6000 Words

I’m in the difficult position on figuring out where to put 6000 words back into Voyageurs.

This is harder than it sounds. Or, rather, doing it well is harder than it sounds. More dialogue might be a good thing, but it has to be the right dialogue — developing character or plot without sounding like the words were crowbarred into the text.

Adding words, to me, is harder than editing. I’ve edited my professional papers for years — the real challenge in academic writing is editing a synopsis of the paper to fifty words, which reads something like this:

Researchers hypothesized that subjects would be more likely to buy the pre-owned car than the used car. One hundred and twenty-three students in a convenience sample received either a used car or the pre-owned car catalog entry. Subjects viewed both cars with equal likelihood of buying.

There’s so much more I could have said about the research this synopsis came from. This, by the way, is the type of writing one has to do for the summary a book in a query letter. You get one, maybe two paragraphs in a query letter (but more than fifty words) to describe your book. If the author wants to participate in #pitmad on Twitter — a big event where authors pitch their books on Twitter — you get one sentence to sell your novel, a statement called an elevator pitch.

Well, back to adding words. I’m really apprehensive about adding words. I did add some descriptions throughout and one whole chapter, which is why I only need 6000 words. That’s the equivalent of two-three chapters, which is what I cut out by advice of my developmental editor. I can understand why those chapters got cut — they were action-packed chapters in a story that had quite enough action. My dev editor is looking for places where I can add stuff, so I may have to patiently wait to see what she has to say.

Day 5 NaNo — and a big surprise

Something strange happened on the way to my NaNo count yesterday. I started becoming interested in writing on Whose Hearts are Mountains again. I don’t know how it happened, but I looked at it yesterday after getting my word count yesterday, and I started writing.

NaNo is surprisingly lenient about this — they say you have to write 50,000 words, and they count writing exercises (word sprints) toward this. I suspect I’m legal writing on two books during this time, and if not, I’ll just have to shrug and say “I’d rather ride this wave of success”.

I’m discovering that Whose Hearts are Mountains is going to be shorter than I’d thought at probably 75,000 words. That’s 4500 words more. It’s probably long enough, and it will get a little longer when I come back and add in some descriptive stuff and other editing. But I’m writing more than 20 words a day on it. Yay NaNo!

I’m still writing on Becoming Kringle, and I will probably work more on it as we approach the
In other developments, Richard is editing my problem child (now our problem child), Gaia’s Hands.
The Gaia stories overlap with Apocalypse and Reclaiming the Balance, but deal more with humans. So we’re co-authoring, and wondering if we should have both our names (I vote yes) or the combined pseudonym Lauren Richards (his vote yes).

So I’m re-energized for writing, and anticipate that December is going to be an editing, rather than a writing month.

Day 1 Summary NaNoWriMo: Time for Pantsing

I wrote my first 2000 words yesterday, flying my way through the first chapter. The good news is that the writing was easy. The bad news is that, if i go through my outline at this rate, I will be done in 16,000 words, which is 34,000 words short of a win.

It might be time to start pantsing.

To explain (and review for my longer-time readers), there are three modes of writing:

Planning, which means writing with a meticulous outline;
Pantsing, which means flying by the seat of your pants;
Plantsing, which is somewhere in-between.

I think I’ve said in these pages before that I’m a plantser, which for me means having an outline with enough leeway to fill in the blanks. But it’s not working this time — perhaps I didn’t put in enough of an outline, or I wasn’t as sure about the action. So I will be pantsing a bit.

What encourages me is that the more I write, the more the layers of the characters reveal themselves to me. These characters need to be complex, because the story will demand that my characters grow and develop — and become the spirit of Christmas.

Update — day 1 Camp NaNo

The first day of Camp NaNo has been a success. I’ve written 2k words (twice my daily allotment), and that section is helping to cement into place a plot twist. I’m despairing about what to do when the book is done, because the first half of the book is all about isolation, and the current direction is solidarity and uniting against danger. I don’t know if it’s going to come out smooth, but that’s what an edit is for.

It’s snowing out. In spring. On Easter. Two and a half inches so far and it keeps coming down. Rebirth is being buried under a cold, white blanket. Oh well