April, Week 4

Good uh…afternoon, squiders! Happy second-to-last day of April! (Except not really because it means May is right around the corner, which means birthdays and school ending, and having to figure out summer break, and…)

So, how have things gone since I finished my novella on Tuesday?

Well, they haven’t.

I should know this by now. If I am single-flowing a project (whether purposefully or due to time constraints) I almost always take a few days break at the end. Sometimes longer, depending on the length of the project that’s just been finished.

Hell, for Nano 2011 (probably talked about here on the blog at the time) I had grand plans of doing 100K. I had 50K left on one project (which was probably Book 1, now that I think about it) and then I had a second project lined up and ready to go. The first half of the month went great! I think I hit The End on Day 11 or something.

But then instead of moving into the second project for the rest of the month, I just…gave up.

Not my finest hour.

I’ve found that if I’m actively working on multiple projects (like I was SUPPOSED to be) then this doesn’t happen. It counteracts the “I’m done with a project, now what do I do with myself” feeling that tends to hit (as well as the “I’ve finished something and now may rest on my laurels” feeling) since you can just adjust your focus to the other stuff.

All this to say that I haven’t really done much since finishing my novella.

I did email some friends to see if someone would beta, and yesterday I re-read Chapter 1 (eesh) and went back over my notes. A lot of yesterday was also spent going back over stuff I’ve been putting off–emails that needed responding to, webinars that have been sitting open, smaller tasks that I’ve been putting off. I still have a few of those to do, which I might get to here after this.

But I do have to accept at this point that even if I work on Chapter 2 today (unlikely, it’s hard to get things done on the weekends unless I get up early because everyone has stuff to do–today was children’s dinner theater rehearsal and a fencing tournament, plus there’s yardwork and we’re going to go see a play tonight, and now all of a sudden we have dinner plans with the cousins–and I’m unlikely to get up early because I like my sleep) and tomorrow (also unlikely, see above but with different things) there’s no way I’m getting the 9.7K I need to hit 25K.

And, you know, that’s okay. I did write an entire novella this month! That’s not too shabby. AND I got a 5-star review on Hidden Worlds from Reader’s Favorite, which is a pretty big deal. I’ve got to put that up on its various pages. Something more for the To Do list.

Every little bit helps, after all, and it’s no good beating yourself up over things you didn’t get done. Undue stress and all that jazz.

Anyway, see you in May, squider!

April, Week 3

Hey ho, squiders! Sorry for the radio silence last week. I don’t really have a good excuse except that I was (as always) trying to do too much at the same time.

I know we’re a little late for Week 3, but let’s talk about it anyway.

I finished up the novella that was half of my goals for Camp Nano today. It’s about 15.3K, so a little over, but more or less what I was going for. I’m going to give it a few days to sit, and then I’ll read back over it, make any necessary changes, and send it over to the TDP people.

Wednesday and Thursday last week were a little rough. I always get a little sloggy at the dark moment because sometimes it’s depressing to write about people at their lowest point, so I didn’t make my words for those days. But I persevered, and now the draft is done! And I think it’s pretty good, just from my initial feelings, so I’ll have to see if that holds up when I read back over it.

Now that that madness is done(-ish), it’s back to the revision. I had grand plans that I was going to work on both throughout the month, but I just haven’t had time. Mondays and Fridays I have off, so those are, in theory, the days where I would have time to do multiple projects, but I’ve been so busy on those days it hasn’t happened. Yesterday I didn’t get to write at all.

Dunno if we’re going to make much progress revision-wise–in theory, I’ve got to do 2K a day to make my camp goal, which is pushing it on a good day. I left off in the middle of the paper edit for Chapter 2, so I’ve got to finish that before I can start the writing portion. I might read back over Chapter 1 as well, which will let me check and see if it’s as awful as it felt, and let me remember what I was doing.

In theory, I’m up for the next critique with the new group I joined, so Chapter 1 needs to be ready (and maybe chapter two, got to figure out how long the pieces are supposed to be). But the initial time we agreed upon isn’t going to work, so I need to figure that out too.

