FebNoWriMo 2015

Lost a weekend and more to a work trip. It will be a good 40 hours of OT, which I can't complain about. (the "losing my whole weekend" I kinda can...)

This means I got almost zero writing done, and I missed class and homework. This week was a total goal-fail, but otherwise pretty cool.

I'm not doing super well on my goals this month...specifically my editing goals. I think I a) made a somewhat unattainable goal and b) picked an editing process that is not an exceptional fit for me. I'm using Holly Lisle's one step process. It has a lot of editing value, but I feel like there are some things it's not helping me to address. For example, Lisle asks you to consider if you've written a complete scene in your chapter...and oftentimes I have, but from the wrong viewpoint, or focusing on the wrong details. I feel like a complete neophyte at this (which I guess I am, ha ha.) Anyway, I need to come up with a solution, and figure out how to approach editing, and I'm not sure what that solution is.

My preferred editing method is as follows:

1. Read the entire chapter as a reader, not editing anything.
2. Go back to the start of the chapter, and edit and/or rewrite entire sections that didn't seem to work quite right on the first read-through.
3. Read the chapter again, fixing up any small issues like spelling and grammar.
4. Move onto the next chapter. Repeat as necessary.

Granted, this won't help with large-scale story problems. Or rather, it can help, but you need to identify the large-scale problems before you start doing this technique.

Hope that helps.

Added about 250 words to the nonfiction book, as an author's note to start the book. Hopefully I'll find the enthusiasm to edit what was already written soon, but probably not today, as I'm going out in about an hour.

ETA: Up to page 52 of 77 in that re-read, which happens to be the start of Part Two (it's a two-part book). So quite possibly the book will wind up being about 100 pages or so, once I've finished writing it.

Progress report.

xXVampyrePrincessXx said:

*Keep up with schoolwork (of course) Check -- though I've had a couple close calls
*Write at least 5k of non-school anything even if it's just journaling. Or random letters. Just writing. Nope.
*Read 5 books 3/5
*Review at least 1 book Nope.
*Complete 5 DayZero goals 1/5 with a couple in progress
*Finish scholarship applications 1/3 -- I have a few more essays to write but I have more pressing schoolwork to do first
*Finish upgrading my computer so I can play games Fuck yeah! I even managed to PLAY said games too!

Click to expand...

I FINALLY finished upgrading my laptop yesterday and I spent a chunk of my morning playing BioShock. Right now I'm trying to ignore my 4.5-year-old laptop that's behaving like I just bought it yesterday in order to get my homework for the week done instead. My excuse for not touching the computer is I'm attempting to download Alice: Madness Returns and it's only 2.5GB downloaded so far (out of like 6.9GB) and I'm telling myself that playing [offline] games will slow down my download. Or something. So I should do homework instead.

Anyways, not bad so far. I'm actually getting a lot done.

~Amber~

Oh, I was just talking about Alice: Madness Returns yesterday, in another thread! It's on my "Must buy" list, though I've never played it (and couldn't get the original to work properly). Looks suitably weird.

1. Edit Secret Solstice Story Progress made; more needed
2. Edit four chapters of WIP 2/4
3. Edit two other stories .8/2
4. Read four books. 2/4
5. Either minimum 500 words OR two edited pages per day. Tick so far

Except... one of those books was Pride and Prejudice, so I don't think it counts. Last year, after discovering I read P&P twice in one month, I decided I had to read 25 new books before I could reread anything. I read 26; then I read P&P again

Instead of writing, I gave my computer some TLC with virus, startup, and registry cleaning, which fixed my "explorer.exe won't work" problem. It loads to desktop without going through task manager now.

But I really wish I didn't feel so guilty for time I could have spent writing.

Up to page 62 of 77 on the re-read of that old WIP. Of course, given that it's a sequel to a book I heavily edited, there's one little factoid that I need to check for consistency in book 1... Which is about 90+ pages itself. And I can't remember where, exactly, this factoid would be located.

So yeah. I need to re-read book 1 before I edit book 2, but I suppose I can finish writing book 2 before that.

Just finished the re-read. Hooray! There's probably about 18k left to go on this story, so I doubt I'll get it all done this month, but I'm hoping to start in on finishing it soon.

Still haven't edited the NF book, though. Haven't been in the right mood.

February has not been a good month for my goals. I think I made the wrong goals, honestly.

Editing continues to be my big challenge; I feel like editor's block is a real thing. I see a page and I think, I don't even know where to begin to rescue this drivel. I think part of my problem is not that the work sucks so badly, but that I wrote about the wrong things. I have three characters (two parents and a child), one of whom is having problems with everybody (the father) but a lot of my chapters are scenes between the two that have a fine relationship. I'll keep them around in case I'm wrong about this, but I think I've neglected to write the interesting bits of the story, the real conflict that occurs.

Why did I do that? I'm so dumb!

