Day 30 - I'm Back Already

Boy, going to bed early and getting up late really does help.   The cold is gone.

After exercise and kerfuffle handling, I got a good planning session in, then a good session at the library, then more planning and drawing.


Today's Progress: 1237 words on In Flight, and I pulled a lot more of the existing prose together.

I really feel like today, the story shaped up.   When a story is in my head, it's kind of a Schrondinger's Cat -- it exists in many different states at once. This is true even if I outline it. There is still a lot of give an take in the story's ultimate shape.  And even exploratory writing doesn't really nail down the specific form of the story -- it just gives me sketches of possibilities.

Then there comes this point when enough parts are nailed down, and I put them together.... and it suddenly is a story. It suddenly has a form of its own, and I'm not exploring any more, I'm filling in and refining.  Today In Flight hit that point.

So the word count I mention above only reflects a small part of the work I did today. I put in a good session pulling together Act 1 -- which led to writing out of specific scenes I needed to write/rewrite.  Then I sat down and wrote them.  Then this evening I started pinning down more of the next act.

I think this story will wind up about 50k, which is longer than I planned, but still a nice short novel.


Eating, Reading, Watching

After my writing session at the library, I rewarded myself with spring rolls from the Asian market.  Three of them and some rice. It was enough to keep me for the evening.

I had finished listening to The Family Vault last night. Tonight I started Agatha Christie's 4:50 From Paddington while I did some drawing, however, I'm not that into it just now. I think I might skip over to something else first.  Maybe another Stuart Kaminsky.  I don't have any more Lieberman books in audio, but I have some Rostinkovs and Toby Peters.  I think, because I'm writing romantic suspense, I need some pathos. (Alternatively, I could jump to P. G. Wodehouse, which would might give me more of a mental break from the story.)

Christie, I think is not enough like what  I'm writing, nor is it enough UNlike what I'm writing.  Also, I'm getting some of the same tone from Sayers right now.

In the meantime, it's still 80 degrees in the house, so I don't know about my sleeping. And I'm going to the student portfolio show tomorrow night.

But I think I'll just go after continuing to knit things together on the story and see where I get.


Oh, and Games....

I also made up another short writing game, or at least I started to.  I think it needs one more element.

I have a great reference book called The Horseman's Encyclopedia by Margaret Cabell Self.  There are, these days, better references for horse people, especially in the area of horse health, but it's a fabulous reference for fiction writers, especially if you want to know some more dated information. 

Anyway, I thought, hmmmm, if I want to write more horse stories, this is a good place to find subjects.  So the first portion of the game will be to roll a page number from the book at random, and pick a subject from what I find on that page.  This in itself could be enough, but I feel as though I need one more element to put together with the subject.

But for now...

See you in the funny papers.