FFVI

The State of the Writer: 7/25/21

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 3 Comments

<–The State of the Writer: 7/11/21         The State of the Writer: 8/8/21–>

A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

Finished Projects: 1

Project: Story
Working Title: The High Archon
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Current Word Count: 676
Prior Word Count: 676
Word Difference: 0
Status: Drafting
Progress: Chapter 1

I’ve been stuck in a stalemate with this.  It happens when there’s just too much.  My notes are currently spread across Scrivener and OneNote, and I was drafting the story in Scrivener.  I need to put all my notes in one place, and I decided I’m going to draft the story in Word like my other ones.  So now I need to move things from OneNote.  I haven’t entirely figured it all out yet, but I have a plan, and that’s better than nothing.

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The State of the Writer: 7/11/21

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<–The State of the Writer: 6/27/21         The State of the Writer: 7/25/21–>

A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

Finished Projects: 0

Project: Story
Working Title: The High Archon
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Current Word Count: 676
Prior Word Count: 676
Word Difference: 0
Status: Drafting
Progress: Chapter 1

A little bit of progress?  Like not really in the word count department, but any progress is good, I suppose?  I left myself a note in a previous session to work on outfit descriptions in the next.  I’m not there in the draft yet, but if I have a destination to strive towards, it’s possible I could “build a bridge” per se, so I’ve been working on that.  So far, I’m in the midst of Maya’s (the female MC), and of course as per my brand, I’m adding more than I expected lol, but it’s alright.

*sigh* I also started going back to the worldbuilding, because of course I did.  That’s okay, too.  One of my lovely friends made an excellent point.  She said that even just daydreaming about your projects is working on them, and I’m doing more than that.  Because just thinking about them is solidifying things in your mind, so I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, especially in light of all I’m fighting against.

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The State of the Writer: 6/27/21

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 7 Comments

<–The State of the Writer: 6/13/21         The State of the Writer: 7/11/21–>

A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

Finished Projects: 0

Project: Story
Working Title: The High Archon
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Current Word Count: 676
Prior Word Count: 613
Word Difference: +63
Status: Drafting
Progress: Chapter 1

I’m making progress even if it’s painfully slow.  I at least wrote one line I’m proud of.  “Promise the moon when you’re too short to reach the sky.”  It’s not the vision I lack; it’s the concentration to put what I’m seeing into words.  I haven’t even gotten to the part I micro-outlined.  I’ve been going back through what I wrote before to iron some things out.  Lots of writers wait until they’ve written the thing before they do any edits, but I always re-read what I wrote last time in order to re-ground myself in the story.  If I don’t, I feel unmoored and disconnected (which…tbh is how I’ve been feeling in general with life).  It takes longer, and I spend less time per session writing (or have to extend the session), but I get more out of it.  I also get to spend more time with the characters and come to a better understanding of where they are.  Like when I outlined this chapter, I had thought the air of it would be more playful and adventurous, but there’s an undercurrent of anxiety because my MC is really worried about something, and her BFF notices because she’s snippier than usual.  I like where I’m going with it; it’s just…life/reality bullshit is getting in the way haha.

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The State of the Writer: 6/13/21

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 7 Comments

<–The State of the Writer: 5/30/21         The State of the Writer: 6/27/21–>

A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

Finished Projects: 1

Project: Story
Working Title: The High Archon
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Current Word Count: 613
Status: Drafting
Progress: Chapter 1

Ughhhhhhhh *but forever*  So first off, I was wrong about the word count.  What I thought was word count was actually character count, so damn my myopic eyes.  I haven’t broken the thousand word threshold yet with this, and I’m not sure how many more words I’ve written in the past few weeks.  Not that many because I’ve really been struggling…like really.  I’ve never had this much trouble starting a story once I have an idea of where I’m going.  Direction isn’t the issue, nor is vision.  I can 100% visualize the scene, but translating that into words humans can understand is where the pipe is clogged.  I know it’s a “I don’t have enough energy to concentrate” type of thing.  I also have this thing where if I don’t feel like I’m doing well, it’ll really put a damper on my ability to work.  I’m not giving up on this project though.  I…can’t really do that.  I’ll just start obsessing over it if I don’t work on it.  If you think this update is all over the place THIS IS EXACTLY MY FUCKING PROBLEM.  I’ve started what I call “micro” outlining where I break down my outline even more so it’s sort of between an outline and a draft.  I just sort of stream-of-consciousness what I want to happen in my notes and then later will go back and smooth it out.  I did that last night with a scene, and I’m hoping to work on it today.  I’ve also been talking to another author friend about it and I’m about to message my other about it.  Sometimes I don’t even need a response; I just need to hear it aloud.