Also I haven't been reading much because I finished Game of Thrones, and I hated it so much that I think I may never want to read again. I picked up a book that I've read before and I am dragging myself through it, and I can't talk myself into putting it down because I want to say I finished reading at least one book this month.

I hate everything.

Cliff Face said:

Just finished the re-read. Hooray! There's probably about 18k left to go on this story, so I doubt I'll get it all done this month, but I'm hoping to start in on finishing it soon

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Yay! Congrats on getting the reread done. Make detailed notes so you know where you're at when you come back to it. (seriously, learned that one from experience...)

auzerais said:

February has not been a good month for my goals. I think I made the wrong goals, honestly.

Editing continues to be my big challenge; I feel like editor's block is a real thing. I see a page and I think, I don't even know where to begin to rescue this drivel. I think part of my problem is not that the work sucks so badly, but that I wrote about the wrong things. I have three characters (two parents and a child), one of whom is having problems with everybody (the father) but a lot of my chapters are scenes between the two that have a fine relationship. I'll keep them around in case I'm wrong about this, but I think I've neglected to write the interesting bits of the story, the real conflict that occurs.

Why did I do that? I'm so dumb!

Click to expand...

I've done exactly that. A book I beta read did a fair amount of just that too. It happens to everyone at some point, I think. You have some of the book, a start, a finish, some middle, and you've read all of that through, right? You can make a big list of all the things that are supposed to be in there (also, you can sum up the scenes that you have in one or two lines) and basically plot it in reverse. It helps because you know what you're missing based on what you have.

Breathe! it's okay. You can totally fix this, and if you decide there's too much fixing, you can say you've learned from this!

(Also, I read the first three ASOIAF books, and hated each one more than the last. Took me ages to get past that hate to watch the show, and I very much enjoy that.)

My life has been work and robots. I really need to get back to my book. The closest I've gotten is in-head plotting of the SNI. This is just pathetic now.

Update:

1. Write 1,000 words a day in my WIP until it is finished. I've been averaging about half this, so I have a little over 10k written for the month instead of 20k. Oh well. At least it's more progress than I have been making lately.
2. Finish beta-ing a book I've had for months DONE
3. Read 4 books DONE--Read 6 so far this month

So it looks like I'm doing great for goals except my writing goals, which is actually the most important. Le sigh.

CoffeeBeans said:

Yay! Congrats on getting the reread done. Make detailed notes so you know where you're at when you come back to it. (seriously, learned that one from experience...)

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Oh, I'll be diving into finishing writing it very soon, so I don't think I need copious notes. Fortunately, being a comedy, it's not actually that complicated.

Just wrote a 2000-word chapter on the old WIP. Hooray! 2k down, about 15k more to go, I expect... *flop*

I've revised through chapter 4. That puts me right about halfway, and my goal for the month was to have them all edited and applied. That seems unlikely now. I admit, I think I might be able to make a real dent, but I'm having such a BIC issue.

CH 5 should be pretty quick (I think. I say now...) so maybe I can bang that out this weekend? I keep forgetting where the real mess starts.

CoffeeBeans said:

I've done exactly that. A book I beta read did a fair amount of just that too. It happens to everyone at some point, I think. You have some of the book, a start, a finish, some middle, and you've read all of that through, right? You can make a big list of all the things that are supposed to be in there (also, you can sum up the scenes that you have in one or two lines) and basically plot it in reverse. It helps because you know what you're missing based on what you have.

Breathe! it's okay. You can totally fix this, and if you decide there's too much fixing, you can say you've learned from this!

Click to expand...

Thank you!

I just freaked out because I don't want to be endlessly writing/rewriting this book, but I think I just need to accept this and move on. Also I think the scenes that need to be written are going to be harder to write, and that I've been avoiding them for that reason. Gah.

Yep, I've got to agree with Coffee here. And even if the new scenes are harder to write, they'll be worth their weight in gold if they make the book publishable. I mean, writing some hard scenes is still less work than writing an entirely new book, which is what you'd probably wind up doing if you scrapped this project because it wasn't working properly.

So yeah. Keep at it. You can do this.

Played guitar just a bit ago, and I'm improving. However, one of my month's goals (to record some guitar music that doesn't suck) might still be out of reach... I'm just not consistent enough when playing. I have moments where it sounds awesome, and these moments might even last 10 or so seconds, but then I lose the thread.

*sigh*

I'm assuming I won't actually achieve that goal. Not this month, at least.

I'm with Cliff, even if the scenes are harder to write, they're going to be worth it (regardless of publishing) because you're there and you wrote the parts of it you'd planned to.

Also, YMMV but I thought I was "avoiding" scenes too, that they were going to be much more difficult, and when I came up face to face, I'd struggle. Turns out, they were not any harder than an average scenes, and maybe a little easier, because at least I knew exactly what I wanted to see in them.

Either way, go get 'em, Tiger!