Blogless days

Apologies to those of you hanging on my every word for not writing a post yesterday - I was having to travel for (real life) work and didn't get a chance to be online long enough to write one. However, I was travelling by train - on a company that hasn't yet worked out this whole wi-fi thing - and had my laptop with me, so was able to do some writing. The result? I think I need to travel by train more often. Over 1000 words on each leg of the journey made it a really good day's writing, and on top of a good day on Friday, I'm having a very good start to February.

Totals - at the end of Friday I was at 37,633 and by the time I got home last night, I'd reached 39,782.

Of course, it's all still very much first draft stuff, but it's still fun to write. At the moment, I'm just detailing a conversation between my two main characters, most of which likely won't end up in the final version, but writing it out is invaluable for me in coming to know about their characters. It tells me about their pasts and how they've got to where they are, and also lets me find out and explore their different voices, exploring their ways of saying things.

Generally, there's a lot going into this draft that's background and stuff that I know won't make the cut, but it's important to me in shaping the story and learning about it. This is the time for letting ideas take root and flow to their logical extent, and the editing, rewriting and cutting can take place later, once this draft has shown me what's important. Though when my target's only 1000 words a day (unlike NaNoWriMo's 1667), I don't have to be quite as demented in what I include to hit the daily target - I've managed to resist full-on infodumps so far.

Actually, that makes me think of one advantage of having viewpoint characters who don't know what's going on - you get to explain what they learn as they go along, not infodump everything they already know to catch the reader up. Obvious statement is obvious, of course, but it is Sunday morning.

A good day

After wading through sludge on Tuesday, yesterday's writing went much smoother. Finally got the characters in the current scene to get things moving and happening, which meant things started flowing as I wrote. Was quite surprised when I stopped to discover that I'd done 1500 words, as I thought it was just over 1000, and that last 500 or so had just flowed out so quickly and easily that it felt like a lot less.

Total so far is 34,742, which means that barring a disaster today, I should hit the 35,000 target for the work in progress pretty easily. Now I'm out of the sludge I should have a decent day today, as I've got a good idea how this chapter finishes and how the next one starts, which should help things flow. Anyway, I need to get back ahead of schedule and rebuild the buffer zone, as I might not get much of a chance to write at the weekend, as I could be busy on both Saturday and Sunday.

Another old short story is pushing into my head too - one I started but wasn't too keen on the way I was telling it. There's a nice little romance in there, but I need to work out how to get to the meat of the story rather than the build-up. Once that clicks, though, the rest of the story comes alive in my head. What I might do is just plough on with it from where I was, then go back and redo the beginning. That approach worked quite well for When There's An R In The Month - the original opening didn't work, but once I'd written the scenes with Rose and Shauna together, I had a much better idea of their characters to go back and redo the start. (And it's the same with the work in progress as well - now I know how the characters work together, their original meeting has changed in my head)

It does feel odd, sometimes, changing character's histories in the light of later developments, but that's part of the fun of revision - you get to hack away the false tales you've told of these people in order to get to the truth about them. In a way, that's a sign of properly rounded and interesting characters - they surprise you by having stories that weren't what you expected when you began writing them.

Sludge

Slow day writing yesterday, one of those ones where every word comes reluctantly onto the page, and my mind was filled with treacle. It happens sometimes, and is likely a sign that my subconscious is telling me 'this isn't a good scene, is it?', which is confirmed when the two characters in it steadfastly refuse to have the conversation I think they should be having. I mean, they keep uttering lines to each other than fit in with what they want, but then when I think of how the other character would respond to that, it doesn't take the conversation in the way I expect it to go.

The good part of that is that the characters are alive and well, even if they're looking at their author with disdain for the day. Which means only 995 words yesterday - a somewhat odd number to stop in, so close to 1000 for the day, but not quite - but real life intervened as well after I'd got that far. Total for the work in progress so far is 33,173, so I'll hopefully be above 35,000 on it by the time January ends.

Thanks to everyone who's read and voted on my latest Literotica story, especially those of you who've come here afterwards to find out more of me. Don't forget that I'm also on Twitter, and all new followers there are welcome too.

It's Wednesday and the sun is shining. Time to work.

Momentum

Decent day of writing yesterday, which finished as I got past 2000 words (2,009 to be exact). Wasn't intending to finish so close to the target, but I'd reached a natural break point for the day, and needed to take a break to choreograph the next scene in my head before writing it.

I'm not often one for meticulously planning out scenes before I write them, usually preferring to go with the flow, but I've found that with action scenes (like the one coming up), I need to have worked out at least a basic plan on who does what and who's where at what point, otherwise I end up getting to the end of it and realising that I've left one character standing there doing nothing throughout the whole thing. Interestingly, that doesn't normally happen to me when writing sex scenes, where the characters tend to be much more forceful in wanting to get involved...

So, on with today's writing, and see you on the other side of 3,000 words!

100,000 words

I have a new idea for a story. More importantly, I have an idea for the character at the heart of that story and can already feel her like a real person in my mind. Stories - especially erotic ones - usually need good characters in them to come alive, and I'm already sparking lots of ideas from this one.

Which is leading me to take the plunge and try something new in 2013. A friend of mine has told me of a challenge for writers based on doing 100,000 words in 100 days. As I mentioed before, I've done NaNoWriMo in previous years - with non-erotic stories - and this is a variant on the same idea, requiring less average daily output, but over a longer period. I've done 1000 words a day for long periods before, so I'm hoping that this, and the new idea, will get me back into gear and writing properly again.

Wish me luck!