Almost Superbowl Sunday

Tomorrow (well, today for those of you on the east coast of the US) will mark the second Superbowl I will have ever watched. Which is the third ever football game I've ever sat through.

I want to write. But although I will probably have a novel and a notebook near at hand, I will resist the temptation to bring my laptop along. I call it research (you never when a character might need to know what a down marker is), in addition to some quality time with my family. There aren't many things we do as a group, but last year my mother convinved us kids to watch the game with her (we'd already ended up watching the Sugarbowl that year, almost by chance, when the UH Warrioirs lost absymally), and lately we've taken to watching Psych all on Friday nights. Well, I watch Monk with her, and we make her suffer through Psych--she claims she doesn't get it. I think the pop culture and the style of humor of Psych are lost on her, but she likes Monk's quirky obsessive-compulsiveness.

Anyway, I suppose this post is about taking a break. I've been steeped in this story for weeks, if not months, and deadlines are fast approaching so I've been feeling the pressure to complete the fiorst draft so I can jump into revisions. But that's how we can get burned out. And by 'we' I think this refers to both writers and students. For me, I was starting to get tired of loking at my computer, and the busy-ness of a new semester made it easy to step away from it. But I couldn't drop it for long because, despite the hundreds of lines of translation I've already done, there is a lot I need to accomplish before March 13.

I am getting obsessed with March 13. So in a weekend surrounded by this novel, which I am luckily starting to like again after a few days of being sick of it completely, tomorrow I am taking a break and I will not begrudge myself the time away from it. Ideas may come to me, and I'll be there, accepting of them, but I will try not to fill my thoughts with working out niggling little problems with the plot.

Tomorrow I rest. And watch the Superbowl. And eat far more junkfood than is really necessary. But I will have fun, and maybe tomorrow evening I will turn on my laptop, chck my email, and slip into the writing as if all of it was fresh and new and exciting. because it's still exciting, just a little quieter than those first few paragraphs.

Cardinals versus Steelers, tomorrow will be interesting.

(On an unrelated note: I didn't find out until it was far too late to do anything about it, but Duff and the crew from Ace of Cakes was here, on Schofield Barracks--Thursday, I believe--and I didn't get to go see them. Alas. I enjoy that show.)

Word Counts Unrelated to the Inauguration

I only saw bits and pieces of it anyway. I've doing reading for my classes and getting over some strange 24-hour bug I had yesterday. (I tend to get the 3-day cold, but I took some NyQuil last night and woke up able to breathe through both nostrils--it's the little things we appreciate when they're gone.)

So the final bout of word counts for the end of my winter vacation between semesters:

Day 22, Jan 8: end at 56,211

Day 23, Jan 9: end at 60,046

Day 24, Jan 10: end at 60,304 (slow day, it's how it goes sometimes)

Day 25, Jan 11: end at 63,114

Day 26, Jan 12: 66,007

Day 27, Jan 13: 66,700

No, that isn't a typo. I did about 700 words on the novel that last day before my first day of classes. But on the other hand, I wrote around 6,500 words on a complete short story retelling Rapunzel in that one night (from about 9:30-2). And I stayed up later than I meant to, because the next day, I had to finish the translation I'd put off, rush to school, spend the day there, come home at 10 pm, then run out of the house the next morning for my weekly meeting with my thesis advisor.

I am proud of that short story--it needs work, mostly editing out extraneous details--but no, I have not finished the first draft of the novel. I am close to the end, and may be be able to push through it before classes next week, but I have to be stubborn about it. I think I lost some of my momentum as soon as classes started up. I haven't typed a word yet since the 14th.

I'd like to say that I'll do a few pages tonight, but I really don't want to have to worry about any lingering assignments for tomorrow and I'm already tired. I may only have enough alertness to finish the homework before going to bed, hoping to knock out any last tiny lingering cold monsters.

I'm off.
Happy writing.

