Right before crap hit the fan in my life, I was writing every day. It felt good. There were days, weeks and months when I was at the hospital and found myself missing writing.

I tried bringing a spiral notebook/legalpad/3-ring binder along to handwrite some chapters.

I tried printing out chapters to edit by hand.

But the hospital room was unforgivingly uncomfortable.

The wooden arms on the seats insisted on digging into my sides, while my legs would fall asleep if I left them up or down for too long. The seat itself was hard, leaving my butt sore. I just couldn’t win.

Which sounds like nothing but excuses, I realize. But there were also important things constantly on my mind, such as my wife’s health and well-being.

But I really wish I would’ve had a working laptop during that time period….

I couldn’t afford one without a job, though. I was at an impass.

But, oddity of oddities, I did manage to fully work out my calendar. Today, for instance, I can tell you that November 23rd is equivalent to Eighth of Tower in Lura, and the farmoon is going to be a New Moon by nightfall, therefore the Crimson moon will be full.

Which makes me sound like a worldbuilder who wants to be a writer, I realize. My only excuse for this is that the calendar was easy to write on. And I was comfy.

Once my new job got easier and I pretty much knew my child was going to pull through and be safe, the keyboard beckoned again.

I’ve been writing—a little during work when inspiration strikes and much more at home during the later hours. I hope to carry that momentum over into the next Novel-Push Initiative.

(By the way, NPI is going to be a one-on-one affair unless somebody else fancies joining up….)

Now more than ever, I want to know how it will feel to complete this project. One novel. Several revisions. It must be done.

I try to remind myself that I can say something today that I couldn’t say last year, and honestly wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to say: I’m done with my first draft! I’m in the editing/revision step. How would me-one-year-ago feel if I could go into the future and read this post?

I have-to-have-to-have-to keep editing if I ever want to finish this novel, seek publication, go to places like Worldcon and World Fantasy, network and meet people, and have fun writing more novels.  And I intend to do just that. But I can’t just write ‘I need to get scene X done by date Y’. It’s never been that simple for me; conventional methods never seem to work. Read the rest of this entry »

In an effort to get through my first draft, I put a few worldbuilding projects on the backburner. And I’m glad I did.

One of those projects was to develop a calendar. Now that I’m in the editing phase, it needs done now. Or else making fixes during later revisions will be a pain.

I first mentioned the madcap idea of creating my own calendar for Five Rings and went into detail with the actual days of the week here. Read the rest of this entry »

So it turns out books on editing and revising are mostly for speeches, dissertations, and essays.

If there’s a book out there solely on the revision process for a novel, I had trouble finding it. Maybe it’s too narrow a market—maybe too few people actually finish their first novel and then need help revising it?

None-the-less, there’s plenty of online articles to find. And most books on writing have a chapter or two devoted to revision. So I’ve been reading some of those, and I’ve found: Read the rest of this entry »

Just two words today.

The & End.

^__^

Yes, the ‘End of the Book’ I’ve been craving since the beginning is upon us!

It feels so good to be done. I’ve been working on this thing since … September 2007.

But it’s just a first draft. To be honest, you couldn’t pay me to show this fuzzy-logic, missing-scene-ridden, poor dialogue version to anybody. I guess that’s what a revision is for, right? :)

I have the option to start a new project for NPI and continue on for the next 6 days, or to stop here. I think at this point I’m going to stop here, keep my mind focused on Five Rings, & read a few books on how to properly tackle a first revision.

I’ll post the final word count when I get Total Assistant working (my free trial expired).

WC: 404.

Huzzah! I made it. I’ve exceeded two straight weeks of writing every day. That’s a long way from worrying about whether or not I’d even make it past the first day.

Today was a rough one. I’m in the most uncertain, cloudy part of my story. On top of that, I didn’t feel like writing dialogue at all, so I wrote what was discussed instead. Laziness? Maybe. But that’s the way it is for now and there’s always revisions.

Welcome to March 10th! Glad you’re still here :)

The past five days have definitely had their share of highs and lows for us all.

1.
packsister:

Still coming in strong at first place, packsister has been an inspiration. Last time we checked in, she’d written 3,316 words in a mere four days for her werewolf novel. Let’s see how she’s doing now:

Tally:

Previous Total WC: 3,316.
March… Read the rest of this entry »

Writers (myself included) go into the craft with at least a few misconceptions about how to write well.

Since we’ve established that every writer has a style, here’s some easy technical ways to improve your already-existing style (especially if you’re still new at this like me).

