The Secret History

So I finally got around to working some more on my Swan story. I really need a title for it. :P

Spent a very quiet and productive day with owldaughter fixing some stuff I didn't like about the story, and ended up adding roughly 2,500 words to it, even though the story itself didn't actually progress. At least now I have a better understanding of the characters and their motivations. That ought to help considerably when I continue the narrative.

10,862 / 100,000 (10.9%)

I realised that I have problems with titles. I didn't have problems when I was just a fledgling writer still in my teens. I had lots and lots of great titles, and usually no stories to go with them. Now I have the opposite problem: stories with no titles.

I've been giving one-word titles to each instalment of Conflation, but I saw today that I'd forgotten to give a title to the last five that I wrote. Oops. It's actually a lot harder than I first imagined to use only one word to describe each instalment. I'm determined to continue that way: it'll force me to hone my vocabulary skills and come up with exactly what I want to say.

Wrote two more instalments of Conflation today (roughly 3,300 words) and about 850 words of the swan story. Things proceed apace, all things considered.

The only project which seems to be really stalled is Into Temptation, which is my own fault. I hate revising my own work, especially when it needs such serious re-writing as what I've already got. I'm halfway tempted to just keep going from where I left off and try to fix it all later, but I don't think it'll work. For one thing, I need to fix the timeline so that it works again. I also need to rethink the main character's motivation. I had an idea of what he was like before, byt I think I may have misunderstood him completely, and that makes for a very poor story indeed.

Ah well. Eventually I'll bite the bullet and do it. In the meantime, at least I'm writing, right?

I have come to the conclusion that I am definitely insane. Not that this is news to anyone who knows me. However, this kind of insane actually feels kind of nice. It feels good to be writing again.


Let's make a list of current projects:

( Behind a cut tag, to spare the friends pages )

Well, it will be something to aim for. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? I likely won't be able to sustain that rate of production, but giving myself an idea of where I'd like each story to be in six months' time is a good start, I think.

As I mentioned, I have a number of projects that I want to work on over the next few months. Before the end of summer, anyway. talyesin has already declared May to be his writing month, wherein he gets to go crazy and do all sorts of writing and post about it all the time in his LJ.

I don't post much about my writing in my regular LJ, so I have no qualms writing a lot about it in here. :)

So, here's what I have either on the go or as a near-future plan:

1- Beyond the Pale: so far, so good. I'm on schedule, I know where the story is going, and I have enough material there for a very, very long time to come. I'm going to continue posting it weekly on Tuesdays until further notice.

Status: up to date and ongoing


2- Conflation: as mentioned, this will be going up every two weeks on Thursdays (possibly Wednesdays if that turns out to be a better day for more people) after May 18th. I have no idea where the story is going, except for the next two installments, possibly three. I'm basically winging it, but so far it's turning out to be pretty fun.

Status: four installments behind and catching up

3- Into Temptation: this is my NaNoWriMo novel that I basically have to rewrite in large chunks. I wrote myself into a corner, pretty much, and I don't like where the story was ending up. I also misunderstood my main character in a major way, and now that I have a better handle on his motivation, it means a lot of establishing scenes have to be changed.

I've been avoiding the novel since December 1st, but it's time I got back to it. I'm thinking of doing the same thing I did in February, and write every day in May (that's 31 days of writing), concentrating on the novel. I'll still have to work on both my serials, so I might not hit 50,000 words, but that's okay. I really don't want to abandon that novel. I think it has the potential to really be good. It needs some more character development, a better subplot or two, and some tweaking of the plot.

Status: on hold since December 1st.

4- Untitled: as you can tell, this project doesn't have a title right now. I think of it as "Cal's Book," but that's not what it's going to be called. I have a little less than 2,000 words written, but it needs a little help. It's supposed to be a YA novel, but as I've never written anything like that before, my tone and register are a little off.

I think this might end up being my summer project. I have to write an outline for it, figure out some subplots, and write up my secondary characters so that they're not as one-dimensional as they feel right now.

Status: on hold since Feburary.

5- Also Untitled: this is a more recent idea, to write a collection of short stories. I'm thinking of asking all my friends to give me a spark of some kind from which I'd write a story, and hopefully that would give me enough material for an entire book's worth.

I'm considering doing this as my august_writing community project this summer.

Status: percolating



Anyway, that's what I've got on the go for now. I may be posting word counts and random musings as the time goes by. Just a friendly warning. :)

As a start:

Beyond the Pale: 140,613 words

Conflation: 8,657 words

Into Temptation: ... huh, I just realized that I don't have a full copy on my computer. It's still on my mother's computer. Hope she hasn't deleted it. That would suck. Rough word count is a little over 50,000

Cal's Book: 1,980 words


More at a later date.