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NaKnow-ing
Tuesday, November 7th, 2023 06:09 pmHoly fsck, the NaNo website says I'm at 22%. And I haven't even entered today's words yet. That's, like, a lot.
11,874 and counting....
11,874 and counting....
NaNo Survival Notes
Thursday, November 2nd, 2023 08:56 pmYou know you can do this, because you've done it before.
Yes, the apocalypse is depressing. Go pet a cat.
Coffee, dammit.
4061 words and counting.
Yes, the apocalypse is depressing. Go pet a cat.
Coffee, dammit.
4061 words and counting.
January Word Count & Weekly Goal
Saturday, February 18th, 2023 12:42 pmAs mentioned previously, the 2500-words-a-week thing has been working better in theory than in practice. That doesn't mean writing hasn't been happening, however!
January:
4685 = Green Ring
5185 = original short fiction (mostly "Venturesome Sheep Day")
Total new words in January: 9870
That ain't bad! Especially when you consider I'm coming out of a two-year slump with very little writing in it at all. If that's all the weekly-quota thing achieves, I'd still say it's an absolute win.
Speaking of which:
Week 1: 4097
Week 2: 1074
Week 3: 1634
Week 4: 1443
Week 5: 1622
Week 6: 1710
Week 7: 989 (Week 7 ends today, but I'm unlikely to get more words in before midnight.)
The average on days that I've written has been pretty decent, often at least within shouting distance of that magical 833 and occasionally well above it. The primary failure point is that I'm frequently only managing one or two writing days in a week. Now granted, I'm pulling extra hours at work and life has been insane lately, but I need to fit writing in more often. Relatedly, I need to speed up my "booting up" process so that a good writing session doesn't have to be a most-of-the-day affair.
The last time I sat down at the keyboard, I put the Mission Impossible theme on repeat. That definitely served to get me going faster sooner! (It's wildly not the appropriate music for the story in question, but it was good for that one scene.)
So that's the state of the writer thus far this year. Now I have to go get ready for my writers group, which paradoxically is one of the reasons I'm not writing today.
January:
4685 = Green Ring
5185 = original short fiction (mostly "Venturesome Sheep Day")
Total new words in January: 9870
That ain't bad! Especially when you consider I'm coming out of a two-year slump with very little writing in it at all. If that's all the weekly-quota thing achieves, I'd still say it's an absolute win.
Speaking of which:
Week 1: 4097
Week 2: 1074
Week 3: 1634
Week 4: 1443
Week 5: 1622
Week 6: 1710
Week 7: 989 (Week 7 ends today, but I'm unlikely to get more words in before midnight.)
The average on days that I've written has been pretty decent, often at least within shouting distance of that magical 833 and occasionally well above it. The primary failure point is that I'm frequently only managing one or two writing days in a week. Now granted, I'm pulling extra hours at work and life has been insane lately, but I need to fit writing in more often. Relatedly, I need to speed up my "booting up" process so that a good writing session doesn't have to be a most-of-the-day affair.
The last time I sat down at the keyboard, I put the Mission Impossible theme on repeat. That definitely served to get me going faster sooner! (It's wildly not the appropriate music for the story in question, but it was good for that one scene.)
So that's the state of the writer thus far this year. Now I have to go get ready for my writers group, which paradoxically is one of the reasons I'm not writing today.
Goals, heh, yeah
Thursday, January 19th, 2023 02:33 pmSo, my newfound resolve to produce 2500 words a week is proving... complicated.
Based on my January 1 output, it seemed like a reasonable goal. And for the first week, it was. Easy, even. What I neglected to account for was that that was the initial burst of starting a new story (and one that had been lurking in the brain waiting to go for ages, at that), which is usually a high-output phase for me. But a whole story, even a short one, doesn't go at that pace all the way through; even if the writing goes very well and quickly, as this one did, there's still the little fiddly bits to wrap things up at the end. So by week two, I had a day where I wrote about 50 words. That was filling in the find-a-better-word brackets and applying some research to fine-tune the world-building, so they were very necessary and important words... but there were still only about 50 of them. This is not an avoidable part of the process.
The other not-avoidable part is that I can't just leap straight from finishing one story into white-heat on another story. There's a mandatory refractory period, during which my brain eases out of the world of the completed story, basks in the glow of accomplishment for a bit, then starts poking around at the pile of ideas to see what else looks like fun. This isn't such an issue if I'm working on a novel, obviously (there are other issues with novels), but right now I want to concentrate on short stories for a while. And since that refractory period tends to be about a week, depending on the story... there's a significant glitch in my math. ;-/
The obvious solution to this is to have one longer-term project in progress, so that I can just drop into that in between short stories. I really don't want to get into another novel right now, but I do have The Green Ring, that just-for-funsies novella I started mumblety-something ago. It's been fallow for an appallingly long time, but I decided to boot it back up and use it for my fall-back project. And it booted up quite quickly, only took a day or two. Great, right? Except that, having gotten it booted up and gotten all the remaining pieces precariously balanced in my head so I can get them out in the right order and with the right pacing and the right antecedents, I am deeply reluctant to let go of it even for a week or so to work on something else, lest I lose it and have to do all that balancing act all over again. That was hard work, and it feels like juggling plates that are going to shatter if I drop them.
