For some reason Blogger has been publishing my posts in reverse order, which is odd. Hopefully it won't do that this time.
I have reached 100,000 words - hurrah! And, more importantly, I have written the very last page of the book. This is great. I know the finishing point I am heading for now.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Thoughts
Well, I've written about 2,500 words today and I'm trying to get to 100,000 by the end of the day. It is definitely achievable - we'll see. I have a to-do list of scenes and chapters to work on that is fairly overwhelming, and I have the whole crucial end of the book to work out too. I would really like to have a finished first draft that I am happy with by the end of April. That's my goal at the moment, now that I know it is going to run over the projected hundred thousand words (although I'm going to cut it down to 80 - 100,000 in the editing process!).
That's me until the end of April, then. Head down, focused and working hard. Goodbye life! No, not really. But to some extent.
I am a very visual person, and I'm finding that quite difficult while working on this book. One of the reasons I liked working on magazines and travel guides was that you had a visual product fairly quickly - the designer laid up the pages and I dropped the text in, and I could see vaguely how it was going to look. With the magazine, especially, I had a finished product every month that I could point to and say 'that's it'. With this book, I haven't even printed anything out yet, so there's nothing concrete to latch on to. I wonder if there is a more visual way of working that would spice things up for me a bit (metaphorically)? I get so tired of looking at black text on a white screen all day. Even though I have a vivid, colourful style of writing, on the page it's still just black on white.
Anyone have any bright ideas? I know it's a weird question. Actually, one thing I've heard of an author doing is making a mock-up of his cover to pin to an inspiration board, so he has a 'finished product' to focus on when he looks up. Hmmm ...
Okay, back to getting that final 500 words.
That's me until the end of April, then. Head down, focused and working hard. Goodbye life! No, not really. But to some extent.
I am a very visual person, and I'm finding that quite difficult while working on this book. One of the reasons I liked working on magazines and travel guides was that you had a visual product fairly quickly - the designer laid up the pages and I dropped the text in, and I could see vaguely how it was going to look. With the magazine, especially, I had a finished product every month that I could point to and say 'that's it'. With this book, I haven't even printed anything out yet, so there's nothing concrete to latch on to. I wonder if there is a more visual way of working that would spice things up for me a bit (metaphorically)? I get so tired of looking at black text on a white screen all day. Even though I have a vivid, colourful style of writing, on the page it's still just black on white.
Anyone have any bright ideas? I know it's a weird question. Actually, one thing I've heard of an author doing is making a mock-up of his cover to pin to an inspiration board, so he has a 'finished product' to focus on when he looks up. Hmmm ...
Okay, back to getting that final 500 words.
Sigh ...
This image of a Zimbabwean woman proudly displaying the ink-stained finger that shows she has voted is from Reuters/Howard Burditt.
The MDC leader has just announced that he is NOT in talks with Mugabe to negotiate a transition of power. So we're still waiting to see what the government is really plotting behind closed doors.
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