Words written today: 554
Total words in novel: 88,984
People killed: 0
Mean things done to characters: The king has refused to allow the Light Cavalry troopers to leave the army and return to their normal lives.

I had to really stare at my writing mantra (which is automatically included at the top of the Word template for a new novel chapter) for several seconds before I could start. Also I didn't start writing until 8.00 pm and I knew I wanted to stop at 9.00 pm for the last episode of Life on Mars. But I managed to force out over 500 words, which is something.

I need to get this thing back under way again. I need to finish it. Just finishing a first draft of this would be an achievement.

And then, of course, I'll have to revise it.

Right now several people are talking about revision. I normally say I enjoy that part most, but I must admit, the thought of revising this first draft is a bit daunting. It's definitely going to be a beginning, a muddle and an end. And the end is dodgy, to say the least. I keep writing along, humming a little tune and gazing around looking at anything but the ending.

They don't all die lacks a certain je ne sais quoi somehow.

Anyway, back to revision...

For what it's worth, my writing method is much more like the process matociquala talks about here than jaylake's (which she links to).

I still don't know whether I have a distinctive voice or not. But I do have a more vivid way with words than when I started and an agent said of one novel, "Sadly, Helen's good plain narrative style counts for little these days."

But like matociquala, none of my novels have been totally ditched. The characters and plot are usually salvageable, even if the actual MS isn't. Yes, I know I threw one into the recycling, and it was typewritten and therefore that was my only copy. But the important characters, scenes and plot strands are firmly in my head and can be reused and done much better.

Tags: a legacy of war, finish that novel in 42!, revision, writing progress
Current Mood: wobbling on the edge of depression

Words written today: 1261
Total words in novel: 59534
People killed: 3 (plus some enemy soldiers)
Mean things done to characters: Huw just had to watch his best friends die. :-(

A difficult scene to write, doubly so because I've already written it in flashback in A Legacy of War and I was trying to make it match the later scene. Not entirely successfully. *g*

It has altered a little, now I come to write the thing in full. Need to go and tweak Chapter 13 of A Legacy of War to match at some point!

59,534 / 107,161 (55.6%)

Tags: a legacy of war, a necessary evil, novel_in_90, writing progress
Current Mood: accomplished

Legacies of War is now complete. All thirty five chapters, plus newly written Epilogue, are available here...

For those who have read up to what was available yesterday, the final chapters are here... Hope you enjoy.

And now this is where I reveal that it is the middle volume of a trilogy. *g* However, it was written to stand alone. Anyway, I now have plans to drag The One About the War out of storage, dust it off and see if I can finish it, just for fun. If I do, it will be webbed too as I suspect that it will not be publishable, due to being a fantasy trope that has been done to death.

Also a trope that the reviewer of matociquala's Blood and Iron seems to hate.

But now [...] there is a recognizable subgenre of books that are every bit as derivative as any Tolkien clone.

This is a genre I happen to like. I will cut Crossover Into Fantasy World books quite a bit of slack. More so, actually, than fantasy set wholly in other worlds. But it's obviously not his thing at all.

I, on the other hand, like this particular subgenre so much that I have written (a large chunk of) two of them. And -- oooh, dear! -- the current WIP is another. So he won't like that then, just as he must obviously dislike much of Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Not to mention lots of other good examples.

Oh, well...

Tags: a legacy of war, writing progress, writing reflection
Current Mood: accomplished