Weekly Writing Check-In: Countdown to Published

This is my last Check-In post before I become a ~real life~ published author. Tomorrow I go to the bank to open a separate account, and by the end of the day I'll be uploading THE FINAL, I SWEAR THE FINAL mobi and epub files to Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and Smashwords, in that prioritized order. Been having to take a lot of deep breaths to remind myself that this is what I've wanted a majority of my life, and just because that "OMG IT'S SHIT DON'T DO IT YOU'RE GONNA GET EATEN ALIVE" bug is gnawing away at my brain, doesn't mean I still shouldn't do it! So what if it's in my real name and my super conservative relatives are bound to find Hildred's stash of f/f romance online? Oh well. It's not like I hide this stuff from them.

In other news, the first draft for the next book in the REN'AI RENSAI series is complete! Came out to be about 91k. Started editing yesterday and it's already down to the 80k range. Figured, why not, I want this published by Christmas, and I'm in the editing mood! And because I'm just like that, I wrote the first page of Book 3 before going to sleep last night. I just had to after coming up with the perfect title for it, finally. (The perfect title always comes!)

So besides the uploading anxiety I'll have tomorrow, I'm finally able to relax a little. This means I'll get to writing the posts for the upcoming blog tour in October, and, if you're signed up, I'll have the posts out to you by the end of the week. On that note, there's still time to sign up for the DAISUKI blog tour for dates starting in the second week! And then, maybe, I'll finally start blogging about OTHER THINGS than just me me me again. I mean, my time has been so consumed with this editing stuff, that I haven't even been able to READ other books. Crazy, right? My brain is all sorts of muddled right now. Which means I'll be spending most of book launch day curled up watching TV and/or sleeping. Pfft. What career?

Next time I check in here, I'll be a published author. And my parents are already telling me I should be selling my 40k novella for 10 bucks. Oh joy, this is gonna be a fun ride.

plug plug plug.

PUT THE MANUSCRIPT DOWN AND STOP EDITING ALREADY.

Oh, I'm sorry, did I yell that? I didn't mean to yell that. Well, maybe just yell it in my head. A little. Okay yeah I meant to yell that.

I'm in the middle of writerly self-doubt, brought on by "too much editing". You probably know how it is:  you get so in the editing "zone" that you keep finding fault after fault after "OMG THIS MUST CHANGE ARGH". Worst of all, you've read your words so many times that they've completely lost meaning and are no longer decent, but the swill of the universe. You know. That epic self doubt that says "you suck light it all on fire."

Thus, I've promised myself  that this is THE LAST edit/read through I'm doing of "DAISUKI." After that, no more. Beyond checking stuff for formatting, this will be my last fiddle before it goes live. I've convinced myself I'm doing the right thing. There is such a thing as "over editing". Since the first edit I did (which is mostly just removing typos / glaring errors) I've taken off 5k, mostly stupid info dumps and cutting out clunky prepositional phrases if not whole lines.It's the same exact story, just...cleaner? But of course it'll never be clean enough for me. It's that moment when you realize what other authors really mean when they say they're never happy with the product.

But no. I swear. This is the last read through. THE LAST. LAST I SAY.

Stop me before I commit every  word to memory.

Weekly Writing Check-In: In Which I Look Super Productive

Woooo, what a week. I worked pretty much nonstop on writing crap, that I barely had time to get any exercise...or eat...or shower...or you know, do life stuff. That's how I am, though. Once I'm in the zone lol what is basic care of my body~

So, let's see what I did this week!

1. Finished second to last round of edits for "DAISUKI." Which lead me to-
2. Format it for Kindle! Took a couple days to get the hang of, but I'm not happy to report I know how to format for ereaders in Scrivener! So far I've only made a mobi and ported it to my Fire, and am now doing my last edits via reading on the Kindle. Do you know how intense it is to see your book all formatted prettily for an e-reader? It's awesome! And the cover is FANTASTIC on my tablet. ;) But now I've got the extra aggravations of my last edit, because the Kindle shows me just how repetitive some words / phrases may be.
3. Wrote three more scenes for the next book in the REN'AI RENSAI series. I'm now two away from finishing the first draft!
4. NOW FOR THE SUPER EXCITING STUFF! Friday I registered BARACHOU PRESS as my Doing Business As and received my first EIN from the IRS. So, essentially, I've started my own business. No press, book, to sell well and make me money to stay afloat. No pressure at all.

