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Sep. 14th, 2009 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseFirst, a random shout. Hey, taleisin, are you still reading LJ? It's just you haven't posted since the move, and while I know that the move and the job are probably eating your time, I'd just want to know how things are going in the deep wilds of Alberta.
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1.3k new words on Bird of Dusk, thanks to a one-day receptionist job. More, technically, since the first draft was handwritten and I didn't bother to insert the bits that really stank. (The computer was actually off limits enough I needed permission to access gmail long enough to get the time sheet i needed to get paid.) This is actually good; with the handwritten draft done, what got in the computer at home was more polished than what came out of my head the first time through. Also, I did a pile of handwritten brainstorming, and I think I figured out a way to have all the nasties line up in a row at the end, which had previously looked less like plot structure and more like snarled tangle of yarn.
Slight problem, technically; I haven't reached the scene I wrote up yet. So now I have a pretty solid draft of the story from A to about Q. And I just figured out U through Z. Which means I've got a gap. It's a short gap, and it isn't *totally* without a road map. But it's a tricky one.
And while I was sick, I was mainly chopping dross from the prior chapters, usually word level dross. And I mean to finish. The first few chapters averaged just under 300 words cut per chapter, but Chapters 6 through 16, so far, have averaged almost 500 each (And levelled out there; which makes sense; the first chapters have been tweaked more). Which isn't a LOT per se, but looking at the word level thing started to force me to see the structure of the bigger story, and looking at the merit and usefulness of so many words led to me piecing together the ending better. Which led to me being able to write out one of the major scenes approaching the climax.
________________
1.3k new words on Bird of Dusk, thanks to a one-day receptionist job. More, technically, since the first draft was handwritten and I didn't bother to insert the bits that really stank. (The computer was actually off limits enough I needed permission to access gmail long enough to get the time sheet i needed to get paid.) This is actually good; with the handwritten draft done, what got in the computer at home was more polished than what came out of my head the first time through. Also, I did a pile of handwritten brainstorming, and I think I figured out a way to have all the nasties line up in a row at the end, which had previously looked less like plot structure and more like snarled tangle of yarn.
Slight problem, technically; I haven't reached the scene I wrote up yet. So now I have a pretty solid draft of the story from A to about Q. And I just figured out U through Z. Which means I've got a gap. It's a short gap, and it isn't *totally* without a road map. But it's a tricky one.
And while I was sick, I was mainly chopping dross from the prior chapters, usually word level dross. And I mean to finish. The first few chapters averaged just under 300 words cut per chapter, but Chapters 6 through 16, so far, have averaged almost 500 each (And levelled out there; which makes sense; the first chapters have been tweaked more). Which isn't a LOT per se, but looking at the word level thing started to force me to see the structure of the bigger story, and looking at the merit and usefulness of so many words led to me piecing together the ending better. Which led to me being able to write out one of the major scenes approaching the climax.
