What's On Your Mind About Your Writing?

The Second Moon said:

Yesterday I found out that one of my beta readers thought I wrote the best action scenes she had ever seen. What a confidence booster. Yay!

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Yay! It's always great to get compliments like that!

I'm feeling overwhelmed with editing. I'm glad my beta was thorough, but boy, am I feeling fatigued with the comments and suggestions. This is going to take some time, and hopefully after it's all said and done, I'll have a stronger manuscript (that hopefully gets picked up and published).

Ugh. I want to start planning another book, but I can't decide which one. They are all so different.

Someone liked it so much, they read it twice. Too bad I already put it up online, can't really use that story to submit to any magazines.

I worried that I'll never find something I like to write as much as my Upper MG SF. I love it so much that in the course of a year, I've expanded it from a three book series to a 13-book series and am still looking for more ideas for books to add on.

I just feel so happy went I write it. Nothing else makes me feel this way. Hopefully I'll never get bored of it, but don't we all hope that for our favorite WIPs?

Took a 750 word short story of mine I liked very much and cut it down to 500 words for a flash fiction contest.

What an exciting exercise!

The story is better, and I've become a better writer. Bingo.

I’ve always had a hard time taking care of myself. I had been getting up at 4:30 every morning because I was convinced I wouldn’t have time to get anything done otherwise. Yesterday I crashed hard and have been forced to reevaluate my approach. I can’t do anything without sleep and that might involve getting up later, even if it means I can’t write, read, cook breakfast, study my Bible class lessons, and casually sip coffee all in one morning. Thomas Wolfe I ain’t.

I need to fix the query.

And upon re-reading the opening pages, it's easy to see what's missing. Prioritized atmosphere over emotional sizzle. Now what to do with that realization.

How to restructure style while remaining "authentic."

I wrote a short story earlier this year and when it was somehow eaten by my computer, I actually sobbed. I was so depressed that I though, forget it. No point in rewriting it. It would stink to have to do it all over again.

Well today I decided to turn that vanished short story into a novel and it's giving me the same good feelings/vibes as my favorite WIP. I'm so overjoyed and if I mention giving up this new project, TELL ME NO! I need to stick through this because I'm really happy writing it and I'm only 26 words in.

Please, don't let me give up on this.

Random epiphany moment of the day that's just slapped me round the head like a large 2x4. I've married one of my secondary characters to completely the wrong person. They are perfect for each other but for the story, he is very very wrong. He's just a bit of filler. The right person though, gives me a bigger tie-in between books one and two of the series, brings one of my favourite characters into book one and very nicely cements the relationships between two groups of people, personally as well as professionally.

It's too perfect not to do. But now I need to decide whether to get rid or reassign the current husband to someone else. This series has far too many people already so I fear it may have to the former. Bugger. I quite liked him as well.

Submitted my flash fiction piece to the contest. Residual shakes and insecurities abound.

kwanzaabot said:

Woke up this morning thinking about Animorphs. Man I loved that series. K.A. Applegate definitely influenced my style a hell of a lot, and it got me thinking, with all the 90s nostalgia in film/tv these days, why isn't there a movie?

So just for the hell of it, in between my main writing project, I decided to start tinkering with an Animorphs screenplay. Condensing 50-some-odd books into a 2-hour movie just plain isn't possible, but I've got a plan that basically compresses the first... 12 or so books? into a fairly solid outline. I'm gonna have fun with this.

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Just saw this some months later. I still love this series, and like you it influenced me. Not so much the style or content as the . . . approach, I suppose. The no-holds-barred, emotionally-sincere approach. The "I'm not going to make this easy on you" approach. I admire the hell out of that and try to emulate it. A few of my betas have noticed this and aren't entirely comfortable with it. They seem to think I should take it easy on my characters, or just nudge things a little to fit how things "should be". Nope. Not going to do that. I like to think the fact that I'm making some people uncomfortable is a good thing. It means they're thinking.

ETA: I think a Netflix series for Animorphs would be AMAZING.

I was writing today when I fully realized that my alien characters are named Davy and Kora. Those names sound a bit too human, considering they are human names. But humans and aliens do have contact so would't aliens see human names and like that name enough to name their child that?

Also speaking of names...I must really like names that start with B and end with a "ee" sound. I have Barney and Bobbi in one series and Billie in another different series.

