Printing tomorrow

The beta draft is very nearly finished. I'm going to spend this evening picking through a few crucial scenes just to allay any remaining niggles. It is just over the 160,000 word mark but editing is likely only to bring that down.

Tomorrow I shall print and bind a couple of copies for people can read. As this is still a beta draft it will be going first to those people I know who are avid readers, particularly of the Fantasy/Sci-Fi genre(s). How long these copies last before I feel the need to make all the corrections which will be noted, remains to be seen.

Almost like being at work

My goal was always to finish this draft by Christmas. Well at one point it was a month earlier but we'll brush over that. The editing process has really sped up now I'm working through the later stuff. I've got a few parts which still need significant attention but I've scheduled myself with daily goals to get it all done by Thursday. Giving me Friday to get a couple of copies printed and bound on campus. hmm... I should probably check the printing unit is open on the 21st. So that will be a copy to take home with me and one to hand out. Assuming I keep on track that is...

I don't know, daily goals, schedule, it's almost like being at work.

Out with the old...

The editing process is now well underway. I've finished cutting the old material form the beginning. What was chapters 2-7 is now chapters 2-3. So there's now 25 rather than 29. But the fact is since this can all be cut and it ends with a story which makes more sense is I think good enough reason to remove it. I'm not sure how much that will have reduced the total length by, I'll find out when I get there. That was the only significant change from Kirsty's edits, though now I do need to follow the rest through carefully to make sure it fits the new stuff.

Back at the desk

I'm back at my desk. Kirsty finished the alpha draft last weekend but put me under orders not to do any work for the week. So now I'm faced with a thick pile of paper with red pen scattered throughout it. Though the first third of the book needs quite heavy editing, pretty much everything that's left of the previous draft she wants me to restructure.

There are a few other bits to work on too, I think about 3 to 4 weeks work to be done to form it into a beta draft. That is if I can get myself into gear and actually concentrate on the damn thing. I'm not doing very well at that at the moment, it's taken me two days just to get round to this blog post.

Once I get back into a regular schedule the word count will begin updating again.

Team alpha, go

Huzzah, 'tis all done, the alpha draft of Sibling is complete. Weighs in at 185,450 words in 29 chapters with a prologue and an epilogue. That's 400 sides of A4 with 1.6 line spacing. It took a mighty 2 and a half hours just to spell check.

Throughout the spell check though I saw plenty of dodgy text emphasising for me that is is very much still of alpha quality. How long it will take to improve to beta quality will depend on how much Kirsty destroys in her reading. I'm hopeful of just a few weeks but I thinks rather optimistic.

So close, but yet..

This morning I would have said 2,000 words will finish the draft. Having written over 3,000 today and still not quite getting there I was clearly wrong. Also I've just read some advice online which implies that for first time authors publishers like 80,000 to 120,000 words and anything over that upper limit is likely to get refused out of hand. ho-hum. I'm going to choose to ignore that advice for the time being.

Today I have also learned that when it comes to writing large quantities of combat nothing's better than Nine Inch Nails to keep me in the right frame of mind.

The continuing chapter expansion

Those paying attention will notice the current and last chapter has just jumped from 28 or 28 to 29 of 29. The chapter was just getting so excessively long it had to be cut in two, and since there was quite a good place to do this, I did it. Just the planned ending is plenty enough to make the new chapter 29 a decent length, plus there may be an epilogue I'm undecided so far.

Also today I reached 180,000 words, huzzah, much more than I dared hope. Not sure how much more there'll be, a couple of thousand at least. If I manage to concentrate tomorrow I may get the draft finished, but if I'm honest Thursday's more likely.

Writing is easy...

Finishing is taking far longer than I expected, I've dropped from 3000 words/day to 1500-2000 words/day. This seems to be a combination of the fact that every scene is super-tense with crucial interactions going on and that though I have the intent for every scenes with a start and an end making it all work is very difficult. At this rate I may have the draft finished by Wednesday but even that feels hopeful.

I am generally happy with all the chapter 27/28 material so far, it's just proving to be quite a slog getting it onto the page.

"Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." - Gene Fowler

end on the horizon

Got back into the word progress today hitting 3,000 words again which is great, probably half of chapter 27. The more important thing is I think I've finally got the ending all fitted together including all the elements I wanted. Looks like finishing the draft by the end of October is fairly unlikely now but so long as I can keep on track with by current plan it shouldn't be by much.