Just a few of many common stylistic pitfalls that can ‘expose’ amateur writers (even writers that’ve been writing for years):

1. Heavy use of words that end in -ly. Read the rest of this entry »

During the month of March, I want to push Five Rings‘ word-count through the roof.

But, sadly, maintaining a steady word-count on my own for a period longer than two weeks is too lofty a goal for me.

So I’m asking for your help.

I’ve decided to host a virtual event; one that came to me after reading Chris Baty’s wonderful No Plot? No Problem!. I’m christening this event “The Novel Push Initiative”, an easier-than-NaNoWriMo event.

But it still encourages writing every day.

THE RULES:

-NO PROJECT-JUMPING! (Please focus on only one project.)

-NaNoWriMo famously averages out to 1,667 words a day. SO…
Here’s the Break-down:

a ”KNOCK-OUT” is 0-249 words OR no post with a tally for that day. (No, I won’t sweep you under the rug like a king’s love-child.)
a ”CHECK-IN” is 250-749 words. (for those days something terrible happens, we’re sick, or we’re just not feeling it.)
an “UPDATE” is 750-1,667 words (about 1,000 words per day. Hopefully, this will be the most common one.)
a ”TOUGHER-THAN-NANO” is anything above 1,667 words. (are you nuts?!?)
a ”COMPLETE” is if you get finished with your book and type THE END. (*jealous* I suppose you can project-jump if and only if you complete a project.)

((So, at minimum, you need to CHECK-IN every day to avoid the big game-over.))

-First off, you’ll need a novel or novelette-sized WIP (work-in-progress). Whether you’re middling, have already done your research and are starting a first draft, or just want to dust off an old project you’ve been meaning to finish, you should be able to participate. (If you’re getting out those red pens to do a revision, tough luck!) :)

-Second, you’ll need a web log of some kind. Even a Twitter account will do.

-And thirdly, you’ll need to reply to this post (or any of my later posts this month) with:
A) a link to your blog, and
B) what project you’d like to work on.

-Each day We, united in writerly cause, will promise to add actual words to our WIP—every single day.
We are required to post WCs (word-counts) in our respective blogs Each and Every Day from March 1st to March 31st. 
If we miss a single day AT ALL—FOR WHATEVER REASON—we’re KNOCKED OUT OF THE EVENT. (Of course, I’m wondering how long I’ll last at this point ;D.)

-To actively participate, a simple Tweet can look like this:

CHECK-IN: 250 words.
11:59 PM Mar 1st from web

((But, of course, it’s your blog: You’re welcome to post snippets, musings, and whatever else you’d like. You don’t even have to label whether your WC is an UPDATE if you don’t feel like it. All I’m asking for is a visible word-count.))

WHAT I PROMISE:

I will periodically link to each of your sites and post your word-tallies up to a KNOCK-OUT.

IMPORTANT: I will be using whatever dates your posts are time-stamped with as a guide, so be sure your local settings are updated.

At the end of the month, we’ll see how many total words we’ve harvested.

If you stay with this until the end, just think: at the very minimum, you’ll have added 7,750 words to your WIPs.

So, still with me? Then I advise you take no prisoners as we march our plots ever-forward, all the way to March 31st! Good luck. I know I’ll need it…

First of all, welcome! Forgive the mess, and thank you very much for visiting. ^__^

The look is different, but it’s still me: Nick, AKA cirellio.

The look of this site will undoubtedly change as I design a layout for my index.html (I’ve been developing one using Dreamweaver CS4. And for the record, I really like the CS4 suite; Much, much better than CS3 IMO.)

I’ve been dilligently brushing up on XML and CSS, and I’ve learned PHP. I’ve also been learning how to draw with vectors, so hopefully I’ll be able to work some of that into my design.

But for now, this downloaded theme’ll have to do. Feedback is, of course, always welcome.

Good news:

I’m over 1/3rd of the way done with my first draft, well-past the point where the main character gets immersed in the world of Lura.

I’m … not sure where the word count sits at the moment, but I’m more focused  on finishing scenes so I can get started on the revision.

Now, some bad news. (WARNING: About to blog about my personal life!) Read the rest of this entry »

Larimosa and her daughter were interesting characters to write. I actually modelled their relationship after how I imagine Marie Antoinette’s relationship would’ve been like with her daughter.

Also, the temple was named after Le Marais in Paris, France.

Scene three’s weigh-in:

798 words.
So the grand total comes to 1881.

And with that, the prologue comes to a close.

And I’m not going back to it until the revision. I’m. Not. Touching. A. Word. Read the rest of this entry »