Category Archives: Writing

Carrots

I began editing down and rearranging Chapter 8 of ESTC today. I took things out and added other things in, and I’ve got pretty much the same amount of words that I began with. More carrots, though, so that’s an improvement. (Carrots are the new measurement of how close to being finished a piece of writing is, after a discussion among friends of how inadequate word count alone is at reflecting completion started by Ceri. More carrots mean the piece is closer to being complete, including thinking and research and polishing and so forth.) Alas, carrots do not render down to a neat little summary the way word count does. So this paragraph will have to do to satisfy posterity.

I left Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro to percolate for a few days, and went back to it tonight. This is still at the stage where word count reflects progress, because it’s about getting the story down in words, and so:

Total word count, Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro: 27,423
Total words today: 2,312

I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I’m aiming for this to be around 60K words long, 70K max, as it’s a YA historical. So it’s roughly about a third of the way there. Not a third of the way done in terms of carrots, however, only word count. Although most of the broad planning for this novella is done, I won’t know how many carrots there are until the first draft is finished. Or I may have a better idea where things stand carrot-wise once I’ve written this second major part of the story, as the third part will be the aftermath.

All in all, a very good day.

Back To Work On The Book That Will Probably Not Be Known As ESTC

I just got the MS back for the spiritual pregnancy book, with the assurance that it feels good and hits the general mark at which I was throwing the ideas.

I am one huge sigh of relief. The problem with being the first to write a book on a particular topic is that you have zero context in which to place it.

I now have two weeks to tweak it and add the things that resolved in my brain the week after I submitted it. And I’ll try to lose another three thousand words or so, to get it closer to the target MS length. Some time away from it has already helped my perception of the work, for which I am truly thankful.

While I do that, we’re trying to come up with alternate titles because marketing’s concerned about the obscurity of the main title. I’m hoping that working on the MS will get my mind going on that too, because over the weekend I drew a complete blank on the problem.

The General Novemberity Wearing Me Down

Matthew Cheney made me laugh today.

If you write about the weather, use as many adjectives as you can, or else your nouns will wilt and become adverbs.

Some coaches insist adverbs are stronger than nouns, but an independent panel of statisticians has proved otherwise. Despite appearances, though, statisticians don’t like nouns so much as they adore conjunctions.

The whole list of deliberately obtuse writing rules can be found here. And I found them via Justine.

Liam had a terrifying asthma attack late Wednesday night, triggered by a coughing fit in bed. The coughs compounded, and his bronchial tubes constricted, and then he started crying because he was upset and scared, and the whole thing just snowballed and got worse and worse. We finally got a shot of his inhaler contents into him after a struggle, which was surprising on its own because he usually loves his little mask, but he was having so much trouble breathing because he was coughing and crying that he wouldn’t let us put the mask up to his face. It took a while to get him to calm down enough to even give him a single breath of the medication, and then he still sounded awful all night. I lay awake all night listening to him over the monitor, and dealt with anxiety attacks the likes of which I haven’t had in about eight years, sourced only partially by the worry about the decision to not take him to the hospital. I hate this time of year. It’s wet, and damp, and there isn’t enough sunlight, and this year seems worse than others, somehow. I got quite ill the next morning, which didn’t help. HRH stayed home because neither Liam nor I were going to be able to handle the day otherwise, neither of us being very user-friendly or even available at times. I felt much better by the end of the afternoon. And I even made cookies, lovely excellent cookies from a newly tweaked recipe, which very closely resemble cookies from a long-gone bakery I used to visit now and again. (Basic shortbread ingredients and proprotions, being sure to use icing sugar instead of granulated, add one egg, plus loads of chocolate chips; chill for two hours; roll and bake. Once the fuses in the oven have been replaced, that is. You mightn’t need to do that last bit.)

But I had a wonderful, wonderful night of sleep last night, and a lovely outing this morning. I was dropped off at daycare with Liam and spent some time playing with him, his caregiver, and one of the other kids. I’ve missed this, since HRH has taken over the boy-chauffeuring job. I got to see Liam open the rabbit’s cage and lean in gently to kiss him, and Boo reach his fuzzy little nose up to kiss him gently back, several times. It was exquisitely cute, and did wonders to soothe the soul of Novemberity/sick/bad sleep ravages. Then I took the metro back and walked to the mall, picked up some sweaters for me and new PJs for the boy, and bussed home. The weather may be overcast but it’s so lovely and warm. It was a good day for an outing.

Since I’ve had the whole day to myself on Liam’s daycare days I’ve been trying to work as soon as he leaves, and this week has proven to me that I shouldn’t even sit down at the computer until after lunch. If I do, then the morning gets wasted anyhow, and I feel upset because I haven’t accomplished any work and half the day is gone. Well, at least I gave it a chance. From now on, the morning is for music and reading and walks. The afternoon is for work. If that’s how my brain has to separate things, then that’s how it’s going to happen. I get exactly the same amount of work done if I sit here for eight hours or three, so why force myself to be here for those first five if I can put them to other practical use?

Now I have web work to do.

Novella Update

Total word count, Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro: 25,111
Total words Monday: 2,380

This part is taking a lot longer to explore than I expected it to, and it’s growing unwieldy and out of proportion with the rest of the novella as a result. I may just stop writing it and jump to the next event. This one is going to have to be broken down, focused, and interspersed with the others in order to give it the correct rhythm, and I can’t properly do that until there are others with which to give it context.

Cautiously Optimistic

Well, today I don’t feel like passing out when I stand up. This is a definite improvement over yesterday.

For the purposes of appeasing posterity, a.k.a. my future need to check my records:

Total word count, Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro: 22,731
Total words Monday: 1,275
Total words Tuesday: 2,340

Things have generally continued being less than stellar in the rest of my life. But at least there are new pages in the novella.

Drawback

The only problem with writing historical-based fiction:

typetypetypetypetype — pause

Q: Wait — damn. Did Albinoni actually write a Gloria? Even more specifically, did he write one before this point in time?

A: Maybe? Difficult to prove since very few of his works were actually published, meaning that most were lost. I can get away with saying that yes, there was a minor Gloria written by Albinoni for the purposes of my narrative. Also, I have just discovered that he was rather fond of the oboe, which suits one of my characters rather well.

I think I’m going to go out for a walk, before the apocalypse-like flood hits late this afternoon.

Novella Update

I’ve had a less than stellar weekend, so this has gone far towards ending it on a better note.

Total word count, Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro: 19,116
Total words today: 3,060

I wrote a thousand this afternoon before heading out to my in-laws’ for dinner (an outing that Liam cut short), and evidently I just wrote another two thousand after he went to bed. I went back and filled in one of the [bridge] sections that needed to be written, but for which I had no plan last week. Time is good thing; it allows ideas to circulate in the subconscious, to emerge when ready. I do something very similar when I write non-fic: if I stall on one section, I move on and pick another section to write, marking where I left off with a vague note as to what ought to go there when I’m in the correct headspace and/or have a clearer idea of what to say, and how to say it.

It’s a good thing that I’m writing historical fiction, and can’t deviate from what I know happened. Otherwise my male protagonist and that young charming sympathetic female character who insinuated herself into the story would be falling in love, because it would be incredibly easy to do the way this story is going. It would be dreadfully cliched, and the temptation to succumb to it would be fierce. Fortunately the scandal is avoided by the simple fact that history demonstrates that nothing of the kind occurred, leaving the novella thankfully unmarked by indignity.