Robyn’s Writing

I have to admit, I haven’t done much with the “Whispers” during November as I was totally absorbed in other writing.  Just the other day I pulled up the next chapter, and decided I needed to add a bit more to the story, to bridge the final scenes of the book from Kalea’s perspective to Jala’s perspective.

Currently, Kalea’s story stops a bit abruptly and only hints at things that I now realize would be better to bring out more fully.  So, that’s what I’ll do, and maybe have her meet up with Jala.  How?  Well now, you’ll have to wait for the end of the story to find out, won’t you?

Yesterday Chris, Gabe and myself met up with a couple other NaNoWrimers at a cafe. It was great to finally meet up.  We’d been talking about it all through November, and finally decided on a post-November meet up, once the novel-writing cram was over.  Unfortunately, not everyone who wanted to come was able to attend, but the good news is we’ve decided to make them a once-a-month happening.

We’re still deciding exactly what we’ll do when we meet together, but it will be to discuss the craft of writing, and quite likely read and critique each other’s writing.  Yesterday was more a ‘getting to know you’ meeting, lots of fun and talking and, well, getting to know each other.

It was very refreshing to meet other (foreign) writers. I don’t have anything against Chinese writers, of course, just that I can’t communicate very well with them, and I wouldn’t be able to read or review anything they wrote. So a nice American-Australian-South African-British mix seemed just right.

I have a plan.

1. Finish the rough draft, tidy it up a bit, fill in any story lines that aren’t complete.

2. Put it away for a month or so.  This is highly recommended. Why? So you can distance yourself from the novel and come back to it with a fresh new perspective.  Reading it as you would someone else’s writing, helps you to more clearly see what needs work.   During this time, I will write new stories, rework the last few chapters of Whispers etc.

3. Research: I’m also going to research some of the things I wrote about. For example, why are alien crafts often sighted near power stations?  How easy would it be to take over a Tasmanian Hydroelectric power plant?  Investigate current conservation issues in Tasmania, and familiarize myself with the remote South West areas of Tasmania (no, not by traveling there, although…I wouldn’t mind.)

My plot has to be waterproof, and make sense. As it’s science-fiction this time, I can world-make but it has to have solid reason to it.

Someone recently explained the following to me:

“When you write SF, you have to think everything out, plan things out, and whatever it is you put together MUST make sense; it must have an internal logic and an external logic; i.e., a sensible — and scientific, thus the “S” in “SF” — explanation for the way things work in your story’s universe.”

That’s what I’ll be figuring out too in this interim period, while my novel is ’sitting’ nicely on my hard-drive, waiting to invited up to the screen again.

But I’ve had a desperately busy week, lots of kids going here and there, and general life busy-ness.

Now that NaNo is over, I’ll get back to ‘regular’ writing, which means another chapter of Whispers posted soon.

I also have an idea for a short story, Christmas related, and not fantasy which I’m going to work on over the next weeks.

I have a few projects starting to come together, collaboration on some writing, and some ideas for re-editing and re-publishing the Denith stories.  All for the new year. For now it’s Christmas, which generally means little time for writing.  But lots of time for fun.

I did.

Over 50,000 words.

I stayed up til  after midnight.  But I did it. Yeah.

I am staying up till midnight, so I can validate my word count. Only problem, I’m not done yet.  I’m currently at 47,052 words and I have 30 minutes till midnight.

I don’t care how long it takes, I will get to 50,000 words tonight.

Silly of me, I know, but last night all of a sudden I was hit with a fierce fear that I wouldn’t finish NaNo.

For the most part the first draft of my novel is all-done, which is a wonderful feeling. Really.  Of course I still have plot details to add, characters to flesh out, setting to describe.  But the basic story line is there.

I’ve been getting wonderful input from my co-writers at OWW on plot suggestions pertaining to Tasmania, which is where the novel is set, and why alien spacecrafts either do or do not need to suck power up from Earth-bound power plants.  Because of this input I’m planning on adding a little conservationist twist, and moving some of the action possibly to the rugged and desolate South Western regions.

Then I panicked.  I have written, to date, a total of 45,704 words to date, meaning I have only 4,296 more words left to write.  I don’t know why I was struck with sudden fear and trepidation, especially since everything is moving along so well.

The mind plays odd tricks sometimes.  I feel fine about it now, confidence that I will finish is back, and I have a story to finalize.  So, I’m off to write. Wish me luck!

Yup. I wrote and wrote and wrote. My goal was to be over the 40,000 mark by the end of our three days off, and I made it with still hours off to go.  So, I thought I’d take a break and update my blog for a while.

Thursday: Wrote 3,383 words, taking me to a total of 30,011words.

Friday: Wrote 6,556 words, taking me to a total of 36,567 words.

Saturday (so far):  Wrote 4,413 words, taking me to a total of 40,980 words.

The best thing about it though is that I’m concluding my story, tying off lose ends and generally seeing everything fall into place.  It hasn’t been without some very surprise twists and turns, and I really didn’t know the entire conclusion till this morning.  Well, I might go type a bit more now while I’m waiting for the train that will take me back to Taipei.

Oh, also had some very good hot-spa soaks too, maybe that’s what helped me get so inspired to write.

I probably won’t be posting. We’re taking off for a few days, but YES I will be writing.  This is actually the ‘make or break’ days for me. Daily life doesn’t give me too many opportunities for really churning out the word count, so I’m hoping to get close to finishing over the next three days.

Think positive thoughts…pray for me…believe I will do it!

And I shall.

I will check in, in three days time.  We will see what I’ve been able to do.

I’m halfway there, with another 13 days left to finish the remaining 25,000 words. That’s a lot of writing, but from here on in there’ll be less to write than I’ve already written. Yeah!

If I can write at least an average of 1,915 words each day I’ll make it across the finish line. I have a three day mini-vacation coming up, and I intend on spending a good deal of that writing. Plus two more weekends (which are prime writing time.)  It’s looking better all the time.