Not a Morning Person Doesn't Even Begin to Describe It

So says one of my favorite key chains. And it's true. Spending the past 4 weeks writing has changed that fact from joke back to truth. I am not a morning person. I an a night owl, or some other nocturnal creature. My sleep has gone screwy the past week or two. I go to bed 12, 1, 2, then wake up around 10 or 11 in the morning. Ususally I wake up a bit earlier, but I still drowse until that time, the past few days I've actually greeting consciousness at those times. Also, I reguarly go to bed or fall asleep around midnight and haven't had this problem before.

Perhaps it's partly from not needing to wake up early, since I didn't have classes, and then partly the staying up a bit later than usual--the curse of being a nocturnal person living with other people and having my own diurnal schedule. I also like to think it's partly a reaction to a general lack of rest that built up over the semester and summer, though I seem to recall learning doesn't actually happen (it was in a psych class, if people were regualrly deprived of a few extra hours of sleep, only getting 4 or 5 a night, they -didn't- then sleep for a whole day to make up for it).

Anyway, so then I have nights like last night when I went to bed at 2, didn't fall asleep until after 3 and woke up about 10:30 or so this morning. I would've gone to bed earlier, but I got on a roll, some time after 9/9:30. Between about 10 and 2 I wrote almost 3,000, most if not all of the writing I did yesterday in fact. I had a few chores that mornig, but not much, so I could've written much longer earlier in the day, but couldn't find the motivation. Day winding down, others are asleep, and my fingers are tapping like crazy.

Today I didn't even try to write much. I checked my email, LJ, some blogs I like to frequent, then shut down. I ran some errands, came home and booted up the computer intending to write, but my stomach was giving me trouble (I still feel the slightest bit of nauseous, but it's nwhere near as bad as it was this afternoon), so I eventually shut down without typing a single word. so here I am now, having already wasted about an hour online. I'm going to see if I can get another 3,000 words done or so.

I have 98 lines of translation to do tomorrow, but other than that and an hour or so of reorganizing my room for greatest effectiveness when classes start this Wednesday, I will be spending the day writing. I don't think I'll finish the whole plot, but endings take a lot of time for me, so I'll get as far as I can and finish the first draft while editing the beginning. Hopefully there won't be too much overlap. Maybe just a week or two, depending on how big the workload is the first two weeks.

Okay, books don't write themselves, so I'm off. Happy writing everyone.

Updates and What I Dread Naming Writer's Block

Day 18, Jan 4: ended at 48,176 word count for the day--2298

Day 19, Jan 5: end at 51,191, word count for the day--3015 (My goal for this day was to pass 50,000, which I did, and then to reach 51,000, which I also did. It was a good day.)

Day 20, Jan 6: end at 52,677, word count for the day--1486 (Less good, but over 1,000 is generally okay.)

Day 21, Jan 7: end at 52,934, word count for the day--257 (Abysmal, I'm trying to reverse this now, but I'm not doing too well so far.)

Yesterday was a scattered day, and I couldn't concentrate. Changing where I typed didn't seem to help.

Today was a run-around day for the first half. I could go out again in half an hour, but that would just be for the drive, the air, and I might do better to really sit down and focus on the writing.

I have this feeling that being able to talk to someone about the story would help (went to writer's group yesterday and I can say that critique does not help or motivate when I'm knee-deep in writing a first draft)--just throw ideas at them, toss 'em around. But I'm always hesitant to bug people, on AIM and the like. I feel like since I don't know what they're doing, it's an intrusion, and I don't like asking if they're there repeatedly and being rebuffed or ignored (not deliberately, just because the person on the other end is busy or not at their computer). Mnn, anyway, so I'm here, in an almost full house, but feling a little lonely. Go figure.

I'm just wandering the internet trying to find some bit of inspiration that will catch me and propel me into pages of writing. Until then, I work sentence by sentence.

Word Count Updates and a thought on how I organize my novels

First post of the new year.

Maybe it's a good sign that it's about making progress on the current novel.

Day 13, December 30, 2008: end of day--42,699, total word count for the day--2,567.

Day 14, December 31 and Day 15, January 1: 0 words both days. My second chunk of allowed lack of writing. It was a good rest.

Day 16, January 2, 2009: (I'll have to get used to writing 2009 now) ended the day at 45,878, for a total word count for the day of 3,1979.