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The State of the Writer: 5/30/21

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 8 Comments

<–The State of the Writer: 5/16/21         The State of the Writer: 6/13/21–>

A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

Finished Projects: 0

Project: Story
Working Title: The High Archon
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Current Word Count: 1673
Status: Drafting
Progress: Chapter 1

I actually started drafting the first chapter last week.  Well…it’s more of a reworking of the draft of the first chapter, but I still consider it progress.  I’m doing something new and using Scrivener as my writing platform, going back and forth from the Word doc I already have.  I’m a bit paranoid about it though and will probably make a Word backup.  Scrivener hasn’t given me any problems and it saves automatically, but you know there’s always that one time.

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The State of the Writer: 5/16/21

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 4 Comments

<–The State of the Writer: 5/2/21         The State of the Writer: 5/30/21–>

A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

Finished Projects: 1

Project: Story
Working Title: The High Archon
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Status: Preparation
Progress: Setting up notes in Scrivener/Working on Chapter 1 Outline

I’m pretty much ready to start writing; I just need the energy and the time.  I know what I want the first chapter to be about, and I’ve even started looking at my other beginnings.  It’s really just finding the space to write.

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The State of the Writer: 5/2/21

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 10 Comments

<–The State of the Writer: 4/18/21         The State of the Writer: 5/16/21–>

A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

Finished Projects: 0

Project: Story
Working Title: The High Archon
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Status: Preparation
Progress: Setting up notes in Scrivener/Working on Chapter 1 Outline

And I’m back to working on the chapter outline.  I think I’m pretty much done with the notes, though there are some things here and there I can work on.  I was talking to another author friend, and she made a really good point about how you can spend too much time working on the prep as a way to put off writing the story, and I think I’m starting to do that.  I’m not sure when I’ll start writing, because I’ve managed to get myself wrapped up in yet another project, but I have been looking at what I’ve written before.  I actually started writing it again about a year ago, so I’m not completely starting from scratch.  It’s just that I needed to hash out the details of the world for my own knowledge before I continued.

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The State of the Writer: 4/18/21

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 2 Comments

<–The State of the Writer: 4/4/21         The State of the Writer: 5/2/21–>

A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

Finished Projects: 1

Project: Story
Working Title: The High Archon
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Status: Preparation
Progress: Setting up notes in Scrivener

Sometimes you take steps back in a process, which is why I removed “working on Chapter 1 outline” from the status.  I’ve been hashing out more notes and trying to refine the connections between this and my first novel.  I’m trying to decide if I want to make a Scrivener for that prior to starting work on this.  Obviously The Serpent’s Tale is already written, but it needs a complete overhaul.  Because it’s the foundation of this story, I have characters and settings from it in Scrivener under “Past Characters” and “Past Settings,” but there’s a lot of crossover, and it might just be easier to make it its own.  Even if it wouldn’t help with this novel, it’ll help when I rewrite TST.  It’s really just deciding if I want to do it prior to jumping into this, and this all started because I needed to make a map lol.  I am absolutely awful at direction so a visual representation would really help; however, I’m also shit at drawing and measuring distances so there’s that, too.  All of the online map creators are either too complicated or cost money, so here I am doing it freehand.  I have notes about where certain places were located as well as the story’s starting and ending point.  It’s just filling out the details between.

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The State of the Writer: 4/4/21

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 4 Comments

<–The State of the Writer: 3/21/21         The State of the Writer: 4/18/21–>

A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

Finished Projects: 1

Project: Story
Working Title: The High Archon
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Status: Preparation
Progress: Setting up notes in Scrivener & Working on Chapter 1 Outline

I really want to start writing as soon as possible.  I feel like I’ve gotten most of the important details hashed out or at least enough of a foundation that I can begin.  I think I’m in that annoying place where I’m getting too much in my head and too worried about starting so I’m becoming nitpicky about details.  The next time I have the energy to work on this, I’m going to put together the first chapter outline.  I really, really want to write the “first meeting” scene, though that’s not for several chapters after a lot of grief.

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The State of the Writer: 3/21/21

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 10 Comments

<–The State of the Writer: 3/7/21         The State of the Writer: 4/4/21–>

A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

Finished Projects: 1

Project: Story
Working Title: The High Archon
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Status: Preparation
Progress: Setting up notes in Scrivener & Working on Chapter 1 Outline

I feel like I’m nearing the end of my set up (maybe?).  I got a bit of everything worked on late last night.  I think I’m worrying too much about certain things becoming problems if I don’t hash them out before I start writing, but I’m literally trying to figure out how to make the best society when I’m living *gestures at everything* lol.  I need to finish up language notes and information on minor characters then I believe I can switch my efforts to the first chapter outline, and maybe even write it.

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