Many, many years ago, I decided I wanted to write a story about a woman who had been, basically, an urban fantasy heroine before being forced into retirement by an injury that impeded her ability to kick ass. During the years of her ass-kicking career, she was too busy saving the world and trying to
About two weeks ago, I realized the impracticality of hauling gold over a mountain (on foot) to a counterfeiter. Jewels are more easily portable, so I changed my pilfering from gold to jewels and my sooty-armed blacksmith/counterfeiter to an embroidered waistcoat-wearing jewel fence. Yesterday, as I got into writing the road trip toward exchanging the
I cannot overemphasize how meaningless word count is at this stage of this project. Ordinarily, due to my aversion to complete sentences during rough drafts, doubling the rough-draft word count is a fairly accurate reflection of the finished product, and I can juggle the numbers for rough and projected and anticipated length and know that
Since I last noted my progress here, I’ve gotten a few scenes into Act II. Act I pushes a protagonist to go on a journey. Act II begins when the protagonist says, “FINE! I’LL GO ON YOUR STUPID JOURNEY!” (I wrote a bare bones 3-act structure post in the distant past with a little more
The following is written with a presumption of intact sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. I am not qualified to lead a discussion about sensory impairments in writing. I apologize to everyone excluded by this falsely “all-encompassing” treatment. Observational Hierarchy In the absence of sensory impairment, there is an observational hierarchy of things that demand
A minor theme in the original plan for this story was “heroes are chumps.” The example the heroine used to argue this point was executed as the reward for all his good deeds. I saved the world, and all I got was this lousy pyre. Well, a lot has changed since the original plan! (A
I can hardly believe it, but I’m at the end of Act I. I shouldn’t be surprised, since this is roughly consistent with my output when I’ve had 40 hours a week to devote to writing in the past, but I’ve been working 90+ hours a week for other people and writing nothing of my
I made a character sit on a hassock. The word came easily, so naturally I began to worry a hassock was some kind of clothing rather than a surface that could be sat upon. While my sense of it as a padded footstool is one definition, another (primary, per some sources) definition is a pillow
This morning, someone tweeted “Happy Friday!” and I thought “lol it’s funny because it’s only Wednesday.” (For readers from the future, the crucial context is that it was actually Monday.) I’ve been working from home for 15 years, so I don’t even have the excuse of a change in routine. Therefore, the only logical conclusion
It may not be much objectively, but considering I’ve barely touched any non-contract writing since 2018, ten thousand words feels like a significant milestone to me. It’s best to not contemplate how many more I’ll need. My “outline” for this story is 53 pages. One might think that’s sufficiently thorough to have figured out everything