Progress with I, Fenris

Finally. I have made some progress on I, Fenris. It is not as grand in scope, scale or skill as I, Odysseus but then again nothing I do may top that. But I have passed the half way mark and the final frames and themes are coming together. It will be done soon but this one must be refined more than most to work properly. Progress is still good. Very good.

Off Again And On Again

Making slow progress on I, Fenris though I had to start over. Its rather slow. Did some good writing for minor scriptlets for the pushpush class. However, on the whole, writing wise it has been a pretty slow month. Goal wise, I'm fine as long as I finish the Unfood script by the end of the year, which I plan to start tomorrow.

Writing Plan

Given the choice between doing it fast or doing it right, I now choose to do it right. Which means throwing out everything I've done on I, Fenris and starting over from scratch. And it means hand writing it, just like I did I, Odysseus.

Another Plan, Another Dollar

So, I'd say what's the point of writing another plan except, that's honestly kind of the whole point of this blog.

I think the counsel I received about doing too much was a good thing but doing too little won't do either...so I'm going to focus on one project at a time, but try to work very hard on it while I'm working on it.

Long term, that's not a healthy writing career, but whatever I do now has to shine. *I* have to be proud of it even if or when no one else cares about it, to get my rhythm back if nothing else.

Oh...and no more writing workshops. It was an opportunity to network, but didn't work. I got valuable feedback, but I also got way too much emotional tsunami as well. At this point, I need to be responsible for both creating, promoting and perfecting my craft, because no one else is going to do it for me.

I might have some help along the way, and I certainly have had some help along the way, but they can't do the writing for me.

Writing Plan

So I have been told that one should write to a particular reader....in this case, I think it should be the person who has still been following this blog...I speak, of course, to you MetaBlogStats.....whatever the hell you are. Unless, of course, one's ideal reader is one's self, but somehow that seems...masturbatory or something...

So where was I? So, the writing....I am nearly 40, so I figure that the amount of time its going to take me to not write Vogon Poetry/Michael Bay level soul melting (not in a good way) prose is probably 2-3 years. I mean, when you have to second guess yourself every paragraph as to whether or not you suck, I really think you shouldn't be sending things to editors...

But time waits for no man, so I'm going to be focusing on poetry which is according to others between average and somewhat actually good, which makes the improving into "making me money and renown so I can conqueror the world" level talent more likely. So I'm going to be working on I, Fenris for Jan....

I'm also going to begin working on the script for Unfood, whilst still reading books and working on the Writer Jail product. So far I have type 3000 out of 5000 non sucky prose.

We'll see as things go from there :)

Writer Jail

So the same mechanism that I've been using to progress my production of crap, is also usable to measure my skill improvement. Specifically, one of the tangible suggestions from the Crushing was typing out the words from decent non sucktacular stories. So instead of producing more gallons of crap, I can just type 1000 words a day from stories that aren't. Right now I'm using the Hugo package. In the interest of being kind to myself, I'm giving myself a reboot.

1000.

I need to do 1000 more today.

There is a small chance out of jail early, I'm rewriting Unfood a third time trying to use merely the things they pointed out, though I'm writing it from scratch. It looks pretty good, but then again so did the second version (also written from scratch.) I may not be able to detect crap.

Oh and if this seems negative, its because I like to be able to record the truth and thanks to the lovely stat counter, I know that no one but a blog counting bot actually pays attention to this, so I don't have to conveniently leave some things out like I do on my family blog. :)

Truth for posterity that won't give a shit and all that. :)

Go to Jail. Do Not Pass Go.

So, word count doesn't matter much if you're producing reams and reams of crap. Better 10 words that actually matter than 10000 that don't.

I'd noticed the phenomena before, but thought it was what I was largely writing ABOUT not the way I was writing or thought I just needed to spell check or grammar check more (I still do) but the reason I wear through readers like you might wear down teeth is because I suck. :) Yes. I said it, I'm an awful writer, especially given how long I've been doing this.

Bradbury said that it took a million words before you became a professional, and here I am at probably what...700000 and I bore people to tears?

Well I'm not giving it up but its back to basics first, writing in a way people find more comprehensible.

I'll keep this up but it will likely be boring for a while, grammar and such. I am going to rewrite Unfood because the idea is too good to let linger, but it will likely be more 'Oops, they rejected it.'

Might start putting rejection letters here though, that might be amusing to look back at if I ever do write something non-abominable...:)