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Rainy Sunday September 14, 2008

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I’m not sure if this is the last vestiges of Ike, but today is the epitome of a Rainy Sunday. Good thing there’s going to be some football on.

Yesterday was a (somewhat) banner day for writing. I got 975 words (so close to that 4 digit barrier!). So, today, of course, I am suffering a bit of a let down. I’m oscillating between the feelings of “This whole plotline is weak, short, and tacked on” to “I wrote so much yesterday that I deserve a day off today.” Both of these, I believe, also stem from the fact that I sort of drank a bit last night, so my brain just feels like it doesn’t want to do any work today.

I took Val to a brunch date, though, and was mulling over this post on the drive back, and that actually helped warm my brain up a little. I’m to the point now where - with some proper protein and caffeine - I feel like I could get some more writing done. Time to push through and turn the currently anemic plotline into the idea that at one point I felt might be big enough for it’s own book…


[Writing] Word Count Wednesday 9.10.08 September 10, 2008

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Fiction Words This Week: 1,608

I actually got to the point this week where I wish I was keeping track daily… but then I looked at my weekly tracking spreadsheet, and it’s starting to look decent, which makes me feel a lot better than when I looked at my pathetic daily tracking sheet.


[Writing] 20% Done! September 6, 2008

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I can’t believe I forgot to post about this when I actually did it. I gave a little bit of a Yattai! when I totalled it up. I topped 20,000 words in The Nine Mothers! Now it actually feels like I can make it! I am not sure about making to to 100K, but I’m pretty sure (judging by what’s happened in the first 20K) that there will be at least 75K before this story has been told.

As of this writing, I’m at 20,253 words total (I have a spreadsheet which does some simple addition since there are two threads to the story which I keep in separate OpenOffice documents).


3 Random Things for a Rainy Friday that’s not actually raining September 5, 2008

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Cory Doctorow has an article in Locus Magazine about getting paid. He’s what you could call a Forward Thinker.

John DeNardo declares that JJ Abrams is the new Overlord of SciFi Fans. Well, duh. I been had known that since Alias. I’m not sure about the putting down of Joss Whedon, but we’ll see when Dollhouse hits the digital streaming media player formerly known as a TV.

3rd… Val wanted me to post this:

As someone who grew up in the Pac-NW, I do find it interesting that storms from the Gulf Coast just make their way up the Midwest through Chicago.


[Writing] Word Count Wednesday 9/3/08 September 3, 2008

Posted by fanaticalpupil in : The Nine Mothers, Writing , 1 comment so far

Fiction Writing This Week: 2,260
Non-Fiction Writing This Week: A bunch

I believe that’s the first time (since I’ve been keeping track) that I’ve topped 2,000 words in a week! I was inspired! I’ve been writing some somewhat tough scenes, too, in that, I already know what happens before and after the scene, but I’m filling in what actually happens so that readers don’t have to make spectacular jumps of logic to follow the story. And in doing so, I am now only 517 words away from 20,000 in The Nine Mothers of White Home. With a goal of 90-100,000 that puts me at 20% done! That actually seems like a decent number.


Anathem Advanced Blogger Reviews September 1, 2008

Posted by fanaticalpupil in : Writing , 1 comment so far

Now, I don’t know who either of these people are or if they’re good judges of the quality of books, but they have posted advanced reading copy reviews of Anathem, and they’re both similar enough that I believe them.

Marcus also posted this picture, which I had not seen before:

So far, it sounds like a book that could have used a little more editing, but then, the publisher has probably given Neal Stephenson some sort of de facto right to just say whatever he wants. I mean…

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #36 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Popular in these categories: (What’s this?)
#1 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction
#4 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary

It’s not every day that an author gets two vidoes on Amazon.com.

Also of note:

Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds

So, yeah, I’ll probably be waiting for the paperback version before I give myself the opportunity to read this one. Of course, I still have to finish The Confusion and The System of the World, and by the time I’m actually able to finish those, there will probably be a paperback of Anathem. Hooray for slow readers!


[Writing] Writing Workshop: Building Characters August 29, 2008

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DeepGenre’s David Louis Edelman provides 6 basic building blocks for creating characters. It’s a fairly quick read, and will help if you’re looking to make one of those character creation spreadsheets. Or if you just want to double-check that your characters are truly 6-dimensional.


[Writing] New Length Milestone! August 28, 2008

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After adding 300+ words over the past 2 days to The Nine Mothers, it has now overtaken the length of my previous longest effort (Hear The Grass Grow) with 18,359 words.


[Writing] Creative Writing: Director Commentary

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Something occurred to me while watching Joss Whedon’s director’s commentary for Serenity. Really, this is something I should have been doing already anyway, but it basically boils down to writing a Director’s Commentary track for my book/story/thing. I know there’s scene outline spreadsheets that include multiple columns for that sort of thing (character motivations, story arc actions, etc.). So, like I said, probably something I should have already been creating, but coalescing the confines of a pre-formatted spreadsheet with that of a rambling Director’s Commentary is what makes it not only feasible in my mind, but also something that I’m apt to actually do.

That’s what it is supposed to look like (in Google Docs, at least). Mine… well, it still sort of just resides in one column, with the director-like rambling that starts with “Well, in this scene, I did this, because of this, and we were trying to convey this.”


[Writing] Word Count Wednesday 8/28 August 27, 2008

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For the week ending 8/28: 353

Not much, but as I always say, it’s 353 more words than I had last week at this time. It seems like there is only one really obvious day for writing. That’s when I get my 300+ words per week in. So, now I just need to work on creating time on a couple other days, so I can get closer to 1000 words per week. I can crank out the 350 pretty easily, but I do it, and then I kind of rest on my laurels for a couple days, and then I get back to where I want to write more, but then I don’t have the time. It’s definitely a pattern, and I’m hoping that being aware of it will help me to change it.