Considered taking a break day today. Ended up with (currently) an all-dialogue POV that was basically about Thelma and Louise. Go figure. Could be a keeper with some work though. Was entertaining to get down. Also managed to fix and ruin my sleep schedule within a 24 hour period. Awesome.
First Fires, the opening song and single from this year’s The North Borders by fellow Brit Bonobo featuring Grey Reverend:
Bleh. Horrible attempt at life today. Didnt get anything constructive halfway off the ground. Broke my record for least written today since I started, but I guess it was better than no writing. Which I was sorely tempted to do. Anyway, since everyone seems to be prepping for editing, I modified a plan created by the user ‘rhymebito’ (Blog / Twitter@ZerosJourney) over at the Nanowrimo forums as a template to create my own editing process.
In case anyone finds it useful, thought I’d share it here as well:
1a. write first draft
1b. immediate post-draft crit points, then sit on it for a while
2a. re-read and make delayed post-draft crit points
2b. label POVs [IDs, char# in/out chronology], matching summary post-its and rearrange til happy
2c. draft 2 rearrange accordingly
3. draft 3, cut fluff ~10%?
4a. macro content revision, print out manuscript
4b. plot holes, character arcs, coherency, pacing, desc.+dialogue, voice
4c. content revision addressing all crit points one by one
4d. repeat as needed until happy with draft 4.x
5. beta reads, address comments
6. micro revision, word redundancy, imagery, sentence tightening
7. print out manuscript in diff font: grammar, spelling, style consistency, read backwards etc
8. polish
9. final beta reads
10. final polish
Notes:
- The numbers of the steps basically refer to the draft number, as separated by aim. Some have sub-drafts. They're grouped in relevant blocks so I can see the various phases of editing easier at a glance.
* 'Crit points' refers to me making a bullet-point list of concerns with my novel that I've made as I've gone along to address during the editing phase. I'm doing a mid-draft crit atm, with plans for an immediate post-draft completion crit (1b) and another delayed post-draft crit (2a) after taking a break from the project.
It seems like a lot of work, but I'd rather skip steps later consciously if need be than get lost in the process and feel overwhelmed.
Also, here is Come Down To Us, Track 3 from Burial’s new EP titled Rival Dealer (just released Dec 16th!). Pretty cool atmospheric stuff (and surprisingly upbeat for Burial) that’s great for setting a mood. All of Burial’s stuff is though, to be fair.
This is absolutely fantastic. Patton Oswalt delivered the keynote address at 2012’s JFL Comedy Conference in Montreal. It took the form of 2 open letters (one to fellow comedians and the other to the gatekeepers of the comedy biz) and was about the digital revolution’s effect on comedy and also on the creative arts in general. Viva the youtube generation.
Here’s a link that contains the transcripts if you want to read the two excellent letters without the impromptu meandering: TheComicsComic.com
Plus a bonus song:
Team by Lorde (yes I’ve been on a bit of a kick the past few days with her so shoot me)
This is the perfect song for one of the characters exactly at this point in the story. Short POV, gotta do another I guess lol.
make believe it’s hyperreal
I cannot for the life of me figure out why this song sounds so familiar. Fantastic piece and performance though.
It’s past 4am and I’ve yet to put words to cursor. I will do it though before sleeping, scout’s honour.
Some days the ghost isnt with you. And some days it is.
Almost didnt want to do anything today. Instead I got the most productive session in terms of word-count in about 2 weeks. Also it was dialogue-heavy and I suck at dialogue.
What else can I say? Here’s a nice lazy song to celebrate.
Been on an immense Bon Iver binge in recent weeks, what with it being that cold autumn/winter point of the year. Great stuff for writing too. Doesnt draw attention to itself in a distracting way yet paints a very moody picture that cant help but inspire something. Now that I’ve absolutely exhausted the two albums, I’ve gone back to root around for more Justin Vernon stuff. Volcano Choir, Justin Vernon, DeYarmond Edison, the Hadestown album by Anais Mitchell he featured so heavily on.. everything.
So here’s a random gem from the gemstack:
For anyone paying attention, the above banner is the standard banner and not the winner variant. I never realistically was going to hit 50k in a month with the pace I was setting but that was fine by me. I was trying to learnt to write off-the-cuff and, more importantly, the discipline to maintain my writing as a daily thing. Which was hard. And is hard. I’ve kept it going. I only missed I think 3 days maximum in November and made up for those with additional sittings/words on other days. I just missed my self-set 30k. I sat down too late that night and ended up breaking it a few hours later (at midnight I was 29k+ from the previous day so I was basically on-target). Ah well, was still proud.
Now November is done. The pep talks are all read. The regional Facebook group is essentially disbanded. All the music that was previously appropriately inspiring-yet-not-distracting-to-write-to feels old and uninspiring. I’m starting the feel the sluggishness because I’ve ran out of all external motivating factors. I didnt mention, but I gave myself the added goal to break 50k with this novel regardless AND to complete the first draft on top of maintaining the daily writing habit. In fact the habit may be the only thing keeping me going at this point. I’ve dropped my daily word target to 500-800 words so it seems feasible and I cant go to bed without feeling like an ass if I miss it.
It’s 3am and I have yet to write my tenth word for today before bed. I’m at about 34k. I hope I have enough content to break 50k, man. 40k is looking reasonable but I’m going to need to discover another ‘event’ to propel the word count beyond that, if I’m being entirely honest with myself.
Sucks.
Going beyond Yugen. Ignore the excessively dramatic music.
abdulj. 