savour that last glass of red grape juice, sit on them youtube beat tapes and shred that celtx yo
Archives for posts with tag: writing
writing is ______
stress relief
free therapy
a way to get things out of our brains
like having a child, except you get to be both proud parents
possibly the purest form of creation
a way to work through our thoughts
writing is all of those things.
It’s also a sneaky way to leave a small part of ourselves in the world forever. Our writings are our horcruxes yo. Word to Ralph Fiennes.
And with that, I’m outty.
Starting a new script tentatively titled London Coconut, aka being brown and thirty. The first one was called No Boxed Gifts and was about being brown and twenty-one. I’m on some Edgar Wright cornetto trilogy shit right now. Fuck with me.
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 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:
Not gonna lie, I’m pretty stoked by the result. Wasnt expecting to care at all so my response has kinda taken me aback lol. Try it for yourself. Maybe you wont care either until you do (ha). I ran through my Nanowrimo Day 1 writing (Allie POV).
EDIT:
Decided to run through my other character POVs to see what came out. Results:
Allie 1: JD Salinger
Raleigh 1: Cory Doctorow
Abbie 1: Neil Gaiman
Allie 2: JD Salinger
Jim 1: Mark Twain
Laura 1: Arthur Conan Doyle
Now obviously I dont for a second believe the results. But I do find it cool that my POVs are all distinctly different in some way. And that the two POVs that belong to the same character got the same result. Consistency for the win.
Link to analyse your style: iwl.me
abdulj. 