An update and some questions for you
Well, it's now Sunday night, November 27th, after midnight already.
Thanksgiving weekend is done and over with. My husband isn't working from home this week, so I should have a few more hours during the day when I can work on this.
There are, right now, less than 72 hours left before the NaNoWriMo deadline at midnight on November 30th.
The goal was, and still is, to get 50,000 words written by that deadline. At this late date, I have come to the conclusion two things. 1) That it is possible that I will meet that deadline - I currently have just over 42,000 words in my rough draft. AND 2) That although I will meet the 50,000 words written during the month of November deadline, a good half of what I've written isn't in presentable form.
Meaning, I've got about 25,000 (or so) in the semi-finished format you've read here in the first nine or ten chapters. Which is good.
I was striving to write the story as it progressed, chapter by chapter. But by the time I got to chapter 6, I wanted to plan ahead. So I started writing things like 'later, have Annie and Luke do/say this' and soon I had an outline going. I wrote rough ideas for scenes I wanted to put in the next chapters. And before I knew it, I'd written the next three chapters that way. It's in rough format - sometimes I spent a little time on dialogue, but overall, it's that feverish writing that happens when you get a stroke of brilliance (or so you think), and words just keeping flowing from your fingertips.
I hit 40,000 words this evening, after I added more ideas and scenes and dialogue to my outline. I know I'll make the deadline and be a NaNoWriMo winner in three days. But what does that mean for you, dear readers?
Well, it means that it will take quite a bit longer for you to have something to read here. I realized that I was rushing (well, with a two week deadline instead of four weeks, I kind of had to rush!) my first chapters. Not that I was rushing the progress of them, but I was rushing to get them out into a readable format, chapter style, with dialogue, set up, etc.
The goal of NaNoWriMo isn't to write a ready-to-publish 50,000 word book in 30 days. But rather, the goal is to push yourself to write 50,000 words. They don't have to be in a publishable format. They just have to be coherent to you, the writer. The reader doesn't factor in at this point.
So, I've taken that advice to heart. "Write like mad," they write on the site. "It doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to make sense. It just has to add up to 50,000 words by November 30th." So, for the next 72 hours, I'm going to work on meeting that number.
I'm close, as I've said before. I'm over 40,000 - I've got 80% of my words written out. Just 20% more to make the deadline. Once I'm a 'winner' I can go back and edit, and do a whole lot more writing. I take about two pages' worth of outline format writing, and turn it into ten pages of 'readable' format, with dialogue and descriptive words and such. In my outline, Annie and Luke are referred to as A and L, and that's just the easy part of my shorthand. There's a lot of 'blah, blah' to cover kissing scenes, and 'they undress' instead of the more detailed, descriptive version. So, two pages is easily ten or more when I "translate" my shorthand into longhand.
Thanks for being patient with this.
If you've logged on and read the first nine or so chapters, and you're ready for more, well you'll just have to wait.
Think of it as a chapter-a-week type of romance, much like the ones they have at eharlequin.com, where you come back the next week to read the next installment. That'll give me a little more time to spit polish the chapters, and to work my format into longhand.
Drop me a note and let me know what you think about what you've read so far. The encouraging comments are great, they keep me going.
Tell me what works for you (more dialogue or less, more descriptive words/not, more scenery descriptions/less, etc). The vocab I use in the more explicit scenes... too cliche? Too much, too little, too graphic, not enough?
I'm going off what I read in Harlequin's Blaze line, which are pretty steamy. I grew up knowing that nice girls didn't think things like "the swollen head of his throbbing cock pulsed against her slick heat"... so it's a little hard to break from that and write this. It's not that hard (obviously, otherwise you'd be reading "he put his penis into her vagina"). I've got quite the dirty thesaurus up in my head, so I don't have too difficult a time coming up with another way to say "penis" - although if I read my writing outloud, I sometimes catch myself in a cliche ('her nether lips', 'his swollen manhood') and I edit those out. Maybe I shouldn't - maybe it's just a cliche to me, but whatever. I change it about three times before I leave it to go to the next edit anyway.
