6 posts tagged “d'sil”

My final count:

40,086 / 50,000 (80.2%)

While I couldn't hit 50k because of my cold, at least I managed to make my lowered target of 40k.  It's still a greater rate of productivity than I've shown all year.  And what I've written during November has been of surprisingly high quality - not perfect, for sure, but not dire either. 

What have I written?  I had a plan for what I would write.  Naturally, I didn't entirely stick to it:

• Painted Angels = 6,078 words
  
• Our Green Fairies = no words
• D'sil short story = 7,498 words

And then...

• Bunia's Journal = 17,811 words
• Other short stories and edits = 8,613 words

I think my biggest regret is that I didn't write more PA, but I am glad I wrote what I did for it.  The book is very close to the end now - I think there are only a handful of chapters until it's done - and I need more time to plot out exactly how the final fight is going to go down. 

Bunia has been an... interesting... muse.  I really enjoyed writing her journal, and now it's sort-of done (I haven't posted the final entry yet because I don't like it all, so sorting that out is one of the first things I'll do when I next write) I can start planning out her novel.  I never do deep plans, but I want a little bit of planning on this one because it's a quest-of-sorts (she goes questing for an interesting piece of furniture, but the collapsing Serrian Empire gets in her way) so I need to make sure it doesn't get all rambly and long and crap.  I need to know when and how she goes from A to B, and I need to keep my narration succint and interesting.  Plus, I need to figure out what exactly D'sil is doing - okay, so I know he'll be working for conflicting people, as always, but I need to be a bit more specific than that.  So I intend to do a sort-of outline - which, probably, will get hacked to pieces in the process of writing the book, but heh.  At least I have a tentative title for the book: The Ephrebet Bed, which is the piece of furniture she goes questing for. 

I do intend to work on Our Green Fairies, I just realised it's not suitable Nano-fodder after all.  The descriptive narrative style demands time and thought, rather than blindly punching out words, as walking the fine line between descriptiveness and purple-ness is tough.  I also think I need to leave it a while longer to let the characters crystallise a little more in my head. 

My vague plan is to get PA done, and in the process of doing it maybe work on TEB's outline and perhaps a handful more short stories.  Then I'll need to edit PA, and once it's all shiny and shipped away to publishers I can work on the book that comes five years after it, Renegade Star, and also TEB and OGF.  I'm sure I'll start working on those while I'm editing PA, just for a change of pace, but heh. 

However, I suspect I won't get much writing done til the end of term, in two weeks' time.  That's because I have my floor manager exam next Friday, and I need to start hard-core revising for that today.  I also have two essays to do, and I need to apply for a job.  *shakes fist at reality*  Also, to be honest, I want to give writing a brief respite after the pressures of Nano.

All in all, Nano has been a productive and good venture, and I'm glad I did it.  And now, back to reality...

I am a little annoyed with the Nano counters I used in my previous posts.  I'd hoped they would continue to show my word count at the time I posted them but they actually update to show my current wordcount, which right now is...

10,115 words

Understandably, I am quite happy about this fact.  I fell behind yesterday, writing only 300 words to bring me to a total of 5,734.  This morning, lying in bed and feeling proud for waking up at 9.30, I finished the first draft of the longer, still-nameless D'sil story.  Then I wrote a whole chapter of PAINTED ANGELS.  But while working on PA, something... interesting... happened. 

Bunia prodded me.  I've been growing quickly used to this, so I was about to brush her aside in favour of Trifmara, but Bunia held her ground.  She informed me that when I write her novel, I should post it in a seperate vox account under her name, and that I should get said account right now before someone else steals her name. 

Sighing, I complied, and you can find the account - HERE!

I returned to PA, then I ate some dinner, and at the end of the PA chapter found myself less than 500 words from the target I had set myself of reaching 10k.  I decided to start penning a piece for On the Premises 1, but I was a mere paragraph into the story when Bunia smoothly stepped in my path with another declaration. 

While she accepts that I won't be starting on her novel any time soon (though I suspect I will be starting it sooner than I originally intended), she said that I should use the journal to write journal entries of what happens between TANSU and the novel.  Sighing once more, I was forced to comply.  The journal entry is in her blog, friends-locked.  To my delight it knocked me over my 10k target.

All in all, I am feeling quite satisfied with my Sunday.  I have a written a lot, and I even managed to fit in some university reading too.  Bunia is happy too, which certainly makes my life easier. 

Nano was definitely a good idea.  I haven't felt this productive in far too long. 

So far, so good, and that's up to the early hours of this morning.  I haven't written any in what I really consider today - I need to do some uni work first before I get stuck back into my story.  Aside from what I mentioned in my previous post, I've only been working on the longer D'sil story, currently untitled, and I intend to continue doing so until a first draft of it is complete because I headed back over to the website of the anthology I will submit it to and found that the deadline is earlier than I remembered: 15th December, not sometime in January.  Fortunately I know pretty much exactly what will happen - not the exact specifics of who says what, but a lot more than just bones - so I shouldn't have any trouble completing this.

Adding icing to the cake, Bunia has been nudging me.  About a week ago, or maybe less, Bunia and D'sil informed me by way of coy glances at each other that they wish to be in a novel together.  And here I thought their worlds were seperate!  Well, not any more, and I intend to write a novel in which Bunia goes on a quest to find an exciting piece of furniture and in which D'sil does.... stuff.  I don't know what yet.  So, with my attention focused on D'sil, Bunia has been getting a bit excited.  She is quite a vocal muse, but she needs to understand that I can't work on her novel yet because a) I have other things to do, like finish Painted Angels, and b) I don't really know what's going to happen in her novel.

