I’ve been anxiously looking forward to making the first pass on my fantasy novel, but I’ve been listening to a lot of Tolkien-inspired music. What should serve to motivate me is actually kind of intimidating.
-
Basic Writing questions is not a crit forum. All crits belong in Share Your Work
What's On Your Mind About Your Writing?
- Thread starter Undercover
- Start date
Starting on edit #5. Searching and correcting filtering, and I’d like to lower the word count - preferably by 4K, but I doubt I can get there.
I'm at the monotonous stage of contacting bloggers and review sources for the recent release. It's always a crap shoot to who will respond and set you up, but it is one of those timely chores that every writer faces sooner or later. My publisher has done their bit, but even their submissions are generally regarded. There is always a question as to who will or will not respond. I did keep a list of those who've had a great record of accommodating me, but it is also genre sensitive.
Conflicted between two endings for my recent short story. One is much longer and exposits everything about the plot, the other is more open ended but shorter word count. 6500 seems more attractive from a sales POV than 7500, but the writing has to be pitch-perfect either way.
Personality theories help with character building. All you need is a good framework to work from, the theory itself doesn't need to be accurate.
I'm returning from my self-imposed exile. Long story short, my writing has made some ups and some downs in the previous year. I've written some things I'm proud of and some things I am not.
I think I am overcritical about my writing that is hindering my work. I feel I am so hell-bent on getting it perfect on the first draft that I end up redoing the same pages over and over again. I know first draft is supposed to be rough around the edges but I just can't stop critiquing my work.
Welcome to AW!
Yeah, that's a thing. Learning to shut that inner voice in a box until you're ready to let it out again is *hard*... but very important.
Can you start small? Write a page or two (a page is ~350 words in standard formatting, IIRC) without stopping for *anything*, then let yourself go back and review. Then do it again. When that feels easy, add a page or two to that length... and so on. After a while, hopefully you'll be getting out entire chapters of rough draft and making serious forward progress.
Can you check with a few beta readers or a crit group?
To me "open-ended" means the outcome is not defined going forward, while I'd assume the one that exposits is giving more details on what already happened. Am I misunderstanding?
(Personally, I am in favour of stories which leave the reader engaged with the events and still have some openness about how they'll resolve, but that's a personal thing.)
I'm trying to work out the details of my big fantasy story, but right now I've got this nagging voice begging me to write a cute Christmas-centric gay romance story about a jaded guy who's part-time guardian of his best friend's child slowly falling in love with the child's drama teacher who is a cinnamon roll personified.
Hem... Are you done yet? XD Because I would beta read that right now.
Anyway I usually go with the flow so I would suggest you to write the story but at the same time not abandon completely the outlining fantasy one. Like do a little of it daily while focusing on the story that is inspiring you right now.
Another thing you could do is to outline the story that is nagging you and see if the nagging goes away.The only problem may be that, if you write it later, it won’t be christmas anymore but time is not your mom so you can do whatever you want.
Four days coming up where I can spend lots of time editing. For this department I agreed to stay at the fire station this time while the crews come to me. Normally I drive a gazillion miles to their stations (rural fire department, very spread out). That means a lot of sitting around in between crews (one comes and has to go back before the next one comes so they keep their area covered). They agreed I could leave if I get an exposure call.
I'm going to work on editing during all the down time, I won't have all the things around my house to distract me.
I'm going to work on editing during all the down time, I won't have all the things around my house to distract me.
Last edited:
Four days coming up where I can spend lots of time editing. For this department I agreed to stay at the fire station this time while the crews come to me. Normally I drive a gazillion miles to their stations (rural fire department, very spread out). That means a lot of sitting around in between crews (one comes and has to go back before the next one comes so they keep their area covered). They agreed I could leave if I get an exposure call.
I'm going to work on editing during all the down time, I won't have all the things around my house to distract me.
Good for you. You have to steal your writing time. I was government security back in 1987, and actually wrote my first non-fiction book while I was on patrol, taking rest breaks and doing stakeouts. I once killed my car battery using the dome light, but kept going with my service flashlight. That's how obsessed I was with my writing chores.
Cruising on my current project, completing about 14K words of the first draft over the past week and few days. I'm afraid I'm approaching the end of the easy part, where I get the last few years of backlogged ideas onto the screen. I expect my pace to slow considerably as the work progresses. But for the first draft I'm only shooting for about 50K scrambled words, and hope to have about 80K of more or less coherence once I get through the second draft (at some future point).
Editing my Fantasy novel has added an additional 5 chapter so far and I'm only halfway. Definitely looking forward to finishing work for Christmas next week, with work done I'm hoping i can do some serious editing!!! 
Beginnings are hard. Especially a beginning that's meant to show the normal, routine life that the protagonist has grown disinterested in, and contrasting that to her exciting saving-the-world past. And maybe having the news tell stuff about the setting is too info-dump-y for the beginning of the story (even though the protagonist stops listening once it gets to the stuff she already knows).
Hopefully "waiting for the news to start" isn't below "waking up".
Hopefully "waiting for the news to start" isn't below "waking up".
I wanted to publish the final book in my series at the end of July.
It still is not published.
Between school and my depression, I just haven't felt up to editing it. I'm close to finishing, but it's so hard to summon the motivation.
It still is not published.
Between school and my depression, I just haven't felt up to editing it. I'm close to finishing, but it's so hard to summon the motivation.
I'm so sorry. I've been there - well, not the school part - and it can be absolutely brutal. I hope you get a chance to recharge this month, and can get the book out in 2019.
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2014
- Messages
- 623
- Reaction score
- 35
I just hit 10,000 words in my first draft. A break is on my mind lol I'm baking with a friend today, and then I have to figure out if I want anything significant to happen in my book before we get to Isil. The dwarf guide, Eshorah, has safely brought most of the students studying in Zara through the caverns (full of corrupt magic that fries your insides LOL) from Earth to Zara, and now he has to take them to the elf Isil who will take them, and other groups of students, the rest of the way to their school of study. Isil is the father of a major character, so I get to introduce everyone to him. But I'm currently trying to discover the layout of this haha
I like the fact that you're laughing at yourself so much. By 10k words I'm usually setting my hair on fire.
Onward friendo!
I'm writing a short story and I've made a schoolgirl error of really liking one of my lead characters. He's the one character that needs to be killed off and sharpish.
Last edited: