Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Writing & Such

First the writing update:

Ghost Dancer
Status: 2nd edit
Word count: 98,300 (Not worth keeping track much closer than to the hundreds, since it's fluxing daily in both up and down dimensions)
Scenes: 52
Scenes edited: New: 6, Total: 10
Words spell check doesn't know: nutjob, stranglehold, sympathizers, trooped
Words I'm surprised spell check does know: nexon - seriously, did I teach it this and not remember? Because I'll be flabbergasted if nexon is a real word outside of Ghost Dancer itself.
The Good: Things are moving along surprisingly quickly thus far.
The Bad: Things are about to slow up, as I just hit the first of the inserted material which will need not just editing, but actual new wordage.
The Ugly: All I can see in my writing right now is commas, cliches, and uninspired generalities. The more I read, the worse it looks. So deep breaths and remind myself that people liked this. Complete strangers have liked this enough to call foreign countries and ask for more chapters. So there has got to be something there, even if I'm not seeing it right now.


A Country for Children
Status: 1st draft, collaborative
Word count: approx. 11, 523 (I'm on the wrong computer to check)
New words today: Unknown because I didn't think to count until the end.

Task o' the day: Hunting up names on the cheat sheet and inserting them in L's sections, as she tends to put in () and keep right on going when she can't remember a name. Which gets confusing over time.



Robbie is off at an enrichment class this evening. It's a free set of classes (3 in all) offered through the Gifted & Talented program here, where the graduate students of the local teachers' college who are getting certified in G&T get to gain some experience with kids while still in training. The 4th graders are doing politics. Apparently Robbie will be finding out about the Presidential candidates. He's supposed to pick which candidate he prefers (I'll be interested to see what information they give them), and then do up a campaign poster for next week's class. I'll also be interested to see how his political knowledge stands up against the other 4th graders. I've talked about this year's Presidential run with the boys quite a bit, but have stayed away from strong expressions of preference, trying to stick to more strictly factual information (though I'm afraid both boys are pretty clear that I don't think highly of W.).

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nexon appears to be a corporation. Maybe that's what it's accepting.

What I was blabbering about when I talked to you this past weekend, turns out to be a known effect: Gravitomagnetism
It also turns out that it is far too weak for most practical application: you need to be spinning the mass of a sun at relativistic speeds for it to be appreciable. :-/

Elizabeth McClung said...

well, I like reading this, even if it makes me feel like a lazy sloth because I am not posting same.

Personally, I have to say, that hell was changing several of the characters names in different drafts and then trying to track down ALL the names and make sure they are ALL consistent in ALL the pages of the final draft (note to self: artistic integrity is all well and good but taken to an extreme it leads to big pain in the ass for editing)

Perpetual Beginner said...

Bill: That must be it, because I only discovered where WriteWay hid the spell check this week. It was very weird to have it flag "sympathizers" and pass "Nexon". I think you're right that it's capitalized, but in the relevent chapter it's a course title "Nexon Physics", so it's fine with the computer.

Elizabeth: If you're a sloth, there's no hope for me at all. I've initiated these updates because they keep me honest!

I'm given hope on the name thing because Janet Kagan, one of my favorite authors of all time, once commented that after one round of name revisions, she discovered that she had a character having an argument with himself for several pages. If she did it, then it's not so bad that I do it sometimes.

Veralidaine said...

Hey-

I have a totally off topic question for you. I saw your comment on Screw Bronze about the shirt "I'm remyelinating and it's getting on my nerves." I mentioned it to a coworker with MS and he says he must have it! Where does one buy such a thing?

-Sandy

Perpetual Beginner said...

Veralidaine - The T-shirts were (if I remember correctly) put out by the Center for Brain Research in Rochester, NY about twenty years ago. I'll ask my Dad this weekend if anyone is still making them - he's got connections in pretty much every MS organization going, so if someone still is, he'll know about it. Failing that, we'll have that dig through the back closet and see if we can come up with more than one shirt.

Veralidaine said...

That would be so rad! You rock. He will be so thrilled if he can get his hands on one- just the other day before I saw that post my coworker was complaining that all the MS shirts say things like "MS Sucks" that are so negative and not at all funny.