Writing accomplishments: Well… I didn’t quite get around to fixing chapter five of ALL ROCS (C2), but I did think about it and I decided I don’t need to rewrite it as much as just fix a few spots. So I continued my “read through + quick notes” editing pass. I should be done with it by tomorrow (or more realistically Wednesday since tomorrow is the Monday of the work-week plus Tuesday agility). Then I can go back and start messing with it.
Sunday 5/27/2018
Went to a write-in at the cupcake shop in Davis which YWC combined with a critique get-together. Fun was had by all and I almost started crying because I was laughing so hard at Elisabeth’s threat to start writing Fred/Nessa fanfiction.
Writing accomplishments: Suffered through the critique of the last two chapters of ALL ROCS (C2). (Just kidding. Everything was very positive.) Worked some more on the read-through with quick notes of the entire novel. Still planning on working on chapter five tomorrow. (Imagine that I’m Spock in that one episode with the caves where he’s screaming “The pain! The pain!” — that’s how I will look tomorrow, complete with ridiculous overacting.)
Egg Stand
(County Rd 99, south of Woodland)
Church With Oak
(Woodland Iglesia Adventista del Séptimo Día — 1st Street)
Sandblasting
(Alley near 4th & Oak)
Saturday 5/26/2018
Writing-related things: Re-read and critiqued the other submissions for the YWC meeting tomorrow. One is for a children’s picture book and I’m so far out of my depth on that one I’m pretty sure my critique is useless. I think for something like that all I can really do is offer encouragement. I still feel kind of bad I can’t offer anything helpful. Oh well.
I also started a read-through with quick notes for ALL ROCS (C2), trying to synthesize feedback I’ve had on it so far. Once I’ve made a pass through the entire thing, I’ll go back and start changing things. I still need to figure out what to do with the dreaded chapter five. I keep hoping the solution will just suddenly appear, but I suspect I’ll just have to try a bunch of things and see what works out.
Somewhat tangentially-related, I’m going to start posting pictures I’ve taken around Woodland. The series I’ve been working on takes place in a slightly modified Woodland, so I’ve always planned on posting them on this website. If I were a decent photographer it would be better. I’ll just try to pick the images where my finger isn’t visible…
Friday 5/25/2018
There’s a fine line between being proud of a book and being sick of said book because you’ve read it about twenty times while trying to edit it. A very, very fine line.
Writing accomplished: Outlined the first seven chapters of ALL GREMLINS (C1). So far I think everything is hanging together. Hopefully I’ll get in a few more chapters before I finish this evening. I also committed to turning in ALL ROCS to one of my writing groups in two weeks, which means I need to redo a chapter that just isn’t working this weekend. (The chapter has a bunch of emotional shit — not my strong point in life or fiction.) It’s a good thing I have Monday off.
Now I just need to figure out why comments aren’t getting emailed to me… Something to look into during my downtime.
Wednesday 5/23/2018
Writing accomplishments: I was not extraordinarily productive today, but I did get up early and smoothed over the chunk I wrote yesterday. I have come to the conclusion that I need to make an outline of what happens when because I’ve changed things so many times I’m not sure if things are being revealed after they’re already common knowledge. So that’s my plan for this weekend.
Bring Out Your Endive!
Not having a language in common means that occasionally my characters go through bouts of playing charades, except with no “4 syllables” or “sounds like”. My goal is to keep the reader from being bored or confused yet not make it seem too easy for the characters. Piece of cake. (Ha ha ha argh.)
Writing accomplishment: Made it through a rough draft of Fred explaining what Ash has done and why it might bring on the end of the world. I need to read it through again for coherence when I don’t have a headache.
Day job accomplishment: Got most of the framework going for the new website, including the LDAP calls to authenticate the user. My boss keeps bringing up the outdated logo on the old website, so I will add the new logo at some point and that will be his sign that I am making progress.
And a snippet of silliness, from a conversation involving a bunch of greens floating in water:
“I think,” John murmured, “we’re the spinach of the universe and the original roc color morphs were coming from whatever the other green stuff is.”
“You can identify hundreds of things at a microscopic level. How do you not know what chard is?”
“You wouldn’t know what it was either if Antonia didn’t stock your refrigerator.”
I couldn’t argue with that bit of truth.
Seeking Clarity
Sometimes it’s hard to focus because I’m just easily distracted, but sometimes there are other reasons.
Writing accomplishments: Fixed one argument, rewrote the last sentence, and uploaded the final two chapters of ALL ROCS (C2) for critique next week. (I thought I was one of the last ones, but then I found out a couple people had created folders but hadn’t uploaded anything yet. It’s all good though — there’s still another 24 hours before anything is officially late.) Scrivener and I were having a difference of opinion on chapter numbering — I wanted them to be chapters 11 & 12. Scrivener wanted to call them chapters 1 & 2 since that was all I was compiling. I love Scrivener, but sometimes… Worked a little more on ALL GREMLINS (C1) to clarify what’s going to destroy the world if Nessa & Fred don’t fix things.
There was one sentence that was bugging me tonight because the parts didn’t fit together. After rewriting it about ten times I finally just fixed it by deleting the whole thing. My new mantra: when in doubt, cut it out. (That works because C2 is 97k words so I have some word count to play with.)