Delirious December - 500 words per day - edit/writing all genres welcome

Well, I NaNo'd properly, and I now have 87K of a WIP (70K added in November). I also...processed...some recent events, and am feeling more ready to apply my nose to the grindstone.

This month? I want to finish roughly outlining the WIP work I've done so far, including notes on what needs changing. And then revisions begin. I'm hoping to have a workable draft by the end of January, but that depends on a lot of things, including what happens with Other WIP.

I'm also working on a couple of other small, tangential things that will likely come to nothing but will keep me disciplined. And I'm working on being more consistent about my social media presence - I'm not quite ready to make a blog-post-a-week pledge, but I'd like to eventually get to 3x/week or more. (I don't expect it'll sell books, but it'll keep me grounded.)

So! Goals for December:

1. Rough outline/synopsis for WIP
2. ~1/3 of WIP revised for the new outline
3. At least 2 blog posts
4. Secret Squirrel projects
5. Other WIP, if applicable

Go, everybody!

Today I made some good progress on the general outline/synopsis. I think the POV character I ditched last month is coming back, but with some big huge changes. Still chewing on the specifics, but I think she gives me the counterpoint plot I need.

I also did some wiki work, although that was mostly resizing and uploading some images. And I wrote a bad first draft of a one minute audio script, but I have to start somewhere.

Welcome to December, my friends!

Yay for Fireborn, Saoirse! I hope the secret project has aged well.

Today I did some more brainstorming, and I think I've come up with another angle. It needs a little more subtlety, but it's a start.

And I did some wiki work. I'm currently making a page for each character, which is a project in itself. One nice thing is that as part of edits the publisher sent me a list of all the named characters in the book, so I'm working off of that list.

Of course, I also noticed that they inferred the last name of one of my characters - they assumed my MC's mother had the same last name as he did. Oddly, they did not infer the same about his (ex) wife, although I didn't specify a last name for either character. It's funny the assumptions people make sometimes.

I did a very small amount of brainstorming tonight, but mostly I wrote a blog post, go me! Now I only need one more before the end of the month.

Hello everyone! I am in again for this month.

As I may have mentioned last time, I have managed to arrange January off work so I can finish this draft and pretend like I'm a full-time writer dude. The aim for this month is another 5k to set me up well for January.

This morning was a few words and lots of headscratching. One of the problems with outlining is that sometimes you don't find the plot holes until you get there, which is like being halfway through cooking and realising you don't have one of the ingredients, except that sometimes the recipe says to put tuna in your lasagne, and it's less a case of finding some tuna and more working out what the chef was smoking when he wrote the recipe.

onesecondglance said:

One of the problems with outlining is that sometimes you don't find the plot holes until you get there, which is like being halfway through cooking and realising you don't have one of the ingredients, except that sometimes the recipe says to put tuna in your lasagne, and it's less a case of finding some tuna and more working out what the chef was smoking when he wrote the recipe.

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See, the solution to this is to never outline.

Seriously, though - you've got this. It will be awesome.

Saoirse said:

I have started the edit of the secret project and am 71% in. It has been a breeze so far. We'll have to see what my betas say though.

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Excellent!! I'm sure your betas will also be pleased.

Today I did some promo stuff, including scheduling my last Goodreads giveaways (because NO, Amazon, I'm not paying $119 to give away books). And I talked out a couple of plot points with Spouse, and I think I'm closing in on some important details. It's weird - it's like I know the high-level plot, but the ground-level plot ends up looking entirely different.

Tomorrow I'll be out for much of the day, but I'm hoping to start actual revisions of some of the NaNo stuff I wrote.

Today I did NOTHING. (Well, I answered an email from a reader, which was nice.)

Liz, that sounds like bliss to me...

I am seriously sleep-deprived at the moment. I had an idea for a new song and the only time I've found to work on it is after my wife goes to bed. Since we get up for work at the same time as each other, I should really be going to bed then, too...

500 words of anything, I can handle that. I'm late to start because of an assignment deadline. But it went in yesterday and I want to get back in the game.

onesecondglance said:

I am seriously sleep-deprived at the moment. I had an idea for a new song and the only time I've found to work on it is after my wife goes to bed. Since we get up for work at the same time as each other, I should really be going to bed then, too...

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I'm operating under the assumption that if I get little enough sleep, my body will get used to it.

SciSarahTops said:

500 words of anything, I can handle that. I'm late to start because of an assignment deadline. But it went in yesterday and I want to get back in the game.

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Go, SciSarahTops!

I revised my prologue today. Which is not a huge amount of work, but for some reason I'd been putting it off.

It's not bad. It'll need a few more passes for smoothness, but the right stuff happens in it.

SciSarahTops!

Liz!


Flaked last night rather than trying to get any more work done. Turns out I need more than five hours a night. Who knew?

I'm up a few hundred words since the last update. I had to read back a bit to check what kind of shoes a character was wearing, and shockingly, I didn't think it was awful, so that's good.

(I don't subscribe to this idea that artists are supposed to hate everything they've done. I write by putting together things that I think are good. Of course I like my own songs, my own writing. They're made of things that I like. Even when they don't quite achieve what I'm trying to do, I don't hate them. They like plants who need a bit more growing time.)

osg, I have been known, from time to time, to read my words of the day for fun. I can always hate them tomorrow.

Well done on the words.

Yay for secret project, Saoirse! And good luck with betas.

I got Chapter 1 revised today, and a little bit on Chapter 2. It shouldn't have taken me the whole day, but I've realized I'm so out of shape when it comes to revising. Chapter 2 needs some tonal changes but not many plot changes, so it's going to be weird, but hopefully I can get through 3 as well tomorrow.

Whee!

Yay, secret project! I hope you got some Covenant time, Saoirse.

I revised two chapters today, and removed another one. Slightly better than yesterday.

Sorry about the eye pain, Saoirse - I hope today was better.

I only revised one chapter, but as it's Saturday I think that's OK. I like this one.

Also, I think I'm going to start a mailing list. With all the nonsense going on with Goodreads and Patreon, attempted monetization seems more and more fruitless. Might as well gather a few folks to send stuff to.

Today I baked two loaves of bread and two cranberry orange pound cakes and wrote nothing.

I revised a super-long chapter today and eliminated 11 words.

Then I started sketching in some of the changes I needed to make to the backstory established in my rough draft, and I realized that super-long chapter had to be replaced.

Once I was finished banging my head against the wall, I wrote 416 words of the replacement chapter.

The weather is supposed to be bad tomorrow, so I'll be snowed in with nothing to do but get over my snit and keep fixing the draft.

Go, team!

Yay about the beta, Saoirse! I hope you're feeling well enough to get back to Covenant soon.

Well, I procrastinated over Replacement Chapter but managed to choke out 442 words. And I set up a mailing list for a newsletter. What I'll put in it I'm not sure yet.