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Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Quick Notes: Forced to Write Edition By State Order Edition

1.  Writing has improved to a couple pages a day at the moment (we're talking handwritten pages so they're quite a lot bigger than word processor btw).  At this rate, one of the books I'm working on will eventually get finished months and months from now, so...there's that!

2.  The scene I'm working on is KH meeting Class 2015 for the first time, so I'm pretty much doing 29 character (since he already knows one of them technically) introductions at the moment, one after another and trying to make it work.  Adding to the difficulty is the fact that all 31 people are talking on and off.  Very chaotic so far, hope you all keep up with it...

3.  How is it that I used to be able to write 90k novels with two storylines and now I'll be lucky to wrap this school story business all up in just 150k?  It's definitely going to be an indulgent book, no question about that.  For those that like twenty pages of Val, KH, Welf, and Miranda eating breakfast or KH spending multiple scenes attempting to prank the Lady or learning more about Welf family trees...

4.  But it's the last school story, and once it's finally done we can move to the new era of 24/7 CRAZY WEIRD MANCY SHIT.

5.  Health wise, everything is completely on hold.  Don't have an appointment until May and we'll fucking see if that actually happens, right?  No COVID so far...Fresno seems to be doing a really good job (California as a whole really), unless the Plague I had late February was COVID, but I'm pretty doubtful about it.  Did catch it from a hospital and was super, super sick even with a flu shot, but probably not.  The weirdest part was that Sherbert and the other cats caught it, which they say COVID can do, but no way to know until someone starts mass producing antibody tests...so...stay home and write, Raley.

6.  Can't believe how much I'm missing sports.  Other than the Football Manager addiction making me watching the occasional soccer game over the last couple years I really haven't been into much for the last five or so years, what with the books to produce and all.  Yet it's weird not have the general background noise that the sports leagues are going on, highlights on reddit and youtube and what not.

7.  Final Fantasy 7 Remake is great so far, about 14 hours in, having a blast.

8.  Anyone else having trouble focusing enough to watch television shows?  I find it so nerve wracking for some reason, I keep watching 2 or 3 episodes of something and then switching across to another the next day, where usually I'm a complete binge machine.  I just don't enjoy tension and conflict at the moment.   Wonder if there's money to be made in tv and movies where everything just goes the character's way and it's all nice and pleasant?  Probably why people turn to HGTV and Food Network and the like...

9.  Grandpa turned 90, fuck you cancer!

3 comments:

  1. May I ask what your writing process consists of? Obviously handwriting pages - do you then OCR them into something digital? Get them transcribed? Type them yourself?

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    1. Usually I'm just a normal boring laptop writer. I don't even use any fancy programs, just Word. But sometimes it's a health thing, like if my back or wrists are hurting I'll switch it up for a few days to get a rest.

      Or if I'm struggling or just need some added focus I'll pull out some blank pages and that can help, especially since you can be lounging in bed relaxing with the TV or your Kindle and then just start scribbling a paragraph or two without a lot of pressure to type away for hours. The last chapter of FM6 I worked on I wrote like 2 or 3 pages by hand because it was bugging me (just FYI, the KH/Paine Geo Realm showdown was actually written last, not the other chapters that followed it).

      I do however like to start a project actually putting pen to page for some reason. FM1 had like the first 3 school chapters written by hand. So were the first chapters of Sky-Island and Gush.

      Why am I doing it now? I think just with that year-plus away with bad health mojo I've felt so disconnected that this kind of feels like restarting again, so some of that probably plays into it. I also hand wrote "Glassbreaker Goes Home" due to my wrists being quite fucked at the time and that really went well so I'm kind of trying it again a little bit.

      As for after I'm done with them, nothing fancy. I just type them in myself and I like using it as a kind of a first edit/rewrite for the material that's very organic and free flowing. My first edits add a TON of fleshing out to scenes and really can alter what I first wrote, so it's a great way to do that.

      I don't know, I'm weird. Why do I do anything? ;)

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  2. That is pretty much the same process I (and my co-conspirator) use. In my case, I am... old. As in- pre-word processor old. So writing by hand just... tickles the correct brain cells.

    Plus- since I have to act like I am working at my real job, a pen and notebook are less obvious than text files saved on a work PC. And I will often just "write the part that I am seeing in my head at the moment" and then draw "circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back" explaining what the heck I was thinking.

    As to KH meets his victims... um... class of 2015... I figure getting HIS first impression of the little bast... ah... eager young people... will be worth however many words it takes. And bonus- one of them "probably" won't jump on a couch to punch out another...

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