wherein Liz attempts to outsource her motivation
Okay, clearly self-motivation is not working fast enough, so.
I am trying to get my WIP Big Bang draft into shape to send to my betas. Saturday evening is my absolute down-to-the-wire final deadline, but I would strongly prefer to get this done sooner -- tonight or sometime on Friday.
So I'm going to post every hour(ish) with a current word count and general progress report, in the hope that this will be enough external motivation to kick me into flow state instead of what I've been doing, which is progress by about three paragraphs per day. *headdesk*
As of ~5pm EDT, the story is at ~18,600 words and I am still bashing the space battle into functional prose instead of its current 'and then and then and then' state.
-----
~6pm, EDT: 19,050 words, still fighting the stupid space battle.
The problem with translating 'and then and then and then' into actual narrative is A) I elided a LOT of details in the rough version (intentionally; that is what it is FOR) which