In which I write about writing. There's no way I'm actually going to keep this up, but hey, it's a way to occasionally update people on progress.
I'm writing a book! It's currently 16000 words or so long, aiming for 50-60 thousand according to my plan, cut into about fifteen chapters. It's basically a quirky children's fantasy book with the chapters forming fairly independent stories to make it good for e.g. bedtime story reading. The first three chapters are now complete, along with chunks of a bunch of later chapters - I'm currently rather stalled trying to work out a plot for Ch. 4 though.
Trying to simultaneously work on bits of 5, 6, and 7, all of which have worked out plots but need a lot of fleshing out. heading for 22,000 words now, so almost certainly over a third of the way through the book, though halfway still feels some distance off!
5 is a simple friends-y sort of story, which is about cheering up one of the characters who is sad - those sorts of tales are important for this kind of book, I think, as I need a fair number of "toned down" chapters and to hold down the threat level in the "adventure" chapters to keep the tone right. Doing a Tolkien and suddenly flipping writing styles into full epic is something I'm fairly sure I'll be fine at avoiding, but I do see where the temptation to do that comes from so I think it's an instinct I ought to think about keeping in check...
I can see it now;
"What's wrong, Henry?" Larry asked.
Henry simple looked down at the floor. His face grew pale and his eyes filled with tears. His delicious hot dog, which moments before had been resting comfortably on the edge of the countertop, now lay at his feet. Blobs of mustard found their way onto everything within a meter radius. Henry could only cover his face and walk away.
Carrying himself to the door Henry opened it to see portugalING T-REX'S FLYING F16'S OVERHEAD! THEY WERE LAUNCHING A FULL SCALE ATTACK ON THE LLAMA/BOVINE CENTRAL COMMAND NEXT DOOR, WHICH WERE THEMSELVES FIRING WILDLY INTO THE AIR WITH AK-47'S AND RPG'S.
I now want to write the llama war book, but alas I should probably finish this one first.
I reached 24000 words today, which is a bit depressing to have only done 2k in the last month. Word 24,000 was "the" which feels a little anticlimactic. But oh well, plenty to be getting on with!
Today I reached forty thousand words :) Reasonably determined that at some point this book will be finished!
You can do it! Not long to go now then?
My calculations suggest that 58 to 60 will be where the end is, so a fair way yet but I've got two thirds done now. Seven chapters out of sixteen are still lacking a complete draft.
Got back to some writing on this - 5 chapters still not fully drafted, I've added about 2000 words in the past couple of days to reach a bit above 49000. If I work on this again tomorrow I should get another chapter completed and break the 50,000 barrier :)
I am continuing to throw lots of random details into the thing - this chapter contains a brief discussion of the concept of elfshot - but hopefully it's done in a sufficiently reader friendly way.
Didn't get the chapter completed at least yet (and I should rest soon), but word #50,000 was "time" :) First piece of anything I've ever written to break that word count barrier.
OK, this month the plan is to finish the book. We'll see if I manage it.
Still 4 chapters at varying levels of incomplete (one is a few hundred words away, one about a thousand short, one 1500 or so short, and one barely started). Passed 54,000 words today, I've added about 2500 or so of those within the past week, so if I keep going at this pace I should get the book finished by the end of the month. Fingers crossed!
Down to 2 incomplete chapters, and one of the two remaining ones is well over half done... the other, however, I'm hitting a complete block on, and it's the last chapter. I have a sort of aesthetic quality I want to get over with it, but how to turn that into a plot that makes sense and doesn't end up repeating the chapter two previous to it is really stumping me at the moment.
I appear to have written a book. Good heavens.
I mean, this is only a percentage of the way through the process, but I have a complete draft of a book. Which feels a bit surreal.
Amazing!
Well done :)
Exciting news!
Thanks both! The next steps are going to be editing, finding children-age beta readers, and looking into publishing options, which will probably be a lot of work. But I'm trying to just do the "finding beta readers" bit immediately, and leave off publisher think for a few weeks while I chat to people about the options.
Time to reboot this, I think, as I recently took a short story which I had written a while back and I've now got the following planned book to over 10,000 words. I've not finished any of the other chapters yet, but I've got chunks of Chs 2, 3 and 4 done, and I have a rough chapter plan, so I'm hopeful I can keep going with it. Not sure what to say about it this day beyond that it's a silly fantasy adventure story. But more updates to come I hope! I figured that I do regularly churn out e.g. travelogues of 5k words, and if I stack a few of those over time I could produce a book in two or three years if I put my mind to it. Maybe? We'll see?
