On Saturday, after the amazing Sue Bradford Edwards and I critiqued each other's stories, I rented a car, drove to West Plains to pick up milord, slept for a few hours, and then drove back to St. Louis--with teenage boy-king and his amazingly tiny new kitten named Yoda.
(When I post pictures, you'll see that Yoda does indeed look exactly like a Jedi Master with syntax issues.)
I know what you're thinking--and you're only partly right. You're thinking that I'm getting ready to apologize for not writing much these past few days.
But actually, considering that the dining room is almost painted and I'm almost sleep-recovered and we there are two almost-brand-new kittens meowling in the house . . . I've done pretty well. Chapter Six is drafted, and I have about 13,700 words.
13,700 very messy, disorganized, ugly, non-rhythmic, and often cliche words.
And I'm getting to the heart of the story now, the crisis, the conflict, the coming-together. I have no idea how to proceed.
So: I'm going to work on the trim in the dining room, find the third Encouraging Email from NaNoWriMo, knit, clean my desk, get the contract out to the tree guys to cut some trees (this is not an easy decision, btw), call our regular handiman to see if he can repla
ce the shower and tile more cheaply than the new handiman, send out a Save The Date email for our November Conference, ask Floyd Cooper for autobiographical information, cook dinner, take a nap, avoid my email inbox . . .You know. Live. So I can write.
Wow. You are a busy chick.
ReplyDeleteNext time you get to fb (which shouldn't be too soon...I'm not tempting you or anything) check out my new photo of my cat. Now that you have kittens, I mean. Cats are so great.
(My cat just jumped up on my chair--how did he know I was writing about him?)
Good luck with the dr and all that but keep plugging along with the novel!!!
You can do it! The middle is hard but you are TOUGH!
OK, I gotta go get this fellow some tuna.
:)
Just so that no one expects too much of me in the future -- I made vague comments on Lynnea's ms in progress (maybe this could lead to this, these would be interesting parallels, be sure to see how author x dealt with that kind of creature in this book.) Lynnea, on the other hand, gave me a marvelous critique.
ReplyDeleteAnd her dining room looks REALLY good.
--SueBE
Hi Lynnea!! I've enjoyed reading your posts here-- and looking at your photos as well. I have a 'stupid' question-- is there a special literary-type reason for counting the words in the novel? Is there a certain amount of words desired for each chapter/for the novel? Just curious, so I have a better idea of what it really means to you (besides the fact that you've written lots of words;) )
ReplyDeleteI hope you have a great day!!
Suzanne
PS: I started a blog page because of having discovered you but haven't had time to do anything with it (including developing a concept ;) I'll let you know when I get that far.
Sweet Suzanne!
ReplyDeleteI have a stupid answer: I count the words because I'm a very compliant person. The NaNoWriMo folks say that it is good to count words because apparently, magically, if you write enough words (20,000 or 40,000 or 50,000)--you have something called a draft. You will hate this draft because it is horrible. But they say that without a horrible draft, you can't do the next thing, which is revise it.
So. . . I count words. :-)
Good luck on your blog--and send me a link!