Sunday Summary and #ROW80 Update

  1. Roll your clocks back people!  Daylight Savings Time is officially OVER.  Thank you God!  Being not a morning person, it matters a WHOLE lot more to me that the sun is UP (or at least coming up) when I get out of bed on work days than it still being up when I get off (because I don’t DO anything that requires sun when I get off).  Darkness equals sleepytime, not haul ones ass out of bed and go run or lift weights time (which I’ve still somehow done ANYWAY, but still).
  2. I’m drinking my tea and mulling over plotty thoughts for DOTH this morning.  I realized the other day that I’d laid some seeds for a very handy reader misdirect, which I worked on implementing yesterday.  And it’s a good one.  BUT, it also means that one very important detail related to the SPP hasn’t been woven in as effectively as it needs to be, and I haven’t yet sorted out how to pull off both.  I suspect I’m just going to push through as is and I’ll have to sort out out in revisions.  It’s funny…the first half of this book is rock solid as is.  I expect to have to do very little to it in revisions.  But the second half has been…for me, largely pantsed in a lot of ways.  Not the way I’m used to working anymore.  But I just have not had or made the time to do the deep immersion in lore that I wanted in order to fuel all my world building because it would’ve slowed me down and I wanted to get down the frigging story.  So there’s been a lot of starting and stopping and deleting and reworking and ditching and rewriting in this second half.  I think the end result will still work, but it’s going to require more clean up than I’m used to.  And I still have to go back and seed more of the world building details.  Mostly in terms of the physical world.  The rest has been very organic.
  3. NaNo has been going quite well this week.  I clocked just over 6k since Thursday.  I’ve been spending a LOT of time with the ladies at Writechat.net.  I do not expect this trend of 2k days to continue ad nauseum, but I’ll certainly take it while I’ve got it.  It would be awesome to finish DOTH BEFORE the end of November to give myself a week or so to do a read through and clean up before sending it to betas.  Not gonna hold my breath on that one, but it would be pretty awesome if I could pull it off.  12 and a half scenes to go until The End.
  4. So yesterday I went to try out the local writer’s group.  I confess to a bit of trepidation on going because my past experiences with such groups have not been what you could call positive.  There are apparently about thirty folks affiliated, though only about 7 were there yesterday (it was game day and apparently several folks went to watch the Dawgs get spanked by Texas A and M).  Really nice group of folks.  Lots of short fiction writers, and some marvelous voices for southern style short stories.  Not sure if anyone else is published outside magazines and short story venues.  No one else writing romance (which I expected), but there was one gentleman who apparently does some YA UF stuff and another woman who writes horror whom someone else I know has been telling me I needed to meet.  She and I hit it off quite well and had lunch after the meeting, which was lovely.  I don’t know whether I’ll end up sticking with the group or not.  It seems to be (as many are) the kind of place where you bring in a few pages, read, get feedback, which is hardly useful to a novelist and certainly not how I work.  They also apparently sometimes do assignments, which is of no interest to me because, of course, novelist, and professional at that.  Don’t have the time or inclination to add something to my already full writing plate.  But I’ll keep going for a while, meet some of the others, and perhaps get involved in some of their community level writing projects.   Maybe.  We’ll see.  Either way, was nice to meet some other folks who are local.
  5. I feel like there should be other news, but mostly my head is entirely in the book, so I’m going to get back to it.

8 thoughts on “Sunday Summary and #ROW80 Update

  1. Wow! Way to go with such a productive week.
    I’ve been wanting to find a writing group in my area, but I live in a somewhat rural community and I don’t have time to invest in driving to the city just now. Be sure to keep us posted on your group and maybe what you would find helpful in a writing critique group.

    1. Well I personally would love to find a group that’s specifically my genre. Not happening in small town Mississippi. But that aside, I think it would be more helpful if writers groups focused on craft, maybe did a group study of a particular craft book over time, talking about how to improve things, educating themselves so that they’re all on the same page, using the same language. Twice a month critique of two and three pages at a time doesn’t actually teach anybody anything (unless you’re specifically geared toward short stories, which I’m not). The thing is, I don’t need a CRITIQUE group, per sae. I have crit partners with whom I work very well. I want a writers group that is more social.

      1. Kait-
        I think your plan for a social group of writers that met to discuss craft is excellent. I think that sort of group has more potential to help us grow as writers than a straight critique group. One: some readers don’t mesh with a writer’s style and those critiques aren’t very helpful to a writer. Two, it creates a common starting point, as you mentioned.
        How about starting an electronic one? I’m in!
        –Sharon

  2. Congrats on the great start to NaNoWriMo. Good stuff! I’ve attended a small writers’ group for years. It has become more about encouraging one another and developing our friendships, though our writing and writing-related endeavours have gone in different directions. Hopefully, you’ll build some relationships that will help in your writing process. Anyhoo, have a great week. (Thanks again for developing ROW80. I love it!)

  3. I’m going to miss daylight in the evenings, but YAY on daylight in the mornings when I’m having to put my cats back in their cage.

    Congrats, Kait, on a very productive week. I hope you keep up that momentum. 🙂

  4. I have so many great online friends, but sometimes I think I need to find a local writers group. Being an introvert, it’s really hard for me to get out there and do that. I’m interested to hear how it turns out. Have a great week, Kait!

Leave a Reply to Julie Glover Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.