Week in Review
Tuesday January 18, 2011 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Blogging | Leave Comments
I'm a little late getting this up due to MLK Day. You might think that would give me more time, but I usually find a way to expand my time wasting to fill the available time alloted. It was a fairly productive week writingwise. I wrote 6191 words this week for a total of 93106, and am edging up on the climax. Seems like I say that every week. I think I'll get through it this week. In fact if I push I think I can finish the first draft this week, two weeks at the outside. I posted a little vignette about how I Suck @writing which seemed to be well received, thanks to all who commented! I also updated my Query Letter and got some feedback. I think it's pretty close. Close enough to shelve until I polish the manuscript. Some other tidbits from the week: Charlie Stross blogged this, he is brilliant as usual: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/01/looking-under-the-street-lamp-.html#more Ran across this short story by @MaryRobinette Kowal http://bit.ly/flXBY0 quite awesome! I heard this on NPR this week and liked it:
"We must see the error in our own truth and the truth in our opponent's error." -- Reinhold NiebuhrThe next thing to tackle after the WIP is finished it to do a synopsis. I found this website which does a fine job of walking you though how to do a thorough job http://www.writing-world.com/publish/synopsis.shtml i09 posted this – the most complete map of the night sky so far http://io9.com/5730972/ Clear Ether! Read More
NaNoWriMo 2010 is in the can
Wednesday December 1, 2010 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Uncategorized | Leave Comments
It's over at midnight tonight, but I hit the 50k mark last night around 11:30 pm. Big win for me! My first attempt and it was not horribly hard, although there were times I wasn't sure I would make it. The entire trick is to be consistent. I have no idea how people write 15 to 20 thousand words in one day. My best day was about 3500. I had several days over 3k and several under 1k. But I only skipped 4 days I think in the entire month. I want to congratulate everyone that gave it a shot! At least you wrote something. Starting is more than half the battle with writing, IMHO. I know at least one person that had 203k. That's just amazing! And in less than 30 days. I know a couple of people in my region wrote two 50k stories in 30 days, again amazing! I think some people are writing without punctuation or worrying at all about grammar. I can't write like that, at least I haven't been able to write like that and I'm not sure I want to, but I was finding that I could write more and more near the end. I stopped last night once I was comfortably over 50K, but I think I am probably only about 2/3 done with the story. I'm really hopeful that this created a good habit pattern. I'm only 70k words into Vim Dicare and I really want to finish that book next. I will say it's hard to step away from Revelation Void now, it was just getting to the good part. All in all, it was a good experience that I would recommend to anyone. It was never too burdensome, on a few days that I was wiped out I just didn't write, and was able to make up for it on other days when I had energy and the muse was awake. I did have a good plan for the Thanksgiving holiday, but if I were traveling it would have turned out a lot differently. My plan for next year is to get a really good start and try to stay ahead of the line all the way. I know my wife wasn't pleased with me all the time, but overall she was supportive. She joked that they need a support group for NaNoWriMo widows and widowers. I'll post a few more pieces of Revelation Void, but please keep in mind that it was pulled directly out of my rear most of the time. Stream of consciousness almost, but it is not edited. I fear that I may have written the most boring SF adventure story of all time, but editing will help pick up the pace. I just went into detail on some things that would likely bore some readers, but that was where my head was when I was just trying to get some words down.
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