Writing: Sorceress Apprentice
Apr. 23rd, 2017 05:49 pmBefore I talk more about writing including venting/ranting I'm making this post to say I finished the first draft of my NaNo2015 novel, Sorceress Apprentice.
I'd "won" NaNo with it but it was nowhere finished and it was a mess. Scrivener lets me write in a non-linear fashion but I had a jumble of scenes and no coherent timeline to sort them into. At 70k I was ready to toss it all aside.
But it's done. It's a little long at 95.3k but it needs editing and that might come down slightly. I'm still not sure about the b plot and might lose some of that.
The story is in essence what I'd planned but became something different from what I had envisaged. There are things I'll need to edit because they're no longer true or as true or as important now the worldbuilding and relationship development is complete.
Unfortunately I haven't had much time to appreciate to celebrate the achievement since I wrote the last blank scene placeholder just as I got sick. And there's a long way to go with the editing later. And it's not as if I've ever completed editing my other novel, "Juliet" let alone published it.
I learnt a lot about how I can write 5k in a day if I'm motivated and know what I'm doing. I still need room to discover the story as I write but I recognise that with longer works like this a better outline would have helped me not get bogged down and have to lose a couple of scenes I'd already written and significantly rewrite others.
So I'm happy at what I accomplished. But I'm also not hopeful about doing anything further with it. It's a good story, I think, will be more so if I edit. But whether it's a story that will ever be made public in any form and appreciated in some way is another question.
I'd "won" NaNo with it but it was nowhere finished and it was a mess. Scrivener lets me write in a non-linear fashion but I had a jumble of scenes and no coherent timeline to sort them into. At 70k I was ready to toss it all aside.
But it's done. It's a little long at 95.3k but it needs editing and that might come down slightly. I'm still not sure about the b plot and might lose some of that.
The story is in essence what I'd planned but became something different from what I had envisaged. There are things I'll need to edit because they're no longer true or as true or as important now the worldbuilding and relationship development is complete.
Unfortunately I haven't had much time to appreciate to celebrate the achievement since I wrote the last blank scene placeholder just as I got sick. And there's a long way to go with the editing later. And it's not as if I've ever completed editing my other novel, "Juliet" let alone published it.
I learnt a lot about how I can write 5k in a day if I'm motivated and know what I'm doing. I still need room to discover the story as I write but I recognise that with longer works like this a better outline would have helped me not get bogged down and have to lose a couple of scenes I'd already written and significantly rewrite others.
So I'm happy at what I accomplished. But I'm also not hopeful about doing anything further with it. It's a good story, I think, will be more so if I edit. But whether it's a story that will ever be made public in any form and appreciated in some way is another question.