A few Work In Progress snippets from the current project :) These may all get changed, but it gives you a flavour of the style I'm going for...
QuoteVescule looked as pained as Ceradan imagined he himself must have done earlier in the day. She was visibly mulling over the fact that their position was not an enviable one, but Ceradan needed that mulling to turn into ideas before.
Silence hung in the room for a few stretched out seconds, like a phantom sword above their heads.
"We can't refuse the request," she said eventually, "but we need to make a point that when paladins do things, they do them as individuals on the terms of the gods, not as. As such, we need a paladin on the job who will both get the job done, and will do it in the way least, shall we say, integrated into how someone like the Duke prefers to operate. Someone with a... limited sense of deference to worldly powers."
"Dangerous, no," said Erminegard, "if we send someone who the Duke might think makes a tit of themselves?"
"I think it works," said Ceradan. "Captain Pahtri has a point, some men would subordinate our whole order to butter their morning bread if they could. As long as the paladin comes up with the goods, the Duke won't have room to complain."
QuoteVurwakt straightened up. "Other thing needed in plan. If fight, how? No shield-biters with us, only coal-biters."
"You mean to say our devastating charm won't make the enemies melt away in front of us?" Jeanne gave a razor-sharp wink in Vurwakt's direction, and the large man shifted his sitting position under the unfamiliar gaze.
"If you want to do the Parranese Waltz with a stone-devil or a wight or a gryphon, I'm not judging, "
"I might be judging," said Carkhit. "Just a little bit, but I might be. I thought I should be honest about that."
"What is Parranese Waltz?" said Vurwakt, slightly too loudly such that the elfin lady with the ink-blue fingers heard and looked over curiously.
"Oh, mother of song," said Jeanne. "When a man and a woman- well, or a woman and a woman, or two men, or a dwarf and another dwarf both of indeterminate gender- I mean, when two people love each other, or when they get bored-"
"The thought is a one that is known," said Vurwakt. Had he just rolled his eyes a little? "The words that are not the used words, these are unknown. The metaphor."
"When I'm bored I usually sew," said Carkhit.
QuoteAlaster pushed the long pole slowly but firmly against the bottom of the waterway, and the punt continued to glide through the reeds and sedge that were packed thick on either side. The heavy, deep booming call of a bittern could be heard somewhere out in the fens, and a heavy-winged harrier turned circles high above them, seeking prey.
"I still can't believe that you held out on us on the wife thing."
"It didn't come up! In any case, Jean-Jacques: I'm wearing a wedding ring, and have been since we met."
"I've worn wedding rings plenty of times! They were just from other people's weddings!"
"You are a dreadful thief and a scoundrel, d'Alvaratanne. You know that?"
"In this life," said Jeanne, leaning back in the punt and gesturing with an imagined wine glass at the world, "we're all scoundrels in our way. Or ruffians, or weirdos, and I know which of the three I'd rather be."
"In my professional opinion as a weirdo," Ansaler began, and Jeanne burst out laughing before he could finish the sentence.
I have returned to the book! And written another couple of thousand words this weekend. At this rate, I'll complete it in a few years, which would be comforting were it not meant to be the first part of a trilogy...
Hit the 20,000 word mark! Trying not to think about what that says about how far there is to go, but once again, It's Something. I'm very much dotting around just building up whatever bits of the book first come to mind, starting mostly with the earlier chapters but I'm pinning down some later elements too. Not sure how well the plot works, I've never been great with longer plots, but we'll see how it goes.
That's quite a lot of words already. Yay! :)
Didn't get anything done through Christmas and January, but I got about 1500 words done in the last few days and that's got me juust up to the 25,000 mark. So maybe I'll finish the book one day... though I am already finding bits I need to rewrite because as I develop the characters they're changing subtly or I'm needing them to react differently to things. I think the main character is getting a little bit less sympathetic early in the book, and some people's reactions to things are getting a bit less blase and pulpy... we'll see how that all pans out.
I am still enjoying them as a group to write, though, and that's important. :bard:
30,000 words in the document now, so continuing to chip away at it! Some of the middle sections of the plot are proving tricky but hopefully I can wrangle them into shape eventually.