So, now I have Green Ring on the front burner, and it's going slowly because the juggling-plates phase is also the sticky, tedious phase where the words have to wade through all that damn plot stuff, and I'm loath to set it aside to work on, say, the next Dix Dayton story, even though that's what it's supposedly here for. It's week 3 of the year and I'm having to push hard to make quota -- I've met it so far on average, but only because I did nearly double the goal in week 1.
And of course there's the usual factor that all this writing doesn't leave much time for anything else. I can write ~833 words in a day, but it takes a large chunk of the day, which means a lot of other things aren't getting done. And sitting in bed until mid-afternoon writing leaves one feeling much the same as lying in bed until mid-afternoon dozing -- nice at the time, but loggy and not good for much for the rest of the day.
Writing is hard. ;-)
Based on my January 1 output, it seemed like a reasonable goal. And for the first week, it was. Easy, even. What I neglected to account for was that that was the initial burst of starting a new story (and one that had been lurking in the brain waiting to go for ages, at that), which is usually a high-output phase for me. But a whole story, even a short one, doesn't go at that pace all the way through; even if the writing goes very well and quickly, as this one did, there's still the little fiddly bits to wrap things up at the end. So by week two, I had a day where I wrote about 50 words. That was filling in the find-a-better-word brackets and applying some research to fine-tune the world-building, so they were very necessary and important words... but there were still only about 50 of them. This is not an avoidable part of the process.
The other not-avoidable part is that I can't just leap straight from finishing one story into white-heat on another story. There's a mandatory refractory period, during which my brain eases out of the world of the completed story, basks in the glow of accomplishment for a bit, then starts poking around at the pile of ideas to see what else looks like fun. This isn't such an issue if I'm working on a novel, obviously (there are other issues with novels), but right now I want to concentrate on short stories for a while. And since that refractory period tends to be about a week, depending on the story... there's a significant glitch in my math. ;-/
The obvious solution to this is to have one longer-term project in progress, so that I can just drop into that in between short stories. I really don't want to get into another novel right now, but I do have The Green Ring, that just-for-funsies novella I started mumblety-something ago. It's been fallow for an appallingly long time, but I decided to boot it back up and use it for my fall-back project. And it booted up quite quickly, only took a day or two. Great, right? Except that, having gotten it booted up and gotten all the remaining pieces precariously balanced in my head so I can get them out in the right order and with the right pacing and the right antecedents, I am deeply reluctant to let go of it even for a week or so to work on something else, lest I lose it and have to do all that balancing act all over again. That was hard work, and it feels like juggling plates that are going to shatter if I drop them.
So, now I have Green Ring on the front burner, and it's going slowly because the juggling-plates phase is also the sticky, tedious phase where the words have to wade through all that damn plot stuff, and I'm loath to set it aside to work on, say, the next Dix Dayton story, even though that's what it's supposedly here for. It's week 3 of the year and I'm having to push hard to make quota -- I've met it so far on average, but only because I did nearly double the goal in week 1.
And of course there's the usual factor that all this writing doesn't leave much time for anything else. I can write ~833 words in a day, but it takes a large chunk of the day, which means a lot of other things aren't getting done. And sitting in bed until mid-afternoon writing leaves one feeling much the same as lying in bed until mid-afternoon dozing -- nice at the time, but loggy and not good for much for the rest of the day.
Writing is hard. ;-)
Hey there, 2023
Sunday, January 1st, 2023 03:40 pmIt's the start of a new year, and I have started as I hope to go on: 870 words this morning. Venturesome Sheep Day has long been lurking in my brain, the usual idea in search of a plot situation, but this morning I woke up with an idea for the mcguffin which has so long eluded me. (And thanks to the commenters on Pat Wrede's blog, who have occasionally asked if VSD would ever get done; I'm sure it was reading one such last night that got my brain working on it while I slept.) It's probably an overcomplicated idea, but I'm enjoying it so far.
Being the start of a new year, I've been reflecting, not on resolutions, because those are so closely linked with failure in our society, but on goals. My biggest goal really does need to be getting back to writing regularly, and this morning is a good start.
I did a little math, and if I could do 1000 words a day, five days a week, that works out to two novels and about 16 moderate-length short stories a year. Fabulous! The flaw in this otherwise excellent plan, of course, is that I can't do 1000 words five days a week -- or at least, I never have. But even half of that would be outstanding; I'd be quite happy with one novel and about 8 short stories a year. This morning's output, three times a week, would... be about that. Hmm. Eeeeeenteresting.
Being the start of a new year, I've been reflecting, not on resolutions, because those are so closely linked with failure in our society, but on goals. My biggest goal really does need to be getting back to writing regularly, and this morning is a good start.
I did a little math, and if I could do 1000 words a day, five days a week, that works out to two novels and about 16 moderate-length short stories a year. Fabulous! The flaw in this otherwise excellent plan, of course, is that I can't do 1000 words five days a week -- or at least, I never have. But even half of that would be outstanding; I'd be quite happy with one novel and about 8 short stories a year. This morning's output, three times a week, would... be about that. Hmm. Eeeeeenteresting.
