Day: November 2, 2012

Nano – Day 2

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

I managed to steal some time at work (read: not eating lunch) to get some writing done.  I am so much happier with the quality of the writing I’m producing today.  I suspect it’s because I have the characters established well enough that I can just move the story forward.  There will definitely be some rewriting going on in my first chapter and a half, but not until December at the earliest.
I’m ahead of schedule for the month and almost at my desired 2k for the day already.  I plan to get some good time in tonight and maybe hit the evening write-in on Saturday.  As long as I don’t get complacent and fall behind, I’m in good shape.

ETA: I’ve crested 6600 as of 11:20.  I’m loving what I’ve been writing recently.  Some good character interaction going on, exactly what needs to be fixed in the first chapter.  (Not yet, Scott.  Not yet.)

I’m also focusing on writing more rather than less.  You see, short stories are all about accomplishing as much as possible in as few words as possible.  The plot must be perpetually propelled.  In a novel, sometimes you can develop character just to develop character.  Or setting, foreshadowing, backstory.  Novels are about the richness of the story more than the efficiency of it.  As I wrote chapter 1, I kept finding myself fretting over wordcount, thinking “I’m spending too many words on B and I need to get to E withing 2000 words, so I better get moving or I’ll have to cut C and D way short.”  Yeah, I was worried about the wrong problem.  Chapter 1 wound up about 1000 words short of my intention.  At least it helped me relax on the wordcount issue and now the story is flowing.

I wanted to hit 7k before bed, but I don’t see it happening.  I got sucked into the horror movie my wife was watching, Cabin in the Woods.  normally not my speed and I thought I could just write while I ignored it, but then I saw Joss Whedon’s name in the credits.  …  Let’s just say that Joss is one twisted individual with a sense of humor a little too close to mine for him to qualify as “stable”.  I don’t think I could call it a good movie, but I was entertained.  But please, someone increase the man’s effects budget.  Well, increase Drew Goddard’s effects budget; he was the director.
But I digress.

In short: NaNo going well.  Cabin in the Woods, twisted and fun in a splattery kind of way.

NaNo Morale Modifier: 9 (out of 10)

NaNo – Day 1

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

Word count came in under 4k for the first day of NaNoWriMo.  I was hoping for 5k, but I got distracted by all the great people at the local write-ins (both the midnight and 6pm varieties).  I’m planning to hit some of the weekend write-ins, but we’ll see.  I need to find a good place to pound out my wordcount and my living room doesn’t seem a likely candidate.  We’ll see.

Not thrilled with the quality of the stuff I’m typing, but I’m deliberately powering on.  Revision will take care of all that.  I suspect I’ll be shuffling some of the early chapters.  It’s slow trying to start 3 PoV characters in the first 3 chapters.  I’ll get back to the first when I hit chapter 4, then move on to a fourth and eventually a fifth.  Having never written more than one PoV in the same story (successfully), I’m a bit nervous about the whole thing.  But mostly I’m sleepy.  G’night.