I like how those only break down to four points. But it was a lot! I feel quite accomplished today over what I accomplished last week, and look forward to this next week as well!

My goals for this week are to finish writing my new WIP and to finish the last edits of DAISUKI. I should have both easily done by Friday, assuming I'm not coming down with something. Only 15 days until release date!

Oh! And don't forget, yesterday I launched my very first (although co-run) blogfest, the Love, Differently Blog Hop coming up this November. Be sure to check it out and maybe sign up!

Weekly Writing Check-In: Work work work.

Man, what a roller coaster of a week. Last week I drew up an outline for the last few scenes in my current WIP, and hoped to get through most of them by today. Well, I got through five out of ten scenes, with the sixth one started. Why not more? Because my final edits came in so I started editing instead! And as of last night, editing is finished! Woohoo! Well, I'm going to start a final read through tomorrow before tackling formatting later this week. I also hope to get through the outline this week and be done with another rough draft! (A really, really rough draft.)

Sadly, this week hasn't be all good news. A couple weeks ago I mentioned my cat Cassie was diagnosed with cancer, but seemed to be doing well on her medicine. Well, last week she stopped eating again, and Friday we had to put her down. Understandably (or it better be), I was really upset for a couple days, also leading to me not writing much. Cats are my favorite animals, and I bond closer to them than any other. She was a very good and affectionate cat who was always there for me when others weren't. Actually, this is the second cat we've lost this year. Third, if you count my other cat that has declared herself feral. 2012 has been awful for animals. I'm also not reading much right now, because I always enjoyed reading outside in the sunshine with the cats bothering me and making beds out of my blankets. Not anymore, I suppose. Life sucks. Then you publish.

Onward~

Weekly Writing Check-In: Back at Camp, with a side of editing.

It's the first Sunday of August, which means the first Camp numbers are in on my end. I'm making steady progress but am not pulling ahead. Last check I had about 8k. That's cool, I'm not looking to break records this month, but I like getting ahead and giving myself room for ULTIMATE BODILY FAILURE ie: the plague, broken everything, and a dose of death. In total the novel (thinking it's gonna break 60k at this rate) is 23k. Definitely not quite as ~sexy~ as the other one yet, but it might get there! Maybe.

Speaking of "the other one", getting preliminary beta edits back. Gonna go through it myself one last time before shipping it off to ye olde bff editor who is, for some reason, ridiculously hyper and distracting tonight. But I guess that's better than her being dead. '

This next week will be the usual writing, editing (for myself and others), working on getting the cover for the novella done, and solidifying my marketing plan. Oh, and I think I'm supposed to apply to consolidate my student loan debt somewhere in there. One of those things is not as fun as the others. (Or good for the psyche. My God. I have serious debt.)

...ONWARDS, AUGUST.

Weekly Writing Check-In: To Smut, Or Not to Smut

I dig me some lesbian koalas.

"Smut", is, of course, my affectionate term for "sex scenes" in my own writing. Usually, in my main series, I'm not shy about including graphic sex scenes (I'm writing for damn adults, after all) so long as it's related to the overall plot, whether by something that happens during the scene or how it affects the fornicatin' characters. It's pretty easy for me to go "lol that smut was fun to write, too bad it's gettin' cut even before the second draft happens lolol". But that's when I'm writing my science-fiction/fantasy.

I've been editing my romance novella this week, and I think I've mentioned here before that me and a few CPs/general friends have been discussing how I should market it. Should I market it just as a romance with a couple graphic scenes, or as an erotic romance? To me, marketing it as an erotic romance means there's smutsmutsmut all over the place, and if that's what you're looking for, you may be disappointed to see the first ~smut~ doesn't pop up until halfway through the novella. Here's the thing: there are two very good places I could insert some good ol' lady x lady smut earlier on in the novella, but I didn't because it wasn't really plot related. I'm thinking I may write them anyway after I finish this edit just to see how I feel about them in the overall story. But I wouldn't have thought of it at all if it weren't me thinking ahead towards marketing. I don't know. I'm talking in circles now.

But yes, smut has been on the brain all week. Ain't being (lonely, sad) 25 grand.

As a Writer, How Do You Measure the Length of a Novel?