June Word Count
Monday, July 12th, 2021 12:20 pmHow the bleep did it get to be mid-July?
I was all set to do this on the first, for once, but then the phone rang and I spent the next week+ sitting with a friend in the hospital and then having her crash on our couch. She's doing well enough to be home now, though we're still keeping tabs. I don't mind one bit having helped out when needed, but there's no denying it rather knocked lesser matters askew.
Total new words in June = 6751
All on Lightning Strikes Twice. Not bad at all, especially considering it once again represents only about three weeks of actual writing. The last week of June just... didn't happen.
There was a profound lack of querying and story submissions in June. I've still got a few things out in slush-land, but I need to get on the stick again.
July's goals... well, so far nothing's happened and the month's half over, so I'll be happy just to get writing again. A couple subbing/querying sessions wouldn't hurt, either. With the con gearing up, I don't expect the numbers to be great, but higher than zero would be a good thing.
I was all set to do this on the first, for once, but then the phone rang and I spent the next week+ sitting with a friend in the hospital and then having her crash on our couch. She's doing well enough to be home now, though we're still keeping tabs. I don't mind one bit having helped out when needed, but there's no denying it rather knocked lesser matters askew.
Total new words in June = 6751
All on Lightning Strikes Twice. Not bad at all, especially considering it once again represents only about three weeks of actual writing. The last week of June just... didn't happen.
There was a profound lack of querying and story submissions in June. I've still got a few things out in slush-land, but I need to get on the stick again.
July's goals... well, so far nothing's happened and the month's half over, so I'll be happy just to get writing again. A couple subbing/querying sessions wouldn't hurt, either. With the con gearing up, I don't expect the numbers to be great, but higher than zero would be a good thing.
May Word Count
Friday, June 11th, 2021 12:29 amold-mission stories = 374
Lightning Strikes Twice = 3146
Total new words in May = 3520
That's really not bad, considering that I didn't write for about three weeks! Judging by the improvement in how the words have been coming, I needed the break. I'm still not producing at the rate I'd like, but I'm liking a lot more of what I produce.
On the business side, I sent 2 queries and submitted a whopping 11 short stories. Need to do better on the querying, but that's more like it on the submitting!
Overall, I'm pleased. Now if I could just stop melting from the heat, I might be onto something!
Lightning Strikes Twice = 3146
Total new words in May = 3520
That's really not bad, considering that I didn't write for about three weeks! Judging by the improvement in how the words have been coming, I needed the break. I'm still not producing at the rate I'd like, but I'm liking a lot more of what I produce.
On the business side, I sent 2 queries and submitted a whopping 11 short stories. Need to do better on the querying, but that's more like it on the submitting!
Overall, I'm pleased. Now if I could just stop melting from the heat, I might be onto something!
April Word Count
Friday, May 14th, 2021 01:38 pmNew words in April = 7783, all on Lightning Strikes Twice
That is a damn sight better than I expected. An awful lot of that was in teeth-pulling low-output slogs, but there were an awful lot of slogs, so it does add up.
(May's numbers will not look this good. I have Stalled, and I am not doing well at getting started again. I was hoping a rest would help, and then I was hoping to find a way to recharge the well & that that would help. I'm still hoping.)
On the business side, 1 short story submission, and no queries. I need to get back in the saddle on that.
There should be more here, but I don't even feel inspired to write a journal post. Words, where art thou?
That is a damn sight better than I expected. An awful lot of that was in teeth-pulling low-output slogs, but there were an awful lot of slogs, so it does add up.
(May's numbers will not look this good. I have Stalled, and I am not doing well at getting started again. I was hoping a rest would help, and then I was hoping to find a way to recharge the well & that that would help. I'm still hoping.)
On the business side, 1 short story submission, and no queries. I need to get back in the saddle on that.
There should be more here, but I don't even feel inspired to write a journal post. Words, where art thou?
March Word Count
Monday, April 12th, 2021 11:02 pmHow is it the middle of April already? When did this happen? (Do not even ask about my taxes.)
So, March's stats, better late than never.
old-mission stories: 609
other original short fiction: 3225
Lightning Strikes Twice = 4852
Total new words in March: 8686
Hot damn! That's way better than I thought I was doing. Which makes me feel a whole lot better about the state of the writing, which is just the pick-me-up I needed right now.
(The "old" mission story is actually a new one, my characters during the pandemic. Not sure how publishable that'll ever be, but I like it, so it counts. The shorts include the rest of "Going Home" and all of "Tooth of the Matter".)
On the business side, 1 short story submitted and 2 queries sent. Which is not wonderful, but... well, there is no but. Just gotta sit down and do it, however discouraging it is.
Still, 8686 words! That's awesome. More of that, April.
So, March's stats, better late than never.
old-mission stories: 609
other original short fiction: 3225
Lightning Strikes Twice = 4852
Total new words in March: 8686
Hot damn! That's way better than I thought I was doing. Which makes me feel a whole lot better about the state of the writing, which is just the pick-me-up I needed right now.
(The "old" mission story is actually a new one, my characters during the pandemic. Not sure how publishable that'll ever be, but I like it, so it counts. The shorts include the rest of "Going Home" and all of "Tooth of the Matter".)
