Robynettely

“Fairfax”. Started month with about about 36,000 words, in the midst of Chapter 14. Ended with about 43,000 and having started Chapter 17. Have I mentioned my process? When I start a novel, I always feel like everything is going to be great this time. I have a brilliant idea, and I just can’t wait to start RIGHT NOW!!!!!!! I write about 15,000 words, and then I realize that I don’t know what happens next. I have a general idea of how things need to end (giant robots!) but I don’t know how I’m going to get from here (burned house in the woods and water wheel and witch hunter) to making the giant robots and having the battle. So I write an outline of the next 75 things that are going to happen between here and the ending (that’s one thing for every thousand words I have left to write). I do not write the outline from now to the end, I start with the end, and then fill in backwards, and then frontwards, and then I fill in the middle. And then I largely ignore the outline and write anothe...

Editing “Dowsing”. (short story, 5K). Finished typing the rewrite, wound up with 6500 words. Edited the first 3000, and then printed again and edited the whole thing on the premise that the beginning is always the worst part. Posted on OWW and got four quick crits, suggesting that the ending was too sudden. That was kind of what I thought before posting it. I let Ed read it too. Toothbrushing Club. (Middle Years novel). So, this year I forewent (if that’s a word) NaNoWriMo on the premise that I don’t need another unedited manuscript lying around, and instead I need to edit one of those down, making November in fact NaNoEdMo. But then I did not apply my usual NaNoWriMo discipline, and instead worked on that short story (not a waste of time by any means) and then screwed around for several days. So, I found myself on November 16 thinking, Oh dear, I guess I’d better read this sucker. I wrote TbC several years ago, and then apparently tried to edit it without actually reading it. In ret...