I've been writing novel-length stories for well over ten years now, and during that time from reading articles in "Writer's Digest" magazine to now trolling through blogs, it seems that the discussions on "novel lengths" has changed dramatically. But as authors we tend to see "novel length" in various lights. There's

• Wordcount Length
• Page Length
• Amount of Time Passing in the Novel
•  How Long It Took to Write

And other general fun parameters like that.

I've been thinking about this particularly since finishing the preliminary edits on CROSS//Rebirth. When the first draft was finally completely finished, it was about 360k. Since then, with the preliminary edits, I've chopped it down to about 340k. (Easy math!) Surprisingly, that wasn't mostly scene cuts. (Yes, scenes got cut, but that's not the point!) Most of that was from simply tightening up the writing, getting rid of obvious redundancies, and rewriting sentences/paragraphs that eventually wound up shorter than before. It's amazing how all of that adds up to 20k. That's a short novella right there! But for me a a novel over 250k is completely normal. Fantasy series and all that.

Which is probably why it seems like it takes me so much longer to write my novels than some other people.  This novel, just in first draft form, took me three years to finish. Three years to write 360k that covers about...a month? Maybe a little over. That's an intense month!

When I define the lengths of my novel, I tend to go by word count. A word count very...normal for me. But I also think about the length of time I put into them.

How about you? How do you define the length of your novel? What's a "normal" novel length for you in any of the above categories? Could you imagine ever writing a 350k novel??!?!?! (if you don't already, of course!)

Sigh. And I'm in the process of writing two more drafts of the same length. This is why I have to be so diligent in writing so much every day!

Weekly Writing Check-In: ALMOST DONE, Camp, with a hearty distraction from Goodreads.

I am happy to report that not only am I almost done with the read through of CROSS//Rebirth (one more chapter then the epilogue!) but I'm also past the 20k mark on Camp Nano.Hooray! I'm managing to cram in 2k a day even with all the editing, blogging, and other BS. Thankfully as I end the draft of Rebirth the chapters are also getting shorter, allowing me to finish them faster. Small favors.

Otherwise, I'm on Goodreads now! Well, I've had an account for quite a few months now, but I've finally gotten it spruced up and most of my stuff sorted. Feel free to add me as a friend! You can find my profile here. I'll add an author page as I get closer to publication.

Anyway, that's it for today. It's 11pm and I need to write 1k more words for Camp. Gotta stay on target, otherwise what do I have? Haha.

Stuck in the RV of Camp NaNoWriMo

I'll be here if you need me.

Here it is, 11:30 PM on the night of May 31st. Camp will be starting in a half hour and I had completely forgotten all about it until now.

lol oops. OOPS.

Well, it's not the end of the world. I know what I'm doing. I know where the draft is going. (I think.) My big pain in the ass right now is just trying to figure out when I'll have to time to write 2k a day when my life is revolving around ~super serious~ edits (of my own work and others') and further research into the future of my business. And oh, the freelance writing. CANNOT FORGET THE BACON.

I'll be okay. That's what I tell myself. Shit, I finished how many Nanos while going through college? What the hell am I worried about? Just because I'm stuck in my parents' house in what's gearing up to be a hot summer (hot summer, a hot hot summer) and can barely focus on one thing let alone four...wait, am I whining? I don't know. This whole entry is just stream of conscience blather.

...It is so hot in my room that my keys are sticking. sjdflkasjfa.

ANYWHOZER. I'll be fine. I know I will be. I'll finish Camp AND finish the edits of CROSS//Rebirth and send its broken shell to my first beta reader by the end of this upcoming month. I know I will! That's not me psyching myself up. I actually will. And panic the whole time.

Pshaw. So who else is camping this month? Are you juggling all your other writing projects at the same time? I think that's my problem. I'm used to my time being sucked up by NON writing enterprises. Now it's like "oh you want me to do more writing. It's like you think I'm a WRITER or something, jeez."

Here's my Camp profile~

http://www.campnanowrimo.org/campers/hildred

Weekly Writing Check-In: Character Birthdays and...well, nobody cares.

LOL "BIRHDAY".