On the business side, 1 short story submitted and 2 queries sent. Which is not wonderful, but... well, there is no but. Just gotta sit down and do it, however discouraging it is.
Still, 8686 words! That's awesome. More of that, April.
Lotsa Lotsa Word Counts
Monday, March 8th, 2021 05:08 pmThank goodness I've been better about writing than I have about tracking wordcounts here. Not that that's a high bar to get over. ;-) So, giant round-up post:
August = 1179 words, all on Green Ring
September 2020 = 777 words, all on Green Ring
October = 173 words, on various shorts (and incl. Street Magic, which is getting lumped in with the short stories for now)
November = 3910 words, all on Lightning Strikes Twice
December = 6738 words, all on Lightning Strikes Twice
January 2021 = 5970 words, all on Lightning Strikes Twice
February = 1408 words on various shorts (incl. the novel version of the "creepy fae thing" as well as the short-story version)
February = 6063 words on Lightning Strikes Twice
February total = 7471 words!
Things are definitely looking up on the word production front!
I'm not going to go back and try to total up all the short story submissions and novel queries for the past six months. There have been some of both, though not as many of either as there should have been. Querying in particular is being held up by Absolute Write being down, although I do have other resources. As well as other reasons, like epic procrastination. ;-) However: onward!
Upcoming goals are the usual: Keep cranking out the word counts, get stories out and queries sent. And maybe remember to do this next month!
August = 1179 words, all on Green Ring
September 2020 = 777 words, all on Green Ring
October = 173 words, on various shorts (and incl. Street Magic, which is getting lumped in with the short stories for now)
November = 3910 words, all on Lightning Strikes Twice
December = 6738 words, all on Lightning Strikes Twice
January 2021 = 5970 words, all on Lightning Strikes Twice
February = 1408 words on various shorts (incl. the novel version of the "creepy fae thing" as well as the short-story version)
February = 6063 words on Lightning Strikes Twice
February total = 7471 words!
Things are definitely looking up on the word production front!
I'm not going to go back and try to total up all the short story submissions and novel queries for the past six months. There have been some of both, though not as many of either as there should have been. Querying in particular is being held up by Absolute Write being down, although I do have other resources. As well as other reasons, like epic procrastination. ;-) However: onward!
Upcoming goals are the usual: Keep cranking out the word counts, get stories out and queries sent. And maybe remember to do this next month!
That Was The NaNo That Was
Wednesday, December 16th, 2020 03:26 pmI never did post my NaNo results, did I?
Well, my modified, revised, and thoroughly laid-back goal was simply to get Lightning Strikes Twice moving again. I did the first 50K of it in NaNo 2018, dropped it like a hot rock on November 30th, and hadn't touched it since. (I started 2018's NaNo already burned out, which was not the brightest move ever.) So getting it booted up again in my brain was an undertaking in its own right.
And... success! Of a sort, anyway. I re-read the prequel, re-read the book-so-far, solved a couple of minor obstacles, and wrote 3910 new words. Not a lot by NaNo standards, but enough to count as revivifying the beast. That got me up to the next major scene break -- at which point it was a bit like having to start the book all over again, but that's been December's challenge.
So, I call win. Yay!
Well, my modified, revised, and thoroughly laid-back goal was simply to get Lightning Strikes Twice moving again. I did the first 50K of it in NaNo 2018, dropped it like a hot rock on November 30th, and hadn't touched it since. (I started 2018's NaNo already burned out, which was not the brightest move ever.) So getting it booted up again in my brain was an undertaking in its own right.
And... success! Of a sort, anyway. I re-read the prequel, re-read the book-so-far, solved a couple of minor obstacles, and wrote 3910 new words. Not a lot by NaNo standards, but enough to count as revivifying the beast. That got me up to the next major scene break -- at which point it was a bit like having to start the book all over again, but that's been December's challenge.
So, I call win. Yay!
June & July Word Counts
Wednesday, August 5th, 2020 11:08 pmJune:
original short fiction = 3871
July:
original short fiction = 4172
That includes the rest of DDJJ2 ("Dix Dayton and the Miner from Mars"), "Dear Ones" (which is now going as "A Fine Warm Tale On A Winter's Night"), and "Hands On", as well as bits and pieces of other things. Technically June includes 296 words of Street Magic, which is a novel, but it's not developed enough yet to get its own wordcount file.
In addition, 601 words in July on the "beach house" follow-up to HoM. I don't normally include it in monthly totals (because it's a sprawly character self-indulgence, likely never to be publishable), but in this case it's worth noting because I finally figured out what I needed to get a key sequence moving (hint: Dad games).
Short story submissions:
June: 6
July: 2
Two of which were acceptances!
Queries sent (July): 2
The numbers are actually pretty decent! (Okay, more querying, but otherwise.) The numbers don't quite tell the whole story, though; there's a lot of not-writing in there, for all I've been kicking it with the short stories lately. For example, all of July's writing happened from the 6th to the 15th, and not a word since.