For now though I have more important tasks at hand, such was watching Due South dvds.

round blocks and round holes isn't always enough

So I've not written anything today yet and I'm not likely to. I'm currently trying to piece together the closing two chapters. I've got a number of events and scene ideas but making it all fit together in a way that works and has everything developing at the right pace is rather difficult. I won't be able to look at it this evening so I wouldn't be surprised if it takes tomorrow and the weekend to get it all together.

I currently find myself staring at my list of thoughts and waiting for the ah-ha moment where I see how to fit it all together... still waiting...

160,000 wordcount reached

Today I reached my goal of 160,000 words for Sibling. I'm still only half-way through chapter 26 with two more to go after that, so I'm a happy bunny.

As a user of compiz fusion I couldn't think of a better way to highlight this occasion other than to surround it in fire :)

Mammoth chapter

Ho-hum it's been another very slow day for writing. Sure the daily word count is just shy of 3,000, normally a very good figure, but I actually wrote about half of that yesterday evening. Maybe this is telling me I probably shouldn't work at the weekends and still expect full productivity within the week.

The other thing about these 3,000 words is most of them were on finishing chapter 25, which now weighs in at just under 9,000 words, longer than any other by a significant margin. This may get broken down in edits or I may actually end up re-organizing so that more chapters sit at around that length, it will depend I guess on how well it reads. Chapter 26 however looks likely to be a much shorter one so hopefully I can get it sewn up by Wednesday, but then I've said that before...

The Death Report

139,020 People

A brief triumph over some of the voices

Huzzah, I've just finished a scene I've been struggling with basically since Thursday. It had been the last scene of chapter 23 but got pushed into the first scene of chapter 24. It is a rather tense exchange between several significant characters and it's taken me this long to piece together exactly how each of them views it and how they feel throughout it.

The good news is I can now get on with the rest of chapter 24. The bad news is that there is at least one scene of this kind in each of the remaining chapters as the story really starts to close on its conclusion.

Finale on a postage stamp...

Another day down, another 3000 words, and I've still not completed chapter 23. It's turning out to be somewhat more massive that I'd first thought. This it definitely good as some of the last few chapters are I think going to be much shorter than the average length I'm hoping for. Maybe they'll turn out to be longer than they seem too, or perhaps I'll be able to write the big final chapter on a postage stamp. I guess I'll find out when I get there.

Funky Gibbon

Well I've worked out how the new ending fits together. I've mapped it out in a way that so far seemed consistent and without any problems. Though I'm sure there are still a few to be discovered along the lines.

Also I upgraded my PC to Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon today, all is going pretty well and the integration of compiz fusion if rather nice. And for a fantastic example of bad lip-syncing see The Goodies - Funky Gibbon

It turns out there is such as thing as too many ideas

Last night I decided, 'you know what, this book needs a different ending' when in this case ending refers to the last 8 chapters...

So I've spent today reorganizing everything to fit ny initial thoughts, which has gone okay. But now I'm stuck on something which is quite important, so I've not written an actual word today other than lots of notes. I have however eaten a lot of sweet chilli pistachios, yum.

Hopefully I'll be able to sort out this out in conversation with Kirsty this evening, talking about these things always seems to help my thinking process.

Chapter of Violence

I've just completed chapter 20, or as I'm now calling it, the 'Chapter of Violence'. The first 5,000 words of it are almost solid action, which is nice. It's good to liven things up again especially as it's the first big scale action there's been since chapter 11.

Finishing 20 means I've kept to my 3 chapters a week goal. So in 7 days I should have completed 21, 22 and 23. Hopefully I'll be able to focus a lot more than I have over this past week. Maybe I'll get some cake... that's sure to help :)

Sometimes it's like swimming in glue

Writing had been going rather slow this week, but I am edging my way towards completing chapter 19. It was always going to be a small chapter but I've squeezed in some extra substance which overflowed from 18 and I think it should end up being a reasonable length.

I've passed 100,000 words since my last post, woo-hoo. I'm still comfortably on course for the 160,000 goal. However I'm now deeply into the material which is completely new to this draft, new characters and new story-lines. It's a bit jumbled at the moment but it's difficult for me to tell how well it reads as I write it. I'm just trying to get it all down onto the page as soon as possible really then when I have the book as a whole I can start worrying about pacing and structure.

For the moment though, it's all about pushing that word count.

