Tag: Writing Diary

Context: Solid writing sessions this morning, charging towards the end of a specific scene. Stuck now, ’cause there’s a multiplicity of things that could come next, and they all seem to be leading me off into an expansive approach to the narrative that’ll lead me into writing a novel. I am not writing a novel. Which is why I spent 51 minutes messing around with the opening part of the next scene and wrote pretty much nothing; I’m about to engage the Kress protocol and go back into the previous scene to chance something and see how if affects the narrative. I need to be bounced off into a new direction. Session 22.1 (7:56 AM – 8:24 AM) Word Count: 610 Session 22.2 (8:36 AM – 8:50 AM) Word Count: 385 Session 22.3 (8:03 PM – 8:54 PM) Word Count: 191 Total Daily Writing Time: 1 hour, 33 minutes Daily Word Count Total: 1,186 Total Manuscript Writing Time: 22 hours, 4 minutes

Novella Diary, Claw, Day Twenty-One So last night I stayed up late, writing a moderately detail plan for the scene I wanted to get done this morning. It was a pretty good plan. Laid out a lot of stuff. This morning I woke up and wrote a completely difference scene. Potentially invalidating all the stuff I’d planned. This is why I’m not, by inclination or any real practical process, a plotter. Session 21.1 (7:18: AM -7:28 AM) Word Count: 107 Session 21.2 (8:03 AM -8:23 AM) Word Count: 470 Session 21.3 (8:35 AM – 8:57 AM) Word Count: 542 Total Daily Writing Time: 52 minutes Daily Word Count Total: 1,119 Total Manuscript Writing Time: 20 hours, 31 minutes Total Manuscript Word Count: 16,283

Write club. Which, if you’ve been following this diary for a stretch, should give you some context for what’s about to happen. I spent the first hour catching up with Angela and hearing all the latest from the Aurealis Awards in Sydney, and the second stretch finishing up my WQ article in preparation for submitting it later tonight. With that done, it’s time to dig into some words. Session 20.1 (12:50 PM – 1:12 PM ) Word Count: 275 Session 20.2 (1:28 PM – 1:37 PM) Word Count: 296 Session 20.3 (8:48 PM – 9:33 PM) Word Count: 599 So, none of that went terribly well. This represents tree attempts at the same scene. Finally seem to have hit it, albeit not in a form that I’m happy with. Taking a short break before returning and trying to clock up another four hundred words, just so I can get back into the 1k a day habit. Session 20.4 (9:49 PM

So I wrote a long post this morning, all of which seems to have vanished into the ether when I failed to save the diary update after entering the first writing session of the day. I’m slightly irritated by this, since it means I’m going to be going from memory when it comes to working out today’s writing time, and I’ve done so much cutting on the manuscript that I no longer have a solid gauge of today’s word count. Session 15.1 and 15.2 So, from memory, session one and two were about a half-hour long and involved writing about 600 words apeice based upon my best guess (and a quick word-count of the scene that only started this morning). I then cut about 3,500 words from the manuscript ’cause they were part of a first chapter that no longer really applies. Some of them may find their way back in again. Session 15.2 (8:21 PM – 8:56 PM) Word

Today I tried to open up a web browser on Odin the Desktop about thirty seconds after I sat down. Disappointing, really, since I’d almost broken myself of that habit (I still wanted too, but I usually remembered that Odin is internet-free and therefore not much good for web browsing). One of the interesting parts about doing this diary is seeing how my process actually works. It’s an inexact science – logging word-counts doesn’t really tell me much about the content or how many times a scene gets rewritten – but it’s already proving informative. For instance, I would have spent years telling people I was a get it done kind of writer, at my best when I just sat down and slogged my way through a manuscript for hours at a time. At the start of this year I actually set up my workflow around that assumption, sitting down to hit set word-counts every day (they varied from day-to-day;

So I didn’t get online a lot between Friday and Sunday, for a whole variety of reasons, so this is going to be a pretty truncated entry that covers the last four days. Strap yourselves in. Day 10 Things I did today: woke up on the Gold Coast and had breakfast with my parents; drove to Brisbane and worked for a few hours in the QWC office; had lunch with co-workers; came home and went through a couple of options for the Tooth and Claw Whispers reading on Saturday; do some prep work for the next Year of the Author Platform course I’m teaching in a few weeks; watched NXT with the Flatmate. Things I didn’t do today: write anything on the novella. Total Daily Writing Time: 0 Daily Word Count Total: 0 Day 11 Session 11.1 (11:43 PM – 12:28 AM) Word Count: 600  Mostly revision on the first chapter.  Trying to streamline things a bit. Total Daily Writing Time: 45 minutes Daily

I hate this chapter. I hate this book. I hate this blog series and wish I’d never started it. I hate the mornings. I hate the fact that I have to the Gold Coast this evening. I hate the fact that there is so much of the book left to go. I hate the fact that it’s getting longer. I hate the fact that I’m not able to just finish this fucker and go on to the next thing. I hate the fact that I didn’t finish my PhD. I hate the fact that I’m behind on pretty much everything at my day-job. I hate the fact that I slept badly and woke up late. I hate the fact that I’m already behind. I hate…I hate…I hate… And really, all that happens more or less on time. Nine days in and this is no longer fun. Must ignore that and keep writing. Session 9.1 (8:15 AM – 8:49 PM) Word

Another lazy day with a lot of time away from the keyboard. Most of it was spent writing other things, some of which were work, some of which was not. Kept thinking I should go write some novella now, then didn’t. Watched some Arrow. Watched some new sci-fi show put together by SyFy channel in the US, whose name escapes me. Made an attempt to watch the Painkiller Jane series that was put out by the Sci-Fi channel before they changed their name to something that sounds like an STD. My Flatmate recommended PJ, but I’m not really clicking with it. It’s slow. The voice-over irritates me. It gets bonus points for having two female characters on the special government task-force team, who actually like each other and get along. Session 5.1 (10:49 PM – 11:25 PM) Word Count: 675 Lots of ground-word type stuff for chapter two. Most of it is wrong. What I’m writing now is framework kind