Hey Folks,
Okay, first, a happy Mother’s Day (tomorrow) to all the moms out there. I hope it’s a great day for you.
Well, it’s getting too hot in the afternoon even to write out in the Hovel, so adjustments are coming.
For those new to the Journal, the Hovel is a rammed-earth structure, basically a cave, with walls that are three feet thick.
I have a box fan out there right now, and I bought a portable swamp cooler that works too, though I have no ready source of water out there for it. But both are noisy enough to wake the dead.
And waking the dead probably is all right for some of the characters in some of my books (grin), but not all of them. So I’ll have to shift back to writing in the early morning or something. That or make the adjustment to write in the house (shudder). I guess we’ll see.
***
Another Word or Two on Cycling
Dean’s post today is good. It’s all about cycling. It’s a rant, but it’s still worth reading. I wrote a response, as follows:
I usually write around 3000 words per day. 5000 is a good day. I cycle back with each scene, so around every 800 words. But at the end of the day, I hit Save and head for the house from my dedicated writing space. (You guys know that as the Hovel.)
The next morning, I sit down, put my fingers on the keyboard and cycle back to read the last scene from the previous day.
I’m reading as a reader (creative subconscious), not an editor, and I allow myself to touch the manuscript as the characters move me. That gets me back into the rhythms of the story, and when I get to the end, I type the next sentence that occurs to me and keep going.
So I guess my version of cycling is a hybrid of Dean’s. But then, it would be. I learned it from him.
The main thing, as he says, is staying in creative voice.
If, as you read over what you’ve written, you’re “looking for” or “finding things” that are “wrong,” that is not cycling, it’s rewriting. It’s the critical voice, and almost every time you do it, it will harm your story.
Trust your subconscious, trust what you’ve learned in classes about sentence structure and grammar and syntax and all the rest, and Just Write.
Leave everything else to the able eyes of your copyeditor. As a writer, your only job is to write.
Here’s a good rule of thumb for you: If you weren’t dipped in the language at birth, and if you don’t copyedit for others (for a fee), don’t attempt to copyedit your own work either.
If you or someone you know is looking for a good copyeditor and a low rate (prime rib at lunch meat prices) see http://harveystanbrough.com/copyediting/.
***
Although I rolled out at around 3:30 this morning, for various reasons I didn’t get out to the Hovel until 3 hours later.
So I started writing at 6:40. By 8 I’d written a little over 1200 words and finished the story I started yesterday. This is where I would normally take a break up to the house.
But today’s Saturday and I have other things to do. So no more writing today.
See you soon.
Of Interest
See “Cycling and the Art of One Clean Draft” at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/cycling-and-the-art-of-one-clean-draft/.
Fiction Words: 1278
Nonfiction Words: 560 (Journal)
So total words for the day: 1838
Writing of A Storyteller (novel and short story collection)
Brought forward……………………………………… 44837
Day 16… 3117 words. Total words to date…… 47954
Day 17… 2680 words. Total words to date…… 50634
Day 18… 1278 words. Total words to date…… 51912
Total fiction words for the month……… 26927
Total fiction words for the year………… 188213
Total nonfiction words for the month… 4270
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 53740
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 241683
Calendar Year 2018 Novels to Date………………………… 3
Calenday Year 2018 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
Calendar Year 2018 Short Stories to Date……… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)………………………………………… 30
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)……………………………………… 5
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……………………………… 182