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juushika. I've been intending to change it for a while, now that I'm updating my overall journal layout to reflect my friends only to public changes. It is brown. It is still pretty close to the previous layout. It makes me want chocolate.
Oh. Good Lord. I spent all day typing up the handwritten draft of the novel. Why? Because now that I've hit the middle third of the story, I need to know where I stand regarding my fictional court and its appropriate etiquette, which means knowing where I stand in the book, which means unifying all the various drafts and versions a bit. In the attempt to avoid getting wrapped up in idea vs. action, I don't want to do more research than necessary, so knowing where I am in the story is crucial.
It also lead to an entire day spent pounding away at the keyboard, rushing through pages upon pages upon pages of the handwritten draft. 10,000 words worth, to be a little more precise. All of that, while battling the worst back pain I've had in about a year—so bad I took meds for it. (I don't take medication, OTC or otherwise.) It was worth it, because I'm now a mere 1.6k words away from the end of the handwritten manuscript, and then I can get back down to business as usual.
Things I have learned from the massive typeathon:
I will lose a big chunk of the wordcount when I edit, especially in the first third of the book. This is actually somewhat of a relief, because this would be an exceptionally long book without that editing. As it is, the first third is quite repetitive, a result of not plotting out the story in too much detail before I began writing. Characters repeat themselves, themes repeat themselves, plot points repeat themselves. Also surprisingly, I'm actually looking forward to streamlining this section because now, in retrospect, the changes that need to be made are quite clear. I'm not doing a word of editing until the first draft is completely finished, though, so that will just have to wait.
At my current rate, I expect the finished first draft to be around 120,000 words long. As stated sometime previously, plus this new massive typed update, I now have the entire first third of the book, the beginning of the middle third of the book, and the beginning of the third third of the book written and typed. Taking into account the length of the current draft plus the fact that a lot of the repeating waffling bulk is done, now, I figure there's about 50k left in the story—enough to fill in the gaps and get to the end. 120k is longer than I want the finish text to be (no, really?) but I'll lose a lot of that in editing.
And now. I really deserve some sleep.
Wordcount: 72,060 typed (288 pages), +1.6k handwritten.
Previous Accomplishments: Typing, typing, typing some more the written draft into the typed draft. 10k of it. Also: determining how the beginning has progressed and figured out some more pieces of where the end will go.
Upcoming Challenges: A little bit more typing, and then some research, and then I get back to the text. Filling in gaps in the story without getting too bogged down by streamlining may be difficult, but mostly because it conflicts with my anal-retentive nature.
Currently Reading: The Call of Cthulhu & Other Weird Stories, H.P. Lovecraft; Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein.
juushika. I've been intending to change it for a while, now that I'm updating my overall journal layout to reflect my friends only to public changes. It is brown. It is still pretty close to the previous layout. It makes me want chocolate.Oh. Good Lord. I spent all day typing up the handwritten draft of the novel. Why? Because now that I've hit the middle third of the story, I need to know where I stand regarding my fictional court and its appropriate etiquette, which means knowing where I stand in the book, which means unifying all the various drafts and versions a bit. In the attempt to avoid getting wrapped up in idea vs. action, I don't want to do more research than necessary, so knowing where I am in the story is crucial.
It also lead to an entire day spent pounding away at the keyboard, rushing through pages upon pages upon pages of the handwritten draft. 10,000 words worth, to be a little more precise. All of that, while battling the worst back pain I've had in about a year—so bad I took meds for it. (I don't take medication, OTC or otherwise.) It was worth it, because I'm now a mere 1.6k words away from the end of the handwritten manuscript, and then I can get back down to business as usual.
Things I have learned from the massive typeathon:
I will lose a big chunk of the wordcount when I edit, especially in the first third of the book. This is actually somewhat of a relief, because this would be an exceptionally long book without that editing. As it is, the first third is quite repetitive, a result of not plotting out the story in too much detail before I began writing. Characters repeat themselves, themes repeat themselves, plot points repeat themselves. Also surprisingly, I'm actually looking forward to streamlining this section because now, in retrospect, the changes that need to be made are quite clear. I'm not doing a word of editing until the first draft is completely finished, though, so that will just have to wait.
At my current rate, I expect the finished first draft to be around 120,000 words long. As stated sometime previously, plus this new massive typed update, I now have the entire first third of the book, the beginning of the middle third of the book, and the beginning of the third third of the book written and typed. Taking into account the length of the current draft plus the fact that a lot of the repeating waffling bulk is done, now, I figure there's about 50k left in the story—enough to fill in the gaps and get to the end. 120k is longer than I want the finish text to be (no, really?) but I'll lose a lot of that in editing.
And now. I really deserve some sleep.
Wordcount: 72,060 typed (288 pages), +1.6k handwritten.
Previous Accomplishments: Typing, typing, typing some more the written draft into the typed draft. 10k of it. Also: determining how the beginning has progressed and figured out some more pieces of where the end will go.
Upcoming Challenges: A little bit more typing, and then some research, and then I get back to the text. Filling in gaps in the story without getting too bogged down by streamlining may be difficult, but mostly because it conflicts with my anal-retentive nature.
Currently Reading: The Call of Cthulhu & Other Weird Stories, H.P. Lovecraft; Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein.
