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dr_phil_physics) wrote2015-04-13 12:09 pm
dr_phil_physics) wrote2015-04-13 12:09 pm
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Where'd All These Stones Come From?
Farmers, especially in New England, are familiar with the concept of stones showing up in their fields every spring. That's why there are so many stone fences in old farms. Every year you clear out the stones and the next year, there's a whole new crop of stones to harvest before you can get any work done. Frost heaving is the technical explanation.
Writers can experience the same thing, due to what I call churning. You work on a sketchy section of rough draft and spend forever time going over the same section. Turn a series of blank lines or a single note or scrap of dialog and flesh them out into the whole scenes they were supposed to be in the first place. Writing here at A, requires tendrils to wander off to points B, C and D. Sometimes it seems you are writing new bits everywhere but on the section you are supposed to be working on. But that's how I have to end up making a story. You can't foreshadow something without having a foreground story and its shadow.
And sometimes you have to rewrite or change the order of events so that your characters learn things in the correct progression.
Yeah, I'm late in writing my weekly update -- usually they show up on Friday -- but it's been a very busy week. In-laws visiting, conference on Saturday, dinners out, doctor's appointment (foot is doing great), etc. All this and I didn't go to Kalamazoo this week due to rain -- and so spent a regular home work day doing my PowerPoints for Saturday. In fact, this is still really a weekly update since I haven't gotten too much progress done on the YA project since Friday. (grin)
A week ago I hit a big milestone, finishing the edits for:
Book 1 Part A Pass 1 Page 368 -- completed 04/03/2015 16:28:59
Book 1 Part B Pass 1 doesn't look so good, with the marker only at page 411 -- and Part A had ten more pages added to it -- but that's not the whole story. The current section, some thirty-forty pages, is all in play. Page 411 was the last marker where I had declared myself "done" with Pass 1. Once I finish the current bit, the marker will make a big jump. And story coherence across Parts A and B will also go up.
It's a process.
Also I had to start a new Research file, R-10A, because I'd bonked into Word's limit of redlined words again. A whole bunch of old Norse and Latin had proved too much for its itty bitty little brain. Honestly, Microsoft needed to have upped those limits a decade ago. Forget this shit about changing the deckchairs of the Start Menu or making desktop Windows look like a smartphone, Redmond, let's work on functionality. The last new "feature" I like in Word came with Word 2010's ability to create a respectable PDF file without needing a full copy of Adobe Acrobat, folks.
New Researches: Mercedes V-Class passenger van. The new Copenhagen Opera House (in Danish usually called Operaen) is the national opera house of Denmark, and among the most modern opera houses in the world. Cost half a billion (US). The Queen's Box is just past 1st Balcony Row 1 Seat 59 and is located on the side, not centered, so Her Majesty can watch what's going on in the wings. Bus Route 66 goes to the Operaen. The Bojesen at the Opera restaurant is located in the front house with a breathtaking view over Copenhagen, especially during sunset. You can have coffee, cheese and sweet courses with dinner -- or they'll save your table and wine for intermission. Carl Zeiss 3x13.5mm Teleater opera glass, made from 1907-1929. Margrethe Alexandrine Þórhildur Ingrid is Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and turns 75 on Thursday. She is one of two queens regnant currently on the throne and is the longest serving of the Scandinavian monarchs. The official Copenhagen residence is Amalienborg Palace, directly across the harbor from the Operaen by design. CEST – Central European Summer Time -- does not follow the revised US DST2007 schedule, so Copenhagen/Oslo/Bodo were off by five hours and not six for a couple of weeks in March. Stupid DST2007. Scandinavian rune variants are also known as futhark or fuþark (derived from their first six letters of the alphabet: F, U, Þ, A, R, and K). Copenhagen Zoo (Danish: Københavns Zoo) is a zoological garden in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1859, it is one of the oldest zoos in Europe. Mercedes-Benz Unimog, an amazing medium duty go-anywhere truck. The name Unimog is an acronym for the German "UNIversal-MOtor-Gerät", Gerät being the German word for machine or device. How to drive a 1976 Unimog 404. Brynhildr is a shieldmaiden and a valkyrie. A cross pattée is a type of cross which has arms narrow at the centre, and often flared in a curve or straight line shape, to be broader at the perimeter.
Research is both blessing and curse -- one can lose hours of writing time trying to track down spellings, history and nature of places and objects and people. And maps. Don't get me started on maps... (sigh)
So the shiny counters display:
Book 1 Page Edits (Pass 1)
The Lost Kingdom Project YA Trilogy Version 1.10 (04-13-15 Mo, 1225 pages)
Book 1 Part A (103,743 words, starts page 42) / Part B (59,217 words, starts page 378)
Still not pleased that Book 1 Part A is over 100,000 words, because it's only going to get longer. I have now exceeded the 2x80,000 word goal for Book 1 Parts A and B. Yes, another author would aggressively pare down Part A, but there's a lot of stuff one has to understand and anyway, I covered that debacle last week. (evil-grin) I could move the goalposts, or rather the midfield, and put the division between Parts A and B in a different place, but right now we're at a powerful natural break in the story. And the current chapter counts are pretty consistent:
Book 1 Part A: 24
Book 1 Part B: 25
Book 2 Part A: 26
Book 2 Part B: 26
Book 3 : 33
Through Book 5 there are currently 153 chapters.
