Progress: 29 September, 2009

[kaasirpent]

I haven't written any new scenes, but since it is Tuesday and I had to edit what I'm taking to my writers group tonight, I thought I'd post a progress bar. The 62 new words represent a bunch of words deleted, more added, some changed, etc. The scene went from 981 words to 1042. It uses the word 'he' 50 times. Which means it needs more editing. :)

Project working title: Necromancer New words: 62 Current total words: 15424 Goal: 60000

Reason for stopping: I'm only editing, and I stopped when I felt like it was more or less ready for prime time. Also, lunch was over.

Notes:

1. I'm stuck at a scene I know has to happen, but I don't know where to put it. So I'm trying to write the basics in such a way that I can add details of setting and stuff later. That way, I can move past the block and keep writing.


2. I've been thinking about NaNoWriMo a lot. I haven't come up with anything concrete, yet, other than that it will be set in the same universe as Necromancer. If I can somehow talk myself into writing 45,000 more words in October, I might actually finish Necromancer before NaNoWriMo. Yeah. That'll happen.

Comments

[feuervogel]

I am slightly jealous of your word count. I recently broke 10,000 (target 90k), and I'm stuck in the section where not much happens -- which means I need to add subplots, invent trickery, or find ways to show characterization until they get to the destination, where the actual actiony plotty part happens.

(I am also jealous of your writing group.)

[kaasirpent]

This is the first story in a long time that I'm feeling the flow of enough to make decent progress on the word count, so I'm happy about it. I'm going to have to come back through and develop some sub-plots, too. I have one, but I think there should be another one or two. This one's a mystery, so I have little clues to drop in each scene.

My Tuesday night writing group is a good bunch, if a bit weak in sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. One or two published in poetry or "Chicken Soup for the ______ Soul" type of things, but it's way better than me, so I don't pooh-pooh it.

I have another group, too, that only meets once per month, and they're quite good, too. And the one on Second Life which is also very good, but I'm not active in that one, right now. They meet every other Monday for critiques. :)

[feuervogel]

I've only found one writing group in my area, and it only meets once a month at the same time as my taiji class. My priorities are with my shifu, in that fight.

Though I met someone through the interwebs who lives in my town, through a strange twist of coincidence. Maybe she'd be up for meeting over coffee every couple weeks. I just have to work up the nerve to ask :/

[kaasirpent]

Come to our Second Life group. If you're free on Monday nights from 9 to 10 and have time to critique four 1000-word selections every two weeks, you're welcome to join us. Alternate (non-critique) weeks we still meet, but for socializing, not critiquing, but it's still usually writing-related. :)

Several of the group are published authors, and Mike Stackpole is tangentially associated with us, as well.

If you decide to do so, I'm "Sathor Chatnoir" on Second Life. IM me and I'll help you get oriented. :)

[feuervogel]

I've never set up Second Life. My desktop would probably choke on it (it's one of the last pre-Intel Macs, so ca spring '05), but the MacBook would fare better no doubt. That's only a bit over a year old.

Since Heroes moved to the same time as House (:P), 9-10 Monday is now free. And with this not working thing, well, I have tons of time. How are the crit pieces selected - by rotation?

[kaasirpent]

Crits are submitted by midnight on the Wednesday preceding a critiquing Monday. We do all of this on a Google group. If you come to the meeting and like us, you can ask to join in the critiquing and just leap in with both feet after Graegor or Luta (their Second Life names) approve your entry into the Google group.

The critiques are done by the order they're submitted. Each person critiques the next four people who submit, and it wraps, so the last person critiques the first four. This way there are always at least four critiques of your story, and you do at least four every time you're in the rotation. You can also critique other people, but the "next four" rule is the only strict one. And nothing is to stop people who have not submitted something for critique to crit the submissions of the people who did.

There is a limit of 1000 words per submission. This is small, but it's to keep the amount of reading we have to do to a minimum. I've submitted up to 1300 words because there was no good place to break near 1000, and people will joke about stopping at 1000 and just not critiquing the last 300 words. (But they usually do. :)

The critiques are submitted to the same Google Group, and everyone can see your crits of others' works. On the Crit Nights, we discuss the stories...and other things.

I believe there is also the "Please critique my novella" type of thing, and there's no formal setup as to who "has to" critique it or not. It's purely voluntary since 8000 - 17000 words take a hell of a lot longer to read than 4000. :)

I adored this group last year during NaNoWriMo because we were all good-naturedly competing with each other on word-count, including having some speed competitions. Fifteen of the eighteen of us who participated ended up "winning" NaNoWriMo.

[feuervogel]

That sounds interesting, if slightly intimidating! Considering the first grand of my current WIP are ... not ready for prime time and the thought of revising them makes me grumph at the moment (because I'm having more fun plowing on and don't want to go back to the beginning yet), I'm apprehensive. What if it's another month or two before I have anything to put in the crit queue? My writing process (if I can be considered to have such a thing) is scattered, and my first draft is very skeletal - little description, few of the inner thoughts and expository things that would have it make sense. I add them in revisions.

[kaasirpent]

Well, this is why I'm not active at the moment. My current WIP is flowing so nicely, I don't want to take the time to tweak the first bit when that--and the critiquing--would take time away from continuing chapter 6. :)

You could try coming to a meeting without critiquing--quite a few people do that. The conversations are usually quite engaging, and it would give you an idea what to expect if you did decide to join the critiquing. For myself, I find just hanging out with people to whom talking about writing is the norm rather refreshing. :)

[feuervogel]

That makes sense :) Hmm, I need to come up with a screen name.