Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 30

31855 / 50000 words. 64% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 73,743
New Words: 1861
Total words for the first draft: 75,604
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 31,855
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: I finished Robert’s dream sequence and his real conversation with Peggy’s ghost inside of it. Then I started Jane’s scene of trying to talk sense into Peg on the topic of the teenager being Strix and that got interrupted by David. And then I ran out of NaNo time.
Fave line: “And he wanted my mother to be around to do. We should all know we never get what we want. So sorry not sorry, Aunt Jane, I’m not stopping. Someone is chopping up prostitutes and I promised to find out who.”
What Else I Accomplished Today: I found old Discipline Under Fire My Year In Fic posts that will be useful for the number crunching I need to do in December. I also got my Sprouts run completed.
What I'm looking forward to: The final results. I didn’t make it all the way to 50,000 words in a month but holy moldy, that’s my best NaNo month since I won it back in 2008! And it is the most words added to THIS NOVEL in years. I only missed one day of writing! The official website won’t support that because I forgot to update one day early on. But bring on confetti!
What I'm not looking forward to: Going to the DMV tomorrow.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 29

29752 / 50000 words. 60% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 73,057
New Words: 686
Total words for the first draft: 73,743
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 29,752
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: And poke, poke, poke dragging on the Sagara p.o.v. scene because I’m not happier with an earlier scene and haven’t mastered the skill of writing as if I have already fixed the scene. So finding a new scene and see if I can make some damn words now. Still don’t know what Raven and Ferris have been doing after they couldn’t find Alexander and warn him about Sagara, so I skipped that place holder. Maybe have them go investigate Ladiespoint where Strix was injured, but I think that could get them meeting Peg or Alexander too soon. I ended up on Robert’s dream sequence while he is healing and it has turned into a ball with his dead that Peggy’s ghost will interrupt to give him some boots to the head, but only after he gets some prophecies from Matt Roger.
Fave line: He turned to offer, but it didn’t leave his mouth as he gazed upon Matt Roger lifting a champagne flute to his mouth and taking a sip. “Still don’t have a taste for this dry stuff,” the dead detective said. “But I see you really don’t have space to set up a bartender in here with this crowd. Peggy did promise me I could have an Old Fashion at this affair.”
What Else I Accomplished Today: Getting really annoyed with Texas tolls system and Louisiana DMV. So I got another toll invoice from around Austin. So bully on for this license plate that looks like mine possibly on the same Dodge Stratus that I used to own for driving in the same places as I would except I know better than to get on Texas toll roads in Houston and Austin if I had gone to Texas at all in 2023. Which I have not.

Anyways, it did remind me to call again and see what they needed. That part went smoothly and the other agency sending me an invoice actually sent a second page of what to do if you get an invoice for a car you don’t own. So then I go to Louisiana’s DMV page, select that I want a notice of vehicle transfer, and then get an error because they want a registration expiration date which I don’t have because I traded this car in back in 2018. So call the phone number given on the website for if you’re having problems, and their computer hung up on me “due to high call volume.” So now I have to go back to the DMV on Friday and see now that I’m armed with what the stupid form is called if I can get it in person. Which is what I should’ve been given back when I went in about it the first time but got sent to the dealer instead.
What I'm looking forward to: Hey Matt is offering cryptic statements about Peg dancing with the devil, Alexander. And she really needs to meet a nice boy like his nephew. Okay I am totally using that tomorrow.
What I'm not looking forward to: Going to the DMV on Friday. At least I won’t have this story results looming over my head because Friday is December 1st.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 28

28444 / 50000 words. 57% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 72,599
New Words: 458
Total words for the first draft: 73,057
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 28,444
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Finished Peg and Peggy’s conversation and closed out that scene. Started the next Sagara’s viewpoint scene. And kept forgetting to use my focus music.
Fave line: It was a pitiful distance that would only be covered in a few strides and didn’t leave enough room for groveling.
What Else I Accomplished Today: I cooked bacon and rice when I got home so food for tomorrow is set up.
What I'm looking forward to: A better writing day tomorrow.
What I'm not looking forward to: Everything else on the list. Has anyone seen my list?

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 27

27926 / 50000 words. 56% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 71,746
New Words: 853
Total words for the first draft: 72,599
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 27,926
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Got into another conversation with Peg and her mother’s ghost over how patrol went. I guess Robert may have to play the heavy that their daughter thinks she needs to be a superhero too.
Fave line: Peggy’s ghost smirked at her as she sat on the side of the sofa closest to the bed. “It is May. No where close to Halloween. So the only reason for you to be dressed as Strix was to go into the city as Strix. How did it go?”
What Else I Accomplished Today: Doctor’s visit accomplished, so drugs should be handled for at least six months. And now I know it’s six months time frame. Also made it into paying job, which then proceeded to give me grief by uninstalling a necessary program. I’m still not sure if that will work tomorrow.
What I'm looking forward to: Payday this week!
What I'm not looking forward to: Scrimping until payday.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 26

26889 / 50000 words. 54% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 71,447
New Words: 299
Total words for the first draft: 71,746
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 26,889
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: I missed yesterday with packing up to go home and then driving home. My brain just shut off by the time we got home. So today is not a make-up day (we aren’t doing those in Rachael’s group) but a resuming day. And then I couldn’t resume. I added some narrative in David’s scene that he saw the female Strix and got Peg home and put Jane to bed. And then I got distracted, so I’m in the middle of a scene for tomorrow?
Fave line: He didn’t want to spend his entire lunch period speculating who would put on Strix’s outfit and how she had known to knock the suspect out or if he had really seen her.
What Else I Accomplished Today: Unpacked my suitcase, cooked food, emptied the sink of dirty dishes, and loved on my void babies.
What I'm looking forward to: Having a bit more of a normal routine.
What I'm not looking forward to: Everything I still have stacked up to do.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 24

26394 / 50000 words. 53% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 70,076
New Words: 1371
Total words for the first draft: 71,447
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 26,394
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Today was a very distracted day. My sister took pity on me and left alone so I could make words. I finished Peg fighting with Kaveh and his group, and Alexander scene, started and finished David’s scene finding out about the riot guns and buying two of them.
Fave line: The man in armor straightened up with a pointed stick extending from his fist. “Anybody else got fangs?”
What Else I Accomplished Today: I made friends with all my sister’s cats today.
What I'm looking forward to: Getting back home to my void babies.
What I'm not looking forward to: Saturday is a Game Day in Baton Rouge? LSU has a home game? Yup, we’re driving home through Mississippi then.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 23

24875 / 50000 words. 50% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 68,409
New Words: 1667
Total words for the first draft: 70,076
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 24,875
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Finished up Peg and Jessie’s scene. Started and finished Alexander’s scene seeing Peg. Started Alexander picking the fight with Peg scene that just got interrupted by who from Sagara’s group? Will have to figure that out tomorrow.
Fave line: Son of a bitch, that bastard is not only alive and well, but so well to be running around here taunting people that he was alive?
What Else I Accomplished Today: It was Turkey Day, so ate and had obligatory family time. Also played BeatSaber for the first time.
What I'm looking forward to: Updating everywhere I have to update and writing more fights.
What I'm not looking forward to: Driving back home on Saturday.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 22

22902 / 50000 words. 46% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 68,305 New Words: 104
Total words for the first draft: 68,409
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 22,902
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Fifteen minutes on the text before I had to finish up house chores and drive to my sister’s house for Thanksgiving.
Fave line: “Maybe you can actually do something. Girls and guys who work the streets have been disappearing. And then body parts have been showing up. So far, only Ashley got named, Ashley Tang. Maybe she’s the only one with all her parts in the morgue.”
What Else I Accomplished Today: Today is a travel day. I got the house set up for being gone three days-ish, then drove for six hours and forty-five minutes with a few stops along the way. There was no more writing after I was able to stop.
What I'm looking forward to: Not being in the car.
What I'm not looking forward to: Having to drive again on Saturday.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 21

22798 / 50000 words. 46% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 67,191
New Words: 1114
Total words for the first draft: 68,305
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 22,798
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Finished up Peg’s scene with the body parts and unnamed Collin with her seeing Erikson and David arrive on the scene. Got pretty far in the next scene where Peg interrupts a kidnapping of a prostitute and will learn about the ones going missing and ending up dead.
Fave line: “A whore into roleplaying? Should have picked a costume that shows your tits.”
What Else I Accomplished Today: I should have known not looking at my planner Sunday while planning things would screw me up. I forgot my doctor’s appointment that was on Monday, and they called me about it today. So I got a new appointment which means burning more leave. After taking Mom to her two stops in town, I finished nine items on my list of twenty-two items to do today. I finally took seven items off that have to wait until Wednesday morning before we leave and seven items have to wait until I get back.
What I'm looking forward to: Getting out of the house for a few days.
What I'm not looking forward to: All the driving to the location tomorrow with my parents.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 20