Day 17, January 3, 2009: o words. Saturdays are my bane.

Today is Day 18. I'm working on it now, though I am finding that it's hard to start in the morning. as in, I get little to no writing done until after noon. I do, however, make pretty good progress in the evening and night, sometimes getting 2,000 words or more done between 9/10 pm and midnight/1 am.

The past few days I've hit a bit of a rut, good word counts aside. I tend to have a very (very) general idea of where a story needs to go. Herein lies the problem with that style of organization--reaching the point of specific scenes that don't fall exactly along the line of that main arc. This one has developed a number of twists and subplots. I just introduced a new character, Detective Sam Emerson. Briefly: my protagonist was arrested for something he didn't do, but he can't really explain what really happened without looking like a loon. He's being framed by two people with otherworldly powers and thus are influencing some of the cops. Samuel Emerson already has a bit of a compulsive personality--he might not even need magic to make him obsess over a case.

The question is whether to develop his character and the police case, or keep it vague. It isn't the main conflict of the story, but it throws a wrench in the protag's plans. He's tried very hard to completely stay out of the cops' radar. Sam's interesting and already creating a voice in my head, which I'd like to explore, but then it becomes a trick of when to us a scene which furthers this arc or another.

More generally, when do I bring in one of these twist characters. Not enough and the few scenes they show up in and one wonders why they're there. Too much and there's no tension, the reader might get bored, or here isn't enough time to focus on someone else. Im a bit worried I have too much going on. Now that i think about it, though, I felt that way with another novel, too. So maybe it's just 'part of the process,' well, my process at least. I just need to keep writing and see where it goes. Afterwards, I can look at it as a whole and see if anything is off-balance.

Just keep writing. Okay, I'm off.

Yearly Resolutions, It’s Starting to be a Tradition for Me By Now

2006 I finished my first novel, a fantasy set in a medieval styled world. I’d started it in high school with a friend. I completed it as my undergraduate honors thesis.

After graduating with my BA, I got real impatient real fast and began another novel, an urban fantasy centering around humans and the fae. By December I finished the first of that. The months following I edited it and brought, five pages a week for the most part, to my writer’s group. Some time over the summer of 2007 I brought them the last of it. I still feel like it needs more editing, but I did get through one big round.

Now I’ve finished my third semester of the Master’s program. MA in English with a concentration in creative writing. My thesis is another novel, urban fantasy, with werewolves and gods/goddesses. I’m about halfway through it, and I want to finish the first draft before January 14, 2009, the first day I go back to class for my last semester. By Mid-May (technically by March or April), I will have a full draft, revised a couple of times.

Between January 2007 and November 2008 I also worked at a part-time job that just began demanding too much time for me to focus on school and writing. I’m not working right now, but I may get a part-time job on campus. We’ll see.

Which leads me to resolutions. I don’t (read: I usually don’t) achieve all my resolutions, but I like having something there, in print, something to move towards. I may not have accomplished what I set out to this year, but I’ve made progressed. That’s good.

So for 2009:

January through May—focus on school and finishing the werewolf UF. Graduate.

May through August—I will wait on getting a job, at least until after the summer (if I can help it) an focus on polishing the two urban fantasy novels. Start querying them with agents. Maybe I’ll start with the faerie one, since I already have ideas for a second and third book.

August/September—if I haven’t yet, start looking for a full-time job. Write Book 2 of the Fae UF if I haven’t started that yet.

October through December—writing Books 2 and 3, querying, hopefully by this time I will have an agent and we’ll be working on getting something out to publishers. (Is it too much to hope by this time next year, I may have an agent and a publisher?)

The resolutions are very detailed, but I think that’s just more evidence that this is the time to get off my keister and start querying. There’s some editing that needs to happen first, but I can’t get bogged down in that and avoid the next step.

So on that note, I will try to take those next steps.

And to you writers out there, good luck in 2009. May you have inspiration and luck in your writing and publication.

Happy writing.

See you on the other side,
Sabrina

Reflection about Villains

I find myself playing with the idea of villains a lot in my stories.

