Story Title: A Necessary Evil
Words revised skimmed over and added to draft last Tuesday: 5449
Words total: 20,625
Other:

I decided against rewriting anything and merely invoked the Power Of the Pointy Brackets regarding the first scene. The comment says:

<<Change to Mark's POV and do a joining bit^[1]with some highlights of the journey.>>

However, for the first time I feel this novel might have legs after all. It's taken until Chapter 4 for it to hit its stride, but I felt that the scene in the library where Mark and Huw meet the prince and the king did work. Hurrah! I feel somewhat heartened.

Also I decided this week to try using small cards to summarise each scene. I know I have various computer applications from Word's outline feature via an Excel spreadsheet to the BrainBox Mindmapping software, but I think it's worth experimenting with something that's actually tangible. I've been using flashcards to help me learn my Welsh and having something physical does seem to help. Anyway, we shall see...

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^[1] More correctly called a "narrative summary" :) What the first part of this chapter needs is a touch of what Ursula Le Guin calls in Steering the Craft "crowding and leaping".

Tags: a_necessary_evil, writing, writing_progress
Current Mood: accomplished

Story Title: A Necessary Evil
Words revisedtoday: 9178
Words now in Chapter 2: 4651
Words now in Chapter 3: 7243
Words total: 15,176
Reason for stopping: Time for dinner
Other:

I've just lightly whizzed through the rest of Chapter 2 and all of Chapter 2. The prose now seems awfully blah, but I'm ploughing on. I need to get the story content right, then I'll enhance it and try to make it more betterer. To use a photographic analogy, I'll grab the shot, then I'll enhance it in Photoshop. It's amazing what you can do in Photoshop. It's amazing what you can do in the rewrite.

Tags: a_necessary_evil, writing, writing_progress
Current Mood: dissatisfied, but plodding on...

Story Title: A Necessary Evil
Words revised and added to draft today: 2740
Words now in Chapter 2: 2740
Words total: 8233
Reason for stopping: Getting hungry. Time to eat dinner. Also done enough for today.
Mean things done to characters: Killed some people horribly in battle.
Other:

Still not quite used to the Asus Eee's keyboard. There's a bigger stretch to the right hand Shift key than on the desktop computer's keyboard, so I keep missing and hitting the up arrow instead. But I'm sure I'll get used to it. At least using the Eee means that I can write away from the desktop machine and the temptations of the Internet. :)

Tags: a_necessary_evil, writing, writing_progress
Current Mood: accomplished

Story Title: A Necessary Evil
Words revised and added to draft today: 2211
Words now in Chapter 1: 5493
Words total: 5493
Reason for stopping: End of chapter 1 and time to get ready to go to work.
Mean things done to characters: Monsters and a poisoned bite.
Other:

Other than adding a couple of sentences and replacing a few words in the new opening scene, this was mostly just a case of reading through and deciding that it's OK. In fact this is where I have to guard against thinking, "Oooo! This is so easy! I'll have the whole novel polished off in a few weeks at this rate."

Very soon we're going to hit the dodgy parts where whole scenes will need scrapping and replacing.

Tags: a_necessary_evil, writing, writing_progress
Current Mood: accomplished