Category Archives: Writing

Progress on my fantasy themed novel.

Writing

Writing progress.

It’s happening again.  In the last two weeks I’ve managed to ‘front up to the page’ most days. I set myself a new target of 500 words a day, much more achievable than the 800 a day I tried earlier.  I’m behind at only 4487 words when I should have 6500 by now — not counting today’s quota. [sigh] Maybe I will catch up.

At 87,615 all together, I’m approaching the pointy end, everything must come to a head soon. I just love it when things come together without me having to think too much about it. During the outlining debacle I looked at one scene and wondered what on earth I was thinking, having no idea where it was going. In another, I had some tom-foolery happening between the brothers, just to emphasize their relationship. And, lo and  behold, those two odd scenes  unconsciously came together to make another scene make sense with no need to go back and foreshadow.

To catch up today, I have to get 2513 words on the page. it is do-able, as  I have written about 2300 in a  sitting before.I better get stuck into it then … right after I get a coffee … and browse Reader … and check my emails. 🙂

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Exercise, Writing

Treadmilling & Writing

A weirdness overcame me on the treadmill today, only the fourth time I tackled exercise this past week. I sooked about getting on it, and I sooked the whole 5 laps aka 2kms. As punishment for my bad behaviour I made myself do another lap. Nasty.

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Half way through that lap the supposed feel good endorphins must have kicked in, because I loosened up a bit. I wondered to myself if the extra lap was just to avoid getting into the waiting writing. I have antagonist scenes to write. I have a bloke to kill off … maybe. And while I was thinking about that, the extra lap finished but I decided to keep going. Before I knew it, I zoned out at the steady 5km per hour and spoke with my main girl T.  That hasn’t happened before — ever!

My Miss T got stuck into me about my plans to kill off her love interest. I explained it would naturally force her into the arms of  J’s brother D, for whom I thought she was getting the hots.  She sneered at me, so what, she said, it was just once I had a bit of a perve. The wings threw me, I couldn’t help myself if my mind wandered to wondering what the front looked like. I owned up to J about that.  She went red. (obviously I could see her too, only in my mind)

But J is a bit of a loser, you’ll be better of with D, I suggested.  Yeah, she countered, but D is a bit keen on that bloody witch who kidnapped me. D isn’t innocent either, he was in on it.

But he’s trying to make up for that. And the bab…  No, don’t go there! she said, I don’t want to talk about that. Well, actually, I didn’t want to talk about that either because I think twins in my fantasy novel might well be one cliché too many!

About this time I snapped out of the zone, wiped my perspiring brow and slogged on until 10 laps (5kms) flashed up on the running, ahem, walking track.

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Writing

Writing

Now that I have finished stuffing about with the deliberate distraction of theme changing on my blog, I must own up to not doing anything about outlining my novel, other than to stare blankly at the screen and open up one scene after another and just look at it. I even resorted to the treadmill one afternoon to avoid outlining.

I managed to write just 107 words in the last week. But my mind keeps insisting I have to do the outline.

So, starting last night, abandoning the electronic method, I followed the damned guidelines and wrote out an index card for each scene. Well, actually, I cut up A4 paper into 4 pieces and called that 4 index cards. 🙂 About 80 of them, written in longhand I will be battling to read. (I just cannot write neatly anymore due to stiff knuckles and a lack of co-ordination between my eyes, brain and pen.)

The first thing that became obvious to me, when I really thought about it, was I haven’t a point of view of the antagonist! How stupid is that? I have nearly every man and his dog having a view-point. I exaggerate. During the index card making, I did manage to prune out two character viewpoints, thus merging a couple of scenes.

And I can remember saying something the other day about bringing my novel back to a younger audience. PHOOEY! Not going to happen.

Now that I have the index cards done, I will try to place them within the three act structure; colour code each POV characters story arc and add scenes where they are wanting; find my plot and sub plot stories; and then write the FINAL scene. In fact, I imagine I might write at least three final scenes.

I’m happy I didn’t feel the need to ditch any scenes at all.  Every one already advances the story and serves a purpose. I feel my characters are showing their personalities.

I’ll be back to writing tomorrow. WIP = 83128 words.

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