Writing Progress

Playing on the IPod: Jars of Clay & Josh Groban
Word Count: 27621

I am in the process of editing and re-assembly of my WIP. I started about two or three weeks ago with my intro, and have been attempting to make a pass through all of my sections, and put everything together in order. I now have a new folder, with individual chapter files labeled up to 10. A couple of scenes are completely new. Mostly, it's just an editing pass--cleaning up words, adding, cutting, piecing, wondering at some of what I wrote (some good wondering, some bad). I'm probably 1/3 through the story at this point, which would make for about a 75-80k total. I can't currently get an accurate word count on my previous version as all of the files were rather mixed up, and I had extra (deleted) scenes in the same folder. I know I will have a bit more brand-new writing to add in as I go.

I wrote an additional scene from scratch today, about 1000 words, that is really a bit of backstory disguised as a bedtime story told to the daughter of a secondary character. I think I want to incorporate it, as I kind of like how it turned out. But, it doesn't have a spot yet, and will need another scene or two to connect it to the rest of the story. I think it will have to wait in my holding area for now.

Also, I am considering entering a contest. I'm not sure of the wisdom of that, as you have to pay an entry fee (I think its $25). The deadline is next week, but they want submissions electronically, so I have a few days to let the idea simmer. I keep returning to the idea, so probably I'll just go ahead and do it. It costs money, but I ought to get at least a few comments back (call it an expensive critique), and I'd be entering some part of my intro, which has had several pairs of eyes look over it in the last several months. That piece is not getting another re-write for a very long time, or I'll end up butchering it by secondguessing myself.

It's still kind of early, and I'm done for the night. Time left for a little reading!

Research

Research ideas come from the strangest places for me lately. I picked up a copy of Playing for Pizza by Grisham at the library a week or so ago. It was something different. I've read a couple of his books before--The Firm, The Pelican Brief, etc. Courtroom drama isn't my top choice in books, but its interesting. This one is about football. Well, football (American, not soccer) in Italy. The main character is a third-string NFL quarterback who can't find a job in the NFL after a spectacularly horrible championship-losing error.

I'm kind of enjoying it, which is a testament to Grisham's actual writing. Because I am not a football fan. Not even close. I used to attend all of our highschool games, because I was required to as part of the color guard (we performed for all of them). And I'd sit in the stands and cheer when everyone cheered, and occaisionally I would look up long enough to actually see someone doing something good. More often, I'd spend my time chatting with my friends, rating the butts of the various cute team members lined up on the side, making witty quips about "tight ends". I'm sure my father, a die-hard football fan and graduate of University of Nebraska Lincoln (the fans dont' get much more fanatic than that, I've noticed), thought I was hopeless. Line of Scrimage? First and Goal? Down? Who's down? What on earth does that mean?

Around my senior year of high school, I think the constant exposure to football and a few basic lessons from my dad actually did sink in. I'm still not a fan, but I did watch the Rams' superbowl victories (yes, it's been a few years), and I actually understand what's happening on the field these days. I have never played, wouldn't attempt to analyze a play or anything, but at least I know what the teams are doing whe they tackle each other. I have yet to actually watch a pro football game in person, but I think I could follow the action if I did. No promises on the "tight end" jokes, though...those guys wear white spandex for goodness sakes!

So, this post is about research, for my romance-novel in progress. Yes, there really is a connection here. One of my secondary characters I've been thinking of as a sort of overgrown frat boy. Not so much a horrible binge-drinking, womanizing type of frat boy, but more of a sports-loving have-a-beer-with-the-guys kind of frat boy. He's not in a lot of scenes, but he's still kind of important to the heroine's conflict. Reading all of the football lingo has given me a definite idea of how to make his character work better.

I feel like I should close this post with a witty football -phrase, like I'm 4th and goal, or that I'm going to punt. But really, it's more like 2nd and 8 on my own 40 yard line. In other words, I'm making steady forward progress, but I have a long way to go.

Progress and Research ideas

My intro re-write is, I think, a bit of a success. Well, to my own eyes it is; no one else has read the new-and-improved version yet. And truthfully, since I just finished parts of it at 10:30 last night, my own opinion is far too close to really see it. There is no longer any sort of surprise as to the true setting--a modern day Renn Faire., and I think it flows a bit better. It definitely improved my ability to include the character's thoughts, as they obviously know that they're not in 14th century Europe, but rather in dressed-up midwestern fair grounds. The re-write is longer than the original--I didn't do a word-count comparison, but the new version is 21 and 8300 words pages vs 15 pages and ??? words in the old one. I have seen an estimate of 250 words to a "manuscript page", but that calculation is completely inappropriate for my pages--I think it assumes that you're doublespaced, and I know for a fact that this file is not. Heck, I don't even indent my paragraphs (a habit I abandoned years ago writing technical stuff. I'm lucky that I remember not to number my paragraphs some days...1.1 Purpose of this document 1.1.1 Background 1.1.2 References 1.1.3 Our story finally begins).

I think that I had a brilliant idea for a post last night, that was not just an update on my WIP. This morning, I have absolutely no idea what it is. It might have been about wikipedia. That site is awesome. Want a photo of renaissance armor? How about a nice diversion reading about German jewels stolen after WWII? Actually, there are whole articles about real thefts of artwork throughout the ages...hmmm..fodder for future story ideas...

Progress

I keep contemplating whether to post one of those nifty progress bars showing my work on Chivalrous, but that would mean that I'd have to clean up my work folder to get an accurate count. I've begun moving files around and re-titling them so that I know which order they go in, etc, but I still have multiple copies of things. I need a source control system. For anyone outside of software, that's a program that keeps a revision history of your source code, and lets you retrieve old versions. The old copies are generally archived (zipped) somehow so that they don't take up a lot of disk space, and you can label versions or add comments so that you know what each one contains. Best of all, when you open the working folder, you only see the latest version of each file, instead of my home-grown method (intro.doc, intro2.doc, introReArranged.doc, etc).

I have tried using Word and it's master/sub document structure, but I haven't found a good groove there, and I keep getting strange section breaks and errors about needing heading values, so I'm back to just a folder full of individual files. I think that method would work well if I had an established outline and knew where the "chapters" should break. Unfortunately, I am only now getting my outline firmed up, so maybe I could revisit that method once the majority of the editing is done.

There are very few things I have ever written that have started with an outline--manily technical documents that have a predefined structure, and the "writing" there is much more fill-in-the-blank kind of stuff. I did once write a quick Word macro that would sum up the word count for all .docs in a folder--should anyone else want it, let me know :)

On the progress front, I've made steady but slow progress the past two weeks. My files are labeled up to "Chapter 4". My heroine and hero have had their initial meeting and first major conflict (the fact that he's engaged to someone else), and have now been thrown together two additional times. My heroine is currently bashing down a wall to help vent a little frustration (well, she's remodelling a house too). Also, I came up with a much better opening line for my first chapter. I have three different versions of the opening so far, and none had a good opener until last night. Well, one had an OK opener, but I was playing with re-arranging scenes in that one and had trouble getting one of the ones in that I really liked.