Wednesday 9 July 2014

(vol 1) CHAPTER 22: “CampNaNoWriMo - Day 9”



It’s now a week into CampNaNoWriMo and things are going . . . okay.




CAMP UPDATE

The good news is that, since starting again last week, I’m sticking to the path and forging forward.
The bad news is that I didn’t get as much written as I would have liked. You know I hate excuses but it has been a busy weekend, one I hope doesn’t repeat during July.

[Overtime + Formula 1 x ill son = low word count]

But, my word count isn’t zero.



DAY 2 – 1504 words

After last week’s post I got stuck into the Novella’s redirection. I rewrote Chapter 2: Searching and it works a lot better now. The antagonist is still aggressive in his search for revenge but he’s no longer a psychotic bastard. Meanwhile, Herschel is now spared from his previous, grim fate but still gets messed up by the evening’s turn of events.


DAY 3 – 411 words

I started Chapter 3: Friend and it was tricky. Set after the night of abuse that is chapter 1, Julie wakes to find Craig acting all normal and getting ready to head off for a stag weekend. This is because I don’t want every scene this couple are in together to be tense or confrontational because you need to see the reasons Julie stays with him. She’s not trapped with him physically, only mentally. Craig is living in denial that his temper ever gets the best of him and just switches off from any previous acts of violence.


DAY 4 – 1070 words

I carried on with Chapter 3: Friend by introducing Julie’s best friend Eleanor. It’s something else that I want to get right by the time this novella is finished; the friendship between two girls. I don’t want it to be a stereotypical boys eye view of a female friendship so I’m working heard on the dialogue between the pair. There’s banter there but also caring, Eleanor is not afraid to bring up the subject of Craig’s temper, even if it can make things awkward.


DAY 7 – 228 words

Not much happened here. Just wrapped up Chapter 3: Friend and set the scene for the next chapter.


DAY 8 – 262 words

Although I was limited and only found about 15 minutes to myself for writing, I managed to get Chapter 4: Tattoo started and have set up nicely how Julie comes to make the decision of having a tattoo done. I’m looking forward to carrying on with this scene tonight.




FLASH! FRIDAY UPDATE

Great news from last week’s Flash! Friday challenge. I woke up Monday morning and turned my phone on to find an above average number of e-mails informing me I had new Twitter followers. It took me a couple of seconds to think why and then I jumped to the site to find that my story, ‘America Can Wait’ received an HM (honourable mention).



I was over the moon with this. Craig Anderson was last week’s judge and his mini review of my story made for a great start to Monday.

And in more Flash! Friday news the site is currently running the ‘Dog Days of Summer’ Flash Fiction competition. 800-1000 words with picture prompt. Looking forward to taking part in this.





SCRIVENER REVIEW

Still finding this software useful. It really helped with starting chapter 2 again and just relabeling it. I haven’t got round to it yet but I can remove this from the main manuscript and dump it in the research section further down the binder. I also like that I can colour code the chapters. I have blue for Julie and red for the antagonist. It helps see how their two stories track each other.



One thing I will have to remember is to go back and fill in the character description. Right now, before starting a scene, I just glance at the casting pictures I have saved but I haven’t written any of that down for the reader. In this early stage I just want to get the story down as I will go back to work on the cosmetics later. I do only have 30 days you know.

Another nice feature of Scrivener is the auto saving. The program saves almost as much as I blink but it also produces a backup when you choose to exit Scrivener. Couple this with me copying the backup to a separate drive at the end of every writing sessions and the thought of losing any work is banished.




So things are going well. I plan on getting a lot more writing done this week although I’m already discounting Sunday (I will be busy going to London to watch a talk given by a comic book legend -more on that next week).

If you’re taking part in CampNaNoWriMo then I hope it’s going well for you (i.e. you don’t have sick children or urges to follow sporting events). Big shout out to my Cabin. They seem a nice bunch and I hope to chat with them more as the month rolls on.

See you in seven.

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