Oh, Memorial Day weekend! How little you mean to the work-at-home, the freelancers, and the generally unemployed. (Read: me.) But, I am taking a bit of a break today, simply because I'm tired and I'm staring down a 25 page (single spaced in Word) chapter and nooooo not today. That said, editing is coming along as usual. This month I've managed to get through about ten chapters which is no bad business. Meanwhile, earnings are up at Hubpages. Still not making payout yet but I'm not complaining. It's still on the up and that's all that matters from that front! I am also still slogging through McCaffrey's "Acorna" series, and reading it gives me so much faith in myself. Especially in the editing department. Reading a book that has clearly never been edited in its existence really boosts ones own writing confidence~

All that shade thrown, it's May 27th. This date has two significances. The first one is that I've got about four days to prep for Camp. I was hoping to get this other chapter finished (since I like starting Nanos on chapter  breaks) but I don't think that's gonna happen. My best bet is to finish on a scene break. Will make keeping track of my total a bit more difficult, but eh. Somehow, I will manage. (However will I do that?)

The second reason is that May 27th is one of my character's birthdays and for some reason this is the only character birthday I know off the top of my head. All my other characters, I know what month they were born in (and what part, because I know all their signs) but I rarely can remember the dates. Okay. I lied. I know why I know this character's birthday - it's because her birthday passes in the first book of the series, and thus far no other character's birthday in any series gets a little spotlight in the plot. And since I methodically keep track of each day and date that passes (WOOOO 2007! fun fact - after February, 2007 and 2012 have the same days, so her birthday is also over Memorial Day in that year) I know exactly what her birthday is. (Not that I can remember my own at the moment though....)

So this week's check-in question is this: Do you know your characters' birthdays off the top of your head? Do those dates play a part in your plots? Do you even keep track? :P

Oh, and today is Miranda's 40th birthday. She's reaching flaming birthday cake territory.

Weekly Writing Check-In: Those Silly Editing Items. And Sex.

When you've been editing your own work for any length of time, you begin to notice certain things that may be unique to your own writing style that you have to batter away with a leaf blower just to have a salvageable draft. I'm not talking about "passive voice", "adverbs", "dialogue tags", or the dozens of little things we're cautioned to watch out for when editing our own or others' works. I'm talking about the writing quirks, the crutches, the things that if anybody caught you repeatedly doing it they would never let you live it down. In my craze this month to edit as much as I can of CROSS//Rebirth to get it off to beta, I've noticed some certain things I've had to CTRL+F for to search and destroy until only one or two remain in a chapter (I usually have long chapters, so one or two is usually find imo.)

- "sigh". All my characters are always sighing, and of course it's usually not necessary. This is a habit I picked up years and years ago as a crutch to display dissatisfaction, eventual fatigue, or as a way to change a character's thoughts or switch POV. I've finally stopped actually writing it so much, but it still abounds in older drafts.

- "realize". This is a new for me in this particular draft. Characters are always having these little epiphanies, apparently. This is trickier to get rid of than "sigh" because it's not a simple delete, but usually requires rearranging entire sentences to get the same idea across without making everyone look like Plato.

- "glance". One of my big things that is pretty much just a style of mine is that I focus on characters' facial expressions, particularly eyes, because this is what I do in real life. Characters' eyes usually convey their inner feelings for me. (And this carries on to others' works...sometimes i don't pick up the inner cues as well unless a character's eyes are described.) But I've been noticing a large amount of "glancing" going on in this draft. Not looking, not glaring, not peering, glancing. Well, it is a pretty word. But I have no need for so much of it. This is a word that's just driving me nuts at this  point because it's EVERYWHERE. Sometimes I just swap out for another word so my "glance" rage doesn't explode, but usually I just drop the whole part or reword it if it's really important.

Aside from that, it's just the usual. First thing I control+F after reading through the whole chapter is "that", because extraneous "that"s are my new kryptonite.

Of course, I type all of this now as I'm staring down the chapter with the super-awkward-heterosexual-generational-difference-sex-scene from hell. (Not because it's awful or doesn't belong, but because it's just so awkward,man, which is good! Because that's what I'm going for.) My brain is going to be caught between "would a reader LAUGH at this description when they're not supposed to" and "oh. oh dude what are you doing with that?! I totally forgot about this!" while I know I'm supposed to be looking for these smaller things. I've read and edited this scene dozens of times now and it's pretty much where it needs to be, but this whole "tightening sentences" doesn't work when you're giggling over the word "tight" hee hee hee!

Sigh. I realize now that I should glance through it.

I'm going in.

Weekly Writing Check-In: Awards! Editing! Yay!

