It's been both a good week and a bad week It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
Anyway....
Actual Writing Done:
(Did I mention I was going to half my word goal while we're editing?)
Returning to Haven: 2,296
No Good Deed goes Unpunished: 1,936
Total Actual Writing Done: 4,232
Headwork and notes:
Outline for Vallel and Eleanore's relationship: 1,075
Administrative Stuff:
Re-did web site, set up new outline for In This Life or the Next: 2 hours
Editing on Book One: 3 hours
Total non-writing work: 1,075 words + 5 hours (equiv 2,500 words)
Total weekly work 7,807 (in words and hours)
Unfortunately, I can't really remember any more the actual details of starting the first novel. It seemed to me that we were almost 1/3 of the way into it before we even started saying the "n" word (that would be "novel", not whatever you were thinking!)
I'm feeling a little lost without anything remotely resembling a story-outline, and also because this story is loosely (very loosely!) based on a Hall plot that ran almost four years ago now. It was not a plot I was very involved with, and it mostly took place between Braz and Liz's characters. With Braz being Sir Not Appearing in this Novel, and my not being very involved at the Hall end of things, I feel a bit lost. I know we're changing a lot (LOTS and Lots) of stuff from the Hall Plot into the Novel Plot, but I still feel like I'm missing a lot of information that might help me feel more comfortable with the story. I'm pretty much ok with the whole Vallel/Eleanore relationship and how it's going to work, but that's what you might call the C-story. The Zoya/Marten/Masato crises being the A-story, and Masato's history being the B-story.
See, we also have this problem in that Liz has a life, and I, honestly, don't. I don't go out, I don't have a quote - real job - unquote. I don't have family that I spend loads of time with, and I don't have Christmas parties to go to for work. A lot of this has eaten into Liz's novel time, and while I don't blame her at all for it, it does sort of leave me out here dangling a bit.
We've chatted about it and we're just now starting to get outlines together. Leastways, there's a lot of Val/Ellie I can write, since that's mostly character driven and the actual events can be massaged around or into the bits. I have some direction to go in, at least.
And I'm doing some vague editting. Not really anything heavy-duty, but just purple-penning the adjectives and adverbs (as Liz and I have a love affair with the words faintly and lightly) and green-penning foreign words, as well as doing a little red-penning. Not too much, yet. Just very basic spelling, grammer checks and whatnot. I want to at least get a bit of opinion back from our test audience before I begin even thinking about major redrafts.
Although there is one part that I completely want to tear out and rewrite, where Loria explains her status as a priestess of Nacheyla that I want to alter quite a lot.
I'm feeling good about finishing the rough draft of novel one, but it does sort of leave me feeling a little... deflated. I don't know, it's sort of weird. I have learned a lot of things, though, over the last six months.
1) writing is work. don't let anyone tell you it's not, because it is. And there are days when it goes well and there are days when it sucks, just like any other job.
2) sometimes, the best thing to do is stop thinking and just write
3) sometimes, the best thing to do is walk away for a while
4) there is no way to tell the difference ahead of time