Had a much better start to this week so far. First three days I’ve written around 5300 words.
Down side is that those total the output for three chapters. Hardly long enough to encompass a proper chapter. They do need a rewrite after the draft is complete, but either they will need some major extension work or I will have to combine them and reduce the number of chapters.
Had a much better day today that I have had for a while, with just slightly over 2200 words written and chapter seven also complete.
To date the first seven chapters total around 26,600 words.
Having seven chapters completed is actually a big achievement, considering how I structure my stories. I have always, from the earliest days of writing, planned my stories around three parts of seven chapters apiece, which means I am one third of the way through. At the current rate that puts the rough draft at around 80,000 words by the time it is over – though my guess is it it probably won’t end up the long until after the polishing begins.
Tomorrow we commence with the second part of the draft, with chapter eight.
Ten weeks into the year already – hard to believe. Where has all the time gone?
Writing this week? Less said the better really. Got chapter six done more or less, and even started chapter seven, but it was well short of reasonable.
I did however get to see Watchmen – first movie I’ve seen for a while. Good movie. Rorschach is the man, mad as he may be. Love his quote at the end – Never compromise, not even in the face of Armageddon.
Also played a little too much Empire Total War, hence the lack of real output. Still, I shall count it as research, as it does tie into the era of my writing, and has given me some new ideas to use in world design, stories, characters and more.
Another somewhat mediocre week to report, alas.
Part of that was due to the weekend being taken out as a chance to write – it was taken up by a major garden renovation. My brother, some friends and myself turned the backyard into something of a construction site – a lot of fun, hard work but not very conducive to getting writing done.
Of course, there is my own general inability to concentrate properly and not get distracted. I must really work on that.
Still, in spite of all that I did managed to get a couple of things done – Chapter Five of Winter Wolves has been written, albeit with much work needed, and also the Cahuac and the Sun short story got a rewrite and polish up. It may need a little more work but in general I am happy with it now. I haven’t put the new version up on the site yet – that will happen a later on.
Well, Empire Total War came out today, and I am going to have to be very careful that it doesn’t end up as too much of a distraction. I don’t want to wake up in five months and find I have done hardly any writing.
So this is going to be a major test, to see whether I can pace myself properly and not let it distract me. I think I may need to set some rules – only play X amount of time a day and only after writing X amount of words.
We’ll see how it goes.
After a great deal of difficulty, I’ve finished chapter five, sort of. Well, I’ve got a draft of chapter five done – though I am far from satisfied with it. With the previous chapters, while there are a few parts I know need some work, at least I am satisfied with the chapter in general. Not in this case with chapter five – it will need a total rewrite when i get to the rewrite stage.
At least it is done now and I can move on before having to think about it for a while. The catalyst for completing it I suppose was an idea I had while walking – a conversation played itself out in my head. Of course, by the time I got to sit down and write it out, it didn’t play out as well as it had in my head – another part that needs to be rewritten at some stage.
But for now, on with the story.
Sat down and finished the rough draft of another short story, so far titled The Tomb of the Togosa Kings. Currently it is a bit over 9000 words in length.
I’m not releasing it for viewing yet – I want to give it a bit more polishing first, especially the ending. I haven’t quite managed to get the hang of doing proper endings yet I don’t think. None of the short stories I’ve done so far I’m totally happy with how they end.
This one isn’t your standard fantasy, being of the later time period of the world that I have alluded to before. It also introduces a number of characters from Winter Wolves – Harry Ban, Elraes, Professor Hjalir and other – when they were younger.
Hopefully the polishing won’t take a long time to do and I can put it on the website for people to read.
After last week’s stirling efforts I had hoped this week would follow a similar course.
I was wrong. While it wasn’t the worse week on record, it was still pretty poor. I had two decent days, without being great, two mediocre days and three days of abject failure.
On the positive side, I have got a short story close to being completed, and, baring anything wierd, it should be done so in the next day or two.
Looking back over the last eight weeks, or fifty-six days, I have written around 63500 words. A bit over 1K a day. Less than I would have liked, but at least above the absolute minimum I had set.
So there I was, minding my own business when another story idea emerged from my fevered imagination. At this rate I should almost be outsourcing all these ideas and taking a cut of the profits…
Where was I. Ah, yes, minding my own business. Well, kind of. Recently I had been going through my DVD collection after having an urge to watch action-adventure treasure hunting type movies – you know, the Mummy movies and National Treasure, King Solomon’s Mines, etc and so on. Which reminds me, I still need to get Indiana Jones and the Goonies some day.
This gave me the thought that I should have a go at writing a fantasy treasure-hunting tale of the type in those movies. Kind of like The Hobbit, but more on the action-adventury side.
And then I put the thought aside to go back and concentrate on Winter Wolves. Except the thought didn’t like that idea and raised a name with me – Sir Richard Hammerman. And that kind of forced back the idea into prominence.
And now we go back a step, to where Sir Richard first appeared from.
It started with a picture I saw, of a man standing at the top of a steep walled valley, on the far side a village clinging to the side. I think it may have even had steampunk elements to it – whatever it did, it gave me an idea for a village for a steampunk setting. In this village lived a young man called Preston who, for reason still being worked on, left the village to see the world. He fell in with a company of explorers, lead by the gentleman-adevnturer Sir Richard Hammerman, and in the course of his adventures crossed the seas to the colonies and a wild land where ancient cities moldered amongst thick jungles and were strange creatures lived.
That was about the sum of the idea at the time. Sir Richard’s name came from the Steampunk Name Generator at Brass Goggles and was too good a name not to use at some stage. For a while the idea languished and may have been forgotten for some time until this new idea came to light and suggested Sir Richard.
This instantly made the story a steampunk story, and personalities and ideas began to swirl around. The characters – Preston, Sir Richard, Captain Archibald ‘Archie’ Hammerman, Miss Eva Redsmith and Professor Hamilton Gooding had before been only names, but now personalities began to form, perhaps inspired by the DVDs.
Sir Richard is the quintessential gentleman-adventurer. Polite, well-mannered, with a dry, straight-faced wit and unflappable stoicism, he is the type to face the certain doom of an oncoming dragon with the line ‘Drinks at seven chaps?’
Captain Archibald ‘Archie’ Hammerman is Sir Richard’s younger brother. Fair-haired and blue eyed, he is charming, adventurous, excitable and with a reckless innocence that can get him in trouble at times.
Professor Hamilton is less mapped yet, but is the intellectual voice of reason and caution in the party, though his deep-seated curiosity for the unknown and mysterious can often override that caution.
Miss Eva Redsmith is even less realised yet, beyond being somewhat mysterious and a treasure trove of obscure knowledge.
The young man Preston is wide-eyed and new to the broader world, fascinated by all that he is seeing and often lead astray by Archie.
Their adventures take them across the seas to the jungles, searching for an ancient treasure, surrounded by the danger of monstrous snakes, piranhas, tribes of lizard men, crocodile men and trolls and the wonder of lost cities and magnificent winged serpents.
Therein lies the gist of the story. The difficulty lies in not starting another story when there are already others in various stages that need working on first.
So there I was last week thinking how well things were going and so I started this week full of hope and even got the fourth chapter done and then on into the fifth.
And then I ran into the wall. For some reason chapter five really wasn’t working despite having the synopsis for the it there. I just couldn’t seem to figure it out even after three days wrestling with it.
So rather than stall out trying to fight through it and loose all the recent progress that had been made, I felt it best to push around rather than through the wall. So the plan is to skip chapter five for now and move on to other chapters, all of which have synopsis written for them, as well as trying to finish off one or two short stories that are half written.
Mist and Shadows 