Hopefully she will be temporarily placated by the extra bit of work I intend to put into her short story, Tansu, before sending it away to Fantasy magazine of the gorgeous covers.  I received some wonderful critique from the Lady of Buns and when I gain a greater lead over my Nano target I'll make the changes.  I aim to have sent Tansu away within a week's time. 

Yesterday, on kind of a whim, I decided to send off Digital Dialogue, a 600-word short story told only in dialogue that I wrote for an informal contest, to this magazine.  If it earns a string of rejections, or if a magazine gives me a personal rejection saying that it should be more than just dialogue, then I'll add non-dialogue narrative; at the moment I can't be bothered, and I don't see the harm in sending the thing off in the meantime.  I quite like it as just dialogue, anyway, but I suppose rejections will probably change my mind. 

Right. 

Must stop procrastinating, must get some uni reading done, and then I can get on with more Nano-ing!  And at some point I need to do some beta-ing.  I have fallen very far behind on that.  My apologies to Rhi, and also to the other two lovely ladies (who almost certainly won't be reading this blog, but heh); I will get round to it eventually. 

This November I will be participating in the wondrous Nanowrimo, the aim of which is to write 50,000 words of a novel in a month.  I'm going to bend that slightly.  Instead, I am going to write a total of 50,000 words in November, with those words falling into any of the following projects:

• Painted Angels. I would like to have a complete first draft by the end of 2006, after which I can spend a few months polishing it off before submitting it to publishers.
• Our Green Fairies.  This was originally going to be my Nano project but I realised I didn't want to limit myself to only one story.  However, I would still like to write something for this novel, so it remains in the Nano ranks.
• The short stories featuring D'sil.  They have deadlines of 15 and 31 January, meaning that I would like at least one polished and sent by the end of 2006.  I hate rushing, so they're Nano projects too.

Now that I have said in writing that I will do this, I will, or I'll kill my vague attempt at a social life trying. *grins*  I'm like that.  Earlier this year I said I'd give up chocolate for lent, not to please the god I don't believe in but to make my ex give up alcohol for lent, and even when he utterly failed to keep his side of the bargain I kept mind.  And a couple years back I said I'd eat only fruit for 5 days to support a friend who was going to do the same to lose a bit of weight, and even when she gave up after a day I still did it (well, except for the part where I figured going on a CCF overnight exercise and eating only fruit would probably kill me, so I ate the army ratpack on that).  If I say I'm going to do something, especially if it's something mildly stupid, I do it. 

November promises to be a productive month.  Only 2.5 days to go.

Sidenote:  Taking into account the clocks changing, I got 11 hours' sleep last night.  What the hell?  I do not need that much sleep!  Wasted time, wasted time.  Grr.

Sidenote 2:  Vox is playing silly buggers.  I posted this earlier, then edited it to correct a spelling mistake, after which it refused to appear on my blog page despite appearing on Rhi's neighbourhood page and the number of my October posts clarifying its existence.  Vox has also started not letting my type in the compose box unless I refresh the page.  

I'm stuck on PA again, though I'm not entirely sure why.  I'm getting to some good stuff now - finding out something very important, and then Trifmara's reaction to that.  And, soon, a big battle near Katina which will be followed by the final battle at Krak'vi. 

I think maybe I'm worried it's starting to drag a bit, that I should wrap it up faster, even though the sensible part of my mind says to just write the damn chapters and then go back and make changes.  Blegh.  It's probably just the same "getting towards the end" mental block I get when I approach the end of anything long - happened with my finished piece of mystery crap that will one day be totally reworked, and also with Statues. 

In the meantime, I've been working on short stories:

Statues - Still waiting for a response from Writers of the Future.  I reckon I'll hear from them January-ish, maybe later.  If they don't like it, I'll send it to Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine.

A Shade of Yellow - Still waiting to hear back from Sybil's Garage.  No news is, I hope, good news; a suggestion that they're having to think about what to do with my story.  If they reject it, I'll send to Apex Digest.

Tansu - This is finished and ready for submission, but I'm waiting for Sybil's Garage to respond because if they don't want aSoY then I'll send them this.  If not, I intend to send this to Shimmer.

Snowdrop - A flash fiction of 99 words, submitted to Flash Shot.  Still waiting for a response.

The Beautiful Collection - A fantasy short, just over 1,000 words, that I began in the summer and finished the other day.  I'm not completely happy with it yet, but when it's done I think I'll submit it to Midnight Street first. 

I'm also working on two pirate stories, one for Shimmer and one for Sails and Sorcery.  Both feature my latest muse, D'sil, a mercenary-pirate type.  He's certainly an interesting man to have around.  And my cross-dressing muse will have a short story of his own, but I can't figure out quite how to start it.  

My ambition is to have found a home for all of these stories by the time I submit PA to publishers. 

In the immediate future, November is nearly upon us, which means that Nanowrimo approaches...  I've pretty much decided to write a first draft of Our Green Fairies for this, simply because I feel that if I can get a first draft of it done, no matter how crappy it'll be, at least I'm one step closer to having another finished novel.

I am writing.  Just slowly at the moment. 

Browsing through specficmarkets again, looking for more anthologies seeking short stories. 

I've decided I quite like these things - when the ideas inspire me to write a short story, as with the Writers of the Future contest and the Red Light District anthology, writing them is a lot of fun.  And if I do succeed in any of these things, it's something good to put on my covering letter when I come to submit Painted Angels. 

I found one interesting one:

Sails and Sorcery - Stories must be between 3,000 and 9,000 words, and be about fantasy on the high seas.  Deadline is January 2007, responses will be mailed by February 15th 2007. 

Pirates!  I've always wanted to write a pirate story.  I'll need to brainstorm this one, but I intend to give it a try.