These past few weeks, I’ve been killing myself trying to write Ashes of the Starry Sea. I’ve made some good progress, as you can see on the sidebar. Today I broke 200 pages. Not too bad. However, the pace has just been killing me. 4k words per day is something I can do…but 4k words… Continue reading Goal shift for Ashes
Category: Bringing Stella Home
Bringing Stella Home 1.1 is finished
A few minutes ago, I finished the rough draft of Bringing Stella Home. This is my third completed novel. Huzzah! It needs a ton of work, too…there’s no way I’m going to let this thing see the light of day, not until I finish the second draft. In fact, I should probably set down tomorrow… Continue reading Bringing Stella Home 1.1 is finished
Heaven’s library
2,943 words today, even though today was the first day of Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers. I’ve reached the major climax of the book–the moment I’ve been replaying over and over in my head. Perhaps this novel is not as bad as I’d thought–perhaps I can pull this off. The current incarnation is terrible,… Continue reading Heaven’s library
Outlining for a discovery writer
I’m almost finished with the rough draft of Bringing Stella Home, but I can’t shake the feeling that this draft really sucks and is full of holes. Part of that is probably that I wrote the whole thing out of the top of my head. The only part that I really took the time to… Continue reading Outlining for a discovery writer
Fine tuning and David Gemmell ROCKS!!!
With Danke’s help, I’ve tweaked the site yet some more: updated the header image, put in the site description under the title, moved the comments link at the bottom of each post (where it really belongs–having it at the top is confusing), etc. Now, the site is even better than ever! All this playing around… Continue reading Fine tuning and David Gemmell ROCKS!!!
Breaking 90k and other mundane excitements
(I almost always have trouble figuring out titles for these blogs posts. I mean, my writing life isn’t all that exciting–I just write. Check out my study abroad blog from last year for true (if old) excitement). I broke 90k words in Bringing Stella Home today. According to my goal of 120k, that’s the 3/4 mark.… Continue reading Breaking 90k and other mundane excitements
The second wind of inspiration
The more I write, the more I’ve come to realize that in order to finish a novel, you have to rediscover something powerful about the story that motivates you to tell it. The thing that motivates you to start the story is rarely the thing that drives you to finish it. Around the second half… Continue reading The second wind of inspiration
13,837 words in a day?
Yeah, that’s right. Believe it or not, I barreled through about 13,837 words today. That’s thirteen THOUSAND, not thirteen hundred. Now, only about a thousand of that was new stuff that I was writing. Most of the rest of it was rearranging scenes that I’d already written, touching them up only a tiny bit. I… Continue reading 13,837 words in a day?
Ugh. Just ugh.
Man, it was hard to write. So hard, I only just finished, and it’s 1:30 am. Ugh. The reason it was hard was because the character’s reactions in this scene needed to be totally revamped. That also necessitated a complete shift in the structure of the writing, because the rough draft consisted almost entirely of… Continue reading Ugh. Just ugh.
Getting into it
Three days into Bringing Stella Home 1.1 and I’m really getting into it. I’ve reworked the first and second chapters a ton. It’s coming along surprisingly well, considering I was just about ready to throw in the towel a month ago. So far I’m over 12,000 words into the story, which shows up on the progress bar as… Continue reading Getting into it