 words in the book--or to have finished it. So that's my new goal, and I took a pretty large chunk out of it today: Over 5,000 words done. Today I wrote a chapter from Saldrae's point of view and then Olvia, a new character who may or may not show up aga...

What you see there, in all its poor resolution glory, is my victory over the 200,000 word mark. Note the beautiful red letters there? Word count achieved. You can also see the beginning and ending dates for the goal, there, as well as the number of days left. I have almost 50 days between now and the end of the year, and I've already hit that goal that I, frankly, thought was rather impossible to get, what with all of the work I have to do instead of writing. I'm absolutely thrilled. Thanks to the sacrifice of my wife, I've managed to get deep into this book--spending more time than just a hobby probably ought to take. And I feel really good about it. Like, really, really good. I know it's just an arbitrary number, but it's one that has taken a lot of effort and ought to be memorialized somehow. Anyway, I think I'll lay off the goals for the rest of 2011 (though I'll continue to write each week, as usual), and, starting in January, try to figure out wha...

Goal Making So, I did really, really well today. I had about 10,000 words left in my 'goal' for this year (I want 200,000 words in the book by 31 Dec) when I sat down. Now, I'm looking at about 2,800 to get that. I wrote over 7,000 words in the book today, which is an unbelievable amount of productivity. Not only that, but the stuff that I put in felt like I'll keep it, for the most part. Obviously, there will be some things that will have to be changed (I'm not looking forward to the editing of this behemoth, I'll be honest), but, for the most part, what happens in this chapter has to stay. It's really powerful (I think), and I really like it. Before I hit the topic, I just want to document what I did today: I put in a flashback of Calistar (who, despite the fact he isn't the 'main character' in my mind, has the most flashbacks of all the protagonists, clocking in at 15 as of right now, and needing at least two more before his back story is...

On Revision One of the things that has me most worried about this project, is the problem of over- and underwriting the whole thing. Obviously, I don't mean underwriting in any legal sense. No, what I mean is that there's a distinct fish-stick problem with my writing, and by that  I mean that I often feel that my writings are like fish-sticks: frozen on the inside and burned on the outside. It's supposed to balance out--in theory--but, in reality, it's just an unpalatable mess. This is something that I've struggled with since I was a really young writer. In fact, I have a distinct memory of breaking down into tears while I was in the midst of one of my earliest writing projects. It must've been during my 7th grade year, when I was working on one of my many Spider-Man novels. I had been slaving away on it at whatever rate I could (I wasn't nearly as obsessive about documenting and measuring my work back then as I am now), and the reality that the story s...

This afternoon, I headed toward UVU to start writing. Gayle had taken the boys, I was at leisure to begin writing.... ...So I went to Barnes and Noble instead. It wasn't that I wasn't keen to get writing--I kind of was. Yesterday was a fairly okay day, putting in the other half of the chapter I had started the day before. But it wasn't the sort of thing that's super inspiring and encouraging. Plus, I knew that I wasn't hungry enough to eat lunch right away, but I didn't have enough in my stomach to last me until the library closed at 5:00. With those thoughts in mind, I decided to browse a little bit before going to lunch, which turned out to be a mixed bag. The con side came in the fact that it was local author day at Barnes and Noble. I did the typical shopper thing--what I would surely dislike or downright despise if I ever became a local author--and glanced over their books and didn't engage any of them at all. Now, to be fair, there were quite a few...

Some work done today. I'm at UVU (thankfully), and it turned out to be a good thing. Yesterday, I went on about how saving stuff helps me later on, sometimes. Well, this time, it was my writers' group that helped. One of the readers is behind the forereaders of my book. Because of this, I'm able to look a little further back than what I normally get to do. This time, it was super fortuitous: All of the stuff I talked about yesterday (with reusing previously crafted stuff) I had already done about thirty chapters before. Not all of it was used in the earlier chapter, so I was able to salvage the work of yesterday and tighten it up a little bit, but it was a good lesson in showing why I can't rely on my memory from stuff that I wrote back in February for what I'm working on now. Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about what I do when it comes to writer's block. The opening line of Henry V is very much my prayer (though not often literal): "O for a Muse o...