Days 30-33 Progress Report

Days 30-31 (August 27-28) - I work really well for a few hours if I wake up at 5 am, I've found. I don't remember what I did on these days, but I do know I got at least a little writing done. Oh wait, I do remember. I came down to Chiayi on Day 30, and I used the entire three-hour bus ride to run through my plot outline and do "image training" for the story. It was very productive. I got a lot of notes made and revised the plot further on. Three hours seems like a long time to do nothing but think, but I was able to keep focused with the plot outline printout in hand and make progress. With the new backstory and plot structure in mind, I looked over Chapter 1 again and started revising Chapter 2 on Day 31.

Day 32 (August 29) - Continued Chapter 2 revisions. Didn't quite make it to the end, but I reworked the Asagawa scene and streamlined it so that it wasn't the mismash of lines I'd left it as after the previous half-baked revision earlier this month. Worked through the chapter until about page 16 or 17 and went to sleep.

Day 33 (August 30) - Woke up at 5 am like yesterday and worked straight until 10 am. It feels so good. Yesterday morning I had to stop after only three hours because I was getting a headache, but this morning I was good. I continued with expanding the previously minimal travel scene, added a surprise family scene to help set up Ayaka for later (surprise because I wasn't planning to write anything of the sort), and then completely rewrote the part near the end that screamed PlotDevice! where the guide leaves to get himself killed. Most of the last few pages, from when they start traveling until the second-to-last second, is completely new or rewritten. And then I added a nasty little surprise for Hinako in the last scene. It's so much fun torturing my characters. I don't enjoy torturing characters in fanfics because I feel badly for them, but when they're my own characters...well, it's fun. And I don't feel bad at all. *grin*

Days 28-29 Progress Report

Day 28 (August 25) - Not much progress to speak of. Although I got some new intel regarding names for men and women in the Edo period. Need to do some thinking because some character names need to be changed.

Day 29 (August 26) - Finally got back to writing. Finished my rough drafting of Chapter 10 this afternoon. Chapter 10 being the current chapter designated as the flashback chapter. But even though I've done a rough draft/sketch of it, it's still very rough. In the end, I'm still a little confused on Kyoshi's motivations. In the end, did she do it out of jealousy or out of misguided love? Or both? It currently reads as both, but I think it's too much of a mishmash of things I want/wanted to include in the real draft at the moment for me to determine if it'll work or not. (Also, I'm tired of designating characters by letter, so I'm going by name now. Some of which have changed as of yesterday/today.)

Update: Rethought problems of character motivation in Chapter 10 and found a solution by creating a new character. I feel utterly brilliant. When evaluating names for the new character, Miyo vs. Okayo, both of which I like, I chose Miyo. I can just imagine the Japanese-illiterate reader coming across "Okayo" and seeing it as "Okay-o." =_=

This really helped clarify Yayoi's motivations, and having those in line, I was able to go back and install some order into the sequence of events and Kyoshi's motivations. Added another page of rough drafting to chapter ten, for a total of eleven very rough pages.

Days 25-27 Progress Report

Day 25 (August 22) - Got a little more writing done on the flashback chapter.

Day 26-27 (August 23-24) - Flying, jet lag, movies, loss of 15 hours, and less than one handwritten page. Hello, Taiwan! Royal Pizza is yummy.

Days 23-24 Progress Report

Day 23 (August 20) - Got two hours of sleep the night before, since I was busy packing for Taiwan. Managed about a page and a half of handwritten flashback story between sleeping on the plane to L.A. And then the rest of the day was eating at Curry House, sleeping, driving places, and eating steak at L.A. Prime. Yum. I don't think I've consumed that many calories in one day since last month.

Day 24 (August 21) - Woke up early (for California time, anyway) and got the first scene and then some of the K and Ya flashback sequence done. It's somehow refreshing to be writing from K's perspective with no H involved. H is always a difficult person to narrate for, even though she's more clearheaded than K and more appropriate as the POV character, most of the time.

It's also pleasing to transform the first two paragraphs I handwrote yesterday into two typed pages.

Discovery of the day: Yams and sweet potatoes are different! Yes, this is relevant to my story. I have a yam in there, and I was wondering if it was okay to interchangeably refer to it as sweet potato. (Thief, you're wrong!)

Day 22 Progress Report

Day 22 (August 19) - In addition to my non-human guy character, I had a human guy character who was supposed to be a supporting character in most of the story. But when I did my outline last night, I realized I had nothing for him to do. He was just an accessory for my other supporting character. So instead of having him hang off her arm doing nothing the whole time, I made him less noble and had him exit after only a chapter. Maybe I'm not representing men very well in my story. But if that's the case, it's better to be rid of them than have a flat character taking up space.