I've read books where I'm panting and growing wet myself just reading the steamy scenes. And others don't affect me at all - it's kind of like having sex when you don't really want to - you just go through the motions, but you're not really into it.
I don't need every explicit scene I write to make my readers gasp and moan, but I'd like to raise your pulse a time or two. I want to make you feel like you're the heroine of the book, that the hero is doing these things to you. (I guess all romance novels tend to make the reader feel that way anyhow.)
But I personally need the scenes to be believable. When I read about a couple doing it on horseback... well... I've never done it that way, and I find it difficult to imagine doing up there. So the scene, and sometimes the book, lose appeal for me.
I don't want my scenes to lose their appeal for my readers (though are just a few of you right now). I want my scenes to be believable.
If you don't think they are - please, let me know. Whether I've written my characters to be contortionists, or the way I described it just doesn't seem physically possible...
Email me (in the interest of privacy) and tell me.
I won't be offended if you email me and tell me this-and-this scene sucks. It can't happen that way. It took too long to happen. or It was over too soon.
I need constructive criticism right now, because maybe you'll point out something critical to the rest of the novel. Either way, whether I take your advice and fix it or not, you'll help by letting me know.
It helps if you've read (recently or not) some of today's more steamier, sexier romance novels. You know, for comparison. I've got a boxful in my basement, the Harlequin Blaze series. I've even gone back to a few for inspiration or for a new/changed phrase or two. (I've even found a few verbs and adjectives I want to change in the chapters I already posted here, but I'll do that after I make 50,000 words.) If you want a couple of the books to read, let me know, and I can get some to you.
It'd make for an interesting comparison, to read some of those books, if you haven't ready any of the more explicit novels lately.
All right...
It's 12:30am now. I need to get to sleep.
If I keep staying up till after midnight every night, my husband will end up hating me for it.
I'll try to knock out another ten grand during the days this week. Wish me luck.
If I get inspired like I did earlier this evening, then I could make the 50,000 goal by Tuesday morning!
Ciao for now!
Thanksgiving weekend is done and over with. My husband isn't working from home this week, so I should have a few more hours during the day when I can work on this.
There are, right now, less than 72 hours left before the NaNoWriMo deadline at midnight on November 30th.
The goal was, and still is, to get 50,000 words written by that deadline. At this late date, I have come to the conclusion two things. 1) That it is possible that I will meet that deadline - I currently have just over 42,000 words in my rough draft. AND 2) That although I will meet the 50,000 words written during the month of November deadline, a good half of what I've written isn't in presentable form.
Meaning, I've got about 25,000 (or so) in the semi-finished format you've read here in the first nine or ten chapters. Which is good.
I was striving to write the story as it progressed, chapter by chapter. But by the time I got to chapter 6, I wanted to plan ahead. So I started writing things like 'later, have Annie and Luke do/say this' and soon I had an outline going. I wrote rough ideas for scenes I wanted to put in the next chapters. And before I knew it, I'd written the next three chapters that way. It's in rough format - sometimes I spent a little time on dialogue, but overall, it's that feverish writing that happens when you get a stroke of brilliance (or so you think), and words just keeping flowing from your fingertips.
I hit 40,000 words this evening, after I added more ideas and scenes and dialogue to my outline. I know I'll make the deadline and be a NaNoWriMo winner in three days. But what does that mean for you, dear readers?
Well, it means that it will take quite a bit longer for you to have something to read here. I realized that I was rushing (well, with a two week deadline instead of four weeks, I kind of had to rush!) my first chapters. Not that I was rushing the progress of them, but I was rushing to get them out into a readable format, chapter style, with dialogue, set up, etc.
The goal of NaNoWriMo isn't to write a ready-to-publish 50,000 word book in 30 days. But rather, the goal is to push yourself to write 50,000 words. They don't have to be in a publishable format. They just have to be coherent to you, the writer. The reader doesn't factor in at this point.
