Sharp Words

I’m not doing well. I’ve at least looked at my writing pretty much every day; I’ve finished reworking Chapter 2, and I’ve had a steady increase in word count… but it’s not going anywhere near as well as I’d planned. And with a visit from my parents next week, I don’t think I’ll get much done then.

I’m going to attempt to finish Chapter 3 tonight. I think I’m going to do a bit of fiddling and put some things into Chapter 4 that I’d intended for #3, and likewise move some bits from #4 to #5, to keep the chapter sizes roughly within a thousand words of each other. It’s tweaking rather than new writing (apart from the rest of #3), but it all helps.

I have to resist the temptation of making small changes in what’s already complete – changing a few words or sentences really isn’t helping at this point. I need to get a NaNoWriMo mindset on and concentrate on the quantity more than the quality. There’s plenty of time for editing in the future; the only editing I should be doing at the moment is the rewriting and also for consistency due to plot-tweaks.

But damn, it’s hard. I think I shall designate some hapless stuffed toy as my inner editor, and give him to AK (my on-hand reviewer and intrepid explorer of plot-holes) to shut in a cupboard for me until November’s over.

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The Nanny Diaries, Nicola Kraus & Emma McLaughlin – finished Sunday 20th. Own copy.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J K Rowling – finished Saturday 26th. Own copy.

Ongoing total for 2006: 121 + 7 re-reads

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I’ve seen in a few places lately (mainly on comments on blogs, particularly on The Guardian) the use of pre-madonna instead of prima donna.

This tickles me intensely, seeing as Madonna could definitely be classed as a prima donna; I assume that a pre-madonna is someone who’s on their way to becoming like Madonna.

There needs to be a word that describes typos which are actually apt in their typo-ness.
(Like one a customer service friend of mine had – something along the lines of ‘I have been expecting the delivery for two weeks. I find this length of time to be unexpectable’.)

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Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett – finished Monday 14th. Own copy.

Scandal Takes a Holiday, Lindsey Davis – finished Thursday 17th. Own copy.

Ongoing total for 2006: 119 + 7 re-reads

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I’ve managed 1068 words in 10 days. Not precisely what I was hoping for, but I did have the excuse of a large amount of paid work to do. Although since that finished at the beginning of this week, it’s not a very good excuse.

On the plus side, I finished the expanded first chapter, and emailed it off to some volunteer friends. I’ve had some comments back, on the whole favourable ones:
- MD liked the descriptions, which confused me as there aren’t any; I don’t seem to be very big on explaining how people and things look. We managed to clarify that she meant the descriptions that the phrases conjured up; something that I’d describe as ’scene-setting’.
- Interestingly, both MD and IL picked up on a fairly throwaway item and are expecting to hear more about it later on. Looking at it, that’s a fair point and the story would lose out if I didn’t do something with it… so plot-tweaks ahoy! Nothing huge though.

So. It’s Saturday afternoon. I’m going to attempt to write for a ten-minute burst to see how far I get… although possibly not far, as I’m reworking existing material (Chapter 2!) rather than writing fresh.

25 minutes later: Well, that was 200-ish words in about 20 minutes of reworking. Could be worse. Probably couldn’t be better. And that 200-something is just the balance; I must have written more than that because I deleted several full paragraphs.

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Cyclists or cystitis?
[Embarrassingly, this is from my home county council.]

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