Thursday, November 29, 2012

Birth of a Novel 11/29/12

It's been a very uplifting week for me. Since the last Birth of a Novel post I've pulled out my two year old 50K Nano draft of Search for Knowledge--the sequel to The Magic Wakes. I remember it being complete and utter trash. My plan was to look through it for anything I might be able to salvage for the rewrite.

Well, I started reading through it a little before Thanksgiving, and I'm happy to report that I was able to keep 37K of it! That stuff is still really rough, but the ideas are good and the character actions still fit in with who they are at the end of book one. I wrote a new beginning, and I now have a better planned goal for the second book in my series. All in all, I feel better prepared to sit down and finish this draft than I did a month ago.

Now I just need to fill in some gaps, switch from 1st person to 3rd, and finish the story. Then I'll be ready to let some of my early readers give me some feedback.

Okay, on to concrete goals!


Last Week's Goals:
1. Write at least 2500 words on Search for Knowledge. It's not a lot, but I still have some unpacking and Thanksgiving cooking to do. The plan is to just get started again. I did write a few scenes, but mostly I cut and pasted the salvageable stuff from the early version. So that counts as a start, right?
2. Finish unpacking and decorate for Christmas. We always do inside before Thanksgiving so it looks beautiful and festive when we sit down to eat, and outside after. I am unpacked! Decorations are up, and we survived a wonderful T-day with lots of food and relaxation. I'll try and get a video tour of my new place up next week.
3. Actually visit the other people that signed up for this thing I've started! Well, most of us didn't do anything last week, and now Mr. Linky is being stupid. Does anyone have a better linky widget that's free?

This Week's Goals:
1. Continue the good exercise habits I've started by going to the gym and watching what I eat.
2. Fill in the gaps between the new start of Search for Knowledge and the salvaged section. This should equate to two or three chapters.
3. Write 4 more of the guest blogs I've planned for my tour in addition to the ones I've started. I currently have six of them completed and six in draft form. That means I should have 16 completed by next Thursday.

How about you? What are your goals for this week?

Now I'm off to see how to fix Mr. Linky for the others in the blog hop.

17 comments:

  1. That's great so much was good!
    I'm on a roll with reading, now that I have time, and want to finish one more book.

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    1. Reading, sweet reading....

      No! I must write! LOL. It's got to be nice having your book finished. Enjoy your reading time!

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  2. That's awesome you found many thousands of words you could reuse. I find that it's easier to get going on a project with a few words tucked under the belt than starting from ground zero with nothing but a blank page and a cursor blinking at you.

    On the words you cut, gather them up as short stories and post them for free on free online sites with lots of readers with a link back to your book page. It's free publicity and will sell more books as people become enamored with your writing.

    I speak from experience.

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    1. Great idea Michael! Do you have suggestions for scifi/fantasy sites?

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  3. I'm finishing up the first pass of book 2. Yes. I sure am.

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    1. Yay! It's got to feel good to have it down. I never thought I'd say it, but I think I like revisions more than the writing. In a way it's less stressful.

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  4. Yay, Charity! That was a really nice surprise. I love it when you read something you originally thought was bad just to discover it was actually quite good.

    I can't wait to see your blog tour guest post for my blog and for your book to come out so I can get my hands on that pretty cover.

    I have yet to post my BoaN for today. I'm going to get to it when I finish reading blog posts for the day and write some. Glad to see the new icon is up!

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    1. It was almost like an early Christmas present. The second book nerves have been getting to me, and I really needed to get started on it. Now that I see a chunk of writing that I can work with, I'm hoping the rest of the story will emerge. I've plotted it out, but sometimes things don't go as planned. ;)

      I still need to fix some of the BoaN stuff. *sigh*

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  5. That's why the manuscript must rest. It takes time before you have enough distance to judge it fairly.

    Goals for this week? Eh. Get through this week. That's the goal.

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    1. So true Liz. Resting should always be part of the process.

      Hope you made it through the week! Sleep in tomorrow and everything will look better.

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  6. That's fantastic that you were able to save so much of it! I'm going through one of my projects that I wrote two years ago and hopefully I'm as lucky. Best of luck with your goals!

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  7. It's awesome that you were able to keep so much of your earlier draft. Looking forward to seeing the tour of your new home! :-)

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    1. :) I'll try and get it clean enough to video a walk through. That's my goal for today.

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  8. Great job on your goals! Don't you love when you think you're stuff is really crappy and you realize it's at least a little better than what you thought? haha

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