So, I've taken that advice to heart. "Write like mad," they write on the site. "It doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to make sense. It just has to add up to 50,000 words by November 30th." So, for the next 72 hours, I'm going to work on meeting that number.
I'm close, as I've said before. I'm over 40,000 - I've got 80% of my words written out. Just 20% more to make the deadline. Once I'm a 'winner' I can go back and edit, and do a whole lot more writing. I take about two pages' worth of outline format writing, and turn it into ten pages of 'readable' format, with dialogue and descriptive words and such. In my outline, Annie and Luke are referred to as A and L, and that's just the easy part of my shorthand. There's a lot of 'blah, blah' to cover kissing scenes, and 'they undress' instead of the more detailed, descriptive version. So, two pages is easily ten or more when I "translate" my shorthand into longhand.
Thanks for being patient with this.
If you've logged on and read the first nine or so chapters, and you're ready for more, well you'll just have to wait.
Think of it as a chapter-a-week type of romance, much like the ones they have at eharlequin.com, where you come back the next week to read the next installment. That'll give me a little more time to spit polish the chapters, and to work my format into longhand.
Drop me a note and let me know what you think about what you've read so far. The encouraging comments are great, they keep me going.
Tell me what works for you (more dialogue or less, more descriptive words/not, more scenery descriptions/less, etc). The vocab I use in the more explicit scenes... too cliche? Too much, too little, too graphic, not enough?
I'm going off what I read in Harlequin's Blaze line, which are pretty steamy. I grew up knowing that nice girls didn't think things like "the swollen head of his throbbing cock pulsed against her slick heat"... so it's a little hard to break from that and write this. It's not that hard (obviously, otherwise you'd be reading "he put his penis into her vagina"). I've got quite the dirty thesaurus up in my head, so I don't have too difficult a time coming up with another way to say "penis" - although if I read my writing outloud, I sometimes catch myself in a cliche ('her nether lips', 'his swollen manhood') and I edit those out. Maybe I shouldn't - maybe it's just a cliche to me, but whatever. I change it about three times before I leave it to go to the next edit anyway.
I've read books where I'm panting and growing wet myself just reading the steamy scenes. And others don't affect me at all - it's kind of like having sex when you don't really want to - you just go through the motions, but you're not really into it.
I don't need every explicit scene I write to make my readers gasp and moan, but I'd like to raise your pulse a time or two. I want to make you feel like you're the heroine of the book, that the hero is doing these things to you. (I guess all romance novels tend to make the reader feel that way anyhow.)
But I personally need the scenes to be believable. When I read about a couple doing it on horseback... well... I've never done it that way, and I find it difficult to imagine doing up there. So the scene, and sometimes the book, lose appeal for me.
I don't want my scenes to lose their appeal for my readers (though are just a few of you right now). I want my scenes to be believable.
If you don't think they are - please, let me know. Whether I've written my characters to be contortionists, or the way I described it just doesn't seem physically possible...
Email me (in the interest of privacy) and tell me.
I won't be offended if you email me and tell me this-and-this scene sucks. It can't happen that way. It took too long to happen. or It was over too soon.
I need constructive criticism right now, because maybe you'll point out something critical to the rest of the novel. Either way, whether I take your advice and fix it or not, you'll help by letting me know.
It helps if you've read (recently or not) some of today's more steamier, sexier romance novels. You know, for comparison. I've got a boxful in my basement, the Harlequin Blaze series. I've even gone back to a few for inspiration or for a new/changed phrase or two. (I've even found a few verbs and adjectives I want to change in the chapters I already posted here, but I'll do that after I make 50,000 words.) If you want a couple of the books to read, let me know, and I can get some to you.
It'd make for an interesting comparison, to read some of those books, if you haven't ready any of the more explicit novels lately.
All right...
It's 12:30am now. I need to get to sleep.
If I keep staying up till after midnight every night, my husband will end up hating me for it.
I'll try to knock out another ten grand during the days this week. Wish me luck.
If I get inspired like I did earlier this evening, then I could make the 50,000 goal by Tuesday morning!
Ciao for now!
posted by Suzie | 12:33 AM
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