Things have been rather hectic this week - in preparation of moving home I've began packing, and woah, all my stuff doubled since I moved here last year! (And I've been diligently shipping things home once a week, so this is quite a feat) and of course I'm just all in a tizzy because stuff is getting expensive up in hurr. I just keep telling myself that ~everything will be fine~ but you know, moving stress!

On the editing front, I've finally plowed through evil chapter 8 and think I've edited it as much as I can now. There reaches a point where all you can think is "WORDS DON'T MEAN ANYTHING ANYMORE" when you read the same scene over and over again.

Moving on...it's award time! Wow, it's been a while! But the wonderful Yelena Casale has given me not one but TWO awards! Woo hoo! Here's the first one:

Sunshine Award

• Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them.
• Write a post about it.
• Answer the questions below.
• Pass it on to 10 bloggers who you think really deserve it and let them know.

Here are the questions:

Favorite color: Orange. I should hope it's obvious by now.

Favorite animal: Cats. There are no other animals.

Favorite number: Anything except 9.

Favorite non-alcoholic drink: Water.

Facebook or Twitter: Both are pretty good at ruining any day by showing off how awful people can be.

My passion: Writing, cats, and (listening to/writing about) music.

Getting or giving presents: I would say "getting" but then that just means I'm getting more crap.

Favorite pattern: ...what.

Favorite day of the week: On a standard week - Saturday. Because you can sleep in AND stay up late. All other days are wannabe posers.

Favorite flower: Rose, I guess? I'm not really partial to any specific flower. So long as they're orange.

The next award!

Kreative Blogger Award

This award requires giving 7 random facts about oneself. Well, okay....


1. I have lived in Japan three times now for varying lengths and with some time in between - however, I'm moving back to America at the end of this month. See above for my packing woes.

2. Part of my packing woes come from me buying so many cheap Japanese CDs here. I collect CDs, particularly those of Asian artists. I currently own about over 400.

3. I can't imagine a happy life without at least one badass cat in it.

4. Up until I was 20 I had very long hair. So long that I could sit on it. I finally got tired of it and realized it no longer fit the image I had of myself and cut it all off into a "pixie" style I still keep today. It suits me much more.

5. I consider myself a fan of video games but I play very few. My eternal loves will always be Pokemon and The Legend of Zelda. Nintendo 4 lyfe. (Final Fantasy wishes it was so cool.)

6. Soup and chocolate are my favorite foods, but never shall the two meet.

7. I wear fashionable wigs whenever I damn well feel like it. My favorite is a blond pixie style. (Sometimes you just gotta be blond.)

Done! Now it's time to pass these on...hm, who shall it be?

Sarah Pearson 
HR Sinclair 
Aldrea Alien
Danika Dinsmore 
Alessandra Hinlo
Susan Francino 
Angela Cothran 

Sorry if you've already received one or both of these...or am I? ;)

/back to editing
/um i mean packing
/lbr I'm playing sims.

Weekly Writing Check-In: Chapter 8, why.

Had a fairly busy week again, but I still managed to sneak in some editing and writing time...somewhere. Anyway, I'm Chapter 8 now, and when I opened it it was 35 pages and 20k words. WELL OKAY THEN. I think that's the record for this novel. I mean, I write long chapters as it is anyway, but even for me this is kinda ridiculous. I'm almost through and have it down to a whole spankin' 34 pages (on the readthrough, i'm sure it'll go down further once I hit search and destroy mode) but I'm laughing to myself. It's taking a whole week to edit this chapter. At least it's mostly dialogue!

That's all for this week, really, but I guess I'll throw a question in here anyway to make it more worth your time: What's the longest chapter you've ever written? Aaaaand go!

Survey Time! Did you hire a professional editor before self-publishing?

...Well, just as the subject says. I know that  vast amounts of you use beta readers, but I rarely see talk about hiring professional editors (who are quite expensive, of course) before taking the self-publishing plunge. So my curiosity is going lyke w0. Feel free to say whether yes or no in the comments.

Did you hire a professional editor before self-publishing anything?

Weekly Writing Check-In: lol editing.

I...I have no better subtitle than that. Seriously.I mean, just the usual editing junk. Finally made it up to chapter 8 in Rebirth which is where I left off last time before Nano made me go "LOL U" at it until this past month. So that means back to serious editing, full of "omg i can't believe i worded it that way make it stop", SEARCH AND DESTROY, and generally watching the word counts go down a couple thousand. Joy.

