Thursday, March 10, 2011

Thursday Thoughts

My mother is visiting this week - got in Saturday morning - so my word count is not what it might be. I am squeezing in brief writing spurts in between socializing and my regular daily routine. We've been cooking a lot - see my other blog if you're really curious. (Three words for you: homemade ice cream.) We're watching TV and playing chattery commentators. My dog is over the moon with the attention.

However, it was a good week in that I finished my draft of "Who Wants To Be A Hero?" (Hmm ... is the question mark part of the title? I've been writing it without ...) Sometimes I think my most marked improvement over the past few years is that I need more editing: Scylla and Charybdis looks to need tons (and tons of cutting, for sure), and this book is similarly going to need a lot of hammering to get it into shape. Sadly, I will be going back and looking for more opportunities for humor. Sometimes, I just had to let the comedy slide and drive on to the point. The fact that I was trying to contain the humor within a believable, sympathetic framework sometimes hampered me. However, once you get to know the characters, the cross-character banter is (I think!) fantastic.

Editing starts this week. I have tentatively figured I will do three chapters a week for this particular draft. This is the draft where I am translating my handwritten notes from the printed manuscript into the book. If it turns out to be to fast to get decent work in, I will revise / rethink. However, that gives me fifteen weeks for the manuscript, or 3 - 4 months. Hmm. Maybe too slow, considering we're talking about one pass-through. Again, we'll see.

Word count for 3/3 - 3/9: 7,755

2 comments:

Aubrie said...

mmmmm...homemade ice cream. I'm glad your mom came to visit! Even if you don't get a lot of writing done, that's important to see her.

Good luck with your edits!

Lindsey Duncan said...

It's incredibly good. I see making a lot of ice cream in my future. Alton Brown apparently has recipes for a lot of different flavors, so I'll be trawling foodnetwork.com ...

It's been good. My parents moved out of the area about two years ago, so I'm still not accustomed to not having them nearby.

Thanks!