Ze world of writing

Hello ladies and gentlemen, cows and humans, multipandimensional light beings and 3D slugs of all subspecies. I'm back. Sorry - I've been so into writing lately that by the time I get around to updating blogs, it's just easier to update Facebook and opendiary. Facebook is quick, and OD at least has readers. So I tend to forget about Blogspot.

News update:

Lenore, my beautiful laptop, started crashing a while ago. I finally sent her off to the Gateway Repair Centre for some TLC at the Computer Spa they've got there. She's feeling much better now, and is on her way home. In the meantime, I've been using an old iMac that my paternal grandmother left my father when she died. He gave it to my brother to use and it's just been sitting there. My brother and I (just today) upgraded the RAM and the OS to 2GB, and to Snow Leopard (that means, 2GB of RAM and Snow Leopard Operating System).

Having this iMac around to use is good news, because I've done quite a bit of writing on it. I was also doing quite a bit of writing on Lenore, but I really do like this computer for writing. I think I'm going to start storing all of my files on my external hard drive, and just go between the two computers...but spend most of my writing time on this iMac.

"So, Kimbar, how has the writing been going...?" you ask.

"Fantastically!" I answer, and then I delve into a deep long overview of how exactly the writing has been going.

At first, I was able to take the new ideas I had for TTAV (the most important book in my life, that I've written and rewritten for almost a decade) and apply them right away. I got 111 pages into the story (to be fair, I started at page 55 and there were a few pages of edited copypasta) before I made a stupid mistake while writing an update on the writing on OD.

See, TTAV isn't just a plot and some characters to me. It's also a feel. Now, I was okay with the plot, and the characters were coming out perfectly, but the feel was off. It was heavy fantasy, light sci-fi. I want it to be closer to a mix of both. At least, I want the fantasy to really feel like it takes place on an alien planet that's got a strange mix of technological advancement and non-technological-advancement. Yes, that makes sense - in my world anyway.

I was writing, "If I decide later that I really don't like the plot because it feels wrong, I can always mix and match the old version and this new version. I just have to take the beginning and end from the new version and stick the old version, edited, in the middle."

Oops. My brain said, "Hey! That's a good idea! Let's do that."

And then I started getting a lot more ideas that required a different plot. Because I wrote a stupid entry. Ugh. One of these days, I will learn not to let my brain run away with itself.

Anyway, I decided not to think about it for a couple of days, and I did other things while not writing and not thinking about it. Then I decided that I had to sit down and figure out what the book was supposed to look like. I needed a full chapter outline. So I sat down with sticky notes and outlined what happens in the first eight or nine chapters, which I already know about (since I'm using the early beginning of the new version and the later beginning of the old version, with some tweaks). After that, I let my mind go and come up with the scenes as they would come. I managed to get a thirty-some-odd chapter outline, on green sticky notes that my dearest Ninja Writer got for me last year for my birthday present/NaNoWriMo Survival Kit (my birthday is October 30th, and the National Novel Writing Month is in November). The next day, I sat down and edited the first four chapters to cut out the preparations I'd set up for the now-obsolete plotline I was intending to use. The next day, I completed that.

I'm now in the process of writing in the new scenes that have to take place and editing other scenes to make them compatible with the new plot. It's a long, tedious process, but I'm confident that it will go well, and that the whole book will be written by the end of summer. I'm actually aiming for the end of this month, but if that's not enough time, then I'll tack on an extra month too. I've already got almost 100 pages written, and most of what I have to do right now is editing/rewriting.

Anyway, wish me luck! I'm off to talk to my writer friend and watch a movie, and when that's done Imma write. Ta!