I've been writing to deadline and/or to spec so much lately (anthology calls, ficathons, etc.) that I don't quite know what to do with myself when there isn't a specific (and close) target in sight. I need to get back to a semi-steady writing habit, with at least some focus on longer things. So for August, I'm going to try booting up Green Ring again; as a little for-fun fantasy thing (albeit with asperations to be a novella), it should be a good bridge.
Also, more querying.
original short fiction = 3871
July:
original short fiction = 4172
That includes the rest of DDJJ2 ("Dix Dayton and the Miner from Mars"), "Dear Ones" (which is now going as "A Fine Warm Tale On A Winter's Night"), and "Hands On", as well as bits and pieces of other things. Technically June includes 296 words of Street Magic, which is a novel, but it's not developed enough yet to get its own wordcount file.
In addition, 601 words in July on the "beach house" follow-up to HoM. I don't normally include it in monthly totals (because it's a sprawly character self-indulgence, likely never to be publishable), but in this case it's worth noting because I finally figured out what I needed to get a key sequence moving (hint: Dad games).
Short story submissions:
June: 6
July: 2
Two of which were acceptances!
Queries sent (July): 2
The numbers are actually pretty decent! (Okay, more querying, but otherwise.) The numbers don't quite tell the whole story, though; there's a lot of not-writing in there, for all I've been kicking it with the short stories lately. For example, all of July's writing happened from the 6th to the 15th, and not a word since.
I've been writing to deadline and/or to spec so much lately (anthology calls, ficathons, etc.) that I don't quite know what to do with myself when there isn't a specific (and close) target in sight. I need to get back to a semi-steady writing habit, with at least some focus on longer things. So for August, I'm going to try booting up Green Ring again; as a little for-fun fantasy thing (albeit with asperations to be a novella), it should be a good bridge.
Also, more querying.
I'll be darned, it looks like a story
Thursday, July 16th, 2020 01:15 pmI have written a 3600-word story in six days, 1600 of it yesterday. That is very nearly unprecedented for me -- despite the story fighting me every step of the way.
And despite my having referred to it as a "flaccid lump of story" at one point, I ended up with something I'm actually pretty happy with. My alpha reader laughed in the right places, which is always a good sign. The key seemed to be when the main character made a play on words and suddenly developed a rudimentary personality, which he'd been utterly refusing to do until that point. (This never happens to me.) And then the words I'd consciously crafted because they weren't coming any other way suddenly took on a different cast, and it all pretty much worked. So thanks, front-brain; it's not normally your job, but it's nice to know you're there to pick up the slack when the back-brain, I dunno, decides to skip off to Aruba or something. /*glares at back of own head*/
Dinner last night ended up being a hazelnut mocha and some Doritos, whilst hunched over the keyboard. I meant to eat something better, but sort of forgot. I got the story formatted and sent off with all of twenty minutes to spare, then stayed up another hour or two playing solitaire before I processed that I should just go to bed, dammit. Thus is the glamorous life of a writer.
And despite my having referred to it as a "flaccid lump of story" at one point, I ended up with something I'm actually pretty happy with. My alpha reader laughed in the right places, which is always a good sign. The key seemed to be when the main character made a play on words and suddenly developed a rudimentary personality, which he'd been utterly refusing to do until that point. (This never happens to me.) And then the words I'd consciously crafted because they weren't coming any other way suddenly took on a different cast, and it all pretty much worked. So thanks, front-brain; it's not normally your job, but it's nice to know you're there to pick up the slack when the back-brain, I dunno, decides to skip off to Aruba or something. /*glares at back of own head*/
Dinner last night ended up being a hazelnut mocha and some Doritos, whilst hunched over the keyboard. I meant to eat something better, but sort of forgot. I got the story formatted and sent off with all of twenty minutes to spare, then stayed up another hour or two playing solitaire before I processed that I should just go to bed, dammit. Thus is the glamorous life of a writer.
May Word Count
Thursday, June 4th, 2020 05:02 pmMay also had writing in it! Eventually.
original short fiction: 1493
The Kitten Case: 2227
Total new words in May: 3720
Which isn't at all bad! Especially since it's only for about two weeks' writing. (Okay, the fact that it was only two weeks is bad, but we work with what we have.) The short stuff was the start of another Dix Dayton story, and the start of a creepy little thing that might end up being called "Dear Ones" (which I've since completed, yay!). The Kitten Case is yet another re-start, but this time it's with actual plot stuff and chapters, so I think it might stick.
Queries sent: 6
Hey! Not bad!
No short story submissions in May, but I do have notions of where to send several this month.
For June: Onward. Finish DDJJ2, figure out where the bleep I stand with various novels, query. The usual.
original short fiction: 1493
The Kitten Case: 2227
Total new words in May: 3720
Which isn't at all bad! Especially since it's only for about two weeks' writing. (Okay, the fact that it was only two weeks is bad, but we work with what we have.) The short stuff was the start of another Dix Dayton story, and the start of a creepy little thing that might end up being called "Dear Ones" (which I've since completed, yay!). The Kitten Case is yet another re-start, but this time it's with actual plot stuff and chapters, so I think it might stick.
Queries sent: 6
Hey! Not bad!
No short story submissions in May, but I do have notions of where to send several this month.
For June: Onward. Finish DDJJ2, figure out where the bleep I stand with various novels, query. The usual.