Just sharing what's on my mind.

Now I'm thinking about if I should make a character a POV character or just keep him as a side character. His POV would be very beneficial in the second book, but I'm not so sure about the first book or rest of the series.

I'll have to ponder about this.

Two more flash fiction pieces in the bag, and I'm wondering if this isn't just procrastination in disguise. My historical novel is beginning to molder, and the Japanese have yet to bomb Pearl Harbor.

Struggling with a setting that I have no idea about how to realise.

More I think about the story I've got notes for scribbled over a bunch of random bits of paper the more it becomes a magic-imbued gangster story the only setting I can think of for it is something akin to an old prohibition-era New Orleans.

But I have almost no frame of reference for that setting and short of taking a holiday to New Orleans I'm just feeling adrift in terms of how to realise any of the detail.

I finished plotting out my novel which is a big thing for me since I am a hardcore pantser.

Now I'm realizing this Upper MG novel will probably 30,000 words if I'm lucky.

That's around 18, 000 words less than my Upper MG linked short story collection

But honestly, I suck at math so I'm just going to write the book and see what the word count is then.

I've discovered a new historical topic I'd like to write about: uses of the name Jack as a nickname for criminals after the infamous Ripper vanished from Whitechaple. A cursory glance at old newspapers suggest several criminal trends that took off immediately following the Ripper's bloody spree and lasting through WWII. But that's the problem. The topic is so big and so wide-reaching. I've never attempted to write about a large series of loosely-connected events and things that are hard to define, like trends. Part of the challenge will be sifting the sources to see which were real incidents and which were simply eager reporters throwing the name Jack around to get a cheap headline off of the sensation. Methinks this will take a lot of time.

Grrr. Chapter 2 out is really short as well. (2,700 words) I am not going to reach 48,000 words with such short chapters. Chapter 1 was 3,200 words. Ugh! I only have nine chapters planned.

30,000 words into current manuscript and want to scratch it and start again.

The Second Moon said:

Grrr. Chapter 2 out is really short as well. (2,700 words) I am not going to reach 48,000 words with such short chapters. Chapter 1 was 3,200 words. Ugh! I only have nine chapters planned.

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From what I've read, 3,000 word chapters is about average for a novel chapter. With that length, you'd need 16 chapters to reach 48,000 words, which is a bit short for a novel. 40,000 is the bare minimum to qualify to be a novel. Less than that is a novella.

I'm aiming for 80k words. My outline has 20 chapters and my average seems to be about 3,500 words per chapter, so that's 70k. I need a few more chapters to reach my target, and I'm sure some ideas will come to me as I'm writing... something I read in another book or hear on the news.

Auteur said:

From what I've read, 3,000 word chapters is about average for a novel chapter. With that length, you'd need 16 chapters to reach 48,000 words, which is a bit short for a novel. 40,000 is the bare minimum to qualify to be a novel. Less than that is a novella.

I'm aiming for 80k words. My outline has 20 chapters and my average seems to be about 3,500 words per chapter, so that's 70k. I need a few more chapters to reach my target, and I'm sure some ideas will come to me as I'm writing... something I read in another book or hear on the news.

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The Second Moon said:

Grrr. Chapter 2 out is really short as well. (2,700 words) I am not going to reach 48,000 words with such short chapters. Chapter 1 was 3,200 words. Ugh! I only have nine chapters planned.

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I'm an underwriter too who can't help but do obsess over the word count of everything too, Second Moon. I usually shoot for 70k and crash somewhere around the 50k's. One thing that really helps me is learning what I usually miss on the first draft. For me, my first draft always end up lacking in description, the five senses, and voice.

starrystorm said:

I'm an underwriter too who can't help but do obsess over the word count of everything too, Second Moon. I usually shoot for 70k and crash somewhere around the 50k's. One thing that really helps me is learning what I usually miss on the first draft. For me, my first draft always end up lacking in description, the five senses, and voice.

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I am an underwriter too. I am on my second editing pass and I’m at 60,000 words. I feel I need at least 10,000 more words. I’m thinking maybe I didn’t flesh out the ending of the story enough so I might be able to add more there. Here’s hoping!

Thanks, starry, Auteur, and sandree. I should mention that it is Upper MG which would allow for a lower word count, but still I would like it longer.