Pacing

Started the new chapter and the new writing week with 816 words.  I’ve had worse starts to the week.  I realised when I started that I wasn’t sure what I was doing with this chapter, but I have a better idea now.  I’m around about 32,000 words now which is about a third of the way through.  I am hopeful that I am pacing the thing well enough but I suppose I won’t find that out till a bit later.  I think I have enough of a framework to where I should be able to take it to around 100,000 words but it is a bit difficult to judge.  Perhaps this sort of thing gets easier, or there are better ways to plan it (there almost certainly are since most of the stuff is just sitting in my head) but I am not panicking yet.  My only concern is that the new character that I am introducing (well not completely new, he has been talked about a bit) might need to do a lot more in the book than I have actually planned for him so far.  Perhaps not but it’s something I’ll have to have a good think about.

I am about to take up driving lessons again.  I took a few lessons years ago but stopped.  My fiance bought me driving lessons for my birthday so I am ready to start.  Hopefully I will get my first one this week.  I will keep you updated, as if you cared.

The New TV

The new TV arrived and is amazing.  Watching normal TV and DVDs look so much better.  The only thing HD I have right now is the XBox 360 and that looks amazing.  Call of Duty 4 is just something else.  I was getting shot because I just couldn’t help gawp at the scenery.

Went to the Stand last night in Edinburgh with my parents.  It was their first trip to a comedy club and they loved it.  It was absolutely boiling though with all the people.  There seemed to be stag dos going on there.  One group of guys arrived early but every one of them was fine.  Another group were a nuisance all night, heckling the comedians.  It was embarrassing seeing them think they were funny.  They were just muppets.  I hate hecklers but this group, the more they did it, the more they all seemed to presume that they should do it.  I thought the staff should have warned them and ejected them if they kept it up.  Tools.  Other than that, it was a great night.  An unintentionally funny bit was when one of the guys in the audience at the front was asked what he did and he said he made computer games.  The compere asked him if we’d know about any of them.  The guy said that he worked on GTA but the compere either didn’t know what the initials stood for or just didn’t put it together in his head quick enough.  After the first act had finished it was obvious someone must have told him that the guy meant Grand Theft Auto as he was all over the guy for it.  For what it’s worth the look on the guy’s face suggested he really didn’t like being made fun of.  That’s why you get there early mate and get one of the good seats at the back where you have a buffer of people to protect you.  Like I did.  I am so smart.

No writing done today.  Are you kidding me?  I just got a 42″ Plasma TV.  Get real.

New Television Eve

The weekend doesn’t seem to be a good time for me to write.  I usually feel like taking Saturday off and more often than not I don’t seem to be able to write very much on Sunday.  This weekend will be a complete washout as well.  My parents are coming to visit, so I’ll be preoccupied with them and also, don’t know if I mentioned this, I’m getting a 42″ plasma television delivered tomorrow.  I did mention it?  Oh right then.  Apparently it’s coming between 7 and 11 in the morning which is good from the point of view that I will get to watch it sooner, but bad in that I get no lie in tomorrow.  Ah well, I’m not going to grumble too much.

Half way through prison break.  Man the dialogue is absolutely horrible at times, there are more holes in the plot than there are holes in your average sieve and it’s probably the most contrived thing ever… but damn it if it still isn’t addictive.  Can’t wait to watch it on my new television.

Did I mention I was getting a new television?

Tomorrow?

Yeah.

Okay then.

In the I didn’t see that coming story of the day…

… I reached this week’s target!  Today I wrote 2093 words giving me a total of 5124 words for the week.  I know I usually say it every week but I honestly didn’t expect to reach the target this week.  It’s been a funny one this week.  The rate of writing hasn’t, today aside, been all that great, but I think the quality of my writing for this chapter has been excellent.  Today, everything just slid into place and I knew exactly what I needed to do to finish the chapter.  So I did.  Another chapter in the can.  I think it’s quite an emotional chapter but I might be too close to it right not to judge whether or not I’ve got it right.

I also made a fairly major change today.  Or minor I suppose, depending on how you look at it.  I changed the main character’s name.  I like the name I gave her, but I was starting to think that it didn’t really fit her.  So I changed it and I think it’s a lot better.  She fits her name now so that’s good.  And after looking up it’s meaning, it’s also going to have a nice in-joke for my fiance and I.  Which is always good.

2 days to go to the big TV.  Bring it on.

Comments that definitely won’t come back to haunt me

877 words.  Still not got as much as I should have done but I think the chapter is starting to hit it’s stride now.  It should be quite an emotional one when it’s finished.  That’s if I write it well enough.  Every time I glance over something I have written before I know full well that it will need to be rewritten.  I am resisting the urge to do that now as I don’t want to get myself stuck rewriting old stuff when I should be writing newer stuff.  I am eagerly awaiting being able to edit this thing though.  My biggest concern is continuity, as I’ve been aware writing this current chapter that I may be “breaking” some things Ive already written.  Nothing major, just small details, but it’s the small details that you have to watch for as it’s easy enough to contradict yourself over minor things that you might not give too much thought to at the time.