April Word Count
Friday, May 15th, 2020 12:56 pmWow has it been a long time since I've done one of these. Mostly because there hasn't been much to report.
But, April had writing in it!
Total new words in April (all short fiction): 3683 words
Not bad! (That's most of "Observer Effect"/Uplink and all of "Bridesmaid From Heck", in case future-me wants to know.) Both were written to market deadlines, both of which I made.
No queries last month, but 3 short story submissions. Also not bad!
Mind you, I'd feel better about all this if I hadn't completed those stories, hit the end of the month, and promptly dropped writing like it'd bit me. I meant to keep going, but somehow here it is the middle of May and I've written a grand total of zip so far. Still, there's half a month left. And the querying's been happening, so that's something.
But, April had writing in it!
Total new words in April (all short fiction): 3683 words
Not bad! (That's most of "Observer Effect"/Uplink and all of "Bridesmaid From Heck", in case future-me wants to know.) Both were written to market deadlines, both of which I made.
No queries last month, but 3 short story submissions. Also not bad!
Mind you, I'd feel better about all this if I hadn't completed those stories, hit the end of the month, and promptly dropped writing like it'd bit me. I meant to keep going, but somehow here it is the middle of May and I've written a grand total of zip so far. Still, there's half a month left. And the querying's been happening, so that's something.
And there was writing!
Tuesday, August 20th, 2019 04:42 pmLost in the shuffle of cons and cats and exploding electrical lines, was the fact that I came back from Narrativity having promised myself I would start writing again, settled down after a few days' recovery time with the best of intentions, and my writing laptop promptly died. Now, this was the not-happy machine previously mentioned, so it could have been worse, but watching it half-boot, crash, and restart itself, wash rinse repeat, was kind of a giant middle finger from the fates.
So I ventured forth (sporadically, because life) to find a replacement. Of course, none of the sources that other people had been assuring me with entirely unverified conviction would have what I wanted, did. The problem here is that what I'm looking for is really old -- pawn shops and the like don't deal in anything even remotely close, surplus stores generally cleared out that generation of laptops a decade or more ago, eBay lists a few but none of them are tested (and the prices are outrageous, though I'd pay that for exactly what I want if it were guaranteed functional). And even other people's closets are starting to be bare of the era of equipment I'm seeking.
So when the MSU surplus store offered a laptop that I could theoretically find a swappable floppy drive for, that would theoretically run what I wanted, I decided to risk ten bucks ($5 for the laptop, $5 for the hard drive) and see what happened. What happened was a lot of swearing; the machine powered up fine (as tested in-store), but getting a bootable OS onto the hard drive was another matter. My no-product-key Win98 CD was corrupted, so I went for plain old DOS, just to get something in place so I could test out the hardware. I FDISKed, I formatted, all the stuff was there that should be, but the machine kept booting to the KillDisk blank-drive message. WTF??? A trip back to Surplus didn't help. ("You could install Ubuntu" -- riiiiiight. I'm going to spend 6 hours of my life figuring out how to install an OS you're comfortable with, because you don't speak DOS? I think not.)
I finally gave up and ran the Win98 install from my other CD -- not ideal, because you spend an hour-plus going through the install before you find out if the product key you cribbed from another machine will actually work. But the install ran, and the product key did work! And then I got all the way through the setup and discovered that Win98 does not play well with more than 512M of memory, and this thing has 2 gigs. Oh, bugger. And none of the tricks recommended on the intarwebs worked; one managed to get me through the final steps of the install, but Windows still won't boot. Bug-ger.
On the other hand, I can now boot to DOS. Which won't let me run any of the other stuff I'd really like to have, but will let me run Textra, my word processor of preference, which is the one thing I really need. Which I had to install from diskette, but for reasons that I'm sure make sense to someone the USB floppy drive works fine even though USB drives proper don't, so that was okay.
And so last night, after all that tech fiddling, I wrote. 334 words, on the post-HoM self-indulgent Thing that's been niggling hardest at my brain. (Of course, the instant I had a working writing laptop, the urge to write that's been hammering at my skull faded. But I sat down anyway, and words happened.)
I'm still using the external USB floppy, which is less than ideal. But I like the machine otherwise; the keyboard is comfortable, the display is properly-proportioned and brightness-adjustable, and it's sleek and just generally has a good vibe. It probably is worth my time to find it an internal floppy drive.
I am, for the record, still in the market for old, working laptops with built-in floppy drives. I could stand to have two such machines in active use, and spares are good, too. So if you've got one kicking around in your cupboards, do let me know. But in the meantime, I am at least up and running again. For the time being, but that's all we can ask in this world.
So I ventured forth (sporadically, because life) to find a replacement. Of course, none of the sources that other people had been assuring me with entirely unverified conviction would have what I wanted, did. The problem here is that what I'm looking for is really old -- pawn shops and the like don't deal in anything even remotely close, surplus stores generally cleared out that generation of laptops a decade or more ago, eBay lists a few but none of them are tested (and the prices are outrageous, though I'd pay that for exactly what I want if it were guaranteed functional). And even other people's closets are starting to be bare of the era of equipment I'm seeking.
