My writing efforts in October.

I finished the first draft of Branded in mid-October. At 135,000 words it is way too big for a young adult novel, so I am going to have to try to cut tens of thousands of words from it. I have already written notes for its sequel set 20 years later. 

I am happy with the story, but the writing is going to have to improve. After a night spent night thinking about whether to go straight into redrafting it or to put it away for a while and go back to another novel, I got up the next day and started redrafting it.

My redrafting is not editing, it is a lot of rewriting. I had hoped to start cutting the novel’s length, but by the end of the month, I had added another chapter and probably about 3,000 words to its length. Hopefully that is only because I now know my characters a lot better and I am just filling in some details at the start that will be cut out later on.

So all up, as you can see from the graph, I wrote about 12,444 words of fiction for October. That’s an average of 401 words a day. On eleven days I got to my quota of 500 words. During the editing phase, I hope to edit for two hours a day at the least. 

Critiquing.

I received my first critique/edit of Shrinking, the short story I have written for a Christmas anthology a few of us Australian Writer Forum writers are putting together. It’s the first critique I have had of my work since finishing my masters, eight years ago. Since my masters, I have mainly spent my time writing first drafts of novels, so there has been nothing to critique. 

The critique was from a writer who I had critiqued and who, according to me, can write well. His critique of my story was positive and found no major problems with the story. His edits will be very helpful.

I critiqued another story for the anthology. This one was non-fiction, so I feel, after working with five different editors for Divine, I know what I am talking about when I suggested many changes to the story. It’s a good story, about the time the writer spent Christmas on an Aboriginal reserve, but I found many things, mostly small, but many repetitive, that I thought could be changed. I hope he doesn’t take offense with all the red ink I put on it. 

I also nearly finished critiquing the novel I started critiquing mid-August. I critiqued about 22000 words of it in four hits in October. It’s a very good novel that I am enjoying reading.

Reading.

Once again, I read virtually nothing for the month, as I was too tired at night to read. I am still halfway through Hugh Howey’s Dust.

My writing efforts in September

Once more, it has been a while since my last post. I have been extremely busy writing and doing other writing activities, as you will see in my update for October.  But this post is about September.

In September, my Ulcerative Colitis decided to remind me of its existence, so I had to take some medicine, which made me extremely tired for just over half the month.

At the beginning of September, I was writing a short story for a Christmas anthology that a few members of the Australian Writers Forum were creating. I finished the story’s first draft on the same day I started taking the medication. At that stage, the story was 9,800 words, 3,800 words over the suggested word limit.

I redrafted the story over the next few days, reducing it to 7,400 words. I then printed it, proofread and edited it many times over the next few weeks. I found a lot to change each time and eventually reduced the story to 7,200 words. On the last day of the month, I finally submitted it to the group for critiquing. I then returned to the novel I had been writing.

One reason I made so many changes when proofreading was that the story was in the third person. I had not written in the third person for a long time, and my tiredness probably had something to do with it, too.

I estimate that I wrote 8,746 new words for the month, much lower than for the previous months (as shown in the graph), but I expected my word count to drop when editing. I averaged 291 words per day. Only on nine days did I reach my quota of 500 words. I proofread/edited for at least two hours on about six days.

Critiquing

Due to tiredness, I only managed to critique about ten thousand words of the novel I am critiquing. Sorry, Peter. Ideally, I wanted to critique about twice as many words.

Reading

I read bugger all due to tiredness. I’m still reading Dust, the third book in Hugh Howey’s Wool series.

Non-fiction writing

I had another article up on Divine in September. It is about smart homes for people with disabilities. Divine has been having computer problems, which has meant my story hung around on its front page for nearly all of September. I also had the second and fourth articles listed on the site for that period. But I did not write any articles in September due to…

 

My writing efforts for August.

I have finally made time to write my monthly blog post about my fiction writing efforts for the previous month. I have been extremely busy writing, editing, critiquing and being sick. Yep, my ulcerative colitis has come back at the wrong time, but when is a good time for it?

Fiction Writing.

I continued writing my novel, adding another 8549 words. I am very close to the end of the first draft, so it was with great reluctance that I stopped to write a short story I had committed to finish by the end of August.

I started the short story on the 17^th of August, hoping to finish it before attending the Melbourne Writers Festival at the end of the month. At the end of August, I had written 5,582 words of it and it still was nowhere near finished. The story is for a Christmas anthology created by members of the Australian Writer’s Forum.

So all up, I wrote 14,031 words for the month, which is not quite the average of 500 words a day I am aiming for. I met my quota of 500 words a day on only 23 days. I have now written about 129,000 words of the novel.

Critiquing.

I critiqued another story for critters.org, and then I committed to critiquing a whole novel on critters. Fortunately, the writer writes a lot briefer manuscripts than I do, with it being 66,000 words. By the end of the month, I had critiqued the first six chapters, about 10,000 words.

Reading.

I finished reading the very good classic, I am Legend by Richard Matheson. It is one of the original apocalyptic novels. In it, a virus decimates the population leaving one lone survivor to battle vampire like creatures. It was made into at least two films, one of the same title and the much better The Omega Man. The novel is very different from both films. Although written 60 years ago, the novel still cracks a punch. I then started reading Dust, the third book in Hugh Howey’s apocalyptic Wool series.

Melbourne Writers Festival.

