Progress report

[clarentine]

1961 new words yesterday, which will sbustitute for the scene I'm cutting (sap--ew) and then some. The subconscious remembered what plot was. Hallelujah!

Best news yet: I found a way to incorporate a ponor. The scenery grows all around me. The Sapree canyons came alive as I wrote them, and the hills of central Vellutira are becoming more real with every word. One of these days, given the chance, I want to see this landscape I'm paraphrasing. (Did you know there's a grant to allow (SFF?) authors to do just that? I think it was fjm who mentioned it on her blog recently. Now there's a grant I want to win!)

Research in the last couple of days was mostly looking for photos of the karst landscapes of the Balkan peninsula. I found some lovely images of Dubrovnik, which, while that city doesn't quite match up to Clarent, will still enrich my descriptions of the Vellutiran capital and ensure it resembles neither Guaymarien nor the Sapree cities. I'm still using a gorgeous image of a flooded ponor and the hills and trees around it as a visual mnemonic when I'm on my laptop at home; you can bet that little fold in the hills will appear somewhere in Break.

Comments

[footlingagain.livejournal.com]

A load of new words and remembering how to plot - that's a good day!

Good luck with your application for the research grant ;-)

[clarentine]

As long as I don't average the words across a week or so, it's a good figure. *g*

How's your own work coming? Making forward progress?

[footlingagain.livejournal.com]

I've stopped averaging my words out over the month, it was too depressing. Now I'm just doing the average for the days that I write. Cheating, but I don't care *g* It's still not up to scratch!

But work is coming along, thanks. Slowly. I've got one short story that's 98% there, just needs a final polish and a couple of vagueries sharpening up.

Then there's the one I'm working on at the moment. I've done a rough draft and am at the 'it just needs tightening up' (= it needs a total rewrite) stage.

I will knock it into shape, though, given enough caffeine and chocolate. And a few long walks *g*

[clarentine]

Not cheating - anything that keeps you moving forward without slitting a vein or two is not cheating. >:-)