Why This Is Hell

That's the end of chapter 12 met, the halfway point. As my primary reader needs a chance to catch up, I can afford to go back to the chronological approach and do the next three chapters in time after chapter 11. The fragments of chapter 13 are about as extensive as chapter 14, around the 500 word mark, but half of 15 is written

63,835 / 100,000 (63.8%)

548 words a day to get to 100,000 by the end of the year; projected word count is 106,000. I lost a couple of hundred words over last couple of days as nothing was done on Thursday - extra portion on Saturday.

Okay, so that's chapter ten finished. This is one I hadn't done any work on in the Easter weekend push, so the only thing I knew is that our protagonist would be visited by a tv crew as he worked on his memoirs. I also knew it was the last chapter before he moved to a different state of his life so I need him to be shaken up. I did a bit of him thinking back, then twigged what would shake him up, and bridged the two sequences today. As always I'm amazed by how often when I'm writing it's uncovering a pattern that's already there.

I've done today's word quota, but I want more, so onto chapter 11. There is already 2000 words of this written, from Easter (see 11pm), leaving little over a thousand to deal with the actual meat (actually I should say meet) of this chapter's job. I think this is going to end up longer than I anticipated:

57,031 / 100,000 (57.0%)

Let's remove the wordage for chapters 11-24:

43,581 / 100,000 (43.6%)

So, assuming I write at a similar length, the manuscript will be 104600 words long, give or take. 573 words a day to hit 100,000 by year's end - slightly more (60 ish) to hit the larger target, but I suspect I'll do some tighter writing just to get everything down.

Edit: I didn't get to chapter 11 today, having gone to a depressing meeting about research funding - depressing because it sounds as always easier to come with an idea for research funding than get research funding for an idea. I did however write the introduction for the fabled New Myths? special issue of Extrapolation. My output is 3000 words for the ... 24 hour period.

After all, tomorrow is just another the same day.

It hasn't been a good week or so for fiction since the start of term. Alongside the nonsense of random room bookings I've had to go back and do an unexpected edit on what I thought was basically going to be an updated reprint, which took longer than planned. There has been unplanned Photoshopping. And I'm going to be in a validation event for a theology degree tomorrow.

Pratchett proofs to look at, though goodness knows when as Saturday is an open day, Monday the big teaching day, and Monday night I'm going to a freebie drink. Plus another edit job returning from the dead past. Sheesh.

Still, I've finally finished chapter six, and the partially written chapter seven I completed tonight. None of chapter eight is written, but a third of chapter nine was (my perspective on it has changed). I need to find the time to keep the momentum.

45,471 / 100,000 (45.5%)

Back to about 620 words a day to finish this year.

Okay, I've done some tidying, and got the wheelie bin in, and found time to do a couple of day's worth of writing. I ought to keep going and get up to 40k today, but I want to watch the end of 21 Grams.

[<<Beyond Four Loons>>]

39,409 / 100,000 (39.4%)

600 hundred words a day to finish this year.

[This needs some links in, which I'll do later]

I suppose this needs a little contextualising. A year last Christmas I decided that I'd been writing nothing but non-fiction for too long and - to borrow a line about Larkin in his later years - I was putting all of my creativity into minutes. Taking photos helped, but there was that bit of me that wanted to be a novelist. I'd written two novels in my late teens, which I probably have the handwritten forms of somewhere, and I'd even sent a chapter off to Gollancz. But since then I'd not got further than a few chapters.

So that Christmas I decided to get back to it, and draw upon some of my experiences, and go for it. Perhaps over ambitiously I wanted it to be four overlapping narratives - I'd just seen Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky - and I set myself a target of 500 words a day, which would take me up to mid-July. Of course I couldn't afford the time, but sometimes you need to do it for yourself. I also had someone who was enthusiastic to read it, and I ploughed through to finish in June.

I knew I wasn't finished with the setting and the characters, and I'd want to go back. National Novel Writing Month comes at the wrong time (I was deep in minutes) and things like Novels in Ninety felt too public. Someone suggested people wrote a novel in a weekend - in homage to Moorcock - but it was the wrong weekend. I rushed to get a second draft of The Four Loons complete by the end of the year, but I knew any sequel would impact back on it.

Write it at Easter, I thought, but I need an idea.

