Come One, Come All, To DecNoEdMo!

xXVampyrePrincessXx said:

(Writing? Can anyone remind me what that is again?)

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I'm pretty sure "writing" is where you stare at a Word doc until your hands become possessed and start typing things that you're not sure even make sense.

At least, that's how it's been for me lately.

Sage said:

Going to start looking at my beta notes for my not-NaNo book. But I think in my down time, I will also do my first read of my NaNo book. That first read is the best. I get to find out when I was funny

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Woo! It's great when you find something funny in a first draft.

I'm not sure about WIP#1... It's meant to be comedic UF, but while editing it I haven't laughed very often. Maybe it's because I've read this WIP about 5 times already? Hopefully that's it... I know WIP#2 has some pretty funny moments in it. Then again, I'm still on the first draft for that one, and have only read it over once since writing it.

Okay, so I'm not sure if I should edit, or type up grandad's story now... I might edit one chapter first, then type for grandad. Technically, grandad's has the nearest deadline... Christmas. I can't remember how many pages there were (I think it was around 20) but I've only typed 5 so far...

And I've come to an executive decision. On Sunday, I'm taking the day off. Maybe. Well, I'll be visiting the grandparents then anyway, so it was never going to be as productive as during the week... I don't know, maybe.

ETA: There are 27 pages... *facepalm* I'm gonna have to work on this pretty regularly over the next 2 weeks. I mean, 27 pages is a lot to type anyway, but I'm slower typing from a piece of paper instead of my own imagination. *sigh*

ETA2: Just read chapter 7. Mercifully, it's a shortish chapter, so hopefully edits won't take long. Of course, I think I need to add a small scene in there still... *sigh*

ETA3: Finished editing chapter 7. Only took about an hour. Even though I had to rewrite an entire scene, for plot reasons, it was a lot less work than chapter 6.

*facepalm*

So, I typed for 2 hours on grandad's life story. Got 2.5 pages done, for about 2.5k words. I don't know what size font he used, but it's SMALL. I'm now at the top of page 8... 20 more pages to go. So probably another 20k... Before Christmas. On a story that isn't even mine.

Ack. Taking a break now, then going to work on my own thing for a while.

ETA: Edited chapter 8. Another long chapter... But at least I'm halfway through the book now.

Go go go!

I made lofty goals this month... I'm not sure I'll get there though. Editing is taking up way too much of my time! I mean, it's a good thing - the book is better than it ever has been, much better, and should only need 1 more brief edit after I'm done with this round. But yeah... Not getting much else done. I've hardly written on WIP#2... I've actually written more words for grandad than for that WIP this month.

Wow... I just counted up word counts for all my Uni assignments so far for this degree. Y'know, for my nifty spreadsheet I made the other day.

I've written 50k words for Uni so far! That's nearly an entire novel! No wonder I've been too mentally exhausted to write while Uni's been going.

Very sobering.

Yeah, the correlation with NaNo didn't escape my notice either.

50k words! I think if I'd had to do all of those in 1 month, ala NaNo, but for Uni, I'd have died. Far too much research and editing!

Have a nice nap. I've been sleeping a bit better the last few nights. Not sure if it was due to coming off a medication, or just finally unwinding after Uni. Either way, I had a nice night's sleep.

Hmm. Found out about the Christmas Creepers competition... Now I'm trying to figure out if I can fit a 3k short into my hectic workload this month...

Maybe if I replace "plot epic fantasy" with "work on short"? The epic doesn't have any real deadline or urgency.

I have been using the D4 a bit the last few days... I replaced 1 option with "write grandad's story" which, sure enough, was the first thing I rolled. Now I'm replacing another option with "work on Christmas Creepers".

In other news, I just edited chapter 9. I totally gutted that chapter... Deleted 2 scenes entirely and rewrote a 3rd pretty much completely. Only 1 scene required just a light edit... Took a fair amount of time, but it's done. Moving on.

ETA: Also found out I got a B for my philosophy class. Now just waiting on the results for sociology.

Hooray!

I've been reading. I decided to try and read 2 books every week over my break. So far, I've read close to 1.5 in 6 days... Might not quite make it to the end of this one in time, but it'll be close maybe.

And I'm definitely realising that I've got way too many goals this month... I'll try to reassess it now...

2 editing passes of WIP#1.
10k on WIP#2.
20k on grandad's story.
3k or less on Christmas Creepers.

Mmm... That's not significantly less than it was... I've pretty much just transferred word goals from WIP#2 to grandad's and replaced plotting the epic fantasy with the Christmas Creepers story...

Maybe I should knock it down to 1 editing pass of WIP#1?

Mmm, plenty to work with is true...

I think my goals for my 3 month holiday are just too extreme. I wanted to get 3 novels (a trilogy) written and polished and up for sale on Amazon et al.

So far I've polished half of WIP#1, WIP#2 is still about 3/4 finished first draft, and I only really have an outline for WIP#3. I have until the end of February...

Add to that typing up grandad's story... Ugh. I don't think I can do all of this!

In other news, I've been making notes on a possible story for the Christmas Creeper short. Yeah, that's not on my list, I know... *shoot me*

I think if I could get a few 5k days in on fresh material, my prospects would look a bit better. But I've just been so focussed on edits, which are taking longer than expected.

I mean, I've probably written about 10k of fresh material just in edits alone! (Even though the total for the novel has dropped 2k...)

Yeah, you can write my grandad's story for me. I've heard most of his stories before (he talks - a lot) so it's not very interesting for me, but it'd be all new to you.

I'll mail you the 20 remaining pages in a minute.

Hmm. Yeah, I'm starting to realise I won't get all 3 done over the break. Initially I wanted the whole trilogy up at once, but considering it'll probably just be 2 books I finish... Maybe I should work on a different second WIP?

Ack! No! That's the kind of thinking that got me dozens of WIPs in the first place! Must. Finish. Something!

Edited chapter 10... I lost about 2.5k words from this chapter! Deleted so much of it (utter rubbish plus something no longer relevant due to earlier edits) and only wrote a reasonably short scene to replace what I deleted.

So officially I have now lost 200 words this month... Even though I typed 2.5k on grandad's story. My WIP is getting shorter and shorter! Ack!