21440 / 50000 words. 43% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 66,024
New Words: 1167
Total words for the first draft: 67,191
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 21,440
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Started a scene with Alexander and the words just would not come. I babbled on the page how the words were not coming. After ninety minutes of fighting with it, I switched to Peg stumbling upon crime and dealing with it and that scene flowed.
Fave line: “I wasn’t trying to kill you, but.” She looked into the van and saw a pile of lumpy garbage bags and smelled rotting meat. “Yeah, you totally had something to do with a murdered person here so good if I gave you brain damage!”
What Else I Accomplished Today: Laundry completely done, kitchen dishes are at need to unload the clean ones out of the dishwasher but everything else is done, sorted through the office for 45 minutes and accomplished nothing with it. I really thought I’d get more fiction writing done, but the current state of everything else I have to do means I’m pretty wiped by the end the chore block.
What I'm looking forward to: Having everything done and then I can relax. What the hell is relaxing? I have been taking my breaks during the sprints but when I’m sitting right next to what I didn’t accomplish, it’s hard to feel like I will ever finish so why did I reward myself with breaks?

Breaks equal to three hours plus however long it takes me to eat. That is five hours for everything on the list. Yes, NaNo is getting three of those hours because I committed to it this year and I am making progress on the project that has been stalled for years and I’m loathe to give it up, especially when writing is my sanity keeper. And giving it up won’t get the chores I hate done any faster. So yes, tomorrow will still have breaks.

What I’m going to do before going to bed is download the vague must do X, must do Y, must do Z, etc. onto paper where I can truly see what has to happen around making words tomorrow.
What I'm not looking forward to: The reason why this office reset is on my list is that I have buried paperwork and phone calls I need to do in my stacks and now the stacks have reached “oh hell where did I put X?” But I only have Tuesday to find them and deal with them and I’m running out of Tuesday already? Mom needs a trip to town, I also need to pack (some of that is hiding in the stacks too). So yeah, steady wincing think about this now. Also, I think I need to box books I don’t have shelf space for into banker boxes and stack those in a messy corner of the office. That will look more contained and that should help on visual stress. It also comes AFTER dealing with the desktop pile that I’m nearly convinced has the paperwork I need to deal with in it.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 19

19749 / 50000 words. 39% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 65,384
New Words: 720
Total words for the first draft: 66,024
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 19,749
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Got Jane’s reaction to Peg’s plan of becoming Strix while Robert recovers. Also wrapped up Raven and Ferris’ scene, but I think they need something else to do overnight. Haven’t figured out what yet. Raven’s schedule was easier before an SUV rammed through the morgue.
Fave line: Jane inhaled deeply and did not scream. She was proud of herself for not screaming. “There is another set of vampires… invading for lack of a better word. They want you, and you want to go prancing into the city so they can get you!”
What Else I Accomplished Today: The kitchen is almost in a state of uncluttered. The office is not much better, since the time I had for it got spent on a cell phone activation. Then I had company over for a few hours at lunch, and was wiped from wanting to do anything else today.
What I'm looking forward to: I took the whole week of Thanksgiving off and we don’t leave until Wednesday. I’m going to keep my usual sleep schedule and block time starting at whenever I am dressed after 4 a.m. tomorrow.
What I'm not looking forward to: Mostly the house chores I haven’t made dents in yet: the office, laundry, whatever is on the list I can’t think of right now.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 18

18784 / 50000 words. 38% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 64,550
New Words: 754
Total words for the first draft: 65,384
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 18,784
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Ferris talked to a cop that is not David and I have no idea what they are going to be doing for the rest of the night. Maybe they’ll go buy more stakes.
Fave line: “Don’t you have some kind of radar to pick up dhampirs?”
What Else I Accomplished Today: All of my out of the house errands, but it wiped me from doing just about anything else. Plus family drama hit both times I set the timers to write and I don’t see how I can compensate for unplanned events like that.
What I'm looking forward to: Starting over tomorrow and getting more things done.
What I'm not looking forward to: The chores I have to do plus more words.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 17

17906 / 50000 words. 36% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 62,919
New Words: 1632
Total words for the first draft: 64,550
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 17,906
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: LOOK AT THOSE NUMBERS! LOOK AT THEM!

Snoopy Happy Dance GIFfrom Snoopy GIFs

So how I planned my day that has so many things that have to get done today? I decided to chunk it. Since the Laziness Does Not Exist notes I have been rereading reminded me that humans really can’t concentrate for longer than three to four hours at one task, I decided to put three hours on writing on then three hours on chores, divided into 45/15s and taking a 15 minute break after every 45 minutes. With this metrics post and some background notes I added to those sections, today is the first day I have made over the 1667 daily goal since Nov. 4th. And I’m not exhausted or defeated by the results. I may end up writing again after four hours on the chores.
Fave line: Do you really think my brown ass will get the time of day at some white mansion? I’m supposed to be Whoopi from Ghost? ‘You’re in danger, girl.’ That didn’t work in that movie either!
What Else I Accomplished Today: I still have to put my chores time in, but I am feeling pumped to go do that!
What I'm looking forward to: The rest of the day!
What I'm not looking forward to: Talking to Mom about medical stuff. That I’m hoping is her medical stuff and that she didn’t decide to suddenly helicopter my medical stuff, but I honestly don’t know what to expect.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 16

15886 / 50000 words. 32% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 62,355
New Words: 563
Total words for the first draft: 62,919
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 15,886
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Getting a chunk of the good guys all on the same page. Ferris gives the backstory of him and Sophia. This might work better as a flashback scene; I’m undecided about that right now.
Fave line: His loyalty gives him some extreme ideas, like I was and continue to be unworthy of the gift of Sagara’s powers, so he decided back then to suck it out of me. Has been around since before Persia went Islamic and didn’t remember that draining a drujs is how you trigger the transformation.
What Else I Accomplished Today: My massage and chiropractor appointment, shopping at Sprouts, shopping at PetSmart, picking up curbside from WalMart, getting the litter shipped to me since they never have it inside the store, and shopping at Family Dollar.
What I'm looking forward to: Bedtime.
What I'm not looking forward to: The rest of the list of errands and housework to complete before leaving for Thanksgiving.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 15

15139 / 50000 words. 30% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 61,734
New Words: 621
Total words for the first draft: 62,355
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 15,139
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Skipped a scene with Peg that would be nothing but active introspection on her part since I’m kind of introspected out of by today and started David, Raven, and Ferris conference scene instead.
Fave line: “We only have an hour before he has to go and we need to know what the hell happened last night, so get your bony ass out of my bed already!”
What Else I Accomplished Today: Started off with a bit of introspection this morning in the lastEUfans Slack. I had made an observation last night that has been lingering in my mind that I was doing good reaching my daily word count goal of 600, but less well hitting the 1667 NaNo daily word goal and went to bed. Which got me honest push back that the NaNo’s word goal “is intense by design. I’m not sure how people do it while still doing life at all.” (I honestly think they dump the life aspects on partners or other family members or roommates or they are much better at the word vomit than I am.) That push back triggered some unpacking for me, which is going here so I will do math in December to smack my expectations with evidence.

I’ve had 600 words as a daily goal for years because I’m equally confident that I can write that in an hour and if I don’t, it’s not because of other things getting in the way, the only reason that I can fail at such an easy attainable goal that only takes an hour is because I am lazy and undisciplined, and will never be a published author because I am lazy and undisciplined.

This is not new territory. The writing blog I started back in 2004 is titled Discipline Under Fire, because OBVIOUSLY my willpower and dedication and discipline to stick to my desires was sorely lacking and needed a bit of public accountability.

I like to think I have mellowed out on myself in the nearly twenty years since that. Reading Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price Ph.D. helped but I think I may have to have it handy for a reread in December when I confront myself with math evidence with all the word count tracking spreadsheets I keep. Because I honestly typed: “Most days I can move through (meaning writing and being happy with the words I achieved) without waking up that brain weasel (having my jerkbrain scream abuse at myself because I’m a failure that so clearly deserve abuse);” the utter honesty at 4:30 a.m. when I should be getting dressed. The brain weasel is sleeping. It is not dead, it hasn’t moved out, it’s just having a nap to get ready to tear into me again.

