Gerald Brandt

As I've mentioned in other places in this blog, I really like routine.  I need routine for my daily chores and for my writing.  And nothing breaks up the routines I cultivate better than a holiday.

I drove out to Calgary to visit my bro, stayed there for three days and then drove a rather circuitous route back which took about 20 hours.  While I was there, I tried to maintain my writing schedule, but because of one thing (late nights) or another (food and booze), it didn't work out that well.  I had a blast!

When I got back home, I tried to get into the routine right away.  Unfortunately, a poor critique of a scene in my current novel (which, by the way, I knew was basically a badly timed info dump and needed re-writing) threw me into a bit of a slump.  Falling out of the routine coupled with forgetting 'It's okay to suck' really doesn't help the motivation.

Time to stop the wallowing and get back to work!

About a month ago, I decided to try my hand at NaNoWriMo.  I had an idea in the back of my head that I didn't want to work on until I finished Anshi, but the timing seemed right.  So, I may not blog at all in November, or I may blog obsessively.  I have no idea.  I spoke to Marnie about it, and she was okay with the idea… even when I told her the house would likely be very messy, and supper would consist of plain rice for 30 days.  Go me!  For those that want to monitor my progress, I'll keep a running counter in the sidebar. 

We had a visitor the last week or so, which is what enabled me to visit my brother.  Marnie's Mom came over from Saskatchewan for a very nice visit.  I tried to convince her to move in.  I even told her I'd build an entire self-contained suite in the basement for her use.  No go this time, but I think she's starting to weaken!

Talk about a slow blog period!  Things have actually been happening, but nothing really blog worthy.

I managed to get out for a motorcycle ride last weekend… took a long ride out to the Whiteshell area and did some nice twisty roads.  Too bad they're falling apart and covered in potholes and sand.

I'm heading out to Calgary next week.  My Bro is back from his year long sabbatical, and I'm visiting with him for a few days.  It should be fun!  I got him more of this, and as long as he doesn't feed it to me, I'll be okay.

The revision is going well.  I have some slow days, of course.  For example, this morning I only got about 350 words.  On average I'm doing about 1500 words a day.  I'll have to put the revising on hold for awhile due to NaNoWriMo, but hopefully I'll be fairly far along when that starts.

Punctuation is everything!

Arrrr Matey!  Did yer know it was Talk Like a Pirate Day today?  All yer landlubbers out there kin talk like a Pirate all ye want.

I'll be wearin' me pirate hat all day, and if anyone laughs, I'll be makin' a meeting wit' you and Davey Jones! 

It's official, summer is over.  My oldest started Grade 2 on Tuesday, and my youngest starts Kindergarten (full-time, mornings) on Monday.  We managed to squeeze in one more frog hunting expedition and one more day at the beach.  The beach ended up being a tad on the cool side, though the boys loved it, and the frog hunting wasn't as fulfilling as the last time we went.  The frogs, it seems, are beginning to hide for the coming winter.

Along with school starting, I seem to have turned the tide against the general malaise I've had.  I'm back to getting up at 5:00 AM and getting a good 1 1/2 to 2 hours of writing in.  Progress is still slow, since I'm taking draft 0 at ~33,000 words, and turning into a solid draft 1 at hopefully 90,000 + words.  At my current rate of rewriting (since I've got a spreadsheet to watch all this for me), I'll be at ~65,000 words when done.  That's with being only 8 scenes in so far.  I'll get the word count up there.  My speed should increase as well, since both kids will be at school in the mornings.  That'll give me another couple of hours to work.  I'm considerring adding a couple of hours in the evening during the winter months.

I can already hear some people asking what's up with blowing up the word count.  Most writers try to get the word count down on subsequent  drafts.  My outline was at 10,000 words, Draft 0 is a lot of telling and short sentences summarizing actions and feelings and stuff.  Draft 1 takes all of the telling and summaries and builds something that is actually readable.  That's why the word count goes up.  Pruning will happen later.

Oh, and I got the motorcycle on the road for the last warm month.  It was still on the expensive side, but I scrimped and saved and got it all together.  Now if only I could get Marnie home from work at a normal time so I could ride. 

As a sign-off, this is one of my favorite songs, and the commercial is cool to boot:

(Holiday Post #2)

I've actually completed draft 0 of my novel, and it clocked in at a pretty low word count.  Fortunately, this is pretty normal for me.  Even with a rather extensive outline (about 41 pages of it), my 'Draft 0's' tend to be about getting the ideas down on paper (plot) rather than telling an intriguing, descriptive story.  The next version, a true first draft, should be well over my projected word count, at which time I start pruning and cutting and tightening. 

It is at the end of the first draft where I will have considered myself actually having written a novel.  So, for the sake of record keeping, Draft 0 is at 34,000 words, which equates to 154 pages and an average word count of 639 words per scene (53 scenes).  For draft 1, there are a couple of scenes I'll be removing since they don't really move the story forward.  Plus, there is a new sub-plot I want to add, with will increase the scene count by about 10.

