Elisabeth Kent

Doesn’t appeal to you? Then, you don’t want to be a career writer. Because that’s been my day, as the snow falls down. Good news is Ifinished another scene (another 829 words drafted), so my story continues to grow. Yippie! But it’s time to wrap things up and think of shoveling snow and making dinner.

 I had finished chapter 3 scene 1 last night, and I finished drafting scene 2 just a few minutes ago. I’m not marking scene 2 final draft yet, since it is literally that hot off the press, but it is currently sitting at 1,873 words. Also, I decided to insert a new scene into the plot following this scene — something to remind the readers of the stakes. And I have to admit it occurred to me last night that this four-book series idea I have might be compressed into one larger volume of work. We’ll wait and see what my final word count is when I finish Book 1. And I am on my way to finishing book one! I am over 10,000 words in — yippie! I love snow days!

I actually wrote the first scene of chapter three tonight, too.  Whoohoo!

And congratulations to the N.O. Saints!

Oh, yeah. I mean it this time. Grin, grin, grin. Chapter two is at 1,565 currently. I have written 2,882 words on the day and finalized chapters one and two. Baby’s on a roll!  Yeehaw!  I have 7,131 words overall for my WIP at the moment.

In this corner, weighing in at 1,317 words — CHAPTER ONE!

And this one REALLY is my final draft.

So, eat that, Musey!

Ya gotta laugh. I have been through maybe five what-I’d-call-successful versions of chapter two, yet each time I mark it “Final Draft,” I end up reworking it the next day. Gah! It would drive most people mad, but I realize that I am continuing to improve the chapter in the revision process. Was it bad before? No. Is it better now? Yes. *shrug* So, yesterday afternoon, I added an exciting element to chapter two, and it was a fabulous improvement. Then, I marked it final draft (same with the first part of chapter 1). They were finished (yeah, right), so I was going to set them aside and finish drafting the rest of chapter one today. Well. Then, the Muse visited me, and the dialogue went something like this:

Musey:  You know, lady, that needle thing was a great addition. Very exciting.

Me:  Thanks, Musey. You are rarely so kind to me or so favorable toward my writing. So you must mean it.

Musey:  Don’t get a big head, lady.

Me:  My bad, Mistress Musey. [shrinks head]

Musey:  Wait a minute. What is this? You labeled this “Final Draft?” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! [face reddens with maniacal laughter]

Me:  [makes a sound like the monkey with four asses] I knew your kindness was too good to last. Say what you gotta say, then.

Musey:  Why not do that with the rest of chapter two? And with this crap you’ve got in chapter one?

Me:  Do what? And what crap? This is good crap. Some of the best crap I’ve ever written.

Musey:  Scrap the crap.

Me:  What a clever motto. You make it sound so easy.

Musey:  It IS easy. Just make it ALL that exciting.

Me:  [rolls eyes] Oh, okay. Of course. Just make it all exciting. Why didn’t I think of that? I could’ve just done that in the first place…

Musey:  Look at this, moron. [Pulls red pen out from behind her ear and circles large sections of text] Backstory. Thinking. Internalization. Feeling. Adjectives. And just look at the so-called action. Standing, leaning, inhaling. Bo-ring.

Me:  [frowns, picks out the five uncircled words -- raised, fired, extinguished, leapt, swung] Dangit, Musey. I hate it when you’re right. [tosses fifteen pages in the Crap Pile]

So. You know what I’ll be doing today.

Two hours later, my biceps are sore and my thermals are still damp, but we shoveled about 24,000 inches of snow — walkways, porch and patio, and one vehicle in the garage. The other vehicle won’t make it out of the garage until August 2013. Because it will take that long for the snow I am not shoveling to melt.

Meanwhile, minus a migraine yesterday (thanks sour cream and onion dip; I now know you contain MSG), I was semi-productive writing this morning. I’m still messing about with chapter two. It’s okay. I just hate writing heroines. Guess I’ll go up to my office and write. It’s either that or dig out my car, and I’m still thawing out.

It’s just not working. The dozens of incarnations have been passable, but the problem is the heroine is all over the place. So, after rewriting and rewriting, I woke up this morning and decided to trash the whole chapter and start fresh. But I won’t be starting fresh today. Today, I’m moving on to chapter one and hopefully I can work out a draft of chapter three as well. I have much better luck writing the heroes, so to make progress, I’ll continue writing the hero’s scenes.

Anyone know when Deadliest Catch starts up again? I’m itching for some adventure on the high seas!

Process is different for every writer, no doubt about it. What’s working for me at the moment is a combination of Excel plotting, Word drafting, and journal writing. I even used the Awesome Note app last night to sketch out a defining moment in my heroine’s life.

So, now for my progress. Three chapters are now at the final draft stages of my sci fi story (yay!), I have titles for each book in the series (yay!), I have 8,760 words finished (of, now thinking, a 100K story, we’ll see, that target keeps moving), and I have 11 additional scenes of this story plotted out on my Excel spreadsheet (yay!). I’ve also started keeping a better writing activity log (another Excel spreadsheet) where I track time spent on different writing activities.

Thus far, (this is interesting to me) since 1/17 to today (1/25) I have spent 1 hr blogging, 8 hrs brainstorming (for myself and others), 1 hr critiquing someone else’s stuff, 6.25 hrs drafting chapters for my sci fi book 1, 3 hrs editing it, 4.25 hrs plotting it, and 10.5 hrs revising it for a total of 34 hours spent on the story since 1/17 (really just 1/17, 1/18, 1/23, 1/24, and 1/25 — so 5 writing days). That’s an average of 6.8 hrs writing per day. I’m trying to get that time up to 8 hrs per day, like a full-time job — which is what I’d like It’ll be neat to see, after I’m published hee hee, how much I make per hour LOL.  I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, WRITE ON!

Yep, stick a fork in it! The final draft of Chapter One is at 3,375 words. Well, now that I think about it, that might just be the first scene of Chapter One, not sure yet. Anyhoo, doin’ the Happy Dance.