I went to the festival for the third year in a row. The only science fiction author I saw on a panel kept on apologising for his book being science fiction, so I did not buy it. I learnt a bit from a panel with the editors of Peter Carey and Jonathan Franzen (I’ve read a number of both author’s books.) Best author talk I went to by mistake. The festival organisers changed the venue without telling me, but my ticket still got me in to see Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket). He was there promoting a novel for adults called We are Pirates, and with a title like that, I just had to buy it. Overall, the festival was not as good as the two previous years. I hope to write more on it in upcoming posts. 

Divine Writing.

I had one non-fiction article published on Divine this month, about a casting call for an Australian web-series Aliens Vs Crips, where four people with disabilities try to survive an alien invasion.

My Writing Efforts in July.

I am starting to feel a bit more like a writer who is actually doing more than dreaming about becoming a novelist. July has been my best writing month this year, as shown in the graph opposite. I wrote 17,127 words of my novel in the month, an average of 552 words per day. And I reached my target of 500 words or more on all but two days of the month. Unfortunately, that means that once I met the quota I did not usually write much more. The most words I wrote in a day was 821.

I have now written about 120,000 words of the novel. I had hoped to have the first draft finished this month, but my characters continue to resist making the inevitable decision to abandon their search and get to the climax. They’re not as bad as climate change deniers though. At the moment they are having an argument and the pro keep-on-searching characters are making a lot of sense, too much sense for them to just quit looking.

My characters obviously don’t care that I have committed to write a short story for a Christmas collection that needs to have the first draft done by the end of August. So it looks like after this week I might have to stop the novel writing for a couple of weeks and get onto the short story. This bothers me as I am so close to the end of the novel, I just want to get its first draft finished. But at least I have a good idea for the story.

Critiquing.

Once again I critiqued four stories for critters.org this month. The stories I critiqued were mostly by beginning writers, so my critiques were longish, two were over 1200 words. I finally finished a critique of a story for the Australian Writers Forum that was delayed by technology problems in June.

Reading.

I read a bit more this month. I finished reading Amnesia by Peter Carey. It’s not his best novel, but it was still a good read, with a great central character. He was a journalist/writer secreted away from the law as he writes a biography of a woman who created a computer virus that released thousands of asylum seekers from their prisons. It’s a premise that suggests a thriller, but the book is more about finding out how her life motivated her to release the virus. I hope to get around to writing a review of it for this blog later this month.

I am currently reading a science-fiction classic in Richard Matheson’s I am Legend. A book that was turned into the classic science-fiction movie The Omega Man and the not so good recent movie with the same title as the book.

Non-Fiction.

Yeah, I know these updates should be only about my fiction writing endeavours, but I have to plug my Divine articles whenever I get the chance. I have a new article up on Divine that is all about a fascinating exhibition on the human mind I had a look at why I was down in Melbourne a few months ago. I really recommend the permanent exhibition and my article about it.

My writing efforts in June.

I wrote more words of my novel in June than May, even though I started using Facebook again. I had a rule of not logging on to Facebook until I had written at least 500 words. So on some days I did not even logon to it. But I developed the habit of stopping writing not long after I hit the 500 word mark, so I could play on Facebook. On 26 days during the month I achieved my goal of 500 words, only on two days did I do more than 600 words. My best day was 1089 words. All up, I wrote 15,488 words for the month. An average of 516 words a day.

I have written about 102,000 words of the novel, and I about halfway through the fifth and final part. I had hoped to have finished the first draft by now, but I have decided to expand the final part. The decision to do that came about because previously I have read novels with characters on a physical journey arriving at their destination and then the novel suddenly ends, with a disappointed me wanting them to explore their destination more thoroughly. So I have decided not to disappoint a reader like me by doing the exploring.

I had pictured the novel as a stand-alone, but ideas for a sequel set 20 years later keep on popping into my head, so there will be a sequel. But first, I have to re-draft this manuscript. Before that I want to write a short story for a Christmas anthology that is being put together by one of my writing groups. A first draft is required by end of August. Now I just have to come up with an idea. 

Critiquing.

Once again, I critiqued a story a week for critters.org during June. I read a story from a writer on the Australian Writers Forum, intending to critique it, when technology problems intervened: my internet was slowing down and dropping out. I am still not sure what caused the problem even though I was reasonably systematic about trying to fix it. First, I replaced the splitter, that didn’t work, then I replaced the long telephone cable with a shorter one, the web dropped out just after I connected it. Then I bought a new top of the range router/wifi thingy, as my router was about seven years old and the wifi about five. But the new router/wifi would not even connect to Westnet/iinet, my ISP.  I rang them, and spent two hours on the phone, it still didn’t work. They said they would try a few things and asked me to keep my old router and wifi connected. They said they would ring back in two hours or so. Two and a half hours later I got impatient and re-connected the new router/wifi. It worked. Five days later and it has not dropped out and is slightly faster than what it was before it slowed. iinet did ring back the next day, 26 hours later. They said they had fiddled with things, but I am none the wiser as to whether my new router/wifi is more stable, or something they did made my connection more stable.

Reading.

I did not do much reading during June as I was too tired at night. Fortunately, that tiredness has receded in the past week or so, no idea why. I am about two thirds of the way through Amnesia, Peter Carey’s very enjoyable romp through 20^th century Australian politics and history. It’s narrator is a very committed writer who is using an old portable typewriter to type even though he burnt his fingers trying to retrieve a manuscript thrown into a fire by its pissed-off subject.

Hopefully some of his commitment will rub off on me, enabling me to finish the first draft of my current manuscript in July.