I have no idea if any other writers out there use the same method as I do, but this seems to work for me. 

There seems to be some sort of block at 6:00 AM.  Moving from a 7:00 AM wakeup to a 6:00 AM one went very smoothly.  The alarm would go off, I'd get up and start the day.  Getting past 6:00 AM has been a bit of a challenge.  The alarm is set for 5:45 AM, I turn off the alarm, and hang around in bed for 10 minutes.  Not exactly working.  I think I'll try one more day at 5:45 AM, and move to 5:30 AM anyway.

I started getting up early in order to get more writing time.  I am managing to stay off the internet, and I did write 200 crappy words this morning, but I'm not seeing the progress I want.  Most mornings I've been working on a contract technical document, which is not why I'm doing this.  Switching from the technical writing to the fiction writing is a tough switch;  I find myself using more of a passive voice.  

I'll keep plodding along.  If this getting up early thing doesn't work, when I go back to regular hours it'll be like I'm getting 2 hours of extra sleep. 

As I've mentioned here before, I started a local Writers/Critique group.  One of the rules that we instituted was that you should have something to critique every meeting.  We did allow for the occasional missed meetings, but we were looking for an overall participation rate.  Last meeting, I didn't drop anything off, so in order to follow my own (stupid?) rules, I need to have something for this meeting.

When I write, my first drafts are bad.  I have sudden POV changes, I change from third person present tense to third person past tense on a whim.  I haven't yet put any first person POVs into a third person POV work, thank goodness.  I really can't hand in the first draft stuff for critique, it'll get torn apart, and rightfully so.

For the last few days, I've been moving my first scene from its first draft stage to something more solid, something that fits in with what a scene should be (POV characters goal moving through to POV characters disaster, with multiple motive-response sequences in it, blah blah blah).  I've found it to be exceedingly slow work.  The thing is, I'm enjoying it.  I like going through and making sure things are structurally correct.  I enjoy sitting on a word or a turn of phrase, making sure it brings across the emotion or sentiment I want.  I thrill at making sure my similes and metaphors bring out the imagery I want, like the work of a fine painter on canvas.

My problem now is, I wanted my first chapter (three scenes) critiqued the next meeting, and I should have handed in my work last Friday.  How am I supposed to get this done by todays extension date?  Aaaargh! 

As an add-on: I prefer to finish a work before I start revising.  The momentum of generating new material builds on previous work, a cake made of many layers building to create a finished product.  I hope that revising before I've completed the first draft hasn't taken the wind out of my sails.  (Ugh, cliché)

I’ve come to realize there are not enough hours in the day to do all the things I need to do. I typically wake up at 7:00 AM (a luxury, I know), and start taking care of the kids right away. I get to bed around 10:00 PM. I go to bed exhausted and wake up tired. Ugh!

So, I’m going to try an experiment. I’m going to wake up earlier. My goal is to eventually wake up at 5:00 AM so I get about 2 hours of writing time in before the kids wake up. My plan is to move my wake-up time back about 15 minutes every few days. I’m thinking if I move things 1/2 hour a week, I should be okay. I still want to get to bed at the regular time.

Starting Monday, I’ll be out of bed at 6:45, on Thursday I’m going for 6:30. After about a month, I’ll be hitting my 5:00 AM goal.

I tried this once before, but I used a ‘cold turkey’ approach, which didn’t work so well for me. I’ve also done the opposite, where I’ve added two hours to my day by staying up later. It worked exceptionally well, but logistically it was a failure. Let’s see what happens with this new attempt.

Well, it’s official I guess. The writing group I started has had its second meeting. We’ve critiqued two pieces of work, and the format seems to be working well. Originally, we had five prospective members, but by the time everything settled, we ended up with two. Yup… just two. Still, it’s a start, and we are pushing each other to generate more work.

One of the rules of the group is that you must have something to critique every meeting. We’ve already broken that one, and we’re currently at every other meeting. With the feedback from the other member (d’oh), it should be easy enough to accomplish every meeting. I’ve left every meeting with a huge urge to sit down and write, which is great.

Currently, we’re looking for more members. I think five or so in total should be a great size. If everyone submits something for critique, and each critique is allotted 15 or 20 minutes, that’s a good length for a meeting. We’d still get time for socializing and discussing concepts and plots, etc. Originally, we’d planned on a group that didn’t cater to any particular genre, but now there may be a slight lean toward Science Fiction and Fantasy. I’m not sure yet. Keeping things genre specific allows us to skip some preamble on the critiques, since everyone would be familiar with the basic concepts. On the other hand, being non-genre specific give us more points of view and a fresh pair of eyes.

Something to think about.

At any rate, if there’s anybody in Winnipeg, Manitoba interested, leave a comment here and we’ll figure things out from there. I’m trying to create a nice tight knit group, so we’ll need to get together and talk first, maybe have a meeting with you, and then we can both decide if the group is a good fit.

Oh, and I plan on getting back to weekly updates on the blog. I’m aiming for every Tuesday and keeping my fingers crossed (which makes it hard to type).