Finished my outline at noon. Three pages with a chapter-by-chapter breakdown. Maybe I should aim for having thirteen chapters. Unlucky thirteen. Of course, it really comes down to story progression and pacing. As of this moment, my outline calls for fourteen chapters. And who knows how it'll really go once I get to drafting. Anyways, having a finished outline that actually provides a fairly plausible storyline from beginning to end is a great relief.

Busy packing tonight...As I go through my shitajiki and anime folder collection, I realize that the only series right now I really like merchandise for is Gintama. Naruto stuff is nice too, but it's second to Gintama. Interesting. So I'm bringing some Gintama shitajiki for the heck of it, but I'm not bringing any of my anime folders. Nyanko folders are more bearable to use (I prize them less) while also being interesting but not too distracting. I think my taste in stationary is quite good, but when it comes down to what I actually use, most of it is utilitarian and plain in design.

Days 20-21 Progress Report

Day 20 (August 17) - Project status: A tangled mass of half-formed threads.

Spent some time browsing OSC's Writing Lessons. Very interesting. For example, he says that how long a novel is isn't about plot, but about pacing. Very true, but I never thought about it like that before.

As I read blogs and such, I'm beginning to realize that most authors already have the whole basic story in their heads before they begin writing. And the last few days (or more like, this month), I've been trying to do just that. It's helping, but it takes time. Of course, writing things out without forethought and then having to rearrange or delete them later would take more time.

Day 21 (August 18) - Spent an hour and a half right after waking up trying to work out the plot tangles. It worked! I have up to the climax more or less under control, in my head, at least. The climax and resolution are still a little hazy, but I do have a general idea for them.

Last night I played lots of FFVII before going to bed. It took forever to beat Yuffie's dad, so finally I resorted to the strategy guide for tips. At night, I dreamed about Materia distribution among the characters and my character K from my novel having a limit break called God Limit. ^_^;;;

Spent the whole day doing non-writing related things and running errands in preparation to go to Taiwan. And then procrastinated a bunch. And after all that, finally got back to writing and worked seriously on my outline, with my new plot ideas in hand. Didn't quite finish. Got near the climax (i.e. hazy problem area) and went to bed at 3 a.m.

Day 18-19 Progress Report

Day 18 (August 15) - Did some brief character sketching. Highly unproductive day.

Day 19 (August 16) - Jotted down some ideas for the second half. I've been writing notes on the back of these big monthly calendar sheets. It feels very good, and it's easy to skim over when I need to review my notes. A big blank piece of paper doesn't have the constraint of lines, nor the constraint of space. I like scribbling notes and drawing diagrams freely.

Anyways, I skipped ahead (or back, in one sense) to a memory sequence. THE memory sequence, essentially. And finally ideas and words are coming, and at last, the past is becoming a little less hazy. Then I hopped back to Chapter 7, skipped the first few completely unorganized pages of potential dialogue, and expanded on a scene marker.

Sometimes I find myself writing lines very suggestive of a mysterious grand plot. The character thinks, if X happens, then everything is finished! ...I only wish I knew what was being finished, and why. Tell me! T_T

Fantasy Art - Book Covers

Look! Chart of Art for Fantasy Book Covers

Top three elements are swords, glowy magic, and castle/citadel. Heh.

Day 17 Progress Report

Day 17 (August 14) - Feeling stuck on how to approach magic. I think it needs a more Japanese approach. Someone mentioned somewhere how with a Japanese approach, magic is in the everyday and mixes with the mundane, whereas with a Western approach, magic is a dimension removed. Something like that. I'm sure I'm remembering very inaccurately. In any case. My head is full of Western magic. *headdesks*

Chapter 6 will explore magic more deeply than before, so I need to do some thinking. Even if I skip drafting all the magic-related parts, I'll need to have something worked out by the second half.

Also, I keep on having information crises on Japanese religion. Since the division between Buddhism and Shinto is so unclear, I keep getting paranoid over whether it's okay to have a shrine to Benzaiten or not. I really don't care who the shrine is for at this point, but I need to decide. It's convenient to have to be to Benzaiten because that's how it was written in the novella version, plus I've already done some research on her. But then I could always make it to Inari or something.

Anyways, skipping over a lot of such details, I managed to get Chapter 6 roughly drafted.

Message to YT: What the...??? Your last line was completely unplanned. You run wild, wild, wild. But on the other hand, it's perfect, in ways that I cannot yet fully fathom. It's exactly what I need to help set up for the second half.

Days 14-16 Progress Report

Day 14 (August 11) - Did preliminary drafting of Chapter 5.

Day 15 (August 12) - Plot-skimmed for chapters 5 onwards and came to the same conclusion as before--I can't make significant progress, even plot-wise, without drafting the first half in its entirety.