Back on why I need math evidence topic. The weasel is sleeping but my unrealistic expectation that I can obviously write 600 words in an hour is getting the equivalent of a finger flick to the forehead because I am putting in a rough average of at least two hours a day to just Strix: Forget the Sun and its metrics for NaNo but not getting much higher than 600 words a day. What I can actually write in an hour and plans to strengthen that muscle has to wait until December when I have time to pull out spreadsheets and crunch.

But I honestly have more unpacking to do on this whole thing because I have buried that it was a thing. At this point of my day, it’s becoming a procrastination tactic to avoid the fiction writing. Don’t worry, these words get counted toward my NaNo goals too. I should’ve made a category for that but forgot to back on November 1st, but they go on the spreadsheet and get counted under the Cumulative NaNo total.

Where I am leaving this whole messy thing right now: this is Day 15 and I haven’t tossed Strix: Forget the Sun aside as unwritable for another year has made this NaNo a success. I have already made more words this year than I made in NaNo 2019 (3780 words) or in Camp NaNo 2021 (13,317 words).
What I'm looking forward to: I have a massage tomorrow. And then my weekend plus a vacation with Thanksgiving.
What I'm not looking forward to: Travel with my parents to see my sister for Thanksgiving. Very, very unsure how it’s going to go.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 14

13733 / 50000 words. 27% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 61,042
New Words: 692
Total words for the first draft: 61,734
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 13,733
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Have just about wrapped up Sally seeing her mother’s reaction to Deats’ reported death.
Fave line: She had expected the newspapers to have a story on it yesterday, but hadn’t had a chance to look for it, what with getting yelled at and grounded from almost everything fun. Her parents really didn’t need to know about the witnessing a crime, just like they didn’t need to know about getting kidnapped either.
What Else I Accomplished Today: I successfully avoided the accidents on the interstate and got to work only 7 minutes late.
What I'm looking forward to: Supposed to go to a Peg scene next. Don’t remember what Peg is supposed to be doing next.
What I'm not looking forward to: Tomorrow is the worst day to have no money, just the worst. Because I get paid on Thursday but have to get through Wednesday with no money.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 13

12783 / 50000 words. 26% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 60,413
New Words: 629
Total words for the first draft: 61,042
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 12,783
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Finished up Alexander and Ywla’s conversation and broke the white page on Sally’s morning after all the shit that has gone down. Also a note to future writing self, I am in favor of sprinkling in foreign language as appropriate. How about in future projects we make them ALL modern languages? No more ancients still using the language they grew up with that is Old Norse and older for me in the now.
Fave line: “You fool of a sonr af einn blóðdrekkr. You murdered your dhǵhemon parent with your first breath. And you just killed my bródir.”
What Else I Accomplished Today: Drank all my water! Made it safely to and from the paying job on very slick roads (and it was so dark and the lights so glare-y; I missed my anti-glare driving glasses).
What I'm looking forward to: A new scene with hopefully lots of words.
What I'm not looking forward to: More driving in the rain. I’m happy we are getting slow, steady drizzle level of rain because my state is under extreme drought and has been for months, so this type of rain will soak in. But slick streets driving ugh!

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 12

12012 / 50000 words. 24% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 59,788
New Words: 625
Total words for the first draft: 60,413
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 12,012
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Alexander killed Jirair and is confronting Ywla. I really expected to have more words for the time I have put in this weekend, but focus wasn’t happening today.
Fave line: “Shit.” The non-existent skirt didn’t hinder the woman from scrambling up to standing on her platform heels. “She’s with that freaky biter.”
What Else I Accomplished Today: I poked at the dishes (meaning that yes, I washed, but still have them left to wash. Though I have finally gotten to pans and pots.) The towels got folded and put away. I seem to have a problem with finishing tasks no matter if they are chores or words.
What I'm looking forward to: Figuring out how to make my focus on the store. Maybe I need to add meditation time.
What I'm not looking forward to: Going to work tomorrow.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 11

11220 / 50000 words. 22% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 59,054
New Words: 734
Total words for the first draft: 59,788
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 11,220
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Finished David scene investigating the fight between Alexander and Strix. Started Alexander’s next scene after he fled the scene of that very public fight.
Fave line: Were vampires telepathic? Because that murdering asshole didn’t have pockets for a cell phone in that skin tight leotard he wore.
What Else I Accomplished Today: For the day that was going to be me focusing on just NaNo words, dishes, and laundry, I had two major detours that lasted hours. But kitchen is looking better while I still have dishes left. Laundry is mostly done, except towels in the dryer after dark. I got a recipe added to my Scrivener Cookbook project. And consolidated family travel plans for Thanksgiving.
What I'm looking forward to: Not having any other major distractions out of the house tomorrow. I would like to have a crazy level of words done to carry me into next week and the holiday season.
What I'm not looking forward to: My plan not coming true tomorrow.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 10

9639 / 50000 words. 19% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 58,320
New Words: 734
Total words for the first draft: 59,054
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 9639
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: I think I almost have this investigation scene wrapped up.
Fave line: “I really thought your whole family needed to be on the force for you to be a legacy. Like on Blue Bloods. Or at least your dad, not your uncle.”
What Else I Accomplished Today: Dental cleaning. I think I have straightened out most of my refills and should get the ones I’m out of tomorrow. And the kitchen is looking so much better, even if I lost a lot of oomph when in order to run the dishwasher I had to rake under it, the stove, and a set of shelves to find where my void babies had hidden the faucet adapter for it. I successfully found it (and if my house burns down, something they stuffed under the stove could be a culprit) under the shelves, but I should have took a nap to get second wind back. I did eventually recover and did another writing session after that. And discovered that the focus music really does help. I had kept listening to my podcast episodes without thinking about changing what was going in my ears for the first two writing sessions. After I broke down the two experiences, I discovered I was writing 6 words a minute with the focus music playing and only 4 words a minute with the podcasts.
What I'm looking forward to: Definitely caring forward with turning on focus music for the writing for the rest of the month. Also going to keep the to do list and timer list so small. Just bouncing between writing and dishes and laundry. Though laundry really doesn’t work with the timer.
What I'm not looking forward to: Interruptions. There are bound to be some.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 09

8587 / 50000 words. 17% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 57,614
New Words: 706
Total words for the first draft: 58,320
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 8587
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Finished Peg and Peggy’s little chat and got the poor kid to bed. Decided to stay with the protagonists and started David’s scene of the aftermath of the fight.
Fave line: “Little hot piece of ass could knock me to the ground and straddle me too as long as she didn’t bust a pipe over my head.”
What Else I Accomplished Today: Success! I managed to early vote so that is officially off the list. Now trying set up two laptops to do the Zoom writing thing! This would be much simpler if both programs were on the same laptop. And got in at the tail end of the Zoom writing time. Need to pay closer attention to the times for it.
What I'm looking forward to: Tomorrow I have to go to the dentist. Other than that, I think I can spend the day bouncing between the kitchen and words.
What I'm not looking forward to: I inadvertently made myself busy tonight? I planned on early voting before going home to write and clean kitchen. I completely forgot about the Zoom meeting with Rachael’s writing group for this year’s NaNo. I want to do it all so I don’t have to leave the house Saturday to go vote. And since I got that done, I don’t have to leave the house on Saturday.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 08

7629 / 50000 words. 15% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 57,152
New Words: 462
Total words for the first draft: 57,614
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 7629
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: I got Peg and Ghost Peggy talking.
Fave line: “It’s a good story and it’s old. That’s how you get your father to accept things. Make them antiques.”
What Else I Accomplished Today: Finished researching the ballot so I can early vote. Had no errands today to run so came straight home and took out trash and chipped away at the kitchen reset. I have one side of the sink free to use.
What I'm looking forward to: Finishing up the scene with these characters and going back to pick up another set.
What I'm not looking forward to: Trying to balance writing with the house chores.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 07

6803 / 50000 words. 14% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 56,724
New Words: 428
Total words for the first draft: 57,152
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 6803
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: I managed that many words with so much exhausted brain! I didn’t end up in bed on time and then Binx woke me up starting at some point after 1 a.m. constantly. So when I say exhausted brain, I mean it. I didn’t write this metrics post on the day of because I got home, changed clothes, took meds, crawled into bed, and had the lights out by 7 p.m.
Fave line: “Don’t beat yourself up.”
What Else I Accomplished Today: I tried on the new pants I found at Sam’s Club, and holy shit, what was labeled as size 12s FIT! So I did manage after work to swing back to the store and return the ones that are too large. That could’ve gone better because I didn’t bring the card that is saved in the app, I got a gift card of the funds. Which I will spend on gas but I was counting on it going back into the checking account it came out of. And I made it home with exhausted brain without wrecking the car.
What I'm looking forward to: Today’s writing sessions with a working brain!
What I'm not looking forward to: Cleaning the house.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 06

