Happy Tuesday, squiders! I can’t believe it’s already June. Holy crapola.
(Also, I did my book tracker for the month this morning, and I need to read nine books this month to be on track, so that’s a problem.)
(I am in the middle of five, though, which is helping nothing.)
My retreat was great! None of the negative feelings I was worried about. I didn’t feel excluded socially (and was actually present for the beginning of the Lore, which was fun) and I strengthened some connections from last year and made some new friends.
I only went to one workshop, which was on setting (historically one of my weaker areas) but it was actually re-affirming, because I was already doing everything she recommended in World’s Edge.
Oh, and I got 13.5K words into the World’s Edge revision, which puts me about halfway through Chapter 4.
(Chapter 4 is more of a mess than I’d originally noted. Holly Lisle had a metaphor she used in one of her classes. Something like, as a writer, you need to do an elephant’s worth of research, but when you write you only put in a berry’s worth at a time. Because readers can’t eat an elephant, but they can eat berries. Or something more eloquent than that.
Anyway, Chapter 4 is definitely more on the elephant side. There’s a section at the end that I think has to come out–the MC never uses what she learns again, and it’s mostly an excuse to get her in a particular place, but she’s in said place earlier in the chapter. So I’ve got to move the plot important stuff to the earlier time and cut the end.
Also it’s a mess in terms of character movement. I’ve mentioned before that the captain’s cabin keeps moving between two decks in the original draft, and there’s a whole lot of movement in Cpt 4 that doesn’t make sense if the captain’s cabin goes into the right spot. I may have to draw out the new movement so I can make sure it makes sense.)
So the revision is on! I did procrastinate it for a good 12 hours of the retreat (I got there about 3 pm on Thursday, and probably didn’t actually start writing until 10:30 am on Friday) during which I went for a walk, read part of a book, chatted with other people, but I think maybe I may have needed to, mentally, after birthdays and the kids being out of school and Memorial Day and everything that was shoved into last week. But I feel good about what I got done, and the critique marathon started yesterday, so I can get feedback almost immediately on whether or not things are working.
And I’ve got my in-person critique this weekend! I want to get Chapter 4 done today, and then I’ll send it and chapter 5 (and maybe 6, depending on length, but if I’m remembering correctly 6 is really long and needs to be broken up) along.
A new thing I’m trying for June is morning pages. I’ve run into morning pages a couple of times in various writing books and things along those lines, but they’ve always seemed a little silly because most of the sources I’ve seen present them more of a journaling exercise.
But I’m reading this book now called Writing Down the Bones (or something along those lines) because I felt like I should read a writing book at the writing retreat. It’s from 1986 or something, so it’s definitely one I inherited from my mother, probably in her latest culling of her writing books.
Anyway, she frames the morning pages as a writing exercise–like, actually write poems, or bits of story, or practice your wording or invoking tones and moods, things along those lines.
Sometimes, when I’m drafting, I can get thrown by my wording. Like, if my sentences feel too stilted, or if my sentence structure feels weird or repetitive. So I feel like maybe practicing actual writing, just 10 minutes each morning, will help when I’m writing new things.
So I’ve decided that every day for the month of June (well, 29 days of June and 1 of July, because I decided this at the retreat and I didn’t have a notebook with me) I’m going to give it a try. Go through the things I’ve saved in my idea file or on Pinterest or on the bingo card I made and have done nothing with, and just write for 10 minutes, and see what we end up with. And then we’ll reevaluate at the end of the 30 days and see how we felt about the whole thing.
We’re 2 for 2 thus far, so go us.
How was your weekend, squider? Any big plans for June?