Pause in the word progress imminent

Finished chapter 16 today :)

But now the planning bug niggles at me so I'm spending the remainder of today, and probably most or all of tomorrow reviewing the events of the remaining 12 chapters and how they fit together. This is not only essential but will allow me to incorporate a number of changes I was musing over with Kirsty at the weekend.

But I am now going to say that I "should" be able to give people a copy to read by the end of November, I'm making that date a goal. That with me reaching the 160,000 words and completing this draft in mid-October then allowing a month to fix it up.

Das Prologue

After the incessant nagging of the one who shall remain nameless (going only by the codename of Kirsty) I am putting up the prologue for people to read. Just follow the link.

I has mai url

This blog is now also available at http://www.meadicus.co.uk

A good day

A very good day in fact. Despite the fact I spend 1 1/2 hours this morning reorganizing chapters 13-17 I still managed to belt out over 4,000 words, the bulk of chapter 13 :)

In these chapters I've got 5 simultaneous story-lines, 1 old, 1 half old and 3 completely new to this draft. I've restructured how the chapters dance between them so they are more chronologically consistent.

Duck!!!

We made marzipan ducks :D

...what more is there to say?

Little Dance

Woo woo that's chapter 12 finished *does little dance*

Turned out no to be that short after all, nearly 6,000 words. So maybe my style is changing for a more lengthy product, I might even have to revise my 160,000 estimated final count. Though I'm very happy with that as a final figure, an extrapolation on the current average puts it at 176,064 :)

I'm sure I'll edit most of that away in the future when I have a fluff cutting exercise.

1 week down

That's the first week of being a writer done, over 15,000 words and about two and a half chapters done, not bad really, I'm certainly quite happy with it. Chapters 10 and 11 turned out to be bizarrely long, over 7000 words each, most of the others sit in the low 5000s.

This could be down to me having more time and so being able to take my time with them. It could be because I'm currently reading Tigana which has a long flowing style, and I might be absorbing it. Or it might just be down to the content of those two chapters, chapter 12 is already looking to be much shorter.

The 28 chapter divisions are fairly arbitrary anyway, it is quite difficult to estimate from my notes how long each one will turn out to be. Especially as I'm now moving further away from editing existing text into writing completely new text as this draft changes from the previous one. I'm definitely going to keep the chapter divisions as they currently are in this writing process, then review them when I get to editing draft 8.

Oh won't that be fun...

Hungry Hungry Hipbuntu

Turns out the next release of ubuntu (8.04) will be Hardy Heron, not, as some people were suggesting, Hungry Hippo. Maybe we'll see the Irate Iguana in 8.10.

Slow day

It's been a bit of a slow day and I haven't written as much as I'd have liked. I did spend the morning talking to someone about a potential job (proper real job loike) in the new year, that did some stuff around the flat then needed doing.

But I have managed to finish chapter 11, though not quite passing the 70,000 word mark which is a shame. There's still plenty of time in the day to I may yet dive into chapter 12 and push that word count up.

Two days?!?!

Kirsty would like to point out that she is impressed. Impressed that although I haven't stepped outside the flat for two days I have, on both days no less, got dressed. But she likes the new prologue, even though she did just edit 200 words from it (grrrr).

A prologue you say?

The other day I found a very old copy of Sibling, the first draft in fact. It reminded me how much I enjoyed the original beginning, long since lost in favor of something which makes a lot more sense. But it did have imagery I really liked. So, draft 8 now has a prologue. It tackles a couple of other issues as well, namely tying the last half of the book more in with the first half by having related matter appear in the prologue.

I should still be able to get stuck into chapter 11 today, if I'm on to chapter 12 by the end of the week I'll be happy with my progress.

First day on the job

That's the first day as a writer finished, I got up, worked most of the day, I think I did okay. If I can get the feed reader on this blog side-panel working you'll see I managed 3000 words, finishing chapter 10, woot.

meadicus on google FTW

It has just been pointed out to me that if you type meadicus into google everything but three results on the first page are me, including the first 5. My reaction was "Wah?" especially as most of them are translations of my last.fm profile. Weird eh?

sibling map (svg)

I've discovered Inkscape which has done a pretty good job of letting me draw the first 100% computer version of the sibling map. Took a while, especially all the little mountains, but I think it's turned out okay.

Pig before and after

We went to the White Row farm recently and picked up some pig. See "before" above and "after" below.

and very tasty it was too :)

How many words? Not enough, work harder...

