Sunday, August 27, 2017
Delayed Progress is still progress, I think?
Hey there, reader people.
All right, I just got a fair bit written on the Ship of the Line story, so that's good news, but the downside is that this is the first time I've been able to work on it for close to three weeks.
Not long after my previous post, I managed to hurt myself pretty badly. The doctor's best guess is that it's some kind of pinched nerve sort of thing, but if that's true then it's far and away the worst case of it I've ever had. Basically it hurts ALL the time, and it hurts quite a bit.
My neck, upper back, left shoulder, arm, wrist and hand, lots and lots of pain that rises and falls, but basically never completely stops hurting.
Ow.
So that's been a problem, when it comes to getting things written, but I think that it's finally, slooooooowly starting to improve.
It still hurts to sit in my chair and use a keyboard, but today was the first time it felt manageable, and I got several hours of work in, which felt pretty great.
If I can put together a few writing days like that, I'll have a chapter for you pretty soon.
Since this section of the story is kind of weird, with all the things that are converging on Sunnydale right now, I'm not really sure how long these chapters will go.
It definitely feels like multiple chapters, but whether that will be two, or three, or five, I can't really say.
I guess I need to go ahead and write it, before I know how it will look once it's written... or something along those lines :-P.
So that's what I'm doing.
Sorry it's taken so long, but I seriously made more progress on this story today than I have in two or three years of noodling around on it several dozen times, so I think things are finally on the right track.
I'll update again when I'm further along on things.
Take care, people.
AJK
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It's good to hear you're making progress, but please don't push yourself too hard if you've got a real medical issue that needs time to heal. You're not on the clock here and we're not going to show up at your house with torches and pitchforks if an update isn't out by XYZ date and time. I for one am confident that you'll get where you need to be with this and other stories.
ReplyDeleteAs for the story itself, I can't give much advice, but as a suggestion, if you feel it may take multiple chapters to get through the current bit, pick a middle amount, say three chapters. Looking at Twisting the Hellmouth, you wrote one chapter over 14K words, and one not much past 3K, so it's not like you're locked into a position where a chapter has to be so long. or so short. If you don't mind me asking, without spoiling anything, how many words have you actually written so far?
Hey, Robert.
ReplyDeleteThe neck/back/shoulder/arm thing has been kind of crushing me for the last several weeks--I think of myself as a moderately tough guy, but this injury has been the longest span of essentially constant pain that I've ever experienced, and it hasn't left me in a happy place.
It's also got a lot of up and down to it; I got that burst of writing done, because it was feeling better, then it got worse again and it was all I could do to just eat, sleep, and drag myself to work and back when it was time to do the work thing.
I still think it's tending better, very gradually, and my plan is to get back to the story over the long weekend.
Chapter length is something I've always complained about, since I see other people posting chapters that are maybe 1500-3000 words, when mine average more like ten thousand words, and often longer, like you said.
The thing is (and maybe this is influenced by my preferences as a reader, as much as my philosophy as a writer) I really don't want to pause a story in an arbitrary place, for the sake of length.
A chapter is as long as it is; it's as long as it needs to be to express a complete thought.
Because of the way I tell stories, the chapters just tend to be long, because I as a reader AND a writer don't want to step away from it until it's at a natural stopping point.
That said, it occasionally gets a little ridiculous. You asked where I'm at on word count right now. Well, Unquenchable Fire chapter six is currently pushing 10,000 words (and there's a ways to go yet, I think), while the first draft of the next chapter of All Your Base is within spitting distance of 30,000 words.
o_O
That second one might change a little; it needs a rewrite to bring it closer to what I wanted with it, but I doubt it will get shorter.
I worry sometimes that you guys will hesitate to tackle reading something huge like that, but hopefully people are okay with just leaving the tab open on their phone or pc and just working their way through it as time allows.