6375 / 50000 words. 13% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 56,169
New Words: 555
Total words for the first draft: 56,724
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 6375
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Not to terrible much. I started a new scene of Peg and Jane bringing Robert home and then the logistics of getting him out of the garage and to his bedroom took over and then I realized I needed to pin down the garage for me. And then I found out that the collection of Stan Hywet Hall photos I have in the Scrivener Project was too large to link together so they needed better organization, so I started that. And then I got curious about the bathroom layout between Jane and Peg’s rooms, but that search while eating led me to another set of floor plans that showed how the service driveway connected to a laundry yard/service area connects to the service areas of Stan Hywet! Saved those floor plans, and I need to find the ones I have written on to update and scan again. Long way around to say, that when Peg and Robert got married seventeen years prior to this novel, she didn’t want to hike to the carriage house for her car. So Robert had a garage built in the cleared space that was that service yard and changed its door into the house, which was probably a task area for cooking or cleaning in the olden days, into a mudroom transition space. So tomorrow when Robert gets out of the car, it won’t be an arduous trek up a lot of steps into the house as well.
Fave line: She clenched her teeth hard on a scream. A bad guy knew more about her family than she did!
What Else I Accomplished Today: I went to Sam’s Club for cat treats and found potential new work pants. I still have to try on and see if they fit.
What I'm looking forward to: Getting the description stuff finished so I can move onto ghost-mom and daughter bonding time. Or what the police do when they arrive late at the scene of the fight. Or who Alexander runs into next.
What I'm not looking forward to: Finishing the organization I started.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 05

5445 / 50000 words. 11% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 55,490
New Words: 679
Total words for the first draft: 56,169
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 5445
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Peg got Jane to help her rescue Strix from Alexander. Haven’t found the transition yet.
Fave line: “Stay down, asshole!” She raised the bazooka over her head and smashed it on his armored head.
What Else I Accomplished Today: I cooked two Greek recipes that need a lot of tweaking to not be soupy messes. I don’t know why they’re so soupy. I did manage to get the bedroom rest and vacuumed, and reset the bathroom.
What I'm looking forward to: Hopefully getting the house mostly clean so I don’t have to bounce so hard between chores and writing. Because I want to make more words now!
What I'm not looking forward to: The hours the kitchen reset will take me all week long. It’s so bad. So very bad.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 04

4608 / 50000 words. 9% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 53,885
New Words: 1605
Total words for the first draft: 55,490
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 4608
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today:
Fave line: “Your abilities?” Peg took another step back and bumped into the desk with her butt and took a hard look at the ghost in front of her.
What Else I Accomplished Today: Today I divided up into a two hour chucks: 45 minutes for writing, 15 minutes game break, 30 minutes for chores, 30 minutes game break. The writing sprints were excellent. I almost got all the laundry done and tried to clean my window AC unit. There is still water on the inside coils and it shouldn’t be there, so I’m unsure of how to fix it.
What I'm looking forward to: The end of Daylight Savings Time!
What I'm not looking forward to: The biggest problem is my list of chores needing to be done is longer than the time I have to work on them, even without NaNo. Sunday I might need to give myself two 30 minute chore sessions.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 03

2820 / 50000 words. 6% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 53,375
New Words: 510
Total words for the first draft: 53,885
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 2820
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: I finished up the confrontation between Robert and Sagara, then returned back to what has turned into the Strix and Alexander fight scene. The Fave Line for this set of words took a long time to come up with.
Fave line: You parasitic antediluvian! What Else I Accomplished Today: So I didn’t start off the day with a writing sprint, which I missed later on in the day when the words were fighting me. Then I started the errands to solve Harris County flagging me for toll road usage. First stop was the DMV, which did confirm that the license plate flagged had been the one on the Dodge Stratus and I canceled it when I traded it on October 31, 2018. But they couldn’t print anything off to prove that. And since I had no paperwork that I can find, they sent me to Supreme Toyota.

I was a wee bit before 9am and when the finance department arrived, who would have the paperwork I needed. “Go sit in the waiting area and I’ll come get you when one comes in.” I very promptly got distracted by the mobile game and didn’t surface for air until after 10am. The finance department could at least give me the trade-in sales page, but I don’t know if that will work. I at least have the Dodge’s VIN so I can possibly get it from the DMV if the toll people don’t like that one.

Then Walmart didn’t have all the litter I bought curbside and that was an ordeal. Then the car decided I didn’t need neutral when I was in the car wash and that almost wrecked the system. And then I lost my shit that I had held onto with all the other setbacks. I went to lunch and then picked up recipe ingredients at Rouses.

Made it home and tried to work on words and chores with limited success on both. I did manage to rotate the mattress and make the bed in clean sheets and now getting all the words into NaNo tracking so tomorrow is a new day. What I'm looking forward to: Rachael says we have to word vomit. Stop trying to make a full coherent draft, that will come later. Make the words now. Looking forward to trying that out tomorrow.
What I'm not looking forward to: All the bleeding chores that must get done tomorrow along with words. And the void babies distracting my writing time.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 02

1867 / 50000 words. 4% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 52,427
New Words: 948
Total words for the first draft: 53,375
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 1867
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Had a bit of a muse brainwave in the car commuting to work this morning, so jumped back to Robert meeting Sagara. It is rough, but coming together nicely.
Fave line: “Charming image. Has anyone introduced you to bullets? Hurts like hell for us, but they can kill drujis. Have you calculated for that?”
What Else I Accomplished Today: Brain.FM focus music helped keep me on the novel. My not leaving it unless a paying job task needed doing until I reached 1667 words was less successful. I didn’t reach the daily goal despite 3.30 hours writing. I also arrived home too late to join Rachel Herron’s Zoom writing sprint meetup thing, but I got my massage and adjustment and necessary groceries at Sprouts.
What I'm looking forward to: Next Thursday’s Zoom, timing should be better on my end.
What I'm not looking forward to: Going to the DMV first thing tomorrow.

Strix: Forget the Sun NaNo 2023 Metrics 01

740 / 50000 words. 1% done!

METRICS Previous Word Count: 51,890
New Words: 537
Total words for the first draft: 52,427
NaNo 2023 Cumulative Word Count: 740
What I Accomplished in the Narrative Today: Broke the blank page with Strix stopping a mugging and have second guessed every word or idea coming out of my head.
Fave line: A drunk patron, a man old enough to know better and did when sober, stumbled out of one bar’s side door into a littered alley.
What Else I Accomplished Today: Remember I am counting the words in the scenes I removed last year and metric posts in my daily words for NaNo.

Also what contributed to a low score today even with 2.5 hours of measured writing time:

• AC at work turned to heat and wouldn’t shut off. We were melting badly.
• I kept getting distracted by YouTube or other tabs instead of writing. Using writing then break wasn’t enough to stop this.

What I'm looking forward to: Changing up the writing routine again. I will use Brain.FM’s focus music and write until I get 1667 words or an hour before taking a break. What I'm not looking forward to: Trying to get all my words before leaving for my chiropractic appointment.

How I Edit

The one month for a Works-In-Progress project is working fairly well, even if February update the BookWorm’s Library bled into March. March is dedicated to Star Wars, so while I was finishing the last of the coding changes, I opened up the Scrivener project holding all the Star Wars fanfics.

Me: “Okay. Sororal Lineality: Miha is with my beta. Have to remind her I need that edited this month. Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command needs to go through ProWriting Aid and then sent to my beta. And last but the largest, I finished the first draft of Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban and it’s ready for me to edit. What do I need to do first?”

Brain: “…”

Me: “Look, I have done novels. I even remember editing those. What was done? What are the steps?”

Brain: “…”

Me: “The hell?”

Brain whispers: “I think I deleted that.”

Basically I have been so caught up in first draft creation and brain-dumping outlining, I couldn’t remember any of the steps I had used to go to a second draft. And when that happens, I go to others for advice. Namely, the craft books I have collected over the years. And getting my own process for this ironed out will help me with another WIP project that needs rewriting and I have no idea at what stage I left it in.

First book I consulted was 2,000 to 10,000: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love by Rachel Aaron. What is largely a book on plotting and increasing your daily word count, she does have a whole chapter titled “Editing for People Who Hate Editing.”

Editing is writing. If you like writing, you like editing. Editing is just the part of writing that comes at the end when you’re weary and things are hardest, which earns it a lot of bad press. However, what most people fail to realize is that editing, like writing is a skill. … The same skills that make you a good storyteller make you a good story perfecter, you just have to stop hating the process and start treating your editing like you treat your writing—something you strive to be good at, something you do every day, and something you want to make a career out of.

