Ruddy weather!

[erastes]

I turned off the storage heaters because of the hot weather the past few days and this morning the sun has disappeared and it’s COLD. *dons jumper*

Don’t forget The Macaronis are over at Coffee Time this month – today Charlie Cochrane is in the chair answering questions and sharing excerpts and doing giveaways.

Just finished “The Ghost Road” by Pat Barker and it has depressed me terribly. I know people had to die, but… STILL. It was unremittingly depressing.  Yes yes, I know that was the point and it wasn’t a Romance but still. *sobs* 

I started “In the absence of men” by Luc Besson last night and it’s rather delightful. I’ll be reviewing that later.

Hugely disappointed with Carte D’or’s Caramel Cinamon waffle ice cream, as – unlike Ben & Jerry – the crunchy bits are just sprinkled on the top and once they were scoffed you are left with just ice cream. Nice ice-cream but i was missing the bits. Note to self, if I buy this again, buy Maltesers and sprinkle in.

Mere Mortals is crawling along – I had a real block last week (wibbling under the cut for anyone who’s interested)

or perhaps the last couple of weeks. The main reason I think is that the timeline has gone screwy. I printed it out, read it through and realised that the entire book had so far taken about ten days and that the relationships within it were developing far too fast. (people said that Standish had Rafe and Ambrose getting it together too fast, and that was over 3 months!) This bothered me, hugely and I wanted to go back and fix it, but I knew that if I did that, I wouldn’t get on with finishing it and it had its own momentum.  I was over half way through and i had made a list of “things that need to happen” and I’d written the ending. 

But the things that were wrong in the manuscript nagged at me, I felt I couldn’t go ON when there were so many loose ends, and the timeline was so short.  Part of this was caused by using Etherpad (which I love, as you know, and I’m not going to stop using it) because I was writing a lot faster than I normally do and was, in fact, creating a draft. I don’t usually create drafts. I don’t write terribly clean but I don’t do what many of my writerly friends do, e.g. do “re-writes”. In fact I don’t really understand the term, never have. It does seem to mean different things to different people.  But it seems now this is a draft, and I’ll have to learn what a rewrite is rather than just cosmetic tidy-up!

Comments

[chris-smith-atr.livejournal.com]

GIANT HUGS.

You'll be fine. At least MeMo MAKES SENSE. No one worships Santa, for instance.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

well, it doesn't make sense to me at the moment. hopefully later!

[chris-smith-atr.livejournal.com]

promise. it does. it may be a bit squished, but nothing that can't be resolved pretty easily. the quality of writing is fantastic.

[mzcalypso.livejournal.com]

For me, a rewrite is getting a draft done, however sloppy it might be, and letting it sit for a week or two so I don't automatically fill in the bits that may be in my head but aren't in the manuscript. I've been doing less of that, with deadlines--more working on one scene at a time until it's right, then asking readers to tell me if there are any howling mistakes (my partner's good at that). I have to have an outline, even if it's just a one-page sketch of the story and even if it gets massively changed--that's when I see if there are problems with pacing.

My writing habits are changing as I move from fanfic to pro mode.. maybe yours are, too.

[sleveen.livejournal.com]

What's wrong with worshipping Santa? He's had his pseudopod in my mind-hole for years... ^__^

[chris-smith-atr.livejournal.com]

Yes, but EVERYONE has had a pseudopod there :P

how u doing?

[sleveen.livejournal.com]

*cackle* It's true. I am Pseudopod Central. :)

I am doing okay. There is a chance (slim or maybe not; I'm never sure) that I can get my job back in the fall when it is advertised, and being off for the summer will give me a chance to get busy with some of the book projects I want to do. So it's a blessing in disguise. Or a silver lining. Or a mind filled with pseudopods. :-D

[chris-smith-atr.livejournal.com]

Glad you're doing okay - read your post and that is best way to view it. Very healthy, very sane.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH SLEEVEY?

[sleveen.livejournal.com]

Sleveey has succumbed to the bumping-up of the medication level, as prescribed by her doctor. Better living through chemistry. ;-)

[chris-smith-atr.livejournal.com]

Who are you then?

