Haven

Hi! This is my (queenitsy's) writing journal. If you're looking for anyting about me, my life in general, or even more generalized fannish squeeing, that's where you want to be.

What this place does have is a lot of talk about writing in general, a good deal of which is pretentious and even more of which is self-indulgent. I talk about my own original projects, as I develop and write them. Most of the talk about and all of the snippets of original stuff is friendslocked to protect the first publication rights, but I will friend back anyone who friends this journal.

There's also a fair amount of fic and discussion of writing it, which is usually (but not always) less pretentious. I write mostly in the Newsies fandom, but not entirely; and mostly, but again not entirely, slash. Fic list, as well as some basics on original stuff, below the cut.

Taking a break from weekly word counts until August. Probably the second week of August, actually, when hopefully my life will have settled down a teensy bit. (Something's got to give, and pressuring myself to write seems to be it for the moment.)

However, I did just finish the next chapter of G&D, finally. Yes, at almost 1 AM on a work night. These things happen. It'll be up in a few days, hopefully, after I've had a chance to edit the bits I'm still not pleased with.

So I didn't do a weekly word count last week. And didn't write anything this week. Because my computer fucking died, and it took my entire fucking novel with it, and I just haven't had the energy to get back to it. I'm going to force myself to do it this week, but Jesus Christ that sucked.

I may still be a tad annoyed...

So my novel is currently about in the midst of the third chapter, the end of which is the end of my first act. (Of three. Ish.) It's about 12,300 words long; I don't really have a goal for length, but I feel pretty satisfied with how it's going.

Though I know it'll be vastly shorter on rewrite. That's the thing. When I did this for Nano, I was just writing random crap to get words, without much of a goal. Now I've got a goal for each chapter, so I'm writing to a purpose; but since there's so much worldbuilding to establish and I'm clunky at that, chapters two and three are reeeeally heavy on stuff I know will be removed. I'm sort of throwing everything and the kitchen sink in, and not worrying about elegance. I know whole pages will come out when I get to editing this draft, and hopefully they'll magically be replaced with a few deft sentences or whatever. On the one hand, that's probably a good way to approach it, but on the other, it's kind of frustrating. I would like for this project to be good.

(Though when in doubt, this gives me hope.)

Some things that have been helping me:

-Scrivener. Justine (see previous link) recommended this on her blog, and it looked neat, so I figured I'd give it a try. I'm in LOVE with it, even without using all the fancy features (like the cork bord, which is really neat, but not how I organize). But being able to split screen between the doc I'm writing in and my notes (or the previous chapter) with my outline at the right? Excellent. Being able to go full-screen with no word/page count visible? Even BETTER. Because when I've got no way to measure how much I'm doing, I do a lot more. (Also, the program is like a new toy. Whenever I work on my novel, I'm playing with a new toy!)

-Writing outside the apartment. I've been bringing my laptop with me to work once or twice a week, and setting up in Borders when I get out. It's because there's no internet to tempt me, I know, but I get CRAZY amounts done. In two hours last week, I wrote, like... five thousand words.

-Only working when I'm focused. I have other projects I can dick around with, but I only work on the novel when I'm working. It seriously helps me concentrate; I don't feel guilty because it's open and I'm not working on it, and when it is open...I work. I don't remember why I made the decision to do that, but it's been working out.

So overall... It's not quite crusing, but it's going.

Woohoo! Being productive!

Novel: 8,300
EYDW: 400
Blog: 300

TOTAL: 9000

Which is pretty good! Hooray!

So I started The Novel. I wrote about 3,700 words, of which I immediately deleted (well, cut and pasted into a different document, I don't really ever delete) about 1,400.

So it turns out writing is much harder when you fret about its quality! My beginning was really quite terrible -- hey! action sequences set in the midst of a giant hurricane probably shouldn't be boring! -- so I started again, and now it's merely mediocre. But I can live with that for now, since this is obviously not the final draft.

I finished my first chapter! Uh, if my other chapters are about this same length, it's only going to be about a 20,000 word novel. However, I suspect they'll be longer.

"There is a common sub-myth that editors are the ones who spot the typos and punctuation errors, and some people out there delight in finding typos as proof that the publishing industry doesn't care about the English language and is headed straight down the toilet. (Uh... it's a typo, not the apocalypse.) But anyway, the people responsible for catching said typos are "copy-editors," who are actually a magical breed of elves whose ears turn white when they see an improper comma splice. Humans need not apply."

-Nathan Bransord, literary agent

Not that I have been stalking agent blogs. *whirling eyes*

Things accomplished this week! Word-wise:
-Book review of Nobody's Princess at AV: ~800 words
-Goofy blog post about subways: ~900 words

Novel-wise:
-I HAVE AN OUTLINE. Which I could actually add to my word count, seeing as how it's FOUR PAGES LONG. (Translating to about 2,400 words.)

Giving me a grand total of... 4,100 words.

AND ALSO AN OUTLINE FOR MY NOVEL OMG. Okay. Enough caps. Excited, though. Hopefully the witing begins this week!

"Your [Rachel's] novels will be about emotions. Mine will be about the midwestern cities with the highest elevation."

Worldbuilding is FTW!

I bother to post this only because I don't think I've missed a week yet. I did jack shit this week. Oops.

Regarding my last post, I should point out that not only does Islana get Journey lyrics to properly express the angst in her soul, but so does Cleran. He also gets Def Leppard!

Look, their love is so magical and tragic it can only be expressed via 80s hairband lyrics, okay?

