Taken Out of Context
Oct. 15th, 2005 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenoftheskiesFor those of you who are writing on this loveliest of lovely Saturday mornings (well, it's lovely here, anyway...sunny and cooler than the past few days in which temps almost reached 100!), what are you writing?
Are you working on a novel? A short story? A screenplay? Something else?
Care to talk about the particular scene you're hard at work on?
Is writing coming easy today? Are you having to struggle?
What are your current feelings toward your current project?
I, of course, am working on Dawn of Destiny, my current novel.
Hoping to finish it this weekend, but sometimes, I do just decide to take off and enjoy life for a while. (My oldest son and I have been discussing the possibility of parking the car at a nearby park and hiking over to the walking trails that go through the woods that caught fire recently. The trails are really nice back there.)
I've already actually written the entire skeletal framework for this particular novel...including the ending. I'm just going back to either add or finish scenes that I didn't write/complete as I was writing.
Why? Well, sometimes, I know the plot point, but not exactly how I want a particular scene to go. Sometimes, I discover that events/scenes further along in the novel actually dictate what's going to happen in the scenes I've skipped.
After my current scene, I think I have maybe 12 more scenes to go. Several of them won't be more than a couple hundred words. Some will probably be several thousand.
My current scene, which I started yesterday, took on a life of its own, connecting backwards with history of this universe and connecting forwards with as of yet unwritten material. Kind of nice except that it referred to things that I haven't decided on entirely yet. So, maybe that means my brain is thinking on these things. I can't wait to see where it leads me.
Lilli had to make a really bad decision. Something that may later cause a major event she's trying to prevent. But, it was either that decision or a far, far worse immediate one. (Don't you love it when a character has no good way out?)
She doesn't have time to stress over it now, and she can't completely prevent the event she's currently working on, but she does have the power to stall it...and that's the best she can hope for at this point in time. Later, once we've ended this book, she'll have all the opportunity in the world to go, "Oh, shit, did I really do that?" and angst over the BIG decision a while. (And, blame herself, of course, because...that's what she does.)
And, that's where I am today. Allowing Lilli to postpone this event that's occurring in my novel (which will ultimately be resolved in this book) and set in motion events of "epic proportion", which will ultimately cause the HUGE conflict later in this universe.
Words are not flowing as easily as the past few days, but that's probably because I know I have to go out and take my daughter to tutor in about twenty minutes. Plus, she and my youngest son keep talking to me (and youngest son is tempting me with Pocky), so I'm not focused.
Hopefully words will flow better once I get home. I think I'm in the mood to end this scene and move on, then come back when I edit/revise and make it all purty.
I think I've decided that I love this novel now instead of just liking it. That happened to me on Ancient Secrets, too, as I neared the end. Things resolved and tied together and, most importantly, I actually can see, in my mind, how the words might flow and the book might transform once I get to the editing/revision part. Kind of like...magic.
No editing or revising, though, on any of the novels until maybe December (over the holidays while I'm off work for a week) or after the first of the year.
For now, I'm working on finishing, because these novels I'm writing influence one another and could change each other, based on how each one turns out.
Of course, my NaNoWriMo is in the same universe, but way before these are set, so it'll be stand-alone for now and not be affected by these...though it will, of course, affect them since it's the history of the discovery of the living crystals and how the Xanali came into existence.
Are you working on a novel? A short story? A screenplay? Something else?
Care to talk about the particular scene you're hard at work on?
Is writing coming easy today? Are you having to struggle?
What are your current feelings toward your current project?
I, of course, am working on Dawn of Destiny, my current novel.
Hoping to finish it this weekend, but sometimes, I do just decide to take off and enjoy life for a while. (My oldest son and I have been discussing the possibility of parking the car at a nearby park and hiking over to the walking trails that go through the woods that caught fire recently. The trails are really nice back there.)
I've already actually written the entire skeletal framework for this particular novel...including the ending. I'm just going back to either add or finish scenes that I didn't write/complete as I was writing.
Why? Well, sometimes, I know the plot point, but not exactly how I want a particular scene to go. Sometimes, I discover that events/scenes further along in the novel actually dictate what's going to happen in the scenes I've skipped.
After my current scene, I think I have maybe 12 more scenes to go. Several of them won't be more than a couple hundred words. Some will probably be several thousand.
My current scene, which I started yesterday, took on a life of its own, connecting backwards with history of this universe and connecting forwards with as of yet unwritten material. Kind of nice except that it referred to things that I haven't decided on entirely yet. So, maybe that means my brain is thinking on these things. I can't wait to see where it leads me.