Man, it just never stops, does it?

Anyway, I hope your April is going well. It’s been downpouring for the last ten hours or so, which is weird but nice, except I have to keep going out in it.

See you Thursday, fingers crossed!

April, Week 2

Good afternoon, squiders! It’s snowing here after being in the 80s all week. As it does.

We’re about halfway done with the month! I think, to be on track for my 25K goal, I should be at…oh, like 11.7K.

I’ve only written a few hundred words thus far today, so I’m at, like, 7.6K.

Not amazing. Not great. More than I’ve written in a hot minute, though, certainly.

Most of the words have been on the novella for TDP. I’ve got it outlined to be about 15K, so while I’m not quite as far as I had hoped, I am at least halfway-ish.

I ran into some issues the last few days with my outline.

It turns out I outlined this story in June of 2018. Good Lord! That’s almost five years ago. Anyway, I outlined it then and broke the outline back out last month to plan for this month. And I wasn’t wild about the outline. I think I told you guys this. Some of the later plot points were just…not good.

My choices were: 1) start writing and see if I could fix the story on the go, or 2) fix the outline before I started.

I chose 1, because I am eternally an optimist even though I know how I work.

So, lo and behold, to no one’s surprise, I had a rough time writing yesterday and realized I’d hit the point where the outline was no longer working.

But, also, that the outline method wasn’t quite working.

I have levels of outlining I do, based on estimated word count. Anything under 5K, I use a phase outlining method.

Past 5K, I switch to a 6-act outline.

For longer works, 30K+, I also use the 6-act outline, but I do arc work and tentpoles as well to help with pacing. Different stories and genres may require additional work past that.

So, based on several 7.5K-10K-ish stories I’ve written for, say, anthologies, I outlined this 15K story the same way.

This was apparently a mistake.

So I spent about an hour last night doing my arcs and tentpoles, and now I feel better about the whole thing. I didn’t actually touch the 6-act part even though I maybe should have because it’s still bad, but I’m hoping the tentpoles will let me ignore them.

Or, you know, in three days, we’re going to be back to outlining fixing.

Now, I don’t mind outline fixing. An outline, after all, is an active document whose sole purpose is to help you write your story, and it needs to change as necessary to help you succeed. I just probably should have done the work at the beginning.

Or maybe not! Maybe I needed to get into the story, expand the world and the characters, before I understood enough to make the outline work properly.

I’ve been invited to join a critique group that’s meeting this Sunday. I’d better figure out if I’m going or not, and look at the materials if so. It’s Sunday mornings, which is inconvenient, so I’m going to have to think long and hard about it.

See you guys next week, when I’ve hopefully caught up!

Passing on the Nerdy Torch

Squiders, if you’ve been with me at all, you know I am (unabashedly) a giant nerd. I went to my first Star Trek convention when I was 12. I cosplayed all through my 20s (and still sometimes). I occasionally hyperfixate which is very annoying because it makes it VERY hard to get anything else done.

When the small, mobile ones came along, I was like, ah, yes, my children, I shall teach you my ways. When the bigger, mobile one was small, we used to watch Doctor Who together (though we had to stop, because we reached a threshold where he was understanding enough of the show to get scared of some of it). I think we’ve watched Avatar: The Last Airbender all the way through three or four times. We’re working our way through all the (appropriate) Star Wars stuff.

And, now, finally, we’re getting into Star Trek.

Star Trek is my Very Favorite, as you know, and I’ve tried a few times over the years to watch it with the small, mobile ones with varying levels of success. The Animated Series went over rather well (probably because it is animated) and we’ve watched a few episodes here and there of the Original Series or Next Gen. But it wasn’t really sticking.

This is a bit devastating. Some of the earliest memories I have are of watching TOS with my parents. And when I was a bit older, we used to sit together every week and watch the new episodes of TNG, DS9, and Voyager as they came out.