Meanwhile, still writing on Revenge. Only a few hundred words before going to bed, but it keeps me busy on it. Editing is technically more important right now but I do love me some writing before bed.

ANYWHOZERZ I have a small announcement! This is  post 198, so you know what that means! Sometime this week (probably Tuesday) will be the 200TH SUPER PARTY POST and YES there will be a contest / nice prize to celebrate 200 entries of this blog! So be sure to check that out this next week!

There will also be internet cookies.

Now I have your attention.

aha.

Weekly Writing Check-In: March 11th, and of course, editing.

First, the bones of this post. Back to editing CROSS//Rebirth with the hopes of betaing it by the end of the summer. I got up to about chapter 7/8 last time before Nano hit, so I'm going through them a chapter a night until I hit that. At about 10k a chapter that's a damn good rate. Still editing though. Clipping about 300-500 words per chapter, most of them extraneous stuff.

And now for the other point. Today happens to be March 11th, the first anniversary of the Great Tohoku Earthquake in northern Japan (or, the Tohoku area). This time last year I was sitting in a hotel in Portland waiting to go to the Japanese consulate to pick up my work visa. Just a bit of an odd coincidence. My mother and I were glued to the hotel TV and internet wondering if I would have a job to go to at all, or if I would even be able to.

Then we immediately worried about our own home. We are from Port Orford, the westernmost point in the contiguous 48. We were bound to be smacked by tsunamis the next day. Which we were. About 11 of them. (We were even on CNN the next morning. We sat in the hotel lobby going "omggggg" and watching in horror as...nothing happened. Ha.)

Since last April I've been living here in Gifu Prefecture, which is in central (Chubu) Japan. It was largely unaffected by the earthquake and tsunamis up north, but Japan is a very monolithic culture and what affects one part of Japan is felt all across the country. As a foreigner I will never be able to understand the magnanimity of what happened to Japanese people here. But as I sat and listened to the announcement of a moment of silence at 2:46 today, I thought about all of the people still living in squalor shelters in Fukushima. American media did a bang-up job scaring the whole damn world about radiation, but nobody bats an eyelash here. Our main concern are the survivors still stuck in temporary shelters, many of whom have no privacy, very little space to hold their minute belongings, and no idea of where and how they'll be another year from now. If you have it in your heart and ability to do so, please donate to a cause, such as the Red Cross.

We have had many earthquakes since I've been here, but since I'm from San Andreas Land, it's nothing new to me. But it's changed here. Even the smallest shake has all our parents calling and the media assuring everyone things are fine. But I wish the western media would leave that alone. Please focus on the people who still need help. All the scare mongering helps nobody. (Choir. Preaching to it.)

I'll wrap this post up with a video from a band that made an interesting take on survival in Tohoku. Those not prepared may find a tear in their eyes. (The title translates to "Let's Meet Here Again".)

Weekly Writing Check-In: This is the scene that never ends~

Well. You may or may not remember my self-challenge to write 25k in February. I didn't keep track of how much I wrote, but it definitely wasn't 25k. Probably more around 15k. But that's still 15k more than I had before.

Right now I'm in the midst of trying to finish up what is thus far the longest scene in the draft. Stuff just keeps happening, and my brain is starting to get numb trying to keep together  what happens next and who's supposed to say what and drop what hints about future plot crap. Thus I've had to break it up into chunks to write, which means I don't get as much done. Or at least it doesn't feel like it. But eh.

Starting this week, it's back to editing the final draft for CROSS//Rebirth. After I feel I've done a sufficient amount of editing I'll get back to writing on the first draft for CROSS//Revenge. But I won't start editing until I finish this damn scene.

Ever feel like the scene you're writing is just never going to end? (Yeah, I write in order. That's not going to change. Like, ever.)

Weekly Writing Check-In: Chasing Myself in Circles

Uh, yeah. Sure.

Remember how I said I was going to write 25k this month, while trying to average about 1k a day? Yeah, I'm not sure how I'm doing. I'm definitely writing every day, but I'm not keeping track of how much - and I don't caaaare! This isn't NaNoWriMo, this is just me pushing myself to get most of this draft done so my muse will be satiated and I can get back to editing. (March will be Hell for editing. I'm two months behind, after all.) So right now I'm just punching out as much as I can a day without paying too much attention to the word count. Doing pretty well? Suuuure.

