Robynettely

First Draft “Fairfax”. Started month with 43,000 words, near the beginning of Chapter 17, having written portions of my second outline. Now I’m past 54,000 nearing the end of Chapter 20. I should be more than half done! We’ll see about that, in about six months. . . Editing Toothbrushing Club. (Middle Years novel). Last time I posted, a week into December, I had gone through the first half, with the goal to have draft 3 by Christmas break. In this, I was successful. There was a lot less moving scenes around, and a lot more writing entire scenes, towards the end. I knew the ending was awful, and had written a note after reading the whole thing to basically delete the last five pages, and I wrote something else entirely. The whole thing is printed out and ready to read again, but I think I should give it a week or two. This is the first time I’ve ever really properly done a “middle” draft of anything this long from start to finish. The document is 53,000 words long which seems sort of ...

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...

Why I read it: I gave it to Ed for his birthday last year. Nadine read it recently (I think she's doing a GGK festival, because she borrowed "The Summer Tree" from me a couple of weeks ago and gave it back last week). She's asked me two or three times since if I've read Ysabel yet, I guess so we can discuss it. Still no "Darkmans". It's still "in transit." I don't think that word means what TPL thinks it means. Tastes like chicken: Tim Wynne-Jones, maybe crossed with "Da Vinci Code" but without the lame-assed puzzles. I'm wondering if he was intending to write a YA book here. I saw this book on a display for the library at the boy's school, but I don't feel like it was marketed to teens. Maybe that's because GGK doesn't have a teen audience really (though I think the Fionavar Tapestry would be great for teens). Somehow I missed that Kim and Dave were from the Fionavar Tapestry until Nadine pointed it out,...

Why I read it: One of my coworkers, Nadine, lent it to me, and then several weeks later she gave notice, so I thought I'd better read it now, so I could give it back before she left. I would have gotten to it eventually, since I live here ( the book is sort of a cultural history of Toronto), so it's the only city I can write about (set my stories in) with any real sense of authority, and it would be good to "understand" it from another perspective (historical in this case). Also, after rather a long string of novels, I thought it was time to read some non-fiction. There was a documentary I saw a little while ago, "Let's all hate Toronto". When I told Nadine that ultimately Torontonians hate this city the most, because we hate it every day, whereas people from, say, Vancouver, really only hate Toronto on special occasions, she said that was typically Toronto-centric thing to say. She commutes every day from K-W. What I liked: I got a little self-righte...

Last week I went on my annual Maine vacation, where I usually see my dad and one if not more of my sisters. Before I went, I had to work a Saturday morning in order to get some TW projects done, so I used the office printer to print "Toothbrushing Club" on scrap paper (It adds an extra dimension to the story to see hardware installation instructions on the backs, right?). I stuck it in a binder, and I took it on vacation with me, meaning to mark it up with a copy-edit while I was away from the computer. Didn't do that. Anyway, I showed the binder to my dad and my sister, but neither of them was exactly chomping at the bit to read the thing. They flipped through, I guess. Saturday morning, my dad asked to look at it again. I thought, awesome, this is my chance for some actual feedback! Apparently not. My dad totally fixated on "What font is this?" Times New Roman (windows default body text) "What size is it?" 10, again the default. "Is this doubl...

Today I was reading "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" and I realized the problem with the Toothbrushing Club is that the fairies are too benign. And to think on about Tuesday I was considering just taking them out, they bored me so much. Not anymore. Onward!

I must have worked on that wretched Toothbrush novel for two hours today, and my second draft still isn't done! When will this stupid thing be finished? I'm only about three-quarters of the way through! I can't stop moving scenes! Reality is setting in. Maybe my goal was a tad unrealistic, considering my lack of commitment to achieving it. Will I really be ready for a line edit by Friday? I think not. Is this the despair that JL was referring to (I think it was she who said that despair is an integral part of the rewriting process), or am I just some kind of lazy dilettante? I think I'll just go watch "Monarchy" on TVO.

Today I took a half-day (afternoon) vacation from work, and I actually worked on my wretched novel for two hours! What a better way to spend the afternoon than buying more pairs of jeans and shirts I won't wear at the mall. One of the other TWs got a marked-up manual back with a big rant on it about how a DIP switch is actually an entire block of controls, and each individual control is a "post". Well, she thought that was silly, and went on a walking tour of the office asking different people what they would call the individual components and the entire thing. The best answer: one of the engineers told her that he doesn't know what it's called in English, but if you translated it out of German, it would be a "mouse piano". That has got to be the coolest technical phrase ever. It almost makes me want to learn German.

Worked on the wretched TBC again last night, for probably an hour, moving scenes around to make them make sense. Seems I had no action for about the first 30 pages of the story. Now at least something happens. I move one thing, and then I have to move about six other things to make it make sense again. And then this afternoon I looked at the second half of the print-out I made weeks ago. I've barely touched the second half lately, so I was thinking I should have a go before I printed it out again. OMG, dispair really is an integral part of the writing process. I booked my vacation for 18-22 August, and my goal is to have a readable draft by then, to fob off on my poor, unsuspecting sisters. Maybe I should go back to the beginning again, since that's the part they would start with...

I started working the brilliant Shakespeare theme into Toothbrush today. A couple of elements had already been there, which is kind of funny. I had these girls, and I needed to give them names... so they got MND names. And now, those names are actually motivated, and the element that they comprised seems more rooted in the plot. It's this sort of thing that makes me not feel so bad about how long it takes me to edit. The idea popped up somewhat unbidden as I was falling asleep on Monday, and it's remarkable that I was able to start working it in. Often, by the time I get around to exercising my genius, it doesn't seem nearly so clever any more. So that was probably 40 minutes of a sonnet and some new conversation. On about Tuesday I realized there's a scene that just has to be removed, as it doesn't work with the ages of the characters. Maybe I should take it out now, and then have some lunch.

If I only have to look at it for ten minutes, turns out I can work on this wretched rewriting thing. Yesterday I picked the first page in Toothbrush that had no writing on it (I assumed that's where I'd left off, on page 3) and marked it up. Then we went out to play for a few hours, and when we came back I made my changes in the draft. That wasn't so bad, now, was it? Turns out, actually, that I had marked up page four and five earlier, but whatever. I got rid of two named characters, turning their dialog into an introduction to two other characters, the kind-of Nemisi (I have a vague feeling you can't really have two nemesises, it's a word that seems like it shouldn't take a plural) of my main character. Maybe later I'll change their names (to protect the innocent). I think I know their true names now.

When I was at band two nights ago, one of the flute players was lamenting that she'd be way better if she'd just take her flute out and practice it for an hour every day. Except that's totally unrealistic. Nobody who is a normal adult and has normal adult responsibilities (I believe this woman has a business contracting to sew home decor items, which she sometimes does until 2am, and has a child, etc.) has time to practice for an hour per day. I don't manage to practice for an hour per week (though that may be partly because I don't want to wear out my reeds). So I mentioned that back when I took oboe lessons, my teacher told me to practice for 15 minutes a day. And that was good, because it got me to take the instrument out and put it together every day, with a minimal time commitment. Who doesn't have 15 minutes? And in fact, once the instrument was out, I used to often practice far more than 15 minutes some days. And then I said "In fact, this is somethi...