A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, there was a terrible commercial where people said “Whassuuup” to each other over and over, and this commercial had nothing to do with writing. But…. I’m gonna use it as an excuse to update you on my writing anyway! Mwuhahaha!
First, I’m writing again. Yay!!! And for 143 days in a row! Double yayyyy!!!
My minimum is 1 sentence, and many days I get less than 100 words. But word count per day has been getting bigger, and my last session I hit 2,300+ words. Triple YAYYY!!!
If you want to know what I’m up to, I’m doing my own version of the mini habits system by Stephen Guise. Basically, it’s a really low-bar checklist so I don’t wimp out. Here’s the book that got me started, and it’s working for me:
Getting stronger after hell
My writing muscles are building back up, and my prose quality is going up. I have better control over the pacing and emotional beats of my scenes, as well. Basically, I’m getting all those skills back that I lost after my Three Years of Hell (TM), where my mother died, grandfathers died, my house burned down, and I almost died and lost a lot of mental sharpness because of a surgery gone wrong.
Writing novels only for now
Writing wise, I’ve been working exclusively on novels. Honestly, I don’t have the time or the emotional fortitude to submit my short stories, so no sales there.
I’ve currently got two projects in the works:
- A rewrite of novel (first book in a series)
- A new novel (second book in said series)
I work on both every day, minimum 1 sentence each, and I also work on outlines (minimum one step/spreadsheet cell) or scene sketches (minimum three bullets) every day. Them’s the rules, and they’re working for me.
The daily grind!
The rewrites on the first book are soaking up most of my word count. It was a particularly hard book to edit, and I edited it 3.5 times line-by-line before I figured out what was wrong: The writing just isn’t up to my standards, and a simple edit will never fix it. Normally I’d trunk it and move on, but the structure is strong, and there are some really kick-ass scenes, and I like the characters. Complicating matters is that I’m about 22,000 words into the second book of the same series.
So I’m currently in the process of taking scene sketches and rewriting the entire book 1 from scratch. It’s the first time I’ve ever done a rewrite from scratch, and it scared the hell out of me at first. Honestly, it’s not terribly hard. It’s just loooooooong. It takes a lot of time because you’re doing double work, scene sketches, then writing. I know someone’s going to say I don’t need the sketches, but I think I do; I need the buffer so the bad writing of the earlier drafts doesn’t “infect” this one.
Results for my Writing
The results so far have been fantastic. It’s gone from a book that I couldn’t say enough bad things about to one I’m actually satisfied with. Quadruple YAAAAAY!
I know I know, you still have one more question: What ELSE am I doing (because I can’t possibly be busy enough)? Well…
한국어 배우고 었으습니다. I’m learning Korean!
NOW…. Whassup with you? C’mon… WHASSSSSSUUUUUUUP with you?
I have quite a few articles on writing. If you’re interested in them, may I suggest you start here with “The Path to Mastery”.