6 posts tagged “journal of a furniture shop owner”
My final count:
(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...
At Rhi's prompt I finally got around to uploading the backlog of Bunia's journal entries, including the one I finished off today which contains a sex scene. :S Because I usually fade to black pretty early on in such scenes, I'm always nervous about writing them out in full, and this is the longest one I've ever written. While I do know to avoid daft euphanisms, and my own sexual experience means that I won't make stupid mistakes about the basic mechanics of the act, I nonetheless don't know if my writing will be good enough. I want it to be a little hot, but don't want it to look like I was trying too much to make it hot - natural, then; a natural representation of what the viewpoint character (first-person narrator in this instance) was feeling.
In this case, it's one of the moments where I think I stretch the realism of this being someone's journal entries. Back when I wrote a journal of my own I never felt inclined to detail the sex I was having (instead I was angsting about my woeful life, along with a million other teenagers with equally woeful lives... as Bunia is 24, she doesn't angst all that much), but maybe some people do. I intend to slip a comment into one of the earlier entries, saying she has a very good memory that allows her to remember the details of conversations (again, another moment where I stretch the realism of the journal format), but would she remember the details of sex? I don't know.
This whole issue of the journal realism is one reason I'm considering self-publishing the entries when they're done. For one, they're likely to be too long for almost all magazines, but too short for novel publishers - currently 16k and counting. And this dubious realism of the journal entries means I think it'd be a tough sell. While I could convert it to basic first person, or even third person, I like the journal format as something different from everything else I write, and would have to rewrite some bits so they felt less like summaries of recent events. I'll see what I feel like when it's done, and I do think it will be done in the near future. There's another brief entry to upload, and then we get back to some non-sex plot. *snerk*
My Nano count is up to 37328, so it looks like I'll be able to push it
over 40k before the end of the month. I still don't think it will
make it up to 50k, if only due to time constraints. Still feeling
a bit ill today, but tomorrow I really need to start writing an essay
and start revising for my floor manager exam. Grr.
(50.3%)
I'm back on target! *dances*
This is thanks to my wonderful muse Bunia, who has been spilling her story to me like floor-length hair falling free from a clasp. When I started her journal at the beginning of the month, I never intended to write so much so quickly. Now I have written 6 entries (one of which was 3 parts long) and I think there is still at least as much to go, in terms of word count, before I reach its end.
The other day I considered self-publishing the entries when they're done, simply because I felt they don't have a strong enough plot to get professionally published but I'd like to get them out there. Now, further in, I think maybe they will have a strong enough plot for me to at least attempt submitting them to the few magazines that take longer short-stories. Right now the entries total a bit over 6k, which already makes them too long for most mags. If they fail professionally, then I'll still consider self-publishing them. Could be fun.
In other news:
Went to see my friend Hajar sing at The Blag Club in Notting Hill this evening. She has a wonderful voice, in a very classical style (rather than a rock-voice, or punk-voice). Annoyingly a lot of people in the bar/club were talking through her set, but I loved her anyway.
Speaking of music, I'm hooked on this song at the moment:
Hell, speaking of awesome songs, here's another one:
Set the Fire to the Third Bar by Snow Patrol, featuring a lady with a wonderful voice whose name has temporarily slipped my mind. Anyway, listen and love.
And now, back to Bunia. The next entry will be a long 'un, because a lot of stuff happens between her more recent entry and when she could get her hands on some writing materials again. Dun dun DUN.
Sometimes muses can be a pain. They interrupt my thoughts in the midst of uni reading, essay writing, revision, exams, driving, work; name a time when I cannot write and they will demand that I write anyway.
But sometimes, sometimes they are a blessing, more beautiful than a kitten playing with a butterfly (assuming, that is, the kitten doesn't eat the butterfly. That's less beautiful).
In my last post I wrote about not being able to find words. And then what happens?
Bunia slides into my mind, slips her fingers into mine, and I write just over a thousand words of her journal (reaching the 14th's target) and am left with a reasonable sense of where it is going.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I will finish the journal entries during Nano, and that I will then begin Bunia's novel. But I don't mind. Writing about her is a joy.
It's nice to know that she's happy enough in my head to help me out like this. *smiles*
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17,012 /
50,000 (34.0%) |
With the completion of a second journal entry for Bunia - available HERE - my Nano count has sneaked above today's target. Hooray!
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.