Watched the apprentice last night.  Glad Nicholas went.  I love the apprentice.  It’s great watching people with over-inflated senses of their own self-worth and talent fail miserably.

Tempting fate?  You better believe it.

The chances of me meeting this week’s target are a million to one

I’m really not going to make the target this week. 375 words so far. I have to say that in spite of the low number of words I’ve written I’m not really too bothered because I am still writing. It’s just the current chapter seems to be going slower than I’d really hoped. I’m making progress though it’s just that it’s a particularly delicate chapter and i’m finding it hard to ensure that I do it justice. Thought some more about the new idea I had yesterday and I may refine it slightly. It will likely be either dark or very dark I think, but today I’m leaning towards just dark. The whole novel is quite dark, but this would be a step above that.

Looking forward to the Apprentice on TV tonight, one of the few reality shows I still have time for. I only actually started watching it last season. My fiance suggested we try to pick the winner tonight but I wasn’t sure that would be possible given the fact that I wouldn’t have been able to pick the winner of last season even on the last week. Christina was robbed dammit. Hopefully someone more deserving than last season’s winner will win.

4 days till I get my massive tv. Expect little to no writing done from me for at least two years afterwards.

Edit: Bumped the writing total up to 621.  Still a way to go though.

Little writing done disguised as a breakthrough

It seems unlikely that I’m going to make this week’s target.  I only wrote 635 words today.  Nevertheless, I’m extremely pleased with this week as today I had what I think is a pretty major idea.  At first I was skeptical I wanted to include it as it will heavily change the tone of the ending of the book.  The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that it not only would work, but it would improve the novel tenfold.  It’s definitely an idea I will have to be careful with to build it correctly within the story.  It’s essentially a twist, but i’m wary of having a twist just fthe sake of it.  I went to see the movie Vantage Point yesterday and my biggest gripe was that the movie’s key twist felt completely contrived and didn’t even bother to offer even the simplest of explanations.  I thought it was extremely lazy writing.  Without spoiling it, it’s a scenario we’ve seen a million times before in movies.  When it’s done well it’s very good, but all too often it’s just such an obvious crutch for a writer to use.  The movie is still a fun enough distraction, but if you go see it you will know what I mean.

I think the novel itself is quite ambitious and this new arc will only add to that.  But I think if I am careful and keep the writing subtle enough I can pull it off.  Knowing what I know I imagine it will be more difficult emotionally for me to write it this way but I am sure that it’s the best way to go.  We will see though.

It might just be crap in the end.

Can write for shit, almost

The writing went better tonight I think. Not better to the extent I’m rattling out pages or anything, but better than yesterday. 485 words.  I think I have a direction now for the chapter. As I said yesterday, I know how the chapter ends, it’s the middle that is causing problems. At least now I sort of think I might have an inclination about where it’s possibly going to wind up going. As you can tell, indecision is not a problem I suffer from.

While I was writing, I noticed that I had, seemingly by chance, written the opening in such a way that it provides a little twist to the story. I’d like to say it was planned, but I’m reasonably sure it wasn’t, unless I had come up with the idea ages ago and set the foundations for it and then just totally forgot about it. That does seem like a possibility with me to be honest. Oh well, however it came about, it’s cool when that does happen and things fall into place that surprise even you.

I bought a 42″ plasma TV today, thus realising one of my long standing dreams of owning a massive TV. That only leaves one dream left of writing a novel. My other longstanding dream of sleeping with Vivien Leigh is, sadly, never going to happen now. It really shouldn’t have taken me this long to accept that. But it has.

Can’t write for shit

God, I’m writing crap today.  That’s what it feels like at any rate.  I’ve written 413 words today and to be honest I think I’ll end up scrapping all of them.  It’s just another of those days where nothing seems to be clicking.  I think the problem is that I don’t have a clear idea what I’m wanting to achieve with this chapter.  I have some vague ideas but nothing concrete.  I know exactly how it has to end, which is something at least.  I suppose I should be focusing on that and working backwards maybe.  I am starting to notice that every time I come to a new chapter I am initially overcome by it’s importance to the rest of the story.  In reality, if a chapter isn’t important to the rest of the story then it doesn’t belong in the novel.  So maybe I have to get over this idea that there are easy and hard chapters to write.  Well, I’m certain that there aren’t easy chapters to write so I’m halfway there.
Hopefully the words will pour out tomorrow.  Until then, happy easter!

Site updates

No writing done today.  After spending so long on the one chapter, I haven’t thought too much about the next one, other than the general idea I have for it so I am taking a day off to think about some of the specifics.  In the meantime I have added a couple of plugins to the site.  You can now submit posts for the attention of various social web 2.0 thingys.  I don’t know why you would want to, but you can.  You can also now vote for posts that you like.  You don’t have to be logged in or anything.  If you read a post, I’d be obliged if you could just take a half-second to rate it.  That would be sweet.  Feel free to leave a non spam comment as well if you want, but I’m not expecting miracles.