Necessary pep talk because my editing skills haven’t completely withered away to dust but have grown weak from not using them enough.

Rachel Aaron breaks her process down into multiple steps.

• Step 1: Change the Way You Think about Editing
  • “What is the point of all this work? … Answer: Reader experience. … You’re asking ‘How can I prepare the reader for what happens next?’ and ‘How can I make them love it?’”
• Step 2: Editing Tools
  • The Scene Map = a very quick jot down of what happens in the book broken up by scene and chapter. Make a new list (don’t depend on something made in the outlining stage) to reflect what you actually wrote
  • The Time Line = a list of all the relevant events that happen in the novel and what characters were doing off screen too
  • The To-Do List = a list of things that need to be addressed organized by how hard the problems will be to fix.
• Step 3: Actually Editing
  • Fixing the big stuff = “I edit from biggest problem to smallest, not from first page to last.” This keeps you from burning out going over the manuscript multiple times because you jump to the spots where the problem is in the manuscript and focus on only that.
  • The Read-Through = “Now I go back to page one and start reading, putting things in order as I go. This is my line edit.”
• Step 4: Activating the Reader Brain = Aaron moves her manuscript to her Kindle device to create separation to enjoy the story as a reader with a notebook nearby just in case she catches a new problem. Only when there are no more problems does she send the manuscript off to a beta reader or hired editor.

Once I started rereading this chapter, I had a memory jolt. This is technique I used to edit Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation. It worked extremely well since I had multiple POV characters and I needed to take note of what they all were doing when not on stage and account for time using different hyperspace traveling speeds. (Time is spent in hyperspace was a thing, granted glossed over by the Original Trilogy and the Prequels, but everything being done by Disney has forgotten it exists and hyperspace must act just like a Stargate wormhole only with spaceships. And yes, I am digressing because it is MATH and I made it work and you are WELCOME.) Looking back at my files for that novel, I used Scrivener’s index cards and compiled an outline from them to create the Scene Map, the Time Line format that made sense was a table: columns for the different POV characters and the rows were what was done at what time and date, and the To-Do List, which was so useful keeping the changes I needed present while editing.

Novelist’s Boot Camp: 101 Ways to Take Your Book From Boring to Bestseller by Todd A. Stone is another craft book of the entire process that I have incorporated into my process before. The Comprehensive Concept (page 41) helps me write online summaries as well as giving a focus for the whole novel. A Character Matrix (page 112 – 114) has helped me tame a sprawling cast and how they relate to each other and how they function in the novel. (That I then proceeded to make every scene they are in isolated from the other characters and made that novel excruciating to write is a different problem.) And up to my last outline that became a sprawling rough draft to get all the dialogue and character actions out of my head, the Master Story Summary was how I focused my outlines.

So surely his editing technique has transferred over to mine since I use so much already. Not so much. I don’t think I have used any of “Battle Plan Echo” since 2008 (Discipline Under Fire: BMFM: Evil Jack 20, Discipline Under Fire: BMFM: Evil Jack 21, Discipline Under Fire: BMFM: Evil Jack 22).

“Battle Plan Echo” is the overall name for the editing process in Novelist’s Boot Camp, a multiple pass system.

Stage 1. Perform scene triage. Conduct a scene-level evaluation of your work, placing each scene into one of three categories:

1. cut
2. rework
3. improve

Stage 2. Execute seven revision passes. Read through your manuscript seven times, focusing on a different story element with each pass. You’ll look at:

1. character
2. objectives
3. dialogue
4. narration and description
5. action
6. logic
7. miscellaneous items.

Stage 3. Rewrite. In this final stage of revision, you’ll follow your notes from the triage and revision passes and make the necessary changes by rewriting your work line by line, scene by scene.

I think why didn’t carry this process forward into things I had written after that novella is that it is so many passes. The questions to consider are very good, I don’t want to lose them. But how can I keep them?

The next book I consulted was Stein on Writing by Sol Stein. He also called his method of revision ‘triage.’ He wants to avoid working from first page to last and “working on trivial corrections and next coming up against a major problem.” So his guide “gives priority to those matters that are the principal causes of rejections by editors.” (Stein 278)

That sounded promising until he started detailing his steps for the triage part and the general revision part. After coming from Stone’s neatly formatted questions to apply to your manuscript, I was annoyed by Stein’s meandering antecedents about his novels and the questions taking multiple paragraphs to get the point across. There was no clear delineation between the triage part and the general revision part, which I suppose does support Stein’s assertion that you can check for these things in any order as long as you start fixing the big problems first.

Moving on for what I can use now, Self-Editing For Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King is probably the first book I bought on how to edit and I have highlighted and flagged something on almost every page of it. But it is designed to teach you what the common problems are and how to fix them with exercises to practice on. So I put this book aside from this project.

The Complete Guide to Editing Your Fiction by Michael Seidman is set up like Self-Editing For Fiction Writers explaining the common problems and showing examples of revisions. But he at least consolidated everything you should examine your manuscript into a checklist. See this post for the questions: Discipline Under Fire: Editing Your Fiction Checklist by Michael Seidman.

Last book consulted because eventually this has to come to an end and I get to work on editing, the Story Grid by Shawn Coyne. If your novel doesn’t make sense or feels flat, this method will identify the problem. But once your analysis leaves the Foolscap Global Story Grid, the breakdown becomes large and mathy to make the spreadsheet and graph. Not every story needs this level of breakdown, so I’m not going beyond the Foolscap Global Story Grid for what I’m making here. I’ll save it for when the novel is completely broken.

The Foolscap Global Story Grid is a one-page diagnostic tool that answers the Editor’s Six Core Questions.

Global Story	External Genre:
	External Value at Stake:
	Internal Genre:
	Internal Value at Stake:
	Obligatory Scenes and Conventions:
	Point of View:
	Objects of Desire:
	Controlling Idea/Theme:
Beginning Hook		External Charge	Internal Charge
	Inciting Incident:
	Complication:
	Crisis:
	Climax:
	Resolution:
Middle Build		External Charge	Internal Charge
	Inciting Incident:
	Complication:
	Crisis:
	Climax:
	Resolution:
Ending Payoff		External Charge	Internal Charge
	Inciting Incident:
	Complication:
	Crisis:
	Climax:
	Resolution:

Now for some definitions. Coyne divides genre into five types that tells the reader what to expect: Time Genre answers how long the story will, Reality Genre answers how far the audience will have to suspend their disbelief, Style Genre answers how the audience will experience the story, Structure Genre answers how the global telling of the story will be, and Content Genre answers what the theme/controlling idea of the story is. It is this last one that everyone thinks of when they think of genre.

Coyne further divides Content Genre into External (stories driven by a global external value) and Internal (stories drive by the nature of the protagonists’ inner conflict). Each of these have subgenres to further drill down. In order to deepen your story, you should have both working. Each has a Value at Stake that is a convention for the larger genre. For example, the core value of the Crime Genre is justice/injustice and that would be the Value at Stake.

Obligatory Scenes and Conventions are what readers expect from the genre you have chosen. For example, a romance needs

1. Lovers found.
2. Lovers split.
3. Lovers reunited.

You still have to innovate what happens to your characters and how they react to it but if you leave out one of these necessary scenes, the readers will be disappointed in how your book doesn’t work.

Point of View is the point of view that the story is told from and how it is structured (first, second, or third person, free indirect style, etc.).

Objects of Desire is plural because the major characters will have two objects of desire: the conscious one that spurs the external actions taken during the Story to achieve it and the subconscious one that spurs the internal actions during the story. It can be best figured out by asking:

• What does my character want? (External)
• What does my character need? (Internal)

Controlling Idea/Theme is the takeaway message the writer wants the reader to discover from reading their story. This is where I would slot in a Comprehensive Concept that I created when plotting the story.

The rest of the Foolscap Global Story Grid is filling out a distilled skeleton of your story. External Change and Internal Change is tracking if the scene is a positive or negative result for the protagonist to achieve their external and internal objects of desire.

My Editing Process Going Forward

So what am I going to do?

1. Open up a new Scrivener text document for the To-Do List.
2. Fill out the Foolscap Global Story Grid.
3. Tweak the Master Story Summary to a Scene Map.
4. Fill out the Time Line with who is doing what and when.
5. Create a Style Sheet
6. While going through the manuscript to create these tools, add any issues noticed to the To-Do List. Also keep in mind Seidman and Stone’s questions while doing this.
7. Work the To-Do List from largest problem to smallest.
8. Run manuscript through ProWriting Aid.
9. Send manuscript to my beta.
10. Edit according to those suggestions.
11. Publish.