So when the MSU surplus store offered a laptop that I could theoretically find a swappable floppy drive for, that would theoretically run what I wanted, I decided to risk ten bucks ($5 for the laptop, $5 for the hard drive) and see what happened. What happened was a lot of swearing; the machine powered up fine (as tested in-store), but getting a bootable OS onto the hard drive was another matter. My no-product-key Win98 CD was corrupted, so I went for plain old DOS, just to get something in place so I could test out the hardware. I FDISKed, I formatted, all the stuff was there that should be, but the machine kept booting to the KillDisk blank-drive message. WTF??? A trip back to Surplus didn't help. ("You could install Ubuntu" -- riiiiiight. I'm going to spend 6 hours of my life figuring out how to install an OS you're comfortable with, because you don't speak DOS? I think not.)
I finally gave up and ran the Win98 install from my other CD -- not ideal, because you spend an hour-plus going through the install before you find out if the product key you cribbed from another machine will actually work. But the install ran, and the product key did work! And then I got all the way through the setup and discovered that Win98 does not play well with more than 512M of memory, and this thing has 2 gigs. Oh, bugger. And none of the tricks recommended on the intarwebs worked; one managed to get me through the final steps of the install, but Windows still won't boot. Bug-ger.
On the other hand, I can now boot to DOS. Which won't let me run any of the other stuff I'd really like to have, but will let me run Textra, my word processor of preference, which is the one thing I really need. Which I had to install from diskette, but for reasons that I'm sure make sense to someone the USB floppy drive works fine even though USB drives proper don't, so that was okay.
And so last night, after all that tech fiddling, I wrote. 334 words, on the post-HoM self-indulgent Thing that's been niggling hardest at my brain. (Of course, the instant I had a working writing laptop, the urge to write that's been hammering at my skull faded. But I sat down anyway, and words happened.)
I'm still using the external USB floppy, which is less than ideal. But I like the machine otherwise; the keyboard is comfortable, the display is properly-proportioned and brightness-adjustable, and it's sleek and just generally has a good vibe. It probably is worth my time to find it an internal floppy drive.
I am, for the record, still in the market for old, working laptops with built-in floppy drives. I could stand to have two such machines in active use, and spares are good, too. So if you've got one kicking around in your cupboards, do let me know. But in the meantime, I am at least up and running again. For the time being, but that's all we can ask in this world.
February Word Count
Sunday, March 3rd, 2019 12:55 pmOkay, I didn't expect the writing numbers to be good this month; I pretty much gave myself permission to abandon writing entirely in order to get that non-writing project I keep alluding to done. Not a choice I'm happy about, but trying to do it all was only making me feel squashed to a grease-spot. So:
Haley novel: 2 words
original short fiction: -2 words
for a grand total new words in February of bugger-all. ;-\
I messed about with fanfic a little, but even if I counted that it wouldn't make that much difference. My brain and my time have been totally consumed by that non-writing project. Which, at least, is almost to the point where I can talk about it in public, and will go live Real Soon Now.
This does not mean I'm not annoyed about the state of the writing.
Querying was still supposed to happen this month: I sent 1, crossed off one agent, and set one agent aside for another book in a different genre. Sigh.
About another week should see the Sekrit Project up and running. And then I must get back to things writing: LST re-activated, and finish the bloody querying on HoM.
Haley novel: 2 words
original short fiction: -2 words
for a grand total new words in February of bugger-all. ;-\
I messed about with fanfic a little, but even if I counted that it wouldn't make that much difference. My brain and my time have been totally consumed by that non-writing project. Which, at least, is almost to the point where I can talk about it in public, and will go live Real Soon Now.
This does not mean I'm not annoyed about the state of the writing.
Querying was still supposed to happen this month: I sent 1, crossed off one agent, and set one agent aside for another book in a different genre. Sigh.
About another week should see the Sekrit Project up and running. And then I must get back to things writing: LST re-activated, and finish the bloody querying on HoM.
Ginormous Word Counts Catch-Up Post (August-January)
Sunday, February 3rd, 2019 09:33 pmHave I really not done this since... July? I can't find one later than July that isn't a NaNo post.
Mind you, a lot of that's because I didn't do much writing for much of that time. And when I did, I'd pretty much abandoned the idea of word count as a metric; it wasn't what I needed while finishing up Falling From Ground (quite the opposite, in fact), and outside of NaNo I've pretty much been in "recovery" mode since then. Oh yeah, and there were technology troubles. However, I do like having the numbers rounded up in one easily-tracked tag, so I shall now dive down the rabbit hole of my record-keeping.
...
...
...
Okay, I'm back. *pant, pant*
August:
Falling From Ground = 1141
September:
Falling From Ground = 17
original short fiction = 489 ("and then the murders started", mostly the short version)
October
Falling From Ground = 502
November was NaNo 2018. 'Nuff said.
December:
original short fiction = 124
January:
original short fiction = 2616
January (and December) is entirely "Dix Dayton, Jet Jockey". Which is, hey, done!
