Jeanie Writes Genre

Working on: Hero Factor

Yesterday: 519 words of forward momentum on Michael's plot thread. Screwed around at picnik and made this:



Today: Get to know Ceredwyn so I can put her to work.

Tomorrow: Back to Michael's troll-dismembering scene.

Labels: Hero+Factor, journaling, progress+reports, writing life

I just hooked up my Alphasmart and uploaded everything I've written on it in the last week. It came out to five pages, which is better than I expected. My total word count now stands at 52,550.

I'm sure the two of you who read this blog appreciate the updates. ;)

At-home writing has gotten easier since late last week when my husband and I finally hauled our sorry selves into the twenty-first century and acquired our very first mp3 players. I've had this thing for less than a week and I already don't know how I ever lived without it. Apart from being able to carry my entire CD collection in my pocket, which in itself is awesome, and apart from being able to load podcasts onto it to listen to while I do the more tedious aspects of my day job that take me away from my computer, I'm finding that the best thing about it is how it functions as a virtual office door. When my husband sees me typing with my earbuds plugged in, he doesn't interrupt me. Somehow, the typing alone was never enough to merit observance of my workspace, but typing PLUS earphones apparently means I'm really most seriously working and am not to be interrupted. Which is fine by me. I never would have achieved those five pages otherwise.

Labels: Hero+Factor, progress+reports, writing life

I managed to cram a couple of word sprints into my day, and as such wrote over fifteen hundred words of novel. THF now stands at over 50,000 words, which I think is a little over half way finished. I hit the big emotional climax of Act 2, and now I'm transitioning into Act 3, which will be lots and lots of action mixed with angst. The angsty parts I should fly through; the action will plod a little more slowly. I know it sounds like that should be the other way around, but I have to see a fight or a battle scene clearly in my brain before I can write it, and it always takes me a while to mentally stage and choreograph it and get a clear picture. It's going to be a pretty epic battle, too. It's daunting. I am daunted.

I had a minorly epic showdown for the climax of This Old Haunt, and I got through that by listening to the battle music from "Chosen" over and over on a loop. It might serve me well to watch that again, to get a refresher course on pacing and fight choreography. But I need to be in the mood to have a good cry first. So far I've only been able to watch that episode once since it originally aired, and it didn't hurt me any less. But this isn't a Buffy blog, so... moving on.

At any rate, it feels a bit like I'm heading into the home stretch. It's a long home stretch, but it's been a long marathon. I'm getting my wind back, and that'll see me through.

Labels: Hero+Factor, progress+reports, writing life

I'm finally starting to recover from NaNo and get back into a writing groove, albeit not nearly so frenetic or productive a groove as Nano. And that's fine by me. I made excellent progress this weekend on finishing up the scene that's been giving me fits for the last few weeks (by the way, regarding the epiphany I thought I had about the story that was hanging me up, I've decided to ignore it; my muse and I have agreed to disagree on the matter), and at the moment I'm pretty happy with it. I have no idea what my weekend word count was--I wrote it on my Alphasmart, and I forgot to bring the connector cable to work, so I can't upload it, and I'm not curious enough to bother counting words manually.

I'm going back to my 250 word daily goal. It won't get my novel finished in a month, but it will keep me plugging along, and if I keep doing that I've got to get to the end sometime. And that's all that really matters.

Labels: Hero+Factor, progress+reports, writing life

I originally posted this over at Sparkle Motion, but I'm copying it over here, this being the writing blog and all. By the way, the novel is still progressing nicely, and closing in on 40,000 words. I expected to be a bit further along by now, but I'm working on a battle scene. Battle scenes, like love scenes, always slow me down. I think it's all the choreography.

Anyway. To the original post, and the hook which, looking at it now, I think probably can lose the first two paragraphs if the third one is sufficiently fleshed out. It can definitely stand to be whittled down. Thankfully (I guess?) I'm still months away from needing a query letter, so there's still plenty of time to work on it.