Editing Your Fiction Checklist by Michael Seidman

Editing Your Fiction Checklist by Michael Seidman

• Is your novel right for the market to which you want to sell it?
• If you’re taking risks, have you maintained the form of the category, even if you’re ignoring the formula?
• Is the language appropriate to your market?
• Have you created minor characters and subplots?
• Do you spend too many time on them, distracting the reader from the main story?
• Do you spend too little time on them? If they’re not important to the story, should they be removed?
• Are you showing, and not telling?
• Do your characters express their feelings, or do you tell us what they are?
• Do you let your characters and their actions tell the story, or are you stopping to bring the reader up to speed?
• Are your characters as clear to the reader as they are to you? Have you maintained their character in dialogue and in actions?
• Are all the motivations clear to the reader, or are things happening because you need them to?
• Have you spent too much time giving the reader the characters’ biographies? At the same time, does the reader know enough about the characters?
• Are characters telling each other stories simply as a way of giving the reader information? (If a character says to another, “Well, you know Billy did this…,” the conversation shouldn’t be taking place.)
• Do character descriptions come naturally, in the course of dialogue or action?
• Are you describing people in terms of icons or idols? Will enough of your readers know what Michael Stipe looks like?
• Have you offered full descriptions (naturally) of your major players? There’s nothing more aggravating than have a series of characters through the novel introduced by one or two features. It might work once, but by the time we get to the third or fourth “he was a tall man with reddish hair and a brusque voice,” it becomes an annoying pattern.
• Speaking of iconic descriptions, does your manuscript read like the advertising pages of a magazine, with a product plug on every page? Does it matter than the stereo’s an Aiwa rather than a Sony? (It does matter if it’s one of the really high priced systems. It tells us something about the character.) Same with most cars, clothes and other products. Unless the brand is telling detail, leave it out.
• Is interior monologue realistic? Are they thoughts the character would actually have?
• What point of view have you chosen? Why?
• Have you maintained the point of view throughout each scene, or jumped into another character’s head in the middle of events?
• If you’re writing in first person, is this someone the reader will want to spend time with?
• Unless you’re writing in an omniscient point of view, have you made sure your first-person character does not learn things in the course of the story that the reader didn’t become aware of at the same time. (This refers to information; interpretation of the information does not have to be revealed until you’re ready.)
• Is your point-of-view character clear from the beginning? If there are shifts, do you make the new point of view obvious soon enough?
• Is narrative in each scene true to the character seeing it? A man and a woman won’t see the same room in the same way; they’ll describe people differently.
• Have you avoided editorializing, commenting or events in your voice rather than that of the characters?
• Does your dialogue say what you want it to say?
• Are your conversations serving any purpose at all? Are they serving more than one purpose: describing things, adding to character developing, expressing ideas important to the story?
• Does your dialogue stand on its own? If you cut explanations, dialogue tags, and anything else used as a crutch to support the words, does the conversation still hold up, saying what you want it to? If not, change the dialogue, not the tags.
• Do adverbs follow quotation marks? This means the dialogue or scene does not express what you said.
• Does your punctuation work as part of conversation? A dash represents an interruption; an ellipsis, a pause or gap.
• Is there any action interspersed through the conversations, or is the dialogue, unnaturally, only words?
• Are your characters giving speeches or actually talking to each other?
• Have you used dialogue to show off your research, allowing characters to give detailed explanations of things that do not make a difference to the story? (We don’t need the principles of rocketry to accept space flight.)
• Do the conversations sound natural? Read your work aloud; even better, have someone read it to you. Does the exposition flow easily or does the reader have to stop, either to catch her breath or figure out pronunciation?
• Have you used contractions, slang, idioms and regionalisms both to ease reading and to give a sense of character and place?
• Does your dialect disrupt the reading? Can you achieve the sense of place without “creative” spelling?
• What does your manuscript look like? Are there unrelieved blocks of text? Can any of your paragraphs be broken into shorter ones? Long paragraphs can also be broken up with dialogue. It helps the pace and also makes the manuscript (and the printed page in the book) easier to read. As in life, sometimes we’re judged by how we look; if a page appears intimidating, the reader is going to be intimidated.
• Does your dialogue look like long paragraphs? Can the talk be broken up by action?
• Are you repeating words, phrases, bits of business because you like them too much or because it was easier to just go with what you know rather than create something new?
• Have you looked at every word, making certain it is the only right word?
• Have you checked for anachronisms, words that weren’t in use at the time the novel is set, products and events that are out of time, if not out of place?
• Have you used adverbs and adjectives sparingly? Like italics and exclamation points, these modifiers are fine seasonings and have to be used delicately.
• Are you using trendy words for effect… or through habit?
• Have you used “which” incorrectly? Go on a “which” hunt. Nine times out of ten, the word should be “that.”
• Have you turned to the dictionary to check spelling and definitions, or simply trusted instinct and a computer program?
• Is your thesaurus near you as you work? Is it well thumbed?
• Did you chart your characters and story lines, to be certain that neither disappears inexplicably?
• Are details all the same at the end of the manuscript as they were at the beginning? Continuity counts, whether it concerns eye color, clothing or reaction to events. If you’re working on a series, continuity still counts. Has your character been injured, had an epiphany, taken a lover? Anything that’s happened has an effect on the character in the next adventure.
• Have you done your fact checking? If you’re writing with freedom, you’re going to have some details wrong: distances, historical facts, a multitude of problems. With the work finished, and research no longer something to be done to avoid writing, check. Get the details you may have missed. No one has to know how much research was done.
• Did you make notes as you read, marking the manuscript, so that when you begin to retype, you know what you have to do? Are you going to do it? When?

Novelist’s Boot Camp Editing Checklist by Todd A. Stone

Novelist’s Boot Camp Editing Checklist by Todd A. Stone

• Scene Triage Questions
  • Is the main character present (Present can mean the character is being discussed)?
  • Is the window character present?
  • Is the villain present?
  • Are the minions/other opposition present?
  • Four no answers, mark the scene as a cut.
  • Is the protagonist, opponent, window character, or minion taking action?
  • Is the protagonist, opponent, window character, or minion having an external conflict?
  • Two no answers, mark the scene as a cut.
  • Is one or more characters pursuing his/their story objectives?
  • Is one of more character pursuing his/their personal objectives?
  • Two no answers, mark the scene as a cut.
• Character Pass Questions
  • Does everyone get on stage quickly?
  • Is your protagonist in the scene?
  • Is each character pursuing her objectives?
  • Is each character consistent?
  • Is each character growing?
  • Where can you trim your cast?
  • Are you characters rehearsing or playing their parts?
  • Are the bit players stealing the show?
  • Is the point of view consistent?
• Objective Pass
  • Are the objectives clearly visible in the beginning?
  • Are the objectives clearly visible in each scene?
  • Are the characters taking action to achieve those objectives?
  • Are objectives in conflict with each other?
  • Can you track the progress as you go along?
  • In what ways can you raise the stakes?
  • Do the objectives get resolved in the end?
• Dialogue Pass
  • Are your characters using words as weapons?
  • Is the dialogue only there to show something?
  • How could this dialogue more strongly reveal the character?
  • How could the dialogue work harder?
  • Is the speaker's identity clear?
  • Does the dialogue contain beats to punctuate it?
  • Is there a better arrangement?
  • Does the dialogue fit?
  • Does it feel real?
• Description and Narration Pass
  • What description can be cut?
  • Does the description do its job?
  • Does the description convey a mood?
  • How can more variety be introduced?
  • Is it part of the scene?
  • Is there a better arrangement?
  • Seek out excess summarizations.
  • Use word-level cues to help you identify extra narration.
• Action Pass
  • Is the amount and type of action appropriate for the genre?
  • Is there action on every page?
  • Does the action have the right purpose?
  • How well is the action recounted?
  • Does the action grow?
• Logic Pass
  • Is the first bang big enough?
  • Is there cause and effect?
  • Does logic work for the characters?
  • Do events follow each other logically in time?
  • What are the effects of changes?
  • Can you work backwards?
• Miscellaneous Pass
  • Are genre consideratons addressed?
  • Are the technical details correct?
  • Visually examine the pages for signs of weakness in your writing.
    • Too much black.
    • Too much white.
    • Too much of the same.

2022 My Year In Fic

2022 Fiction Word Count:

478128 / 177267 words. 270% done!