We continue onward!
Dr. Phil
Writers can experience the same thing, due to what I call churning. You work on a sketchy section of rough draft and spend forever time going over the same section. Turn a series of blank lines or a single note or scrap of dialog and flesh them out into the whole scenes they were supposed to be in the first place. Writing here at A, requires tendrils to wander off to points B, C and D. Sometimes it seems you are writing new bits everywhere but on the section you are supposed to be working on. But that's how I have to end up making a story. You can't foreshadow something without having a foreground story and its shadow.
And sometimes you have to rewrite or change the order of events so that your characters learn things in the correct progression.
Yeah, I'm late in writing my weekly update -- usually they show up on Friday -- but it's been a very busy week. In-laws visiting, conference on Saturday, dinners out, doctor's appointment (foot is doing great), etc. All this and I didn't go to Kalamazoo this week due to rain -- and so spent a regular home work day doing my PowerPoints for Saturday. In fact, this is still really a weekly update since I haven't gotten too much progress done on the YA project since Friday. (grin)
A week ago I hit a big milestone, finishing the edits for:
Book 1 Part A Pass 1 Page 368 -- completed 04/03/2015 16:28:59
Book 1 Part B Pass 1 doesn't look so good, with the marker only at page 411 -- and Part A had ten more pages added to it -- but that's not the whole story. The current section, some thirty-forty pages, is all in play. Page 411 was the last marker where I had declared myself "done" with Pass 1. Once I finish the current bit, the marker will make a big jump. And story coherence across Parts A and B will also go up.
It's a process.
Also I had to start a new Research file, R-10A, because I'd bonked into Word's limit of redlined words again. A whole bunch of old Norse and Latin had proved too much for its itty bitty little brain. Honestly, Microsoft needed to have upped those limits a decade ago. Forget this shit about changing the deckchairs of the Start Menu or making desktop Windows look like a smartphone, Redmond, let's work on functionality. The last new "feature" I like in Word came with Word 2010's ability to create a respectable PDF file without needing a full copy of Adobe Acrobat, folks.
New Researches: Mercedes V-Class passenger van. The new Copenhagen Opera House (in Danish usually called Operaen) is the national opera house of Denmark, and among the most modern opera houses in the world. Cost half a billion (US). The Queen's Box is just past 1st Balcony Row 1 Seat 59 and is located on the side, not centered, so Her Majesty can watch what's going on in the wings. Bus Route 66 goes to the Operaen. The Bojesen at the Opera restaurant is located in the front house with a breathtaking view over Copenhagen, especially during sunset. You can have coffee, cheese and sweet courses with dinner -- or they'll save your table and wine for intermission. Carl Zeiss 3x13.5mm Teleater opera glass, made from 1907-1929. Margrethe Alexandrine Þórhildur Ingrid is Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and turns 75 on Thursday. She is one of two queens regnant currently on the throne and is the longest serving of the Scandinavian monarchs. The official Copenhagen residence is Amalienborg Palace, directly across the harbor from the Operaen by design. CEST – Central European Summer Time -- does not follow the revised US DST2007 schedule, so Copenhagen/Oslo/Bodo were off by five hours and not six for a couple of weeks in March. Stupid DST2007. Scandinavian rune variants are also known as futhark or fuþark (derived from their first six letters of the alphabet: F, U, Þ, A, R, and K). Copenhagen Zoo (Danish: Københavns Zoo) is a zoological garden in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1859, it is one of the oldest zoos in Europe. Mercedes-Benz Unimog, an amazing medium duty go-anywhere truck. The name Unimog is an acronym for the German "UNIversal-MOtor-Gerät", Gerät being the German word for machine or device. How to drive a 1976 Unimog 404. Brynhildr is a shieldmaiden and a valkyrie. A cross pattée is a type of cross which has arms narrow at the centre, and often flared in a curve or straight line shape, to be broader at the perimeter.
Research is both blessing and curse -- one can lose hours of writing time trying to track down spellings, history and nature of places and objects and people. And maps. Don't get me started on maps... (sigh)
So the shiny counters display:
Book 1 Page Edits (Pass 1)
The Lost Kingdom Project YA Trilogy Version 1.10 (04-13-15 Mo, 1225 pages)
Book 1 Part A (103,743 words, starts page 42) / Part B (59,217 words, starts page 378)
Still not pleased that Book 1 Part A is over 100,000 words, because it's only going to get longer. I have now exceeded the 2x80,000 word goal for Book 1 Parts A and B. Yes, another author would aggressively pare down Part A, but there's a lot of stuff one has to understand and anyway, I covered that debacle last week. (evil-grin) I could move the goalposts, or rather the midfield, and put the division between Parts A and B in a different place, but right now we're at a powerful natural break in the story. And the current chapter counts are pretty consistent:
Book 1 Part A: 24
Book 1 Part B: 25
Book 2 Part A: 26
Book 2 Part B: 26
Book 3 : 33
Through Book 5 there are currently 153 chapters.
We continue onward!
Dr. Phil
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