As I said in my last post I've got a little bash script for counting my progress through draft 8 of Sibling. I also now have a little python script which uploads this figure to another blog (using the blogger api), which feeds the total displayed on the right-hand column of this blog.

The whole thing is cronned to run every weekday at noon, so I should have an automatically updating state of progress. I also plan to blog manually my weekly totals so I can see when I've done well and smack myself down when I've been a bit crap.

Unfortunately one of the methods I plan to use to keep myself going is turning off the internet while I work, so the auto blog probably won't work and I'll end up running it manually most of the time.

Stepping back into the water

Well I had a few hours and couldn't resist picking Sibling up again, tackling a big and quite significant scene I've been pondering how best to approach over the past week or two. I have to say I'm quite happy with what I put down so far for this piece.

I've also written a little bash script which counts the total number of draft 8 words written. This evenings scribblings have totaled 433 words so far taking it from 57,431 to 57,864. Extrapolating this average word count I should finish this draft with something like 160,000 words. Which I'm really rather happy with as it's double that of draft 6 (draft 7 didn't really happen). I'm hoping to put a little running progress gizmo on the side-panel of this site, something else to distract me when needed.

Bye bye University

Righty then, last Friday was my last day at the university, I am now an unemployed bum. After 8 years at the university I've left many times but this is the first time there has been no immediate plan to return.

I'm aiming myself at a four month novel finishing exercise which will probably leave me tired, pissed off, and even more tired. But if I have a draft I'm happy with, if I have even one rejection letter I'll be happy the four months (and savings) have been well spent.

But before that this week is holiday. We're not going anywhere special but the plan is to try and do all the touristy stuff there is to do in Bath which we've never done. Maybe not the most exciting holiday but thankfully a cheap one :)

The Frog King

Frog King makes everything better

My very own Frog King plush arrived today, all the way from Canada and pretty damn quick. Huzzah.

How to write a book in 28 excruciating steps

So, referring back to my first post I'm going to be leaving my job at the uni and becoming one of the unemployed on 24th August 2007.

The plan, though bereft of detail it is, is to leap on this as an opportunity to finish Sibling, the novel I've been working on for about 13 years now (I can't quite remember when I started it).

Sibling has gone through many drafts over the years, sometimes slight, often with dramatic changes. I am currently working on chapter 10 (of 28 hence the title) of draft 8, one of the 'dramatic changes' drafts. Writing has gone in spurts, I go through phases of loads activity punctuated far too often by months of dormancy. Well this is my chance to get my head down and get stuff done, I'm giving myself until the end of the year to be sending it off to publishers. I look forward to all the rejection letters and getting back into the job market in January.

Up until recently I've been doing bits of writing in the evenings after work, and that's been rather dull as it's meant I've gone for days on end without really leaving a computer screen, which isn't healthy. I've also been taking holiday and spending whole weeks working on Sibling. I've found that given a few clear days I've been able to really get into my stride and get loads done, I'm hoping that then next few months will go like this. My main statement is this isn't a holiday, I expect to be getting up in the morning and working as hard as I currently do, just without the getting paid bit.

I intend to post my progress here, wish me luck.

Wicker Pyramids

Rocket powered wicker pyramids for short-range sub-orbital transport, the solution to our nations public transport needs...

At least according to a dream I had over the weekend.

The facebook of eternal dispair

I've done it, I've given in and joined facebook. I am now among the multitude... I look forward to spending a great deal of my time worrying about having enough facebook-friends and being in the right groups.

Panama

I saw these genuine panama hats a while ago in Tumi and today I finally decided to get one. It's very light and comfy.

Sibling Map

A lot of posts on this blog will be tell of my progress trying to finally finish Sibling, the novel I've been working on for about 13 years. The location has gone through many designs and I've finally got around to scanning the latest one, with scale and train lines and roads and everything.

where I hack

Picking up from a currently popular blog post theme I've noticed on Planet Ubuntu I thought I'd post this picture of my home working environment. I know it's amazing, a desk even messier than the one I have at BUCS / Marketing and Communications.

I've a blog

The imminent arrival of unemployment status (contract at the University of Bath expiring on 26-8-2007) has driven me to create this blog to help me maintain contact with all those who I still currently work with, plus friends who these days are scattered all over the country/world.

There may not be much appearing here while I'm still at the Uni, but I hope to update more frequently after leaving. Though it's perhaps more likely to become yet another dead blog as I get distracted into another job or similar.