In the books I read I love finding an antagonist that has a reason for being the villain. That they aren't just acting as a foil for the hero for the sake of the hero having someone to fight against. The better the reason, and the more complex the background (even if it's only hinted at in the story), the more I tend to enjoy that character. Simple example: Severus Snape as an antagonist. He isn't a villain, ultimately, but there are numerous times throughout the series where he's in opposition to Harry Potter. What I find compelling is that he basically loathes Harry throughout the series, but they're both "good" guys. The question of whether he's an ally or not is turned on its head quite a few times, and especialy at the end of the sixth book (being in fact, a huge part of the promotion for the seventh book).

Anyway, I was thinking about my own writing (-not- I assure in comparison to HP, just generally thinking about the two novels I've been working on), and I find it’s never enough to just have a person to label the bad guy, even if they have perfectly reasonable reasons to be the villain.

Instead, I have one novel where the “villain” is essentially a child that wants a mother, along with the servant who guards and cares for him. In the novel I’m currently working on (and providing the daily word counts), there are multiple villains, and some surprises thrown in. The two main characters are chasing one ‘bad guy,’ but it’s pretty clear that two other characters aren’t so nice, and can be considered villains although some of their goals overlap with the heroes’. Then there is Guy 1’s friends, neither of whom are what they seem and one of whom's motivation is in direct opposition to the heroes, but isn't a villain. And Guy 2’s friends, who seem friendly at first, and again, have the same goals at the heroes, but one has darker motives, i.e. villainous, than the other, though they work together.

Perhaps this tendency of mine has risen to the surface because of this latter bok--I have the added challenge at taking that complex interweaving of action, relationship and motivation (explained in a rather mangled "concise but vague" manner above) and making it seem natural. That the revelations of the two main characters occur at times that make sense and that the people who seemed to be allies but aren't have their motivations well explained--trying to avoid the sense of "what, why is he really a bad guy, I thought they were friends" or worse "that explanation makes no damn sense, what is this writer thinking?"

I like a complex antagonist. Can you tell? More than complex, I love throwing in that uncertainty. Is the villain as villainous as they seem, or are those friends really acting in the protagonist’s best intentions?

Thus were my thoughts earlier today and last night.

I took a break from the writing for the holidays, so here's the word counts:

To refresh your memories Day 5 was Monday, the 22nd of December and I finished that day at 31,342.


Day 6, Tuesday Dec 23: end of day--32, 232 words, so 890 words, least amount so far for a day when I did write.

Day 7, Wednesday Dec 24: 0 words, but allowed for the holliday

day 8, Thursday Dec 25: 0 words, but also allowed for the holiday, and I was in the kitchen for most of teh day helping with the dinner.

Day 9, Friday Dec 26: end of day--32,896, so 664 words for the day, new low (I didn't realize it was only that much, but it's better than nothing, this whole period was off because of the holiday)

Day 10, Saturday Dec 27: 0 words, it was a run-around day that wore me out.

Day 11, Sunday Dec 28: end of day--37,062, so 4,166 words for the day. Getting back in the groove.

Day 12, Monday Dec 29: I'm still writing and am currently at 38,483, which is 1,421 for the day. I am still working on it, though. It's been a slow day because I let myself get distracted by the TV and the internet. Hence my doing this now. I'm so close to 40,000 I'd love to get there before I go to bed, but if I keep the internet window open I won't reach that goal, so this is my update and I'll edit it tomorrow with today's final word count.

Until then, happy continued holidays and happy writing to all.

EDIT: Last word for yesterday, Day 12--40,132 words, for a total word count of 3,070. Not too shabby. Today is starting off a bit slower.

Day 5 is it?

So I did Day 1 and 2.

Day 3, Saturday 12/20: 26,611

Total word count for the day: 1067 words

Mitigating circumstances: No excuse really. There were people in and out of the house all day and it threw me off. I was just unmotivated and distracted.

On the other hand: It's better than nothing.

Day 4, Sunday 12/21: 0 words

Total word count for the day: 0

Mitigating circumstances: I had a date-ish hang out with a friend which took up the better of the morning and early afternoon, plus a little running around before I got home. By the time I could write, I was too tired.