Back to drafting, starting from Chapter 5.

Day 16 (August 13) - Chapter 5 drafting finished, roughly. Very dialogue heavy.

Day 13 Progress Report

Day 13 (August 10) - Back to work. Spent the morning working on AK's short sections. She's easy to write for too. Maybe because they're short sections? Interestingly, she has me slipping into present tense narration, and I didn't even notice until the end. I have to make sure I'm consistent.

Speaking of tenses, it's always tricky for me. When I'm writing about things remembered, that happened earlier, I tend to stick in too many "had"s. He had laughed, and she had hated him for it, etc etc. You need one, or a few, to establish that the scene is not happening now, but it's easy to fall into the trap of sticking too many in and burdening the flow.

Today's progress: Revised and expanded AK's sections. Found a plot bunny with much potential for the second half. YU decides to be a show-off instead of revealing Major Plot Secrets. Drafted through page 9 of Chapter 4 and truncated the rest. AK needs three more chapters, starting from Chapter 4, before everything converges, so this way, if the truncated part can turn into another chapter, then everything will work out perfectly. We'll see. I'm flexible with chapter endings. As long as the story keeps moving, it's not hard for readers to interpret something that's not an intentional cliffhanger as a cliffhanger. I'm not entirely happy with Chapter 4 being only 9 pages, actually, but we'll see.

Days 11-12 Progress Report

"The best writers I know are the ones who treat writing like a job, whether or not they have another one. They work every day, they revise, they network, they educate themselves. They don’t think of themselves as artists, but as workers, and they take rejection in stride."

--From an agent interview on Guide to Literary Agents.


...Yeah, I need to work more seriously. I went out and socialized today, socialite that I am.

Days 11-12 (August 8-9) - Did some research, took some notes, decided I couldn't go forward without being more serious about drafting Chapters 4-6. Serious drafting will commence now.

Day 10 Progress Report, Measuring Progress

Day 10 (August 7) - Pulled teeth with Chapter 5 and got a lot of apparently useless lines, because they didn't help me jump the plot gap. After half an hour, gave up for the day. Went downstiars and cleaned up doggy poo from the carpet--Ginger is sick these days; probably caught a cold from when we washed her.

Had an extremely unproductive day, in terms of writing. I took a two-hour nap in the evening and woke up at 9 pm feeling sluggish. It was dark downstairs. I let Ginger in, closed the garage and locked the door, then went back upstairs. Only a few minutes later, there is the sound of the garage door opening and then knocking and shouting from outside. Apparently I locked my dad out; he had gone off to visit a friend and pick pears and peaches from a nearby orchard. Anyways, realizing my error, I hurried downstairs and unlocked the door. The whole incident reminded me of Poe's "Cask of Amontillado" with the banging and shouting and locking people out (or in, in the case of the story).

Anyways, I finally return to Chapter 5 at 11pm. Surprisingly, I had figured out how to bridge the gap, at least partway, in the morning. And it didn't take me long after sitting down to figure out how to move Chapter 5 forward. It's still a lot of talking heads, but now it has some momentum and set up for the mid-story peak which should be in Chapter 6. So now Chapter 5 is in some semblance of an order. Not really what I would call drafted, but it is storyboarded, at least enough for my purposes, and I can move on.

On another topic, I was thinking today how people always ask, how far are you from being done? How done are you with this chapter? There's really three ways to answer that. One is, you can go by process and say, "I've drafted the whole chapter and am on my first revision." That's a good answer to me, because I know exactly what that means--there'll probably be at least another huge revision after that, and countless dissection of word choices and phrases, countless re-readings with a critical eye for plot, for character, and a critical ear for sound and language flow. There may be only one more huge revision looming ahead, or maybe two or three, but then a million little revisions and edits that all add up. Because the person asking the question knows even less than the writer where the finish line is, that answer means nothing to the questioner.

The second way to answer, and it's somewhat related to the first way, is to go by percentage. Say, I have my draft and have finished a round of heavy revisions. By this point, if I did my work well and make no gigantic changes to the plot down the line, I might say that, optimistically, 70% of what I have right there is going to make it to the final draft. (Do note that this is all speculation, as I have not yet produced anything near a final draft yet.) Of course I may need to add scenes and delete things and nitpick, but the manuscript itself is 70% done. This sounds optimistic, but really, it doesn't tell you all that much either. If the first 70% came after a lot of headbanging, teeth pulling, and blood-letting, then the last 30% will come in excruciating cuts. Tiny papercuts, maybe some larger ones for a short transition scene. But by in large, it will be a painful, slow process whereby you have to make an old beaten cowhide boot shine, somehow. This way of answering the question sounds more optimistic than it really is, but it is more informative than the first way in that you know the endpoint is 100%, or maybe 120%.

