Well, squiders, I thought it couldn’t be done. Well, no, I didn’t, but it was starting to feel that way.
I finally got done with the re-write on Chapter 1. It’s a little over 3000 words (which is about average for me for chapter length, but is, I suspect, considerably shorter than it was before) and probably terrible.
At least, it felt terrible. It may not be. I’m going to go through and see if I can tweak it emotionally, because I feel (again, haven’t re-read it yet, so who knows) like maybe I’ve gone too far and made Lana unlikeable again. Blagh. It’s enough to make me feel like I’m an idiot who doesn’t know how to write.
(That being said, I was showing Hallowed Hill to someone yesterday, and I scrolled down to see the reviews, and there was a new 5-star one from someone I don’t know at all that was super complimentary, so everything is subjective and creative endeavors do stupid things to your head.)
(Also I may leave it for now and come back to it after a few more chapters, with the hopes that I will establish Lana’s new character better over time and will be able to do more justice in a bit.)
Anyway. I started doing the paper edit of Chapter 2 on Wednesday, and then yesterday I had no free time and today I got an injection into my back to hopefully get rid of the last of my back pain, so I haven’t gotten back to it. (Maybe after this.)
I have been working on training with Taig, which is going okay thus far but is getting a little confused because the smaller, mobile one thinks he’s adorable and keeps getting him out when I’m NOT writing. Also, someone got chocolate on him. I’m not saying it was her but I have my suspicions.
But here we’ve come to the end of March, and April is upon us. April should be smooth sailing, as far as regular writing time goes, so I went ahead and put a rather ambitious goal of 25,000 words for April as my Camp Nanowrimo goal.
This is for a combo of two things:
- The continuing revision of Book 1
- A serial novella that I owe Turtleduck Press
I am aware that I should stop taking on novellas, but here we are.
Serial novellas for TDP get posted in increments up on the website, and then, in theory, get consolidated into a single story and released as ebooks. At least, that’s the new plan. This novella is the trial run of the idea, so, you know, no pressure or anything.
Generally I write serials as I go, but I’m thinking it may be easiest and best to just sit down and write the whole thing all at once this time through. This will allow me to make sure the whole story makes sense before I start to post segments of it (something I always worry about) and if necessary I can go back and make edits as well.
The story is outlined (has been for a while) and will be about 15K when complete. I’m hoping it can be done (first draft wise) in two weeks or less, based on how long it typically takes me to write a 10K story. I re-read the outline while I was on the cruise a few weeks back, though, and there’s a couple of later plot points that I don’t like, so I do need to either poke those before I get going or hope I will figure out something better as I actually write the thing.
Now, Kit, you might be saying, how is 25,000 words ambitious when you can and have routinely done a full Nano at 50,000 words?
Well, couple of reasons. 1) It is easier to do 50K during Nano because of several reasons, such as the fact that almost always (but not always) I’m working on a new project, and so there is New Project Momentum, and because there is creative momentum from a ton of other people working toward the same goal. 2) Uh….no, I guess mostly one. NO WAIT. I have done Camp Nano for years and years and years (and, before that, April Fools, which functioned the same way, where you set your own word count goal. One year, several people set 300K words as their goal AND MANAGED TO HIT IT, which to this day is madness) and the most I have ever done in April is 35K. I usually manage somewhere more in the 10 to 15K range.
Actually, one year where I hit 25K, I made a weekly goal chart because I was working on multiple projects, and that worked really well. I’m going to hunt that down and re-do it for this year right after this too.
Anyway, I hope everything is going well for you, squiders, and wish me luck!