That said, I've encountered one of my nemeses: The Chase Scene. Now, I'm not too shabby, I think, with most action scenes anymore - fight scene? Awesome, especially if it's between two pivotal characters who have a lot to fight out. Even better if they're taunting each other! Suspenseful scenes? Okay! Especially if people are losing everything around them and their sanity is but a single thread ready for me to cut!

Chase scenes?

Oh, no.

I don't know what it is about chase scenes I hate so much. I've always hated them, and not just writing them. I always ignore them in movies and gloss over them in other books. Remember when the rule was you're supposed to go quickly through them anyway, and leave out all the details because nobody would realistically notice them? Well, now I've been reading up some more, and the trend seems to have steered in the OPPOSITE direction, and we're all supposed to be Dean Koontz. Lol, screw that. Seriously.

When it comes to chase scenes, my thoughts are - make it as short as possible. Only put in the necessary details. Unless a major plot point somehow happens between Point A and B, there's no reason for me to know every damn twist and turn somebody goes down. I also don't care how hard they're running. I just want to know where they're going and if they're unscathed. Oh, and what happened to the person chasing them...I guess.

Can you tell I wrote one a couple nights ago? Half asleep, no less. It was awful. I literally did the bare amount necessary for a rough draft, thinking I would flesh it out in Round 2. I will be seriously kicking myself for that later.

But I don't care. Because chase scenes suck. Why can't we all just sit around and talk/fight out our feelings?

Any kind of scene you just hate writing/reading?

I can't believe it's time to think about this ALREADY.

(no picture today because I'm on the little netbook and it can't handle that shiznit.)

They've just announced over on the Nanowrimo forums the coming of Camp Nanowrimo in 2012, for the months of June and August.

1) Yay! I was hoping it was happening again thsi year!
2) Hm. No July. (because of too many tech difficulties this year, apparently.)

Actually, this works for me. Well, August will again anyway. And I'm sure to continue writing CROSS//Process like I started writing last Camp (and had a lot of fun doing because it was different while being the same familiar territory of past Nano ventures.) June will, however, be totally up in the air cause I have no idea if I'll be settled back into my American life already since I'm moving at the very beginning of May. If I'm still at home I'm sure I can do it, if I'm in the midst of moving and trying to find a job...I may have to pass this next year. But I waaaant to.

Of course, I also have the editing to do. Since I have a publishing date goal of 2013 then I really need to get this thing edited and off to betas. Sigh. Such is the writing life. Maybe I can get this edited and off by the time camp comes so I can do that while I wait. Yay!

"One-Pass Manuscript Revision", or, something cool I found on the internetz.

ORAAAANGE. THEY'RE ORAAAAAANGE.

Whilst surfing the great Nano divide of "omg why are you posting" and "omg why am I reading this" on the forums I stumbled upon a link that somebody posted called "One-Pass Manuscript Revision". In it the author, Holly Lisle, shares her process of revising her entire first draft in one go. Well, it's quite the promise, so of course I decided to check it out!

Her process is very "physical", meaning it requires notebooks, binders, and completely decimated forests from printing out your manuscript. Since this is completely infeasible for me, especially here abroad where I don't have the room for such things, let alone access to any printers (let's talk about what a pain in the arse that is sometimes), I decided to focus on Part 2 of her process, which lists all of the things to check for in any given scene. Since during my recent edits I often sit here going "uuuuh now what should I check for" I find most of these suggestions pretty invaluable. Some things, like timing and placement, I already keep meticulous track of, but others such as listing what the conflict in each scene is and how it contributes to your themes is a good reminder.  Of course, there are some things towards the end that kinda make me roll my eyes, such as GETTING RID OF EVERY INSTANCE OF "TO BE" EVER and essentially replacing every "was", "were", and "is" with either purple prose or...I don't even know...but overall I think there's a lot of good advice. I would still suggest that inexperienced authors, especially those who are not as familiar with editing yet, try not to do their entire revisions in one sitting, however.

Also, re-reading once again how most mainstream novels are expected to be between 90-125k words long reminds me that I am writing the right genre. I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I had to tell one of my epic fantasies in only 125k words, man. Also, today I began reading "Kushiel's Scion" by Jacqueline Carey (yay birthday presents!) and it's nearly 1000 pages long - I wouldn't have it any other way~