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 hit a patch I didn’t want to write. It ended up being only a couple hundred words of transition between connected scenes, but they had a repelling forcefield around them (probably because they’d be better as a scene break, but I’ll figure that out in revisions). While I avoided that for two days, I
Today I dipped a toe into Fight Scene II, prior to which the heroine acknowledges confronting three skilled soldiers will have a much different outcome vs. three inept bandits, so she would prefer avoidance if at all possible. (It’s not at all possible.) I also got to point out that she was trained from childhood
Someone today expressed vindication about all their slice-of-life scenes that have been criticized in the past, with a belief that everyone’s salivating to read about going to brunch now. Nah. Criticism of slice-of-life scenes is often phrased as “it’s boring to read about stuff I do every day.” The person offering the criticism is undoubtedly
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
Yesterday’s writing ended up being less about yesterday’s scene than I would have liked, so today I finished that one. (I write these posts around noon when I exhaust my 4 a.m. supply of creative steam + caffeine, so I will sometimes fail to rise to the rest of the day’s aspirations set forth therein.)