She offered them a name, and seals they all became

and laughing, took a coat of dappled light....


Progress notes for September 6, 2006:

Raising the Storm


New Words: 2285 words.
Reason for stopping: Houston, we have a draft.
Tea: Orange pekoe with (in alternate cups), maple honey and Saskatoon honey.
Music: Peter Gabriel, Passion, The Mollys This is My Round, the mixed tape of Nordic and medieval not-in-English music, Oysterband 25
Can't stop fidgeting: Though I'd written myself into a corner, then swapped the two dialogues that happen in this scene, and suddenly it all clicked to a close. Alas - see below for the *real* fidgeting.
The Glamour!: My back hurts.

Darling du Jour:
"They make up stories about what I am and where I came from, and believe them, and I want to shake them... but they look at me like I'll make it better, and I want them to be right."

"You're dreaming," said ____. "Half the plantings are ruined, and you can't fix that."

"No," _____ said. "But it's not me dreaming. It's them."

Inevitable Asides: Yes, I do mean to post a summary of the Gimli Event. For now, suffice to say, frisky_turtle most assuredly earned that reward, and all cries of "WOO-HOO!" and "HOOBAH!" are rightfully hers.
__________________________________________________________

So, first I have to breathe a little and register that this draft is done for the moment.

Done.

Sorta.

There's a problem. I knew it, but not that it was this big. And big is the word. Again. I tried, honest...

By Word's mechanical count, which is not the most reliable means of counting words, but for the moment, the easiest to compile:

189,000 words.

My drafts always end up with bloat and then need to be edited down: that's how I write. I've excised as much as 25k between drafts (That was Bird of Dusk, the trunked novel, which eventually shed another 10k), but I thought I would end up with 160K - 170 at the worst. (Maybe I was hoping for a miracle. The last finished drafts of Raising the Storm were *two* books, one near to 150k, one over 120k. This draft and its unfinished computer-crash predecessor smushed them back together, and thus, even at 189k words, I lost over 80k.)

Now it looks like that will be what I end up with when I cut it.

Yaarrrgh.

Thing is, here's the next steps.

I put it away in one of two ways:
- One, I save the files, move them from the current projects folder to another folder, and don't look at them for three months or more - probably until Christmas break.
- Two, I get people to look over the story and give me critiques, and don't look at the story until at least two of those have come back to me. Which also means leaving it until *at least* Christmas break.

While that's being ignored, pick up other projects to drive it out of my head a bit (in this case, that's as likely to be focusing on schoolwork as a new story, though don't quote me, one of the various planned stories will bite -- two are nibbling as it is -- and I'll be off again.)


Now, normally the choice would be a no brainer: I can do a lot on my own looking at a draft with fresh eyes, but adding other people gives you a startling mix of useful advice you'd never have thought of, and wrong-headed suggestions that make you have to stop and figure out what you did wrong that made them see the story so badly. (and occasionally totally useless stuff, but those are a lot rarer than you'd think.)

However, I'm not sure how comfortable I am asking *anyone* to read something 189k. That length would be *murder* if they think it stinks. Hard enough reading a 2000 word short story that's painfully bad, and finding anythign useful to say. If they do like it ... it's still a lot to go through with a critiquer's mind, which means reading carefully, looking for boring bits, be they whole scenes or mere paragraphs. Analyzing why you like bits or don't, instead of just liking them or not. And continuing to read that one segment that makes you want to tie the writer to railroad tracks. It's not a light reading style. It's even harder than the reviewer's reading.

I'm tempted to let it sit, see if I can shop it down, then send it for crits once it's trimmed. But that would mean a second revision after the fact, and too many direct revisions to the same draft can kill it as dead as anything else. (this is why you write new drafts from scratch where possible; it introduces freshness.)

Still. Anyone game?

I promise if it's agonizing you can stop after 20k (pnh did read the first 10k, and the one larger problem he had amidst much "You're doing good, keep going" has been rather amended. Oh, and I did try to figure out other terms for "tsunami".)

