2011 Fiction Word Count Week 4

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Spurt of creating and then I fall flat. Should I count this as a pattern so soon?

Tin Man Vocabulary

"The feather that dropped the Munchkin" equivalent to "the straw that broke the camel's back."

Don't really need that for anything yet, but it popped into my head and I don't want to forget it.

2011 Fiction Word Count Week 3

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Triangulation Entry Post 3

Untitled

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METRICS
New Words: 130
Total words for the first draft: 423
What I hate about my writing: Right now, it feels like too much work.
The Good: It just occurred to me how much Cobaine’s death affected Mealte. Not out of any love for his master, but rather how it dooms his family. Growing up in a hurry doesn’t even begin to cover it.
The Bad: I got my morning writing session in with waking up on time. I thought I would add to the total during the paying job. Then the paying job had one of those days that went kaboom in the face.


I managed to pull my brains together enough to finish the paying job stuff, but 370 more words were out of reach.
Fave line: Mealte’s talons lightly scratched the table leaving the surface unmarked.
What I'm looking forward to: Right now, letting the characters chatter.
What I'm not looking forward to: Am I leaving out important details? I want them to come into the story naturally, but am I also forgetting what the reader needs because I know it already?

2011 Fiction Word Count Week 2

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Ugh, I don't like this. I should not be falling off the wagon two weeks into the new year. Must make progress this week.

Triangulation Entry Post 2

Untitled

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METRICS
New Words: 293
Total words for the first draft: 293
What I hate about my writing: Waking up late so I have no time to work.
The Good: The plot finally came together over the weekend. The hour delay caught in traffic during the morning commute yesterday gave me a few paragraphs.
The Bad: I have no bloody idea what happened to my concentration and focus.
Fave line: Irida looked up at the male across the table who stared at his bowl of blood stew if it were a divination tool.
What I'm looking forward to: Right now, letting the characters chatter.
What I'm not looking forward to: I have a suspicion that this will be one of those stories I have to add description to.

Triangulation Entry Post 1

Word count: up to 5000
Theme: Last Contact
Genre: speculative fiction (including science fiction, horror, fantasy, magic realism, alternate history)

I came up with five ideas off the top of my head as I mulled over what works for this submission call.

1. Mealte’s backstory – the last contact he had with his girlfriend and family
2. Piper of Shadows – the kid who finds out he’s a changeling
3. Blue Man on the Porch – last contact Bridget has with Earth
4. Something with black-eyed kids in it either a Piper of Shadows story or Steampunk
5. Steampunk short story mystery I had started

”Blue Man on the Porch” was out of the running after looking at my last draft, far too long and too much of it necessary to cut it to 5000.

I spent some time typing what I had jotted down of my Steampunk mystery, enough to figure out it wasn’t working. Not the story or the character voice I have so far, but it wasn’t gelling with “Last Contact.” Then I read Kait Nolan’s post To Trudge or Abandon last night. I’m not abandoning the steampunk mystery, but I’m putting it aside for a story I’m more passionate about for this submission. Hopefully this does not invoke the Fear Monger in all its crazy glory.

Mealte’s backstory is what I keep coming back to, only discovering it’s not Mealte’s story to tell but his girlfriend’s. I know what’s going on and nearly all the characters, but the framework to drape it over is still eluding me. Ironing out specifics of Mealte’s culture is something to look forward to. Mystery is out for considerations of my series, but it still has to be connected to mystery.
I still have some puzzling out to do, but this has the spark.

Steampunk Mystery Post 1

Steampunk short story

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METRICS
New Words: 438
Total words for the first draft: 438
What I hate about my writing: Get up out of bed and do it on time, damnit!
The Good: I like both the voices that developed in what I have written.
The Bad: It’s not working for the “Last Contact” entry, so I have to put aside again.
Fave line: “They’re gonna string you up for fraternizing with them Yankees.”
What I'm looking forward to: A different story for the call for submissions.
What I'm not looking forward to: Evil commute home.

2011 Fiction Word Count Week 1

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A little short of where I should be, I fell down on writing Thursday and Friday. And I didn't spend as much time this weekend catching up. Striving to do better this week.

Stellar Gift of Death Post 64

Stellar Gift of Death

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METRICS
New Words: 604
Chapter Thirteen total words: 3770
Total words for the first draft: 53,584
What I hate about my writing: When playing catch up doesn’t work.
The Good: I got a lot done today, despite getting distracted by the what to do for Triangulation entry question. I have a pretty good idea what the next complication will be, and just got an added idea of Xeryl and Mealte surprising Zy by not letting her fight. Shouldn’t be a surprise to any readers, she’s still injured even though she has trouble remembering that. And she may not know how to classify either one of them in the context of her life, they don’t have the same issue. *Smirk* The aliens have a better grasp of relationships than the human protagonist.
The Bad: Repeat after me: “Playing catch-up on everything for the weekend does not work. Playing catch-up on everything for the weekend does not work.” I plan on making headway into the word count and get distracted by chores which are equally piled up. Then I get frustrated with lack of progress for everything and play with the computer for a couple of hours. Worse, it looks like next week will turn out the exact same way unless I pull myself back on the tracks I laid out.
Fave line:

“One sneaking in is better than three. And they haven’t seen Mealte, so even if they do spot him with the cameras.”