*pokes with big stick*

[sleveen.livejournal.com]

I am George the taxi dancer and sometime gigolo, sweetheart. ;-)

Pls. see new LJ header. :)

[chris-smith-atr.livejournal.com]

Oooh!

I want a gigglo.

To go with my jiggling! :D

[sleveen.livejournal.com]

Yes, but you jiggle so beautifully. A gigolo would be over-egging the pudding, I fear. :D

[kittymay.livejournal.com]

They don't?

[angelabenedetti.livejournal.com]

realised that the entire book had so far taken about ten days and that the relationships within it were developing far too fast

Massive empathy there. :P That's exactly what my current rewrite is about, and I don't usually do multiple drafts either. But I got through version 1.0 and realized that because of what's going on with the external (adventure) plotline, with one of the guys getting kidnapped about halfway through, by the end my two main characters had only spent about 24 hours in each other's company, including time spent sleeping (separately). [headdesk] That wasn't enough time to even get them into a sex scene at the end, much less time enough to start thinking about Falling In Love, you know? So most of version 2.0 is adding a relatively huge chunk to the middle, adding more subplots onto the adventure plot so that it'll go on for enough time that the guys can actually hang out and get to know one another and progress from surface attraction to actually liking one another, in a semi-believable fashion. I don't need to get far enough for them to run to Canada to get married by the end of the book, but I need to get to the point where they can at least think they're falling in love without anyone rolling their eyes. [wry smile] So far I've added a bit over 20K words, and I'm thinking maybe another 10K.

But anyway, yeah. I'm used to writing the story, doing a cosmetic tidy-up, then sending it out into the world; this is a whole new experience. I'm looking forward to what I'll have when I'm done, but not actually enjoying the process. I definitely feel for you, though. :)

About the Coffee Time thing, I went over the other day when Alex linked to it, and just tried again, and I can't figure out how to navigate their board. :/ I can only get it to show me one post at a time, and don't see any way to make it show me a whole thread, or even a way to automatically click on the Next message. Help! Am I just missing something? [squint] There's a sort of list or diagram up at the top showing the message threads, but if I dive into that, how do I keep track of what I have or haven't read when I come back in an hour or a day? The whole thing is just horribly non-user-friendly looking and don't want to jump in if I'm going to end up drowning in it. But logically, there has to be a way to keep track, or no one would use that forum. Hint please?

Angie, feeling kind of stupid right now

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It's reassuring that you are having the same problem - and now actually, I'm not going to stress that I could easily finish the book in about another 10k - because the rewrite will necessarily add thousands to the manuscript - thank you!!

As for the boards, I think you have to sign up before you can see anything. stupid, I know...

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I think that's right, after all, I'm still such a newbie - and am learning more and more with every book - thank you!

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

I do sometimes wonder how much extra speed you get from writing fast. Since I started the 'just blast through the first draft as fast as possible' method, I find I'm spending two or three times more time on editing than I used to. When I used to write slowly, the first draft took me a long time, but then it didn't need much more than a polish and it was ready to go. I'm still not sure which is best in the long run.

[angelabenedetti.livejournal.com]

If you really wanted to add wordcount anyway, then yeah, doing an internal remodel isn't a bad way to get there. [nod]

About the forum, sigh. I hate accumulating new logins and passwords. We'll see.

Angie

[angelabenedetti.livejournal.com]

I'm usually pretty slow too. [nod] I remember the first time I did NaNoWriMo, all the advice about how you should write "just anything!" And how "Absolutely anything is fixable!!" o_O Well, yes, technically true. I hate working like that, though; it really does seem to be a lot more work in the long run.

Angie

[mzcalypso.livejournal.com]

I have trouble with that stupid board, too. What I've found is you go back up to the Macaronis monthly listing, click there, then the day's listing. There are page numbers at the upper-right of the post-display section that take you from page to page.

I hate that damned board, but it's probably a matter of getting used to yet another $#!@#!$! system.

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

Yes, and it means that I end up with three or four things at once that I can't bear to look at again - and the editing process becomes really painful. And yet, it still seems to be the process I'm sticking with. I think the satisfaction of at least getting something to work with *quickly* outweighs the pain.