She offered them a name, and seals they all became

and laughing, took a coat of dappled light....


Progress notes for September 6, 2006:

Raising the Storm


New Words: 2285 words.
Reason for stopping: Houston, we have a draft.
Tea: Orange pekoe with (in alternate cups), maple honey and Saskatoon honey.
Music: Peter Gabriel, Passion, The Mollys This is My Round, the mixed tape of Nordic and medieval not-in-English music, Oysterband 25
Can't stop fidgeting: Though I'd written myself into a corner, then swapped the two dialogues that happen in this scene, and suddenly it all clicked to a close. Alas - see below for the *real* fidgeting.
The Glamour!: My back hurts.

Darling du Jour:
"They make up stories about what I am and where I came from, and believe them, and I want to shake them... but they look at me like I'll make it better, and I want them to be right."

"You're dreaming," said ____. "Half the plantings are ruined, and you can't fix that."

"No," _____ said. "But it's not me dreaming. It's them."

Inevitable Asides: Yes, I do mean to post a summary of the Gimli Event. For now, suffice to say, frisky_turtle most assuredly earned that reward, and all cries of "WOO-HOO!" and "HOOBAH!" are rightfully hers.
__________________________________________________________

So, first I have to breathe a little and register that this draft is done for the moment.

Done.

Sorta.

There's a problem. I knew it, but not that it was this big. And big is the word. Again. I tried, honest...

By Word's mechanical count, which is not the most reliable means of counting words, but for the moment, the easiest to compile:

189,000 words.

My drafts always end up with bloat and then need to be edited down: that's how I write. I've excised as much as 25k between drafts (That was Bird of Dusk, the trunked novel, which eventually shed another 10k), but I thought I would end up with 160K - 170 at the worst. (Maybe I was hoping for a miracle. The last finished drafts of Raising the Storm were *two* books, one near to 150k, one over 120k. This draft and its unfinished computer-crash predecessor smushed them back together, and thus, even at 189k words, I lost over 80k.)

Now it looks like that will be what I end up with when I cut it.

Yaarrrgh.

Thing is, here's the next steps.

I put it away in one of two ways:
- One, I save the files, move them from the current projects folder to another folder, and don't look at them for three months or more - probably until Christmas break.
- Two, I get people to look over the story and give me critiques, and don't look at the story until at least two of those have come back to me. Which also means leaving it until *at least* Christmas break.

While that's being ignored, pick up other projects to drive it out of my head a bit (in this case, that's as likely to be focusing on schoolwork as a new story, though don't quote me, one of the various planned stories will bite -- two are nibbling as it is -- and I'll be off again.)


Now, normally the choice would be a no brainer: I can do a lot on my own looking at a draft with fresh eyes, but adding other people gives you a startling mix of useful advice you'd never have thought of, and wrong-headed suggestions that make you have to stop and figure out what you did wrong that made them see the story so badly. (and occasionally totally useless stuff, but those are a lot rarer than you'd think.)

However, I'm not sure how comfortable I am asking *anyone* to read something 189k. That length would be *murder* if they think it stinks. Hard enough reading a 2000 word short story that's painfully bad, and finding anythign useful to say. If they do like it ... it's still a lot to go through with a critiquer's mind, which means reading carefully, looking for boring bits, be they whole scenes or mere paragraphs. Analyzing why you like bits or don't, instead of just liking them or not. And continuing to read that one segment that makes you want to tie the writer to railroad tracks. It's not a light reading style. It's even harder than the reviewer's reading.

I'm tempted to let it sit, see if I can shop it down, then send it for crits once it's trimmed. But that would mean a second revision after the fact, and too many direct revisions to the same draft can kill it as dead as anything else. (this is why you write new drafts from scratch where possible; it introduces freshness.)

Still. Anyone game?

I promise if it's agonizing you can stop after 20k (pnh did read the first 10k, and the one larger problem he had amidst much "You're doing good, keep going" has been rather amended. Oh, and I did try to figure out other terms for "tsunami".)