Scriniary

Links:

•Links to various free SF sites

Shameless self-promotion:

•How to format a manuscript for an online critique group.

Writing Summary:

Goals for the week:
Finish unstickynoting ch 11-15 - maybe half?
Go over the notebook notes for ch 4-10
Go over crits for ch 1-3 – half done, but haven’t started any edits yet.
Do some reviews (have at least 2 to return) – Did 1.

That list appears deceptively short, looking back on it. Spent a lot of time on two notes: “Does this do enough to show why Jessa cares?” and “Does it make the reader care?” Both required planting things all the way back to ch 2. With luck the answer to both is now Yes.

This week:
Finish unstickynoting ch 11-15
Finish ch 1-3
Type ch 4-10
Notebook notes for ch 11-15

The notes for 11-15 aren’t so bad; I’ve already dealt with most of them. (Maybe I can get a head start on ch 17, which has a two page essay on “something’s wrong and i don’t know what”….)

Filed by scriniary at 5:54 pm under Uncategorized, Writing
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Added a random isearan word generator and a list of a few of my writing-related articles to the website.

Also updated the site’s main page with more links, including Digg and Associated Content.

Redid a bunch of the css.

Still to come: adding piles of research notes and recipes.

Filed by scriniary at 12:17 pm under Site Changes
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Links:

• (Humor) Helpful advice in the event of terrorist attacks. I like the one with the blaring radio.

• Via anghara, daily diversions for writers (comics)

• How to Move Posts from LiveJournal to WordPress is my first article for Associated Content. (Paid more than the cup of coffee I’d expected.) I really should finish backing up my old LJ posts someday.

Writing Summary:

Last week’s goal:
Revise more: through ch 10 (except for dealing with the scene that might need cut).

What I did:
• Dealt with the scene that needed cut. Had to move four bits of description elsewhere — I tend towards sparseness so can’t afford to lose any. Two bits went to a scene where I’d cut some boring bits, and the other two went to a scene that had previously been set in a place I’d been setting far too many scenes. Hopefully it is now more interesting.
• Unstickynoted [1] ch 4-10
• Dealt with some notebook notes for ch 4-10
• Started unstickynoting ch 11-15

[1] unstickynote - Look at each page of the manuscript and make all corrections marked with sticky notes. Generally these are smaller (or at least scene-specific) things. Larger concerns are scribbled in a notebook.

This week:
Finish unstickynoting ch 11-15
Go over the notebook notes for ch 4-10
Go over crits for ch 1-3
Do some reviews (have at least 2 to return)

Unstickynoting is easier than dealing with the notebook notes, which is why I put those off last week.

I’m not going to finish this before March like I wanted, probably, but I’ll see how close I can get.

On the one hand I feel like I’m wasting my time (first novel, why bother fixing it again, better to write a new one). On the other hand, I think I’m getting a good return on my time as far as quality goes.

Filed by scriniary at 6:30 pm under Uncategorized, Writing
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Links:

• Tobias Buckell tells how he got his freelance career started.

• Dvorak update: I know all my letters and lots of punctuation. Friday afternoon I made the switch entirely. I type verrrry slowly now; it’s annoying, but I had to switch bc my fingers were getting confused. And it’d be good to stop hitting ctrl-q when I mean ctrl-x. At least OpenOffice asks me to confirm that I want to quit.

Goals for the week:

Revise a lot.
Try to get Chs 1-3 ready for critique.
Do two critiques.

Writing Summary:
I’ve been revising. Not much interesting to say. Chapters 1-3 are up for review on the OWW. I’ve also handled random sticky notes throughout the book.

This week:
Revise more: through ch 10 (except for dealing with the scene that might need cut). That’ll give me a week to do the next 10 chapters and a few days for other stuff (like crits)

Filed by scriniary at 7:36 am under Uncategorized, Writing
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x-post from LJ

Misc:

• Jenny Rappaport has some interesting things to say about query letters.

In the comments, someone asked her about mentioning higher education degrees. That’s something I’ve never even thought about including. If it’s not strictly relevant, I don’t see why anyone would care. “I became interested in writing about research students at a university while pursuing graduate study in physics.” Just not relevant.

Now, if I wrote science fiction rather than fantasy, or fantasy about materials science, that’d be different. Or if I wrote books set in modern times, I could pull up the other degree/career. (Someday I’m going to write a murder mystery involving the perils of installing sidewalks in a subdivision that doesn’t want them.)

Do you guys include your education or career experience? Is it relevant?

• Dvorak update: I know almost all my letters (the top two rows – I still can’t type my name) and some punctuation. Though I’m not too fond of having the ‘ and ” key where the qwerty’s q is. We’ll see.

Writing Summary:

I’ve decided to reduce the number of soldiers that show up at Jessa’s inn in Chapter 1. While reading through to check all the times I referred to their number, I found these lines:
Page 15: “There must have been at least fifteen of them.”
Page 17: “Seventeen against three. I like those odds.”
Page 20: “…killed twenty men.”
Good thing they didn’t run into those guys on page 354; my characters wouldn’t have stood a chance against so many men.

I’ve dug through chapters 1-3 to see where I can tighten things up a bit. Chapter 2 has the most potential for shrinkage. That’ll be tomorrow’s task, though; for now I’m declaring myself done for the night and am going to go read.

Filed by scriniary at 12:47 pm under Writing
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I’ve been rereading Lost Magic, partly to take notes for the book I’ve been working on (which is a sequel), and partly to decide how much is wrong with it and how fixable it is. And if I thought it was worth fixing.

The good news is, most of it’s fixable, and I think I have good ideas for doing so. (I’d have been worried if I couldn’t find anything wrong with it after two years.) And I still love the book.

There are a lot of spots with minor wording issues, just a slight awkward feeling on the sentence level. The first three chapters need tightening (which I knew two years ago, but didn’t see how to do it). And there’s a superfluous scene in chapter 10. I like the scene, it does some good things for the worldbuilding, but not enough for plot or anything else, and it doesn’t fit with its surroundings. I can steal many of the descriptive bits for an earlier scene and kill this one.

There are a few larger issues that are fixable, and one that I’m not so sure about. There was something that started bothering me before chapter 16 (and stopped bothering me before chapter 19). I think I have an idea for what to do about it, but hm. We’ll see.

And description. It’s still sparse, I suspect, but I can’t tell. I visualize the scenes as much now as I did when I wrote them, as much as I do when I read other people’s books, and so I still don’t notice how much is on the page. I’m just not going to worry about it.

So, how’d I do on my January writing goals? I’d wanted to finish the first draft of Seliveon’s book, but I got stuck at the beginning of the end, as usual. But since I’ve made good progress at starting the rewrite and I reread the previous book, I’m going to call that a success.

For February, the plan is to fix Lost Magic one last time. I’ll put the first three or so chapters up on the OWW when they’re ready (they’ll be called Trapped Magic then; I’m changing the title). I’d also like to make “significant progress” on Sel’s book. Whether that’s more first draft or more second draft doesn’t really matter. And I should fix Lost Magic’s query letter and synopsis, too.

Filed by scriniary at 12:46 pm under Writing
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