On the other hand: I am trying to make up for it today.

Day 5, Monday 12/22: 29,403 words so far

Total word count for the day: 2,792 words

Mitigating circumstances: another day of distractions, with two people, basically on the other side of a thin door all day.

On the other hand: I'm not done yet today. At least I want to get past 30,000, if not 3,100. It just depends on whether I can focus a little better now in the evening (it's...goodness, I didn't notice, it's almost 8--I thought it was just after 7 pm).

I'm going to keep at it. In the meantime, people with a few spare minutes pop on over to Shrinking Violets. It's a blog for introverts and/or writers. Right now they're doing the Twelve Days of Christmas--Introvert Style.

EDIT: So far at 3,528 words total for today. Not too shabby, considering it was in fits and starts all day. I'll give you the final total tomorrow, but for now, just wanted to give it an update before closing the internet for the night (oh internet, how you distract when I could/should be writing).

EDIT 12/23: Last count for yesterday, Day 5 was 31,342, with a total word count for the day at 4731.

Pretty good, considering. It wasn't until nighttime that I really got on a roll. Now if only I could stay up all night without worrying about bothering others in the house.

Near the end of my first half-week of vacation

Here is me, hoping that by keeping track of my word counts, it will somehow fuel me to keep writing more and more. ~my stomach growls in protest~

Day 1--Thursday 12/18 (since wednesday was a run-around kind of day): started at about 16,000, ended the day on 20,292

Total word count for the day: 4,292 words

Mitigating circumstances: This was all essentially transcription of what I'd written longhand over the course of this semester. So none of it, possibly barring a few sentences at the end.

On the other hand: Good way to start this break, and I had no idea I'd written that much longhand.


Day 2--Friday 12/19: started at 20,292, ended on 25,544 (yes, I'm being a little redundant)

Total word count for the day: 5,252 words

Mitigating circumstances: I was distracted by a trip outside and a long lunch, and distracted myself with computer games.

On the other hand: I see this as a very good word count for one day. I'm hoping to maintain this for at least a while.

To reach between 80,000 and 100,000 before I start up with school again, I should be writing between 2,800 and 3,600 words a day. This doesn't include the two big holidays and their eves. But I know that there will be days when I just write that much, and there will be days where I will go and lose most of my writing time. So I will take as many of these 5,000-word days as I can get. Preemptive strike.

Happy writing, all.

My winter break begins now

I did some more transcribing last night, so I'm over 16,000 in HS, what will be the master's thesis.

Today is basically my last day of running around sans holidays. All the other days I plan to write. Working out some very basic math, I can reach about 80,000 before the first day of class if I write about 2,300 words. I can get to around 100,000 words if I do closer to 3,500 words per day. That I believe, includes taking Christmas and possibly New Year's Eve off. If I write on those days, I have a slightly smaller daily word count.

I don't do the word counts and minimums as a hard and fast requirement, though. Some days are better than others, but it does give me an idea if i am consistently short, that I'll need to pick up the pace, or if I cna take it easy later, because perhaps I'm ahead.

I don't think the word counts include today, either. I have to go to university and run some errands. Then I'm going to finish up my Christmas shopping and hang out with a friend of mine. She lives in town and I live in what I guess are the suburbs (although it doesn't really feel like it), and I don't go into town often. I take the bus through it for class, but I usually stay on campus if I have free time. So yes, today I have time, and she has time, and we are hanging out.

Tomorrow I write. But today, with two long bus trips, I will try to plot out the rest the book. I know what I've done and what I need to do to fill in the gaps between the already-written scenes. But if I'm going to really focus almost every day, I need to know where I'm going. And I've introduced a number of characters that need to show up again, and I need to suggest the connections between them (playing with who's your friend and who isn't), red herrings and what not, and if I know where those hints will come in ahead of time, I (hopefully) won't be staring at my computer screen dumbly for hours at a time, only to start playing computer games (right now I am slightl obsessed with mahjong tiles) in an attempt to clear my mind.

I know that's bs, but if I have something to riff I can avoid it anyway.

Happy writing. Wish me luck.