aamcnamara

Today was my last day at the archives, which was kind of awesome, and kind of not. Awesome in that I finished my third box of political cartoons, bringing me up to a sum-total of 7 years and over 1800 unique cartoons; not in that there are still years and years of cartoons left I didn't even touch. Awesome in that my boss-person brought in cupcakes 'cause it was my last day; not in--well, you know the drill. Food allergies, which are irrelevant enough to library work that I hadn't mentioned 'em, but the thought was really nice.

On the writing front, it's possible that reading the last of Delany's About Writing while in novel-withdrawal mode wasn't the greatest plan ever planned. But I read the rest of it! Weirdly, he talked about Alphabetical Africa and then it came up in conversation with epicrauko this weekend/last week, and then a copy of it came across my desk at the bindery yesterday... so maybe I'll pick up a copy sometime, who knows.

Anyway, About Writing was good. Delany makes me think about writing in an orthogonal way to the way a lot of writers do. A few key things of his, so I remember them: each word building on an image--add things to the image, don't cut away what you've already caused the reader to picture; structures and patterns create plots; a story about a man going into a store and buying something can sideways-talk about []ism as easily as science fiction can (somehow I hadn't quite gotten that before, and I still don't quite believe that it's as easy, but maybe my brain just works in speculative fiction because I have read so much).

Yesterday--maybe the day before?--I sat down and thought, via a pen and notebook, about where I am in the novel-rewrite process. What's going on, and why, and why it matters to the plot and the themes and all those fun academic writer-y thinky thoughts. I didn't end up actually sitting down and working on it, since I didn't have a ton of free time by a computer that day and I want to at least skim through what I have so far before I go on, but...

...today I sat in the park after the archives, and the rewrite grew a title. So it is officially no longer Mad Library Hermits (which it was until I realized that that was problematic), and it is no longer Badass Library Hermits--both of which were joke-titles off a throw-away one-liner not even in this draft so far. Instead, it is A Returning Power.

Which might be a terrible title anyway, and will likely change, but it's actually about the novel, not my jokes about it. That's a step in the right direction. The fact that I know enough what the novel is about to make it grow titles is proof of a step, too.

Sometimes I feel like one day I will actually be a Real Writer. (The rest of the time is evenly split between "I'm a Real Writer already!" and "I will never be a Real Writer." In case you were wondering.)

(Only three pages or so of that are from today--I wrote some last week after the last update.)

Writing is a very calming, satisfying thing to do on early, rainy mornings. Or at least it is for me.

Yesterday evening I just spent some time writing down ideas and thoughts for the novel revision I'm avoiding. I think I have to blow up the library earlier. Maybe. We'll see. But at least thinking about it is thinking about it, and not avoiding the subject entirely.

One could call that an outline of the rough draft of that novel I wrote this summer. Ten pages, each chapter divided into scenes and noted for content, time, characters, setting. It's a little amazing how many new things I saw while going through it this way. Things like where the major events fall, both within chapters and within the structure of the novel. ("Chapter endings being major turns" starts happening near the end of the novel.) Things like how many scenes it takes for a specific character to fall in with Our Heroes (less than one, in some cases), how many scenes a particular character is in overall... there's a lot of stuff in here that I wouldn't have seen otherwise, that it'll take me a while to sort out and recalibrate.

So far, this month in college, my writing work has been pretty scattershot--I'll spend a day and a half one weekend revising a short story, not do anything for several days to a week, poke at the novel-in-progress to the tune of a few hundred words some day, do the last ten chapters of my novel outline the next evening.

After the ritualistic write-some-on-the-novel-every-day of this summer, it takes some adjusting to. I still would like to get back into the habit of writing every day, but some concession has to be made for various things. (Like having classes and homework and friends to hang out with, none of which were particularly urgent points this summer.)

In other news, I discovered in my first day of the Awesome Job that I need a watch to keep time with while I'm sitting in the rare book room (or I'll just stay there all day). Therefore, I will soon be the proud owner of a pocket watch.

I believe the technical term is OH MAN DRAFT YAY YAY YAY.

(The last line is bad. But I can fix that. I can fix all of it! I can fix anything!)

I love it when the Big Action Scene and the Big Revelation Scene are the same thing.

(I have been using the "writing is not rewriting" tag a lot. However, I expect that soon enough I will be using the "writing is rewriting" tag far more. The thought of revising a novel terrifies me, but I intend to do it anyway.)

Another Struggle day.

I spent way too much of it watching A Very Potter Musical. Warning: it is literally two hours long. This is a fact which I did not realize until I was ensnared (ensnared, I tell you!) by its awesome.

Then I spent way too much of it angsting about having to write.

Upsides: I got a thousand words done, eventually; I queried about a short story submission that's been out for a while; I made a new submissions spreadsheet which will keep everything much more organized than before, if I can figure out just a few more tricks in Excel.

Also, I learned that Cicada magazine is now accepting electronic submissions. I have had it in the back of my mind as a good market for a while now, but the whole process of printing it out and mailing it in and waiting for a while never seemed worth it enough. (I know, arduous.) In fact, it's sort of amazing that they survived this long without e-submissions, seeing as how they actively want teen submissions. But hey, their bailiwick.

This whole day, I was itching to work on short stories, not the novel. I plan to follow that impulse this evening, starting now.

Well, I have 70k. And I'm back to thinking "oh no I will not have enough for the rest of this novel!". But clearly I just spent a thousand words, well, not doing all that much--I mean, it was important, just that there were not tons of things happening--so I probably will be all right.

Because it is late, I am stopping in the middle of a Very Active Scene. Possibly the most Active Scene so far, or at least the longest. At least tomorrow there will be very obvious things to happen next. I hate it when I've stopped writing the day before because I wrote everything I knew about, and then I have to sit there and figure out What Happens Next.

Also, I am not entirely certain how this is all going to work out in the end. There is one key element which got lost earlier in the novel, and... well, let's just say it's going to be interesting.

Somehow in all the excitement I got at least a little bit done on my novel tonight.

Now I am going to bed because there are too many things I need to think about and reply to, and if I get started I'll be here all night. In the meantime: you are all awesome.

I like this milestone better than 60k. For this reason: I started July with 50k and fully intend to finish the 80k first draft of the novel by the end of it.

As of today, and 65k, I am halfway done with my goal for the month. Two days early.

(Which is with skipping three days to go out of town over the 4th of July, plus not writing yesterday for a variety of reasons which seemed excellent at the time. Like the Last Ever Grad Party I have to go to--this year, anyway--and going to see a play, and mounds of blueberry pancakes.)

For today? I am going to eat some cookies, maybe read part of a book, and hang out with aliseadae.

(You know, when I come up with a title for this thing I will have to go back through all these entries and retroactively tag them with it. Because right now "everyone has a novel" is the catchall tag, but there will be other novels. Unfortunately, I am the sort of writer who can't come up with a title until there's at least a draft, sometimes several.)

(I am going to run out of verb phrases to use as writing update post titles eventually, but not for a while.)

This was yesterday's progress bar which I did not post.



There was brief celebration of reaching 60k. Also I went to the library and finally saw all of The Dark Knight. (Yes, I'm slow.)

This is today's progress bar so far.



I may or may not do more today. I know what happens next, that most important of questions to be able to answer, but I don't want to push it too far or go too fast and miss something big. I might take a break and, oh, actually write thank-you notes for graduation gifts or something.