“They will not, Mistress,” Mealte interrupted.

“But if they somehow manage to, they won’t connect you with me like they would him.”

What I'm looking forward to: The next complication and the Triangulation entry story.
What I'm not looking forward to: Figuring out how to get back on track with my To Do List.

Stellar Gift of Death Post 63

Stellar Gift of Death

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METRICS
New Words: 207
Chapter Thirteen total words: 3166
Total words for the first draft: 52,980
What I hate about my writing: Not having enough time to reach my word count.
The Good: Zy found a way past the impasse and I think I’ve come up with an added wrinkle that’s more menacing than comical.
The Bad: I meant to sit down and write when I got home, but elected to spend an hour of quality time with my nephew first. After I took him home, I noticed that I finally had a green Internet light on the modem and stayed up way too late getting connected and downloading updates.
Fave line: “Once the Museum hours are done. They think no one would be brazen enough to break in while the building is occupied.”
What I'm looking forward to: Outer space battle; not sure how many chapters away it is at this point.
What I'm not looking forward to: Going home and finding that they turned off the Internet again.

2010 My Year in Fic

Meme I did last year (LiveJournal post or Discipline Under Fire blog post), so I thought I'd make it a reoccurring one. Analysis is always fun.

My stories: Completion follow-through still sucks. Most of the stuff I finished has made it only a few places to read it. I had intended to finish a lot in November and December, but the dead computer didn't help. I'm STILL trying to get the new one sorted out *sigh*.

Tin Man: Not His Kink: My first foray into kinky erotica and I actually found enough courage to post it. It won't be going up at FanFiction.Net because it is most decidedly NC-17 in places, but the plan is for it to go up at the Library fairly soon (as in as soon as I get the new computer updated and Internet running again).

Tin Man/Alice: Making Whole: Two little sentences popped into my head when considering a Glitch and Azkadellia adventure in Wonderland, and the next thing I knew I had this story for the first challenge from Tin Man Crossover Fanfiction. Commentary version here.

Tin Man: Don't Know What the Other Hands Are Doing: Written for Tin Man Challenge Round 7: One Hit Wonder. I was inspired by Airofday and the Realm of the Unwanted. It won third place.

Tin Man: Every Day I'm With You: Tin Man Crossover Fanfiction Challenge 2 for Valentine's Day was harder. I don't really consider this a proper short story, since it is a scene for the sequel to Tin Man: Dragons and Ninjas. But it also hangs together rather nicely and shows the Queen and Ahamo at their best.

Tin Man: Wide Open Spaces: Written for Round 9: Scavenger Hunt. Unplanned sequels to a stand-alone novel were a specialty this year, because this was the second one.

Tin Man: Medals and Luckdragons: Written for Tin Man Crossover Fanfiction Challenge 3. I feel very meh about this. While "Every Day I'm With You" works alone, I think "Medals and Luckdragons" doesn't make sense without the rest of the unwritten novel.

Tin Man: Where Did That Come From: Written for Tin Man Challenge Round 11: Things Unseen. At some point, my brain filled in the plot hole in the time sequence of the Tin Man miniseries. I thought it was a rather elegant solution myself and features more of Glitch in his Glitchy-awesomeness. It won third place.

Tin Man: Victory Ball: Written for Tin Man Challenge Round 12: Honored. It's a prequel to an event aluded to in Tin Man: Dragons and Ninjas. After this one, I ignored the challenges to work on original fiction for a while.

The Hitchhiking Highwayman: is original fiction finished and submitted to a paying market. It was rejected, but the publishers were super nice. They even sent an email saying they had successfully received the submission.

Covenant of the Restless: is original fiction that I had finished the first draft of back in 2006. In between then and now, I thought I could incorporate it into a fantasy universe I'm developing called "Piper of Shadows." I finished reworking it and submitted it. I'm still waiting on the response.

The Hyrueliana: I worked on this editing project that will never be completed at some point during the year. Ages ago, I thought it would be a good idea to test Stine's triage editing technique out on this story and I haven't reached the end of the triage yet. *rolls eyes*

Stellar Gift of Death: I worked on this original fiction novel, but fell short of my goal of completing it in 2010. So it is the first thing I am working on in 2011.