The last way to answer is to go by time: "I've worked on this since high school, on and off. And at the rate I'm going, I'll never finish. This effusion of creative desperation and raw want will never see the light of a bookstore. Or maybe it will, in another decade. Five years if I really try. Two if I suddenly turn into a genius writer and everything goes smoothly. ...Okay, fine. I know what you're asking. The first complete draft--a real draft and not skimpy chunks of scene and plot and character and dialogue, with a full set of first-time revisions (because an unrevised first draft is absolutely worthless and terrible by nature)--will be done by the end of this year. If I kill myself. Which I plan to do, because yes, it's time to stop dreaming and start chasing the dream." That probably answers the question in terms the questioner understands.

Day 9 Progress Report

Day 9 (August 6) - Started Chapter 5 off with K's POV, so it went quickly. After all the headbanging I went through to develop her character, she's surprising uncomplicated and easy to write for. And somehow, I feel like she gets all the good lines, whether it's dialogue or narration. Sneaky girl.

Alas, my progress did not last for long. K finished her short, one page scene, and then I was back to H. I really don't feel like writing details and trying to visualize new things these days. I just want to skip all those parts and see if my excuse for a plot works. So anyways, I skimmed over writing the next scene, did some research online, and then left it there.

I'm stuck again. I sketched the story progression as a chart of peaks and flats (like a line graph), and Chapters 3 and 4 were mostly small rolling hills and flats. Chapter 5 needs a small, unrelated peak to change it up and bond the characters before my big mid-story peak (mid-story? Possibly. Though I haven't thought about how to move the plot beyond that point yet. It's hard to tell if it's mid-story when you can't see how far away the ending is) coming up in Chapter 6 or 7. I need a good plot device...

The more I think about it, the more I realize what functions I need this plot device to fulfill. It's like having a job opening and knowing what the requirements are; all I need now is a fitting applicant.

Day 8 Progress Report

Day 8 (August 5) - It's becoming clear as I work through Chapter 4 that my story is made up of a lot of talking heads.

I failed the noon deadline for the chapter (I was weak and slept too much), but somehow managed to complete basic scene drafting before 4 pm. Which is something. Never mind that the second half of the chapter gets shoddier and shoddier, and I didn't quite write out everything I ought have. Things like that can wait for the first revision. The important thing at this stage is to have enough written so that I can test the direction of the story, staying on track enough and involved enough that the muses still provide inspiration and new ideas that contribute to the overall plot.

In any case, on to Chapter 5!

Day 7 Progress Report

Day 7 (August 4) - A decent writing day where I actually wrote a complete scene and am working through a second one. But I've been easily distracted all day, and go out of my way to look for distractions. And I caught up on Naruto episodes (I watched 6 today!). I was bothered in one scene, in episode 118, where a dog was scared off by Juugo. It ran away barking. Which is very strange, in my experience with dogs. My dog only barks when she chases things. I mean, I've never seen her flee for her life before, but if I had to guess, I wouldn't think she'd bark when she's running away.

Anyways. I clearly need to focus and stop looking for distractions. My sense of urgency has dulled. I need a more immediate deadline. Something like, finish drafting Chapter 4 by tomorrow noon!

Days 5-6 Progress Report

Day 5 (August 2) - A rather uninspired day. Did some scene sketching for Chapter 4, mostly dialogue. Didn't quite finish. The Internet (at least the places I visit) was ablaze with plagerism talk the past few days. It makes you paranoid.

Day 6 (August 3) - Finished up some scene sketching and dialogue drafting for Chapter 4. It was like beating myself with a plastic flamingo. If this is going to be Chapter 4, then I don't even want to get down and write it seriously. The problem with trapping all your characters in a certain setting is that you need to find new ways to keep them moving forward. Chapter 4 just isn't moving.

Day 4 Progress Report

On Day 4 (August 1), I worked on revising Chapter 3. Unhappily, it turned out to be a huge pain to rewrite K's lines. She's such a tightrope act, and it's even harder when I already had good lines for her before. All her scenes in Chapter 3 need to be rewritten. Such a big job, and after only an hour or two, I no longer felt like it. So I went on to Chapter 4. And then did some more story plotting, rearranging of events, and then dipped in and out of Chapters 3, 4, and 5 like whoa. And then I went and downloaded the Barnes & Noble eReader, because I was curious about eReaders. And after that I looked up a literary agency and wasted time. Clearly I was having an unfocused day. So I tried to go to bed early, but I had already taken two naps of one hour each earlier that day (who takes two naps a day, seriously?), so I ended up falling alseep at something like 3 am and dreaming about some terrorist who tried to run me over with an entire train.

Something is wrong with my brain, I think.