Week Two - how was it for you?
I’ve had better.
Um… So, this was a bad week to get a social life. I told myself I didn’t move 300 miles from home to sit in my room and eat Maltesers, so it seemed kind of justified.
Okay, I admit it! I went to the pub four nights in a row. Although, one time I really did just have that one drink and another time was for the noble cause of Poetry!
I had to call in one of the three lifelines:
- Dream Sequence
- Gratuitous Sex Scene
- Hallucinogenic Drugs Trip
I went for Dream Sequence. It actually does have relevance to the story at least. It’ll probably turn out to be a kind of flashback. It wasn’t just giant pink bunnies and the feeling of falling. I think I’ll save the surrealism for Hallucinogenic Drugs Trip.
Word count at the end of Week Two:
A paltry 18,238.
(With comma, to make it look longer.)
The average word count statistic: a source of inspiration or stress?
Both. But it’s definitely helpful. It gives me something to aim for.
Any changes to your writing schedule/habits?
I went to Edinburgh Central Library’s Reading Room. For some reason, the Wifi wouldn’t work for me and I guess I’ll count that as a blessing in disguise. It has a domed ornate ceiling and shelves and shelves of books up on balconies running around the room; presumably to protect the literature from old school daleks. I’m just beginning a description of a library in my novel and I had planned to base it on this. Unfortunately, I remembered that books made of paper were meant to be a rarity in my world. The domed ceiling gets a mention though.
Has your story taken any unexpected turns?
The shady cult for posh boys is taking on further significance. It’s called The Order of Hephaestus, by the way. Their favourite things are exploiting women and the working class and eating large slices of lemon meringue pie.
What was the best thing you wrote this week? And the most frustrating passage you worked on?
Writing about someone doing research in a library doesn’t make for a very exciting scene. I ended up writing about how Ana got bored, while the scholarly Benjamin did the research, rather than describing the research process too much.
The best thing I wrote was probably introducing a new character, Francis, a bigheaded antiques dealer. I switched to having the narrative follow him for a bit, to help explain how the book came to be found in the rubbish by Ana. Hopefully, whenever I feel stuck writing Ana’s story, from now on I can switch perspectives to keep it keep going.
Do any particular writing challenges present themselves this week?
Keeping everything going at a steady pace. Revealing the right amount of information at a time.
Hopes for next week:
Be a dutiful NaNoWriMo participant.
NaNo in a nutshell (Week Two):
See picture.
Follow Suky on Twitter at @SukyGoodfellow
I was chuckling too - especially the line about Daleks. I love the idea of you sitting there and using that rather fine location, though minus the books. If you'd been writing in Starbucks that scene would have been totally different.
If you've introduced a new character, might you be thinking he needs to come in a little earlier? Especially if his perspective is going to be important? Not that I think you should fix this now. but it might be worth thinking about in the edits. Of course, there's no hard and fast rule about this, but it is usually a little odd to have another perspective character introduced after nearly 20k words.
I've had a bit of a mare this week - all since my last blog - and this made me laugh. It's good to know I'm not the only one of us starting to think 'oh, bother, it's going pear-shaped' :-)