My favorite story this year: Tin Man/Alice: Making Whole, I really loved how this came together. Second favorite: Tin Man: Not His Kink because I think it turned out pretty hot in places.

Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Tin Man: Not His Kink, everyone seemed afraid to read my kink.

Most fun story: Tin Man: Where Did That Come From, Glitch roaming around the Northern Palace, forgetting that he's alone and that he's stuffing his inventory pockets (to borrow a gaming metaphor).

Stories I Wrote That I Never Thought I'd Write: Tin Man: Not His Kink, given how hard it's been to dip my toe into smut, I never expected to dive head-first into heavy kink.

Hardest story to write: Covenant of the Restless, when it came to submitting, I freaked out. Yes, I have issues but I am working on them.

Biggest Disappointment: Not finishing Stellar Gift of Death by Dec. 31st. It's my own fault for saving it for last.

Biggest Surprise: How freaked out I got over submissions. My brain has been dodging that fear for a long time. And I got caught up in the review count envy. On the good side, I tallied what I could of all my writing output since I started when I was eleven-years-old and found out I have written over a million words of fiction.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?: In the amount of words, less than what I had planned. But then I finished more stories than I thought I had, even if I haven't finished them by posting them at the Library yet.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?: I tried updating two chapters a week at the Library along with FF.net and hated it. From now on, the complete story goes up at the Library first. And I need to submit more.

Did you meet last year's goals?:

1. Write 365,000 fiction words in the entire year Only managed 51,914, but I spent a lot of my time flailing about and not writing anything. Looking back, that is really disturbing for me.
2. Submit stories to more challenges -- I don't know how long this is going to stay a goal; I'm finding it difficult to meet the deadlines I wanted to participate, but found that thinking of things to fit the criteria shuts down my muse.
3. Finish original stories Zy's untitled novel or Strix, whichever one catches my fancy first Well, Zy's novel has a title now Stellar Gift of Death, but I'm only around fifty percent done with it.
4. Finish "Making Whole" a Tin Man/Alice crossover for a challenge Done except for posting at FF.net and the Library
5. Finish "Tin Man: Not His Kink"
6. Decide how brave I am and what to do with "Tin Man: Not His Kink" I have decided; I just need to actually do it.
7. Make some headway into the Zackverse. catyuy has been waiting patiently for more Zack. The little bit I've done in The Hyrueliana barely counts towards this.
8. If I still need to add more words at this point, next story due in the BMFM: Evil Jack series is "Till Death Do Us Part" Never reached this scenario.

Do you have any goals for the coming year?:

Write 182,500 fictional words between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2011

• Specific: Write at least 500 words every day
• Measurable: Post the weekly total every Saturday at DUF using the Writertopia progress bar
  • Keep track of daily progress with a marathon spreadsheet
• Action-oriented: Finish Stellar Gift of Death by March 20, 2011
  • Finish a 5000-word short story for Triangulation submission by March 31, 2011
  • Finish steampunk mystery
  • Finish another story in the Piper of Shadows universe
  • Finish the "Blue Man on the Porch"
• Realistic: Finish four original stories before any fanfiction
• Trackable/Time-based: Each story has a marathon tracker of its own, and metrics are posted daily at DUF

Submit enough stories to get rid of the anxiety over it

• Specific: Submit to six markets by Dec. 31, 2011
• Measurable: Find a tracking method that I can update without fuss.
• Action-oriented: Look for 12 markets
• Realistic: Send out at least one story in February, April, June, August, October, and December
  • Have conversations with the Fear Monger; it helps
• Trackable/Time-based: Honestly note the anxiety over each submission on tracking method

Stellar Gift of Death Post 62

Stellar Gift of Death

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METRICS
New Words: 1724 over three days
Chapter Thirteen total: 2416 words
Total words for the first draft: 52,230
What I hate about my writing: Unable to come up with alien names or metaphors.
The Good: I've plugged away for three straight days.
The Bad: My finishing marathon spreadsheet says I need more words. And getting up on time isn't happening.
Fave line: “Murdock sponsored me for Training. A lot of Trainees didn’t understand our relationship and started making fun of it. Like he gives me preferential treatment.” She snorted. “I’m a superstar Agent because he’s tougher on me than anyone else in the galaxy.”
What I'm looking forward to: Outer space battle; not sure how many chapters away it is at this point.
What I'm not looking forward to: Trying to find my way out of this chapter. I think the complication I had worked out has ended up being more comical than menacing.

2011 Fiction Word Count Day 1

2011 Fiction Word Count Week 0

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I could have waited until I had the first week's data, but I'm having a hard enough time keeping up with everything I have to do this week. Why not have a little satisfaction that I am plugging away?