The Wayfaring Wordhack

Whoops! Only remembered it was Sunday because of frigg's post. Time to post a little something before turning in.

Just tonight I did a couple of sketches of leaves. Nothing fancy, but it felt good to have pen in hand again.

And this afternoon, for some strange reason, I started thinking Witherwilds and had a couple of thoughts that I might be able to work in.  Whether these ideas turn into something useable or not, it just felt good to have the story occupy my brain again.  So, did some note-taking but no real writing.

I'll take what I can get.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been doing a lot in terms of rethinking certain story aspects. Today, after reading a couple of blog entries, notably "Too Much of a Good Thing: Over Plotting Your Novel" by Janice Hardy, I decided I need to get rid of the 6th POV I introduced in Book 2. That is an ouchie realization since I've already written over 10K words from her POV. Yeah, sucks. But better to be hit upside the head with that particular 2X4 now rather than after writing all of book 2, or worse books 2 and 3.

The introduction of that POV will expand the scope of the story too much and take the plot wider, instead of deeper,* and deeper is where I need to be going.  That extra POV also takes some pressure off one of my other MCs, and that is BAD.  I now understand why, all of the sudden, I started flailing around so much with his arc when that arc was clear enough before the "brilliant" idea of including POV #6 swamped my brain.

I'm also reading the Story Structure Series on Storyfix and getting ideas and much needed clarity on the 8(!) parts of the 3 (which is really FOUR--yeah, my brain hurts, too) Act Structure. Another site mentioned 8 parts, too, but said parts weren't labelled or described in a way I could get my head around. I couldn't figure out where that eighth part slotted into/expanded the 7 point plot structure that I already linked to.  I think I pretty much have a handle on it now, and I'm seeing things I instinctively did right and others than need tweaking to maximize impact for the reader.

More than that, I'm seeing the holes I left (deliberately, intending to flesh them out later) must be filled now because whatever I come up with should (dare I say must?) impact the story.  So, a lot more brainstorming for me.  

Brainstorm, plotting, and all other planning must be set aside long enough for to come up with at least a snippet, which I'll be posting on Sunday. frigg and I have decided to do Snippet Sunday on our LJs.  I'd love it if other creative types on my flist did the same.  I get pumped up reading about/seeing others' creativity at work. No obligation or pressure of course.  

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* The "deeper not wider" is also from The Other Side of the Story, Janice Hardy's blog, which was advice from her agent Kristin Nelson.

since I finished writing well after midnight, but here are this week's stats:

Tonight's words: 507
Days of writing: 5
Weekly count: 2648

Woot.

Here's to an easier week next week. 

I couldn't connect to the Internet Monday or Tuesday night to report my progress, so I'll lump it together here. First off, I'm still enjoying the story, but I fear I've fallen too deeply in the edit-as-I-go trap and am not able to immerse myself in it as I should.

On Monday, my reading went much more slowly, and I ended up cutting 14 pages (not consecutive--mostly doing the kind of deletion that saves you a line and after a while adds up to a page. Though one cut was a 4-pg scene I decided to do away with.)

Tuesday, we had to take our car to GT, and the shop kept it all day, forcing us to kill time in boutiques. When we got home, I was too exhausted to read more than 55 pages, two of which I cut.

So this morning, as of writing this (already started the read for the day), these are the stats:

Pages read: 627/873 
Pages deleted: 23
Biggest deleted chunk: Training scene

B&N are coming over for dinner tonight, so this arvy will be spent cooking and cleaning. *sigh* I guess I won't finish reading until tomorrow. Unless I resist the urge to cut...

*puts down the scalpel and gets back to reading*
 

Wrote a grand total of four words today. Yep. Four. No madlib there, (fill in user name :P ). Our lunch guests stayed for seven hours, and my morning was filled with rolling out and cooking the tortillas (was smart and made the dough last night), putting the pie together (same smartness with the tortillas applies to cutting the apples and making the pie crust), doing the rest of the cooking, and a spot of cleaning in the kitchen (oh, and I did a crit). By the time the guests left, I was beat and had a splitting headache. The meds have finally kicked in enough that my head has stopped spinning. Alas, it is 5 to midnight and I'm still beat. 

So, the ending is not for tonight. But I'll get it tomorrow. Just watch me.

ETA: I wanted to edit this and now can't remember why.