An update, at last

Most of you (I think) by now know I spent last week in Minneapolis at a professional conference for that "other thing" I do, i.e., my day job. Though the 49th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine was interesting and educational, it put a serious damper on my writing progress.

The plan was brilliant: DH and Baby Boy were staying home, due to the high cost of airline tickets and the lack of anything for them to do while I was at the conference. My mom volunteered to come, as we enjoy traveling together and it was a chance for her to get away from home and veg for a week. As long as the hotel had a pool/hot tub and cable (it did) she was good. And *I* knew that my mom usually crashed by 9 pm, being the "early to bed, early to rise" type.

So I was banking on a week of going to meetings, spending a nominal amount of time with my mom in the evenings, and then having the nights free to write with no distractions.

Except, on vacation, my mom stays up till 11 pm or later and wants to watch TV all the time. Makes it hard to write, especially when the table the laptop is on is only 10 feet away from the television. *sigh* Don't get me wrong - we had fun. I just didn't get any writing done. Sven is not happy.

On top of that, I just really wasn't happy with chapters 7 and 8 as they were. Too pat, too little tension...if my interest was flagging, knowing all the stuff that's coming up, how could I expect a reader to press on? So after a lot of internal debate and brainstorming, I tossed them. That's 5K, folks. A third of my monthly goal. Ouch.

The good news is, I worked out an idea for a new chapter 7 that ramps up the tension and makes Elspeth's introduction to the clan a little (okay, a lot) rockier. And I'm almost done with it. But after all that writing, I'm only 300 words beyond where my counter was a week ago.

So I'm revising my end-of-month goals somewhat. I originally wanted to be at 65K by tomorrow. As far as having written 15K in a month...including the tossed wordage would actually make that doable. But I'm looking at real progress on the story here, so no dice. I want 65K in MS form.

It would be impossible for me to write 6K in the next 24 hours, even if I took the entire day off and holed up in the library or Panera or wherever. So I'm giving myself to the end of the week to try and pull it off. That's 2 extra days, and I'll need about 2K per day. We'll see.

Friday I'm having (all 4 of) my wisdom teeth out. I'll be spending most of the day sleeping, which will serve the dual purposes of helping me recover from the surgery and this massive make-up push. Knowing that's coming will help me press on in the interim.

Having said that, though, I also know when I've reached the point of diminishing returns. Which is now. So rather than keep myself up for another 2 hours to get maybe a couple hundred more words (I've already managed over 1000 today, so I'm not slacking!), I'm going to bed so as to be refreshed and productive tomorrow.

Oidhche mhath.

P.S. - Less than two weeks until Fergus!

Chapter 7 down

I only managed to scrape a measley 300 or so words last night (didn't even bother to update my counter yet) but the important thing was I managed to beat chapter 7 into a form of submission. It's still rough, and I'm not 100% thrilled with it. But it works; it accomplishes what I need, keeps most of the description, and the word count is about what I wanted. Furthermore, I've expended way too much time and effort on it and I need to be able to move forward. There will be time for revisions.

*chants* This is the SFD...This is the SFD...

So tonight it's on to chapter 8, which is half done and if I finish may catch me up to my word count goals. The pace will pick up from here.

At last

I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I feel like I've been stumbling around in the dark of chapter 7 for the past week. But thanks to the help and insightful comments of my friends, I may have found my way out.

You'll notice I finally updated my word counter. Woohoo. Look for that to make another jump tomorrow when I (hopefully) finally finish 7 and move into 8.

But for now, to bed.

Slash and Burn

My word counter is no longer correct. But rather than update it and depress myself *g* I'll just let it sit there until I catch back up.

Yup, you heard me. Catch back up. Today I went on a slash-and-burn through chapter 7. But for good reason.

I've been in 7 for a few days now. That's the one I wanted to finish over the weekend but didn't quite manage to finish last night (Hi, Claire!). This is the meet-and-greet chapter, the welcome-to-your-new-home chapter. I wanted the reader to see and experience everything Elspeth was seeing as she made her way to Glenstrae. I researched. I pored through images on Google. I researched some more. And I wrote it all down. And it was boring.

I was having the hardest time moving forward with the chapter. And then a very helpful comment from Carol on my July X (which was based on part of 7) and the advice in this thread (both on Compuserve) metaphorically kicked me in the rear. I was struggling with 7 because nothing was happening. There was no tension. It was too much description and taking too long to move the plot forward.

I still wanted that level of detail, but I broke up the descriptions and scattered them throughout chapter 7 and backwards into chapter 6. Maybe I needed to write them all in one big chunk, but the reader doesn't need to get them that way. It also meant cutting a lot of extraneous wordage.

So I've been set back, but it's moving me forward in the long view. Chapter 7 is tighter (if shorter at the moment) and faster-paced and you know what? Once I cut all that stuff out inspiration kicked in and the part I was stalling on started to roll. Will I finish it tonight? Probably not, but as long as I'm at 57.5K by the end of the week I'll be happy.

Chapter Six Down

I got back to writing tonight after reaching the point of diminishing returns on my updated spreadsheet. There's only so much info you can pack in before it becomes a storyboard in truth, and gets away from the simplicity and straightforwardness of the spreadsheet format. So I'll stick with what I've got for now, and make a real storyboard with post-its and whatnot when I get to the end.

Managed right at 1000 words - not bad considering I was chatting until after 10 pm. Finished up chapter 6, which is my shortest chapter to date at just under 2900, and started in on chapter 7. In so doing I got past the first of a series of hurdles: describing the dress accurately as Elspeth changes into period clothing. The next hurdle will be bigger: it's time to meet the clan, or at least the principal members. Still dithering on who all that will include and to what degrees.

Chapter 7 is sitting at about 800 words at the moment, so I figure another 2000-2200 will round it out and put me at 54K...I'm shooting for that by the end of the weekend. I need to be at 57.5K by the 15th to meet my midmonth goal, which seems eminently doable if I finish 7 as planned.