Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Stuff and Stuff

The NaNo thing is going to start to get challenging. The basic premise of the story revolves around a scavenger hunt. I have done the 'set up' stuff to get me to the hunting part. Now I have to figure out what it is people are looking for. I have a number of scenes that I would like to incorporate into the story but have to figure out how to get from A to B to C, etc.

The word count, as of now, is 13660. I'd like to get another 5oo done before going to bed. It's after 10pm here, so bed will be soon as I'll be getting up at 5:45am to start it again. I'm really impressed at some of my 'buddies' word counts...they set a challenging pace. I bet that Danielle Ferries, in particular, will have this thing rapped up with a bow by the 25th of the month!

In other news...I'm please to announce that my flash story "Thor's Hammer" has been accepted at 52 Stitches as part of this year's line up. It's I thrill to be presented with talented writers such as: Catherine Gardner, Mercedes M. Yardley, Brenton Tomlinson and Laura Eno. If you haven't done so before, drop in to 52 Stitches for a tasty, dark story each Sunday. With Aaron Polson carefully applying the stitches, you know you won't be dissappointed...

14 comments:

Rebecca Nazar said...

52 Congrats! Good company indeed.

BT said...

Ah, you say the nicest things.

Congrats on your acceptance!

As for NaNo - who said you had to write the scenes in order? All the words count so write the scenes you have in your head and join the dots later.

Laura Eno said...

What BT said. I write scenes out of order as they come to me.

Yay on your story acceptance to 52 stitches! It will be nice to be in your company. :)

Aaron Polson said...

Congrats on a stout word count (and joining the stable over at that little pub, too). The Tolstoy pic w/his quote of the day is going to give me Zeus-nightmares.

Katey said...

I'm so excited to see the 52 Stitches list filling up with all you awesome folk.

Good luck stitching together your scenes, Alan. I've just been through it, as you know, and man, I feel you. You're not alone, at least :D

Fox Lee said...

Congratulations!

Anonymous said...

Gratz Al!

Alan W. Davidson said...

Becca-Thanks!

BT and Laura-Thanks for the adivse on the re-ordering scenes. I'm sort of a linear thinker, but I do what you say if I run into a road block.

Aaron-Thank you sir. I looked a little like Tolstoy after my four months of travel years back.

Katey-Thanks for the support.

Natalie-Thanks a lot.

Anton-No sir, thank you! ;)

Kate Shaw said...

Congrats on the story!

I love your scavenger hunt plot. Do they do any time-traveling to get the items? Their list should include stuff like "dinosaur" and "mind-control device." :)

Cate Gardner said...

Congratulations.

I'm an A through Z kind of girl, but I do love inserting extra scenes when the first draft is done and dusted.

Danielle Birch said...

Awww, thanks Alan. And congrats on 52 Stitches, that's huge news! I hope to submit something soon.

Alan W. Davidson said...

Thanks, ladies, for the nice feedback.

KC, sorry but the hunt is set more or less present day on a "Newfoundland-like" island. I will try mind control next NaNo...

EC said...

Hi Alan,

Good work on your writing.

I'm on my last professional edit(I hope!) with an editor on my mystery book and I can say the first draft is nothing at all like the eigth. I've deleted 95 pages of text(single spaced), but the word count is still 102,231, and it took 3.5 years to complete...though I did have twins during that time.

The scavenger hunt sounds interesting, and I think your A will lead to C, F, and Z. As long as you keep plugging away!

Alan W. Davidson said...

Wow, eight edits! What a massive manuscript, Erin. You've cut out that much and are still over 100k words (watch out Stephen King...)

My night school instructor said that he took 3 years to write his novel (see Ed Kavanagh at left under Newfoundland writers). I think that he worked at a "day job" for 2 years of that.

I think that 3 1/2 years isn't bad since you took time away to have twins...seems like a good excuse to me!