The basics were there within an hour. One of my four focal characters from Loons had spent a numbers of years away - perhaps in prison, perhaps on the run. I'd dropped hints about what he had done before he vanished, but I was unclear of the mechanics. From the hints that were there, it was obvious that there was a story to be told. I didn't want a single viewpoint character, and I didn't want omniscient, so I fixed on two story arcs, one in the first person, one in the third, but focalised on the first person narrator. I wanted the counterpoint between the two voices.

I jotted down twenty four chapters titles and a sentence for each one, and even wrote a first line - "I nearly lost my fingers in a till when I was seven." - then let it percolate for sixty days. I'm mad, but I did the sums. If I have four days to write 100,000 words that's 25,000 a day, and in three four-hour shifts, that's just over 2,000 an hour, 35 words a minute. I can type thirty-five words a minute.

A doddle.

Oh yeah.

No, but the point is to put down a marker that will take the rest of the year to be rewritten, and I can go back to the Loons and head off continuity issues, and even think about sending it off somewhere. But can I make it.

( Good Friday )
( Friday pm )
( Friday Night )
( Saturday )
( Saturday Afternoon )
( Saturday Evening )

Further updates will be here - it may be Monday or evening Tuesday before I summarise the second half.

I spent part of last year getting back to writing fiction, and part of this was escaping from The Big Project, which needs to be kickstarted after falling apart with the turn of the year. I've done two drafts of 100,000 words, and there it stays, percolating, expecting to be rewritten again, and sooner or later will be sent somewhere.

So obviously now is the time for a follow up.

National Novel Writing Month keeps coming at the wrong time, I thought life would be too busy for matociquala's Novel in 90 and I have a houseguest this weekend so no First Annual Urban Drift Novel(la) in a Weekend with deadcities_icon.

Then I thought, Easter. Gives me another day. Or another 20,000 words. Ish. Give or take. I didn't have any plans.

And there it might have stopped, had not the entire structure of the damn thing dropped into my head, complete with an opening and a closing sentence, and I now have a basic chapter breakdown. And an opening paragraph. Darn. I've got to resist doing anything more than outlining, but clearly I need to find out when Easter actually is.

Oh dear. Oh dearie me.

[<<Beyond Four Loons>>]

121 / 100,000 (0.1%)

Edit

Easter is 6-9 April 2007. Sixty-three days and counting.

aHOD: Is there anyone you would trust to take over your teaching?

Dr A: Well, I think I'm crap anyway, but no, there isn't.



Big Project

113,536 / 160,000 (71.0%)

The Four Loons

103,000 / 103,000 (100.0%)

Now to type in the corrections whilst I still have printer access, and a willing reader to hand.

I know our widening participation policy isn't really to a) get more grammar school applicants and b) get more men, but those appear to be two of our policies mentioned in the same breath. Funny the oppressed minorities you find yourself in these days. (One out of two ain't bad. Bog standard comp, me.)

It's a sunny day outside, so at least the walk to work for two meetings will be pleasant. I have a blood stain on my collar after I started bleeding at the end of Dead Man's Shoes, a disturbing* film, last night, but I can't be bothered to change it.

More progress also made last night – the big project actually looks doable (2000 words a day is my guestimate) although I'm going to lose printer access at the key moment of revisions. I suspect I can't take it home from work to talk to the home machine, so I may be buying a new printer sooner than I imagined. Tesco.com here I .come. One of the strands is now finished on the novel - half a dozen chapters to go. I might get to key in the first changes tomorrow.

The Big Project

93,130 / 160,000 (58.2%)

The Four Loons

85,271 / 103,000 (82.8%)

* Disturbing if only because I realised five minutes after the end that I didn't get something that N had. Doh. Worth a look.

Having bought the undercoat and gloss I've now started painting my front door. So far I've done the sanding down and rinsing off. I'm not clear how you know you've sanded enough, but I'm guessing it's just some kind of rough surface to let the undercoat bond to it.

Some of the online instructions seem to suggest sanding down at every point. Seems like overkill to me. You put some paint on, sand half of it off, paint again. H'mm.

Time to let the rinse dry and risk an undercoat. Off to the market and to buy a couple of brushes. If I can shut a door that not longer has a handle.

Editing on Manuscript - At the rate I can start keying in corrections early next week.

50,371 / 103,000 (48.9%)