Dissertation Update
Okay so it's been a few weeks since lectures ended. With them went the best part of the course, the fiction workshops. For a week or so I floundered a bit and felt lacking in direction. Then I realised the obvious: The only person who is going to motivate me is me. Charlotte, family and friends can nag and that's awesome... but it only goes so far. Anyway. I made myself this...
I'm sitting at 9k words, which represents three chapters of the novel. By the end of this week I need to have written another 3k. The complete dissertation will be 15k prose and 5k commentary.
I have to admit to liking the schedule. It gives me the structure I need to guilt myself, should I fail to meet my target word counts. I also highly recommend a desktop countdown telling you exactly how many days are left until the deadline!
So how's it going? Quite well I think. I've got the plot outlined (a bullet-point document of many levels) and I'm still really enjoying the story. The next part is going to be really fun to write and I've been looking forward to it for quite a while. The last couple of weeks have seen a few logic kinks ironed out and a shift in the themes of the story away from abstract ideas and more towards something people can relate to. One of my course-mates put me in touch with her nephew (who sits right in the middle of my target age-range) and he gave me some great feedback too.
We've also organised our own workshops to continue where the official ones left off. It's great to have a group of knowledgable and talented people to review your work and bring you down when you need it 
ONWARD!
Rat’s Tail
That's the working title of the project I've set myself. I've got a world history. I've got a piece in the anthology that sets up a shit ton of questions. I've got another piece of back story. I've got the beginnings of an interview with a character who probably won't even be in the story much.
I don't have much in the way of characters. I don't have an overarching plot. I've only got a vague family tree.
But I do have priorities!
Update!
It's been nearly two months since I last updated. The lack of classes over the summer combined with a general winding down has resulted in less writing and more reading and even more thinking about writing. In short I've been relaxing and making notes. I keep promising that I'm going to write more and be more disciplined but it's just words... I mean it's empty promises to myself. The mood to write comes and goes. I've have been writing, but I'd be lieing if I said I was writing every day.
So... Current Projects... I've got two large projects in mind at the moment. I've found that a lot of the short pieces and exerts that appeared in my writing practice lately can be slotted into one of the two worlds. What they're lacking at the moment are overall plots but ideas continue to emerge and they're taking me in some interesting directions. I don't want to talk too much about them yet as they're likely to change as they mature but I'm finding that one of the most interesting things is trying to work out how the world in which I set one story can evolve from England as it stands now. I've been talking to knowledgable friends and I'm hoping to have a recent history timeline done by the end of this weekend.
It's only two months till I'm due to start classes again and I'm damned well going to have something significant written by then!
Treading Water
It's been just over two weeks since I handed in my last assignment. In this time I've been getting the odd job done here and there, sorting out my flat and generally relaxing. The one thing I haven't done a whole lot of is writing. I had such grand plans for this summer and now they're seeming less like plans and more like good intentions. And as I'm sure you'll agree, good intentions are a waste of time without the determination to back them up.
So here's the new plan. I'm going to write every day for an hour. I don't care about what or for what project, specifics can come later. The important thing is the actual writing. It starts today.
All Done!
That's it. Done. The lot. For this year... I handed in my last assignment yesterday. I'm quite proud of both scripts, but I suspect they won't get especially great marks. The subject matter o each is less than conventional.
But what this really means is that until 11th October I have nothing to do but work towards my personal writing goals. To start with that means more short stories. I've got no end of ideas for those and I'm also considering starting a novel. My anthology piece is a 2500 word (dare I say) fragment of a larger piece that doesn't exist yet. Anyway it'll be an interesting learning experience. The first thing to do is make a list of all my ideas, pick one and then just go for it!
This is going to be a good summer!
Onward!
The Home Straight
My scripts are all but written. The only thing left to do is make them good. I've got three full days and one evening. I'm confident I can make them at least semi-tolerable though! So this is it. Monday is my final deadline. After that it's four months of freedom and working on stuff that I can enjoy.
Making Progress
Time it be ticking away. We're now less than three weeks from our big script deadline and also the end of term. I've just booked three extra days off work to get my stuff done (one this week, one next week and one the week after). That means one three day week, another three day week and then one four day week, followed by yet another four day week! Yay! Of course all these days off are going to be spent working on writerly thing but still yay!
As far script progress goes I've been pretty much ignoring the 30 minute script for now. I know I need to throw myself into it and get the damned thing written but I'm also much more confident that I can make my 10 minute script good. I really want to get that one into a better position and focus on one thing at a time. That's what a little positive feedback will do for you. I've got all my on paper edits done now. I'm now in the progress of copying them up into my CeltX project and then go through the comments and feedback from other people. After that it needs a big old proof read and we'll see how the dialogue works out. Dialogue is hard, much harder than I expected. But still... three day week! Yay! Onward!
Also Hay this weekend! Big yay!
Starting Over
The sound of an oncoming storm. The dense, cardiac beat of the double kick. The epic chords. The music crashes over me. It soothes. But it doesn't dampen. I need this, this freak out. I need it to work, to rant to get my goddamned arse in gear. And the music helps. I ride with it.
Okay. Melodrama done. I've got six weeks till my script deadline. My idea is dead. I've not had any passion for it for at least a month and it really shows. The characters are empty and we've only now been shown what a good treatment should actually look like... So. Starting over. A new idea, that isn't really new. It's been bubbling away in my mind for a while now. But the thing is it isn't a story. It's a character, which is where all good stories really need to start.
Six weeks. 30 minutes. One resurrected undead overlord with a sharp suit. Let's do this thing.
Character/Script
I still feel as I'm still stuck on this whole script thing. I've got an idea of what I want to achieve but my story idea has changed to the point that my main character may no longer be my main character. He seems to be the only one who doesn't grow or change in my head any more. I guess that may be because I never really liked him very much... and if I don't like him then there's no reason for anyone else to. I'm tempted to steal personalities from my friend's at work. I think cue cards may be the answer... We shall see tomorrow. I need to take a break from being sociable and get my head down... Ugh... /ends.
Subscribe
Tweets
- No public Twitter messages.
Now Reading
}
Music
Photos
Links
- Bookworm Blues
- Dark Fiction Magazine
- Floor to Ceiling Books
- GavReads
- Gentle, Parochial Horror
- Mulholland Books
- NanoWriMo
- NextRead
- Only the Best Sci Fi
- Schizopolitan
- Scrivener
- The Eloquent Page
- Walker of Worlds
- Words and Pictures
Bluster
Categories
Archive
- November 2011 (3)
- October 2011 (1)
- May 2011 (2)
- April 2011 (2)
- January 2011 (1)
- August 2010 (1)
- July 2010 (1)
- June 2010 (1)
- May 2010 (1)
- April 2010 (2)
- March 2010 (2)
- January 2010 (2)
- December 2009 (1)
- November 2009 (2)
- October 2009 (3)
- September 2009 (8)
- July 2009 (2)
- June 2009 (1)
- May 2009 (5)
- October 2008 (2)
- September 2008 (2)
- August 2008 (2)
- June 2008 (4)
- May 2008 (6)
- April 2008 (4)
- March 2008 (12)
- February 2008 (12)
- January 2008 (16)
- December 2007 (16)
- November 2007 (17)
- October 2007 (42)
- September 2007 (36)
- August 2007 (21)
First Draft Complete
I'm officially declaring the first draft of my dissertation prose complete. Five fairly long chapters and 15433 (according to Scrivener) words later and I'm relaxing a little. Tomorrow I can start editing.
The plan is...
That should about cover it.
Onward!