Category: the writing process

Un-Nano, day 2

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ Leave a comment

Words at start: 19,395
Words slain: 1259
Total words: 18,136
Goal: 5000
Percentage: 25.2%

Didn’t have a lot of time for writing today, so I still have a ways to go with cleaning up TD 204. I always say, “A day without fiction is like a day with too much sunshine.” Icky, in other words. But I’ve set aside the next two days for fictioning. None of that annoying socializing to get in the way.

But tired, tired now. I’m hitting the hay.

Un-Nano, day 1

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 15 Comments

Words at start: 19,395
Words slain: 909
Total words: 18,486
Goal: 5000
Percentage: 18.2%

Ah, this is better. I like my stories trim and pretty, not lame and bloated. No puppies from this batch to share, I cut those words out one at a time. 4,101 to go.

Oh, and then there’s this:

Yet another reason NaNo and I don’t mix well

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 5 Comments

I edit as I go. And you know, it was a skill I had to learn. I used to be afraid to edit. “I want to change that… but what if I decide later I like this old material better and it’s *gone*!” Well, sometimes editing’s necessary just to move on *at all*, so I learned ways to deal. Like backing up every day so I have old versions available if I need them. One other thing I do is create a “puppy pound.” My old writing coach had this saying from one of her editors: “This story’s great, except for one thing. You need to kill the dog.”

The “dog” is some part of the story you’re emotionally attached to that you refuse to get rid of even though it’s not contributing to any plot point. For me, the “dog” is often a cool squib of dialogue or description that could have been part of the story, but then didn’t fit once I had most of the story written. Sometimes, I’ll bend the story into pretzels to keep the dog there. But I’ve learned to get rid of my dogs by taking them and putting them into a separate file. The dogs go there, and all the other story snippets that could-have-been but proved extraneous to or wrong for the story go in the puppy pound.

I’m so used to having my puppy pound now, I forget it’s there unless I’m dumping verbage into it. But I have two puppy pounds going, one for TD 204 and one for TD 205/206. These are bits of text I wrote for the episodes in November that I just clipped out and stuffed away. I didn’t consider them as part of my “word count” because they’re not part of the “official draft”. But by NaNo rules (which I flout with impunity), they count in my total word count.

Right?

NaNoWriMo Day 4

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 2 Comments

The woman I’m having dinner with wanted to do a “swap”–her art work for my fiction, and so I dug up a chapter of my old novel to share with her. One chapter, 8119 words. Jeez. That was before I learned that my writing was better when I cut any “full draft” down 25-30%. And also before I had mastered the art of writing descriptive detail. I was still in over-doing it mode back then to compensate for my earlier under-doing it instincts.

Anyway!

New words: 1417
Total words: 6718
Goal: 50,000
Percentage: 13.4%

Quote-worth snippet: nothing worth noting. I was just trying to finish my intro descriptive blurbs, and kind of rushing through them at that.

nano notes

NaNoWriMo Day 2

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 6 Comments

New words: 2249
Total words: 3250
Goal: 50,000
Percentage: 6.5%

Quote-worth snippet:

Connor flies out, yelling and flailing, then –

SMACK!

Is brought to a halt by something HARD he hits head-first.

TIGHT SHOT – He slumps flat, face-down on a dirt-covered plank of wood. His body is still for a moment. Finally, he shifts slightly and groans.

CONNOR
(muffled)
Ow.

Amazing how a little sleep (not to mention totally changing your tactics) can effect your effectiveness!

I will write no sentence before its time!

nano notes