Lilli had to make a really bad decision. Something that may later cause a major event she's trying to prevent. But, it was either that decision or a far, far worse immediate one. (Don't you love it when a character has no good way out?)
She doesn't have time to stress over it now, and she can't completely prevent the event she's currently working on, but she does have the power to stall it...and that's the best she can hope for at this point in time. Later, once we've ended this book, she'll have all the opportunity in the world to go, "Oh, shit, did I really do that?" and angst over the BIG decision a while. (And, blame herself, of course, because...that's what she does.)
And, that's where I am today. Allowing Lilli to postpone this event that's occurring in my novel (which will ultimately be resolved in this book) and set in motion events of "epic proportion", which will ultimately cause the HUGE conflict later in this universe.
Words are not flowing as easily as the past few days, but that's probably because I know I have to go out and take my daughter to tutor in about twenty minutes. Plus, she and my youngest son keep talking to me (and youngest son is tempting me with Pocky), so I'm not focused.
Hopefully words will flow better once I get home. I think I'm in the mood to end this scene and move on, then come back when I edit/revise and make it all purty.
I think I've decided that I love this novel now instead of just liking it. That happened to me on Ancient Secrets, too, as I neared the end. Things resolved and tied together and, most importantly, I actually can see, in my mind, how the words might flow and the book might transform once I get to the editing/revision part. Kind of like...magic.
No editing or revising, though, on any of the novels until maybe December (over the holidays while I'm off work for a week) or after the first of the year.
For now, I'm working on finishing, because these novels I'm writing influence one another and could change each other, based on how each one turns out.
Of course, my NaNoWriMo is in the same universe, but way before these are set, so it'll be stand-alone for now and not be affected by these...though it will, of course, affect them since it's the history of the discovery of the living crystals and how the Xanali came into existence.
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Date: 2005-10-16 12:40 am (UTC)Still working on my Chronicles of Magic: Daughter of the Mystics story. Eee!
Are you working on a novel? A short story? A screenplay? Something else?
It'll be a...novel, I guess. Book one of three. I have an idea as to how book two will start off, but nothing beyond that, really. Should be fun when I get to start outlining book two.
Care to talk about the particular scene you're hard at work on?
The current scene is just before Azura, the main character/narrator (it's in third person), is going to meet the king and queen, the parents of Riordan which is the prince she's "courting"- not officially courting, really (they didn't ask each other)...and she's not a princess- so that she can request help from them for her people, who are going to war and there isn't a huge amount of them. Her people live in a secluded, hidden village in the forest, in a community for magic users, and they're going to war against Zeriphan, a sorcerer...She just met Riordan's younger sister, and now she has to go meet the king and queen, then she'll go before the Council to request for an alliance and help against Zeriphan and his forces....I think I'm almost done with this chapter. 80...something pages (I write it front to back and type it a couple pages at a time as I write a chapter), and only the fifth chapter. :D
Is writing coming easy today? Are you having to struggle?
Unfortunately, I haven't had ANY chance to write today- I had to work a crappy 11-7 shift and it was pretty busy (which should be expected, for McDonalds). I wrote a little last night but eventually lost the energy and went to sleep. Tomorrow is the last day I work until this coming Friday, so from tomorrow til Friday before 4:00 (eee, finally a Friday where I don't have to rush around in the morning to go to work) I'll have time before and after (-cough- and during) classes to write. I'm going to be struggling with the scene where Azura meets the Council and king and queen, because I haven't thought of what they'd be like until now, physically and otherwise, though I do have an idea as to how they're going to react to Azura's request. It's just going to be a little harder because...up until I started writing this chapter, I didn't have much about Anvar, the kingdom that Riordan lives in/the forest is part of, developed, so I'm still playing around with ideas. I struggled with one scene where they were in a tavern because Riordan found out that a friend was killed, and I'm iffy about his name, and the name of the friend who told him (they're both overused and slightly cliche names, but they were just names that came to me when I needed them), and I'm iffy about how the friend died, and...blah. All stuff I basically need to wait and see what people think about when they read it.
What are your current feelings toward your current project?
I'm excited to be so far into it, because it's been a really, really, REALLY long time since I've written something more than 20 or 30 pages long and haven't given up on it. I'm also excited because my creative writing teacher is letting the scene that I wrote as a draft assignment be considered something "new" instead of something I was already working on (it's a scene that'll be coming up in the current Chronicles story, and it was nice to write it out and see how it'd turn out) since she wanted us to write something new and I told her that I didn't want to write something else and have it distract me, because I've had that happen before...so now I have to work on revising that scene and adding on to it by this Tuesday. Yay.