Soz

Right, well, I need to start with an apology for leaving it so long between posts. I'm going to blame Christmas.
I went home for a few days and had fun with my sibs, and should be back in leicester tomorrow.
My spangly BlackBerry is broken right now;they are sending me a new batterry, but I'm still not getting any of my emails. Sigh.

Writing is Hard

Writing is not fun. Let me elaborate: Coming up with an idea is fun, plotting a story is fun, talking about it for hours in a coffee shop or pub is fun. Writing the thing is so hard sometimes I sometimes contemplate deleting the whole file on my hard drive, or giving the whole thing to somebody else and screaming "just fix this!" at them until they reassemble my words in an appropriate order.

So as you may have guessed, I'm back working on Inter Vivos. I'm writing chapter two at the moment. I say "writing", when really I'm typing vague words that transition my character from infancy to puberty. Urgh! A lot happens in those years but it's not important plot stuff, it's important character stuff (and red herring stuff) and so some of it may go in the final edit, but I can't edit something that's not even written, can I?

Actually, I had a better time writing this chapter than I have had previous when trying to work on IV. I think the main thing I've figured out is to firstly work out what I need to include in this chapter, then start in a blank document, and type it out, without reference to what I've written before, without trying to save my favourite paragraph that I wrote 2 years ago.

It's almost Christmas, and I can't wait. I'm at work until Wednesday, then I'm off until 5th January. Yay! This does mean that I really have no excuse for not finishing the short story that I've started. It would be so great to start the new year with something good enough to sell. Will keep you posted.

Global Warming

I've been trying to embed a video into my blog, and I can't work out how to do it, so here's the YouTube link: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=h4focttTjOw
The video is not particularly good, but I've been trying to research what the world would be like "after Global warming", as it were. This is all part of my world-building exercise for Inter Vivos. Does anyone know anywhere I can get some good "after" information from? I'm specifically interested in the effects on the Mediterranean.

Urgh. Inter Vivos isn't going so well at the moment. The first few chapters are pants, but I don't know what to do or how to start it to make it all better. Can I just start at chapter three and tell the rest in retrospect? My brain hurts.

Post-NaNo Plan

Right, so this is my attempt at making myself a masterplan. Goal: Finish a book. Target Deadline: February 2009.

The thing is, now that I've crossed the hurdle of finishing a first draft of a novel not once but three times, the thing that scares the crap out of me most is the editing process. Or rather, revising what I've written to make it good enough to show to people whose opinions I actually care about. Inter Vivos is about 50,000 words long right now, and needs to be about 90,000. Dorcas is 50,000, but as it's a children's book, it doesn't need to be much longer.

Trying to revise a novel feels like trying to scale a huge mountain. And you reach a peak, and you feel good, but then you look up and there's still hundreds of miles to go to get to the top, and then you get vertigo and have to sit down for a while...

So, through the NaNoWriMo forums, I found this website: http://www.hollylisle.com/fm/Workshops/one-pass-revision.html and reading it, it actually makes quite a lot of sense. So I'm going to give it a go. What's the worst that could happen, right? I think that at least if I have a guide, it won't feel like I'm climbing that mountain on my own, and if I get stuck, hopefully this will help me.

I'm also going to try to finish a short story I've been working on by Christmas, so I can start to send it to slush piles everywhere in the New Year.

This is the plan anyway. I need to do this, I really do need to be more disciplined and motivated. Wish me the best of luck!