So, 2021 is gone. If I look back, the following had happened, good and bad, in writing life:
Rivals and Revels—all positive, really. I loved doing the whole ONC and turning it into a novel. Bummer that it was shortlisted but not won Watty. Its performance, with swimlane, was satisfactory.
Lone Werewolf—the biggest fiasco of 2021. My fixation on this book really stopped me from doing something more promising.
Mafia series. Trapped did as well as I had ever done on a book, but overall, I am about 70% happy about it. Raised went nowhere, but I will still edit and submit it to Watty.
To Marry a Dragon downright surprised me by being shortlisted for Watty, but I didn’t expect nothing, and I got nothing, neither reads, nor recognition for it.
Alchemical Bonds—I spent a month on it, and finished it, so not really a big deal. I am glad it’s finished, and I don’t have to think about it again. Ever.
Overall, I am both even more tired and even more resigned to going nowhere as a writer.
Started the second-to-last chapter. I also spent a bit of time to prep another potential chapter 1 preview for Nick’s reviews to see if there is any reason to prefer one over another. And, well, practice the dark art of Chapter 1. It’s a frustrating experience, because I feel that I have a good story to tell, but nobody understands it.
Sending you huggggss. You’ve got this! You’re a real fighter for all I know
My frustration is about being behind with my novella. I want to write longer as a novel, with more details, more room to wiggle, but I honestly don’t have the energy for that right now. I just want to get it done with.
I’m at 23k (10 chapters) still 6 more to write. I’ll probably hit somewhere between 35k-40k words in total when it’s done. Maybe I will just keep it short and fast-paced for now before taking my break. Then I can start the thorough editing for my big book to get it ready for smth bigger and just write offline or short stories in between.
I wrote only 250k words (roughly) last year, and I don’t know why I feel tired by the end of the year
Started putting BifL on my laptop, which means basic editing has to start: all because my 4G phone was upgraded to a non-Samsing and so the note app I was using isn’t on this phone.
I haven’t finished the thing, so it’s annoying me that I’m editing before ending. But then, it’s not major changes, just making sure that things are a bit more clear in the MC’s motivations.
And right behind that is CiaBG–whixh needs to be finished, too, but onto the laptop it goes.
It’s a bit different. I was trying to follow what I had learned from Cron, but I am overwriting it. I also try to answer too many questions in chapter 1, so I make it difficult to read by adding information that seems vital in. I think that I structure things logically, going from point A to point B to conclusion, but it is too hard to follow.
Basically, I lack the natural feel for what has to be there to make it easy to follow and immersive.
I’m trying to not get overwhelmed but I do have a lot of big projects. At the rate I’m going, it will take me years to finish them all and that just sucks because I have ideas for other projects which I’m holding off on.
There just aren’t enough hours in the day to tackle it all.
Currently, I’m still putting together what I wrote during nano. I’m making progress but it’s slow, especially in the incomplete scenes. I have a lot of scene snippets to sew in together and it’s such an unexciting process… And I keep pushing some of those snippets further into the story because they don’t fit in this scene but then later it will be too late, I need the set up.
Ugh… So annoying.
…
In other news, I’ve used Campfire for a while now and reached the limits of what can be done for free. I’m very tempted to buy lifetime access to a few modules but I’m trying to reign in my excitement.
The bottom line why I looked into it was to help me curb the madness of my complex story structure - a digital replacement for my index cards.
And as is, Campfire doesn’t do what I want.
Possibly nothing out there does.
On the other hand, Campfire is really cool for other things, like keeping track of characters, having your own encyclopedia and overall cool organization. And they keep developing the product, so one day it might do what I want.
A danger of using it is that I’m having fun using it and could fall into the trap of forever tweaking my projects instead of writing them. That’s why I don’t think I’d use it to actually write, only to organize.
That might need more a “business editing” than anything. Only good thing about that English class was that while others encouraged you to use long diatribes for word count and plain ostentation, the foucs shifts to getting rid of anything that does nothing for the focus of the letter.
Sometimes that keeps me from going off the rails. shrugs
I feel this. And then when some of those hours are taken up by Dave&Ava blared loud enough to wake the dead, I’ve got wasted hours where I can’t do jack but go nuts.
If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t think that one chapter Nick said was overwrought you submitted to him was (I think I might have agreed with some of his other notes, but I thought the prose was fine). Granted, I also make a point of writing in a more ornate style than the average Wattpad book, which is a barometer he’s more likely to have in mind, but I do remember thinking that specific complaint was unjustified.
No, the problem is, the way I see it upon reflection, is that I tried to focus on two things. The family conflict/relationships and her feelings toward the corpse/future replicant. I need to take out everything that relates to the replicant and focus only on the family’s conflict and the crime they are committing.
I checked one of Brown’s from the library to see his pacing.
I’m enjoying writing him a bit too much.