***

Yesterday, Miss Snark posted a question about how one would go about writing a short hook for a novel with multiple protagonists. Being that my novel has two main protagonists who kind of serve as shadow selves of each other, this is a question I've been pondering myself. When I was writing my hook for my Crapometer entry back in December, I couldn't figure out how to fit both of my protags and their distinct storylines into 300 words or less, so I ended up picking the one that gives the best idea of the overall plot. That didn't go over so well, and it gave a lot of people the wrong idea of what my book's about.

This new discussion got me to obsessing about my hook again. It may seem a little premature to do so, seeing as how the book's only a third of the way done, but as I'm sure I've said before here at some point, I think writing a hook is a good exercise for honing your plot and figuring out exactly what your story's about. Plus, it's motivating. At least for me.

So after obsessing on it all night, I think I've got it: a hook that includes both of my protagonists and their separate stories, as well as the overarching plot that combines them. I did it in about 400 words. I'd like to whittle it down by 50-100 words if I can figure out how to do so without losing the integrity of the thing. At least I've still got plenty of time to pare it down.

As Michael Chambers wraps up the last day of shooting his hit supernatural TV series before it goes on summer hiatus, he's looking forward to some down time before beginning publicity tours and summer film projects; but when his ex-girlfriend and current personal assistant shows up with her cat in tow needing a place to stay, he's too nice a guy to refuse her. When he accidentally lets her cat run away, he's too responsible not to go look for it. When the cat turns out to be a shape-shifting trickster who abducts Michael and delivers him to the militant daughter of the Faerie Queen, he's too wigged out to stick around and hear what she wants. And when his attempts to get home reveal a hidden Faerie world full of violence and terror that is about to spill over into his own world, Michael must decide whether he's too much of a coward to take part in the princess's plan to prevent it.

The trickster has been tricked. The pooka, a shape-shifter who gets his kicks playing cruel practical jokes, has met his match in the princess. He must now perform three tasks to win back his freedom. The first two are simple: get close to the actor, and bring him to the princess. It's the third that proves a challenge, as he must pose as Michael and carry on his life so that no one notices he's gone. The pooka's weakness for human women, and the consequences he would face for indulging that weakness, have for ages kept him from impersonating a human, so he's a little out of practice. The only person close enough to Michael to unwittingly provide the pooka with the guidance he needs is Claire, Michael's beautiful assistant, who is still struggling with feelings for her former lover. The pooka just wants to finish his task and get out of this mess with his immortality intact so that he can return to the simple life of pleasing only himself.

As one world stands on the brink of a war which would bring destruction to the other, Michael's and the pooka's paths eventually intertwine as one discovers the mystery of his past and what it means to possess true power, one discovers the mysteries of humanity and what it means to love someone other than himself, and both discover the sacrifices required of those who would be heroes.

I'm excited about this hook. Looking at it as objectively as possible, this describes a book I would love to read. That means it's a book I'd also love to have written. That last part is what's going to keep me going when I find myself slogging through the second act, trying to fit all of the pieces together and in desperate need of a second wind.

©2007 by Jean Marie Bauhaus

Labels: Hero+Factor, progress+reports

I'm exceptionally sleepy this morning. Under optimal circumstances, this can be a good thing for my writing. It's conducive to daydreaming and falling into that trance-like, meditative state I like to call "story head." Here at the office, though, where I've been doing pretty much all of my writing ever since my home computer crapped out on me last year, there are too many distractions, and so I never quite get there. To really achieve that state, I need quiet. Music doesn't help. On a day when I've had enough sleep, I can put on my headphones and crank up some classical music to drown out the chatter of my early-bird coworkers and go to town on my novel; but on a day like today, it's just not happening. I'm too unfocused, and I just want to put my head down and doze.

Even so, I expect to break the 35,000 word mark this week. Not too shabby, considering that due to schedule weirdness I didn't write anything novel-related in the previous two weeks. So this week is all about getting back into the routine, anyway. And if I can end it on a milestone, that will spur me on into next week. And if I can just get through this chapter, which has been a difficult one to get my head around (normally when that happens I just skip it and move on, but I've reached a point where it's necessary to come back to this one and find out exactly what happens here), then it should be smooth sailing for a while.

The middle part is the hardest part, y'all. And I've still got a lot of middle left to go.

Labels: Hero+Factor, progress+reports