(Though we only got a few seasons into Voyager before something got messed up with the station it was on–we got sound, but no picture. Very frustrating.)

With the newer Trek–Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks–none of them are family-friendly, so we couldn’t watch those with the kids.

Til now.

My spouse and I sat down a few months ago to watch the first episode of Strange New Worlds, and we came to the realization that here, finally, was a series we could watch as a family.

And, hey, this time around the kids were interested too!

(Also I ADORE SNW.)

We did hit a bit of a snag–Episode 9 is rated TV-14 whereas the rest of the season was TV-PG–and we haven’t managed to figure out why exactly it’s got the higher rating and whether or not it would be okay for upper elementary-aged people. (So if you know, let me know.)

So while we wait for me and/or my spouse to get our act together about Ep 9 (or just watch it), we decided to switch to Prodigy. This is an animated Trek series made specifically for kids through Nickelodeon.

And, squiders, I loved it. The small, mobile ones loved it. Programming for children can be very hit or miss for the whole family, but it was a unique take on the Trek universe with enough Easter eggs to appeal to long time fans.

But we’ve hit the end of Prodigy til season 2 comes out, and we’ve got the last two eps of Strange New Worlds.

We’re running out of Entertaining-For-the-Whole-Family scifi/fantasy shows on our streaming services. We did Amphibia and Owl House on Disney+, plus the Mysterious Benedict Society and are now in season 2 of The Secret of Sulphur Springs. Not necessarily seeing a lot else on that platform that’s appealing right now. And kids’ programming is kind of hit or miss on the other platforms–though we did watch some Scooby Doo through HBO Max (and the first episode of Velma, which was pretty dang awful).

(Paramount+ does have all the Nickelodeon stuff, so I suppose I could poke through there and see if there’s anything interesting. Mostly the small, mobile ones watch Spongebob on their own.)

ANYWAY, the spouse and I were talking about Voyager for some reason, and about how I’d never watched the whole series, and we realized…we could watch Voyager with the kids.

There’s a gazillion episodes so it would keep us busy for a while, if nothing else.

I brought up this idea with the small, mobile ones the evening, and the bigger, mobile one said, “Maybe we could watch Next Gen too.”

Oh, be still, my heart.

Thoughts on the newer Treks, squiders? (I admit I’m not wild about Picard–I’ve talked to you guys about that before–but I’ve also only watched the first season so far.) Know what happens in SNW EP 9 and can advise?

First Week of April Down!

Howdy, squiders! How’s April treating you? I’m actually feel pretty good about things!

As I talked about last week, I’m focusing on two projects this month with a goal of doing 25000 words between a novella that will be released serially and my ongoing Book 1 revision.

I’m not off to an amazing start–at 3K as of yesterday, and I’ve not written today (and it’s not looking like I’ll get there) so I am a bit behind for the month, but definitely catch-up-able, and seeing how I’ve only written three days total, I’m averaging about 1K a day, which is, well, more than I’ve done in a while.

It’s nice to just be writing again.

Thus far I’m focusing on the novella. Getting it done means I can get it edited, which means it can start to go live sooner. Plus it’s the smaller project, which means it’ll get done faster anyway.

I’m having a super good time with it, actually. It’s got horror elements, because that’s what I like these days, but it also has fantasy and romance elements which are just fun.

Do I feel a little bad about pushing Book 1 to the backburners for the beginning of the month? Well, yes, but it probably will be helpful to work on something else for a minute, to remind myself that I don’t suck and writing is not all frustration, and so I can come back to the edit more refreshed.

As for Taig, I haven’t really been using him, because I’m having so much fun with the story. I mean, I’m still putting him out, but I would be fine without him. Sometimes I just put him next to me where I can’t really see him.

I’m trying setting his different sides to projects. So the novella is on his angry side, and, in theory, when I work on Book 1 (hoping to do the novella in the morning, and the revision in the afternoon, starting tomorrow) I’ll flip him to happy.

Anyway, progress is happening and thus far it is good! Happy April, everyone!