Speaking of rabbit holes, the writing of DD,JJ was essentially done a week ago; the time since then has mostly gone to working out tedious details about spaceship propulsion systems and asteroid orbital dynamics. The asteroids particularly were challenging; it seems that there's just enough known about many of them to get me into trouble if I don't fact-check, and not enough for me to be sure of my facts. I did finally find an orbit simulator that told me more or less what I needed, but the process sucked down an amazing amount of time and ambition. I'm only just now recovering the "yay! finished!" feeling I should have when completing a brand new story that I'm pretty happy with.
Also, there was querying!
December:
Sent: 2 queries
Agents set aside for another book in a different genre: 1
Crossed off: 3, I think?
January:
Sent: 7
Crossed off: 28
Which is great! Except that I was supposed to finish the final due-diligence push on Highway of Mirrors in January, and it's... not finished. For a while there, it was going pretty well, in large part because I'm only querying agents I'm genuinely keen to work with; if I'm meh or I find I'm trying to talk myself into them, off the list they go. But querying is all too easily bumped by writing (okay) or a certain non-writing project (not so good), and so I've run aground again.
What's next? I don't even know; I think that's going to merit a post of its own.
(admin note: first use of new tag for short fiction, because cramming it in under "writing" is... unhelpful.)
Mind you, a lot of that's because I didn't do much writing for much of that time. And when I did, I'd pretty much abandoned the idea of word count as a metric; it wasn't what I needed while finishing up Falling From Ground (quite the opposite, in fact), and outside of NaNo I've pretty much been in "recovery" mode since then. Oh yeah, and there were technology troubles. However, I do like having the numbers rounded up in one easily-tracked tag, so I shall now dive down the rabbit hole of my record-keeping.
...
...
...
Okay, I'm back. *pant, pant*
August:
Falling From Ground = 1141
September:
Falling From Ground = 17
original short fiction = 489 ("and then the murders started", mostly the short version)
October
Falling From Ground = 502
November was NaNo 2018. 'Nuff said.
December:
original short fiction = 124
January:
original short fiction = 2616
January (and December) is entirely "Dix Dayton, Jet Jockey". Which is, hey, done!
Speaking of rabbit holes, the writing of DD,JJ was essentially done a week ago; the time since then has mostly gone to working out tedious details about spaceship propulsion systems and asteroid orbital dynamics. The asteroids particularly were challenging; it seems that there's just enough known about many of them to get me into trouble if I don't fact-check, and not enough for me to be sure of my facts. I did finally find an orbit simulator that told me more or less what I needed, but the process sucked down an amazing amount of time and ambition. I'm only just now recovering the "yay! finished!" feeling I should have when completing a brand new story that I'm pretty happy with.
Also, there was querying!
December:
Sent: 2 queries
Agents set aside for another book in a different genre: 1
Crossed off: 3, I think?
January:
Sent: 7
Crossed off: 28
Which is great! Except that I was supposed to finish the final due-diligence push on Highway of Mirrors in January, and it's... not finished. For a while there, it was going pretty well, in large part because I'm only querying agents I'm genuinely keen to work with; if I'm meh or I find I'm trying to talk myself into them, off the list they go. But querying is all too easily bumped by writing (okay) or a certain non-writing project (not so good), and so I've run aground again.
What's next? I don't even know; I think that's going to merit a post of its own.
(admin note: first use of new tag for short fiction, because cramming it in under "writing" is... unhelpful.)
NaNo 2018: Did it.
Thursday, November 29th, 2018 10:46 pm50,663 words.
50,644 validated.
/*topples gently sideways*/
50,644 validated.
/*topples gently sideways*/
NaNo Update, Day 27 -- above par!
Tuesday, November 27th, 2018 07:48 pmI am caught up!!!
3063 words today, including one run of 1526 in one sitting. Which is huge for me. And that means 5511 words in the past two days, which is more than my standard quota for a month. Hot damn!
The flying ferrets helped, but it was really the banter between our heroes and the foreign agent that did it. I tend to think banter is horribly difficult for me, and often it is, but when it's going well, it's terrific.
And, I'm actually enjoying the writing, today and yesterday. After that 1526, I had to rush my shower, because I kept getting more words and had to get to the keyboard before I forgot them. That feeling when the words keep coming and coming and you can't get out of their way fast enough, y'know?
(I am above par for the first time since the 13th. That almost feels as good as winning. Yeah!)
I almost don't want to stop. I can keep going for another 5000 words (4400, really) and finish tonight, can't I? (And the answer is No, no I can't. My brain will explode. But I love that I'm tempted.)
3063 words today, including one run of 1526 in one sitting. Which is huge for me. And that means 5511 words in the past two days, which is more than my standard quota for a month. Hot damn!
The flying ferrets helped, but it was really the banter between our heroes and the foreign agent that did it. I tend to think banter is horribly difficult for me, and often it is, but when it's going well, it's terrific.
And, I'm actually enjoying the writing, today and yesterday. After that 1526, I had to rush my shower, because I kept getting more words and had to get to the keyboard before I forgot them. That feeling when the words keep coming and coming and you can't get out of their way fast enough, y'know?
(I am above par for the first time since the 13th. That almost feels as good as winning. Yeah!)
I almost don't want to stop. I can keep going for another 5000 words (4400, really) and finish tonight, can't I? (And the answer is No, no I can't. My brain will explode. But I love that I'm tempted.)
