Fresh when it gets here from
Julie Barrett
Friday, November 3, 2006
Yes, it's the end of the week, and I'm behind as usual, even though it's been a somewhat productive day.
I'm behind on my NaNo count, but I've got some things outlined, so I hope to get on them in about an hour. This morning, though, I noticed that the light at the park down the street was amazing, so I came home, grabbed my gear, and headed back to the park. I spent an hour and a half shooting, and ended up with five that I'll post over on the shopping site as soon as I get the chance. The picture o' the day will be from that shoot.
Ran by Starbucks to warm up with some coffee and chat with the coffee group. Unfortunately I had very little time as I had to get back home and get some work done for a client and get a start on laundry.
So how goes NaNo? Well, I'm not happy with the story. Not one bit. Still, I've decided that this is an exercise to reach a word limit within a deadline, no matter how horrid the writing may be. I have a funny feeling that as I log more BIC ("butt in chair") time that the manuscript will improve.
This means that I have given myself permission to write like crap. This is a big cringe-inducing moment for me, because I tend to write a little then edit a LOT, then write a little more, and so on. But I can't do that if I want to make the goal. This may be the "under the bed" novel, and right now I'm fine with that. As I said, I'm doing this for the exercise.
Yesterday's writing session was an exercise in frustration. It was an early release day at school (out at noon) and I only managed about 700 words. We stopped for food, ate, and then I got back to work. This is one of those days when things just didn't go as planned: The hard drive on Chris' computer started to die. Oops. This is one of those cases when we really had to drop everything. I didn't want him to lose his data, which included homework and other projects. So we ran down to Fry's and then spent almost half an hour making a decision. Ugh. How hard could it be? I left him to it while I shut the door to the office and cranked out another 1300 words. Yep, I managed 2000 words before 5:00, which I thought was doing pretty well.
As wrote the last couple hundred words, I realized that I had not done nearly enough world building, and that more notes were going to be a necessity. I stopped and created character and object cards as well as cards to describe various "how the world works" tidbits. They're all stuck to the door for easy reference. I have a feeling that soon I'll have more cards than will fit on the door, so I'm trying to decide if I want to do a spreadsheet or a small database or just a text file. I'll have to think about it. At any rate, I need these facts available so I don't have to search the manuscript to make sure I've got a name right. Or even worse, I don't want to have a plot point fall apart down the road because I forgot that object X worked in a particular way.
Once I get more of that worked out then hopefully writing will continue apace. It had better!
I'll post today's picture, then it's back to laundry, then time to get the kid, then back for serious BIC time. Have a good weekend!
Tags:
Photography, Writing