So tonight, wemblee made the fatal mistake of asking me what this whole Saga business is about, anyway. I do not think she expected me to spend the next hour and a half throwing insane amounts of text at her while (I assume) she stared in horror until her eyes glazed over. However, typing up the basic gist of the whole damn thing reminded me of several things worth noting:

1) I love this story very, very much;
2) This story is incredibly ridiculous;
3) I really have become much, much better at plotting/writing/world building/etc. I mean... of course I am, I've got a lot more practice at it now, but wow. It's been a few years since I've needed a deus ex machina so badly that I LITERALLY had God show up and fix things.

For those who are curious, below the cut is the whole "basic gist" thing. It includes (gasp!) spoilers for the story, but I assume no one is going to read it now (and would not, exactly, encourage people to do so...though I'd be thrilled if people did). I left in a few of the actually IMs between me and wemblee, when they amused me.

Here is what my first real SRS BZNSS attempt at writing looked like: ( I can remember thinking, with nary a trace of irony, "It'll be just like Romeo and Juliet, but fantasy!" )

Curious? Baffled? Want to MST it (oh god, I would laugh so hard)? This nonsense is still online, and did I mention, it was styled as "original anime"?

So I've been slowly rereading the Saga over the last few days, and mostly enjoying the heck out of it. I mean, doing a lot of wincing and giggling, because it is so very, very awkward, but that's to be expected (seeing as how most of it is over six years old. Whaaaat? When did this happen?).

But perhaps the most amusing -- now, I have never been and accept that I never will be much of an artist. That's why I'm very glad that, even back in the day, I realized Journey lyrics were by far the best way to express a character's pain.

*giggle*

I'm on my way out for the night, so here is the super early word count.

First: I failed to make headway on the novel.

Word-wise:
-Spot/David: 3,400
-Review at Active Voice: 1000 words
-Post about Iron Man at the nerd blog: 1,900 words
TOTAL: 6,300

Not bad. Next week, my main goal will be to actually work on the novel; other than that, I've got another post in mind for AV and another post in mind for the newer, sillier blog. We'll see.

Wow, totally almost forgot to post this week.

- Finished the readthrough. Hooray!
- Also, wrote about ~6,300 words of Spot/David. Huh?

Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Goals for next week:
- Figure out what the next step is with the novel. Perhaps try and start it.
- Uh, write stuff. Either this, or G&D, or Ortegaverse, or...something.

I know, that's all very concrete and definitely.

( weekly random excerpt )

I finished my markup of the rough draft of the novel! Hooray for that. Now I just need to figure out how to make it not suck. This, I suspect, will be the hard part.

So I failed this week. Well, I was successful at screwing word count -- I did not write anything -- but I failed at finishing the read-through of my novel. I'm close to the end, but not there yet. Alas.

I did edit and post that Splinktrack smut, though. And made lots and lots of little updates around the Refuge/Nobody Told the Horse. So...there's that?

Fail.

Let's see.

-Refuge birthday fic: ~ 2,000 words
-Splinktrack smut: ~4,000 words
-Edited: 1.5 chapters

So... good on the word count, not so good on editing. But hopefully after the Refuge birthday stuff is completed Tuesday, I'll get some focus back on that. So that'll be my goal for next week: finish the Refuge stuff, screw word production, and finish this readthrough of the novel. (I'm about two and a half chapters from being done.)

( excerpt. adult content. )

You know, I'm pretty sure there was a time when my writing brainpower was used for plotting actual fics and not just mentally choreographing threesomes.

...

I should probably write this while I'm still inspired.

Weekly word count time!

Mostly random projects: 1,200
Review for AV: 1,100
PLUS
Editing: A couple chapters marked up

I didn't get as much done editing-wise as I would have liked, or writing-wise, frankly, but it wasn't a total bust. I'm making headway. Goals for next week are the same. Hooray.

But have an excerpt. ( Blink/Mush phonecall, EYDW!Universe (unrelated to current arch) )

Well. I barely wrote enough to require counting this week. Less than a thousand words total (though they were at least fun, smutty words!). HOWEVER. I made it through about half of my former nanonovel with red pen in hand! I'm discovering a lot of issues with it just by paying attention, but this is good, because just about all of them are fixable -- and as I'm thinking of how to fix them, other bits and pieces occur to me, like things that will heighten the tension and make the protagonist's arch make more sense. I'm even starting to get an inkling of how the darned thing ends, which is good seeing as how I just never wrote that part. (Oops.)

But the upshot is, even with the low word count, I do NOT feel unproductive! Which is what I was talking about a couple months ago now as one of my issues with editing. So huzzah! I know, every time I go through one of these phases, I get that super-jazzed this could totally be a salable novel! feeling, but seriously! This could totally be a salable novel!

Goals for next week:
-Continue the red penning
-Write something for the Refuge Birthday Extravaganza
-Work on the next chapter of G&D

Let's see what we've got.

G&D: 2,000
Cut from G&D: 800
Complete random thing: 300
Total (I didn't even need a calculate for it): 3,100

Bah. Not so good. I didn't even finish the G&D chapter; it's not working as I'd wanted it to, and now I'm distracted by a shinier object.

Goals for next week:

-Continue rereading, marking up, and working out pieces of the novel temporarily dubbed Stormcorps (aka Nano2007)
-Ideally, figure out how that damn thing ends
-Also G&D

So, as I was talking about a few weeks ago, possibly this week will be more devoted to editing than anything else, and I will strive to remember that that is also productive and important.