Insights To Not Forget: Narrowing my focus to one WIP per month the whole month before going to another WIP gave me results I am proud of. Proud enough to use this prioritizing against in 2023. Look, I finally managed to cross-post old stories at Ao3, which I have been planning on doing for years, but this is the first year I have managed any headway on doing it.

Stories I Posted at Ao3 Finally:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Bloodlines: The Turtles are used to being blamed for the crimes they stop in the Big Apple. But they aren't murderers--despite what Chief Sterns says. And the quest to clear their names is complicated by the arrival of the victim's younger siblings needing protection from the Shredder. Takes place about ten months after the present day parts of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ronin: Three years after Bloodlines, Allie's beginning college coincides with the appearance of a new vigilante on the streets. The Turtles name her the Ronin, but is she really master-less or is her hatred for the Shredder an Oscar-winning performance?

Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Family, Friends, and Foes: Val Tech discovers the Turtles and now they're on the run. But things really explode once they reach Chicago. A crossover with Biker Mice From Mars. This story takes place in 1995, one week after Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Reunions and three months after Oroku Nagi's death in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ronin.

Tin Man: Dragons and Ninjas: Five months after the Eclipse, Longcoat attacks and dragon sightings terrorize the population, so DG and her companions set out to save the O.Z. again and cross paths with a Slipper on a mission of his own.

Tin Man: Where Did That Come From: How did Glitch and Cain get to the Sorceress' Tower so quickly?

Tin Man: Don't Know What the Other Hands Are Doing: What happened to Airofday when the Longcoats dragged her away?

Tin Man: Victory Ball: None of this was worth a lousy medal.

A Mist of Prophecies: A Storm of Things Forseen: Queen Titania has a mission for Cassandra that can bring the halfling gargoyle to a clan that will accept what she is. But can Cassandra trust the Queen that destroyed everything she knew?

A Mist of Prophecies: Shivers the Heart to Hear: Every sorcerer's apprentice has to learn not to mix magics. Now is Angela's turn.

A Mist of Prophecies: The Party: A Gargoyles: TimeDancer Fanfic. Brooklyn and Sata find themselves in the future, just in time for the MidSummer's Eve party given by some members of the Manhattan Clan. Members they have never met before. Well, all except one.

A Mist of Prophecies: Regrets: What compelled the trickster Puck to create the role of Owen Burnett? Second place winner in the 2001 Gathering's Writing Contest, Category: Pucking Around.

Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Shatter Your Illusions: Limburger is scheming, the Biker Mice are thwarting, and a new player is riding into Chicago--on a Martian bike. What do you believe and who can you trust? This story takes place in 1995, a few months after "Once Upon a Time on Mars." It is the first story in Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare series.

Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Put Me Back Together: Now that Throttle has lost Carbine, he feels that he has nothing left. Can Charley help him realize who still cares for him? Or will Limburger's goons confirm Throttle's worst fear? This story takes place in 1995, three weeks after Shatter Your Illusions.

Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Reunions: Limburger's latest attempt to kill the Biker Mice results in transporting the bros and Charley to the Olympian Fury, a refugee ship reported destroyed during the Martian-Plutarkian War. But this new hope for the future is dashed by a threat worse than the Plutarkians. This story takes place in 1995, one week after Put Me Back Together.

Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Let Us Give Thanks: Sparks wanting to celebrate Thanksgiving sets off a mystery from Charley's past. Can the Biker Mice find the answers? Fifth in the Wars Are Won by Those Who Dare series. This story takes place in November 1995, five months after Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Family, Friends, and Foes.

Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Turbo: Turbo arrives in Chicago, and secrets Throttle has kept buried for most of his life now threaten Charley. Sixth in the Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare series. This story takes place in May 1996, six months after Let Us Give Thanks.

Evil Jack: Domestic Bliss: Charley is married to Jack, and they have a four-year-old daughter. But why can't Charley remember anything from the past four years? And why do three bikers keep following her? First in the Evil Jack series. This story is set in 1996.

Evil Jack: In Sickness: Hannah is in the hospital with an unknown disease. How can Throttle save her from that? Sequel to Evil Jack: Domestic Bliss. This story is set in 1997.

Evil Jack: For Worse: Jack returns to Chicago determined to use Charley and Throttle's drunken mistake to destroy the Biker Mice. Third in the Evil Jack series. This story is set in 1997.

Tin Man: Not His Kink: Zero knew her weakness. And he would make her help torture Cain. She wouldn't let herself cry. She had to get Cain out of this. This wasn't his kink.

Stories I Posted:

Nothing new this year. Oops.

Stories I Finished:

Star Wars: Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban: Word count = 61,382 (8093 written in 2019 + 14,789 written in 2020 + 22,252 written in 2021 + 16,248). So it took many more months than I initally planned on, but the first draft was finished on November 19, 2022.

Trigun 3 Outline Word Count = 157,526 (83,769 written in 2021 + 73,757). This is the longest and most detailed outline I have ever created and I finally finished it on October 24, 2022. It is practically a first draft of the future novel, and has the heft of words to be a novel. I don't think I will copy this method in future outlines. I'd rather have the words in something closer to publication. But it might happen again.

Stories I Didn't Finish:

Strix: Forget the Sun: Word count = 51,890 (26,588 written previously + 4279 written in 2019 + 279 written in 2020 + 15,328 written in 2021 + 5416). I had a breakthrough on why this novel is so hard to write: all my characters are separate and doing things by themselves. I had set aside April, June, and November to work only on this novel and could barely work on it in June and November. I'm only planning to give it one month in 2023. And I hope I get more of the characters together so it's not as hard to write.

Trigun: Three of a Kind: Word count = 20,838. I started the novel from Trigun 3 Outline after I finished Mission on Mimban's first draft. While December 2022 was set aside to work on Zackverse projects and I forgot to continue uploading my older works to Ao3, I discovered its website is not playing nicely with IT settings at my paying job which makes it so hard to edit saved drafts. I needed something else to do and this is the story not leaving me alone.

What I Think About My Stories:

My favorite story this year: Judging from how easy the words are coming, Trigun: Three of a Kind.

Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Strix: Forget the Sun.

Most fun story: Trigun: Three of a Kind.

Stories I wrote that I never thought I'd write: Trigun: Three of a Kind.

Hardest story to write: Strix: Forget the Sun. Every word is precious but I really shot myself in the foot separating all the characters like I have. That was real plotting fail.

Biggest disappointment: That it took three months to finish Star Wars: Mission on Mimban's first draft. I thought I'd get more Star Wars projects done this year but not with how long I took on this one story.

Biggest surprise: How well the monthly focus kept me on track with everything.

What's your favorite piece of dialogue you wrote this year? From Trigun: Three of a Kind

And just when he thought he had failed protecting the sandsteamer, failed saving the insurance girls from the hostage situation the other passengers and crew were in, up they popped to stop Brilliant Dynamite Neon from shooting him. Introducing herself with that insurance society’s name and giving herself an outlaw moniker. And she had surprised him again by getting under his duster after the duel while he was distracted trying to encourage Kaite to do the right thing over his transmitters. Vash had reared back and smashed his head against a wall. “I do not paw you!”

“Permission granted to paw if I’m bleeding out!” Meryl yelled back.

What's your favorite piece of description or narration you wrote this year? From Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban:

Obi-Wan peeled the one on her stomach free. Charred flesh pulled off the unconscious young woman with it causing the slash to ooze blood. The separation of her tissue didn’t go deep but it looked excruciating. Obi-Wan frowned. Both Luke and Mara were proficient enough with a lightsaber to avoid self-inflicted wounds like this. And Luke would not strike Mara.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would, less, or about what you predicted? For starters, let's subtract the Library totals from my word count of the year. Library total = 346,120. 2022 total words = 478,128. So brand new words = 132,008. That is only 74% of my 2022 goal of 177,267, which is not a disappointment at all! But here's hoping I can get more words next year that equals finished project.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I don't know if the focus on one thing a month was a risk, but it did help. I got to projects that I have planned to do but never had reached time to work on them because everything else is more important. So eventually I will get backlog done! I think I managed more days of writing than previous years, but I will track this next year to find out.

Number of Days I Wrote or Edited: 311 days.

Number of Days Meeting or Exceeding the daily 600 word count: 113 days.

Did you meet last year's goals? Wow, I am so bad at guessing how much I can get done in any time frame. So very bad. The goals from my 2022 one-page business plan are: Spend one month on a writing project instead of doing the juggling thing. If I finish one early, then I'll figure out what to do next. These projects are going into the Weekly Planner that I look at every day so I don't forget as well as the one-page business plan.

• January = Trigun 3 Outline. 29 days only working on Trigun 3 Outline, the beginning of the month was shared with writing 2021 My Year in Fic.
• February = Star Wars: Mission on Mimban. 25 days only working on Mission on Mimban. Nothing else grabbed my attention that month.
• March = BookWorm's Library Update. My mother had a heart attack and I had dental implant surgery, but I still managed to focus this month on a revamp of my website, which hadn't been updated since 2017. That's how many years updates had fallen off the To Do list. And yes, I had put it on there to do. I probably put it on the My Years in Fic for those years too.
• April = Strix: Forget the Sun. 23 days working on this novel. I found a problem in the outlined plot and spent the first week fixing that. Then tried to split my attention between this novel and Trigun 3 Outline by the end of the month.
• May = Zackverse Upload to Ao3. Started with the stories in the Zackverse that I have already written and then kept going to everything I have written. Got 11 stories uploaded. Also kept working on Trigun 3 Outline during this month.
• June = Strix: Forget the Sun. Only 13 days of the month that I worked on this novel. 27 days were spent working on Trigun 3 Outline.
• July = BookWorm's Library Update. This July was a mess. I did work on updates that I didn't get finished in March, but I was rear-ended commuting to work on the 7th, my three nine-week-old void babies made it to my house on the 23rd, then I tested positive for Covid on the 25th and promptly forgot to upload all the updates I had made on the Library files. I also worked on Trigun 3 Outline 27 days.
• August = Star Wars. I thought I would be done with Mission on Mimban by this month when I set up this plan last year. I hadn't and then I only spent 16 days on it, compared to 19 days on Trigun 3 Outline.
• September = Trigun. Oh look the month I was supposed to work on Trigun and no other projects stole my attention the entire month. 26 days of work on Trigun 3 Outline.
• October = Star Wars. I was so close to reaching the end of Trigun 3 Outline I just kept working on it until it was done on the 24th. The last seven days of October were spent on just Mission on Mimban.
• November = Strix: Forget the Sun. Since I was so close to the end of Mission on Mimban, I kept going until I finished it on the 19th. Then I picked up Strix: Forget the Sun and finally realized how hard it was writing the character's scene when he was all solo and how I had done that to all the characters in it. I finally reached the end of that scene and then had a plumbing crisis on the 28th - 29th. I started updating Ao3 on the 29th while waiting on plumbers and continued with that, as well as starting Trigun: Three of a Kind on the 30th.
• December = Zackverse. I see now that I was supposed to start working on a Zackverse story, but I thought this was just more uploading instead since I still had old stories that need to go up. I could only upload and tweak the stories to Ao3 on the weekends when I was home, so I had to have something else to work on while at the paying job. I continued on with Trigun: Three of a Kind.

See how much I put under each of these categories? The goals from my 2021 one-page business plan are:

• Make real progress on the Strix series
  • April, June, November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's first draft = still not finished
  • April, June, November: Edit Strix: Forget the Sun to second draft
  • April, June, November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's third draft
  • April, June, November: Send Strix: Forget the Sun to a developmental editor
• Progress on Star Wars fanfics
  • February, August, October: Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban's first draft = finished
  • February, August, October: Edit Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to second draft
  • February, August, October: Send Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to beta reader
  • February, August, October: Finish Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban third draft
  • February, August, October: Edit Sororal Lineality: Miha to second draft = finished
  • February, August, October: Send Sororal Lineality: Miha to beta reader = finished
  • February, August, October: Finish Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft
  • February, August, October: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to second draft
  • February, August, October: Send Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to beta reader
  • February, August, October: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to third draft
  • February, August, October: Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Extrication first draft
  • February, August, October: Finish Sororal Lineality: Kyber first draft
  • February, August, October: Outline Everybody Lives But Maul story
• Writing Trigun
  • January, September: Finish Trigun 3 Crossover Outline = finished
  • January, September: Finish Trigun 1 Outline = didn't go back to this one
• Writing Zackverse
  • December: Work on Hyrueliana's overhaul = forgot to do this
• Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank, Dreamwidth, Discipline Under Fire, and Tumblr Random Thoughts = Do once a week = this doesn't happen so I really need to rethink this one
• BookWorm's Library website maintenance
  • March, July: Make sure the software is up to date
  • March, July: Add any files that need adding = did this once
• Add Media Center to BookWorm's Library = this section is now in the Library
  • March, July: Create section
  • March, July: Make artwork
  • March, July: Code section
  • march, July: Upload files
• Add more fanfics to AO3
  • May: Upload Zackverse in story order = Zackverse what I have finished is uploaded
  • Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban third draft
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft after Mission on Mimban
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command third draft
• Other publishing
  • March, July: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation to the Library
  • March, July: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service to the Library
  • March, July: Post Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences to Library = done
  • March, July: Upload Looking For Home: My Home Is You to the Library = done
  • March, July: Upload Looking For Home: Outcast to Library = done
  • March, July Upload Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002 to the Library
  • March, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Aftermath to the Library
  • March, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha
  • Update FF.net profile of where newer stories are now

My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:

• Write 600 daily words. Can be split among stories. = The yearly goal was 177,267 that I reached on March 16, 2022. The Library files are what got me there that quickly.
• Write and edit every day. = 311 days out of 365. 85% of the year.
• Work in meditation time with Brain FM. = I still need to do more with meditation and the focus music options. My word amounts do go up more when I do use focus.
• Use my Kanban Flow checklist consistently. = Oh no, I forgot about the checklists again. I have to do some work that my checklists are too much for one person and find a realistic solution for this.
• Don't let chores pile up. = Which is related to the checklist problem I need to solve.

Do you have any goals for the coming year? I'd like to finish up some of the listed drafts so the list looks much more managable after next year. Here's how I'm going to break down 2023:

• January = Ao3 Upload / Trigun: Three of Kind since I can't do the uploads at the paying job I'm pretty sure I will have more left to finish
• February = BookWorm's Library update
• March = Star Wars projects
• April = Zackverse projects
• May = Biker Mice From Mars projects
• June = Trigun: Three of a Kind
• July = Ao3 Upload / Trigun: Three of a Kind
• August = BookWorm Library's update
• September = Star Wars projects
• October = Biker Mice From Mars projects
• November = Strix: Forget the Sun
• December = Trigun: Three of a Kind

This list has more under each category than I will get to in a year, but I didn't want to take a chance of forgetting what to do next. (Where the hell does this fear come from?) The goals from my 2023 one-page business plan are:

• Writing Strix series
  • November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's first draft
  • November: Edit Strix: Forget the Sun to second draft
  • November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's third draft
  • November: Send Strix: Forget the Sun to a developmental editor
• Writing Star Wars fanfics
  • March, September: Edit Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to second draft
  • March, September: Send Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to beta reader
  • March, September: Finish Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban third draft
  • March, September: Finish Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft
  • March, September: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to second draft
  • March, September: Send Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to beta reader
  • March, September: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to third draft
  • March, September: Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Extrication first draft
  • March, September: Finish Sororal Lineality: Kyber first draft
  • March, September: Outline Everybody Lives But Maul story
• Writing Trigun fanfics
  • January, June, July, December: Finish Trigun: Three of a Kind first draft
  • January, June, July, December: Edit Trigun: Three of a Kind to second draft
  • January, June, July, December: Send Trigun: Three of a Kind to beta
  • January, June, July, December: Edit Trigun: Three of a Kind to third draft
• Writing Zackverse
  • April: Work on Hyrueliana's overhaul
• Writing Biker Mice From Mars fanfics
  • May, October: Find Wars Are Won series notes and see if stories can be consolidated
  • May, October: Finish next Wars Are Won story to first draft
  • May, October: Finish Evil Jack: Till Death Do We Part to first draft
• Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank, Dreamwidth, Discipline Under Fire, and Tumblr Random Thoughts = Do once a month
• BookWorm's Library website maintenance
  • February, August: Make sure the software is up to date
  • February, August: Add any files that need adding
• Add more fanfics to AO3
  • January, July: Upload twelve already published stories
  • January, July: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban third draft
  • January, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft next
  • January, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command third draft after Mission on Mimban
• Other publishing
  • February, August: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation to the Library
  • February, August: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service to the Library
  • February, August: Upload Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002 to the Library
  • February, August: Upload Sororal Lineality: Aftermath to the Library
  • February, August: Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha to the Library
  • February, August: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban to the Library
  • Update FF.net profile of where newer stories are now

My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:

• Write 600 daily words. Can be split among stories. The yearly goal is 478,128.
• Write and edit every day.
• Work in meditation time with Brain FM.
• Figure out how to keep the house clean.
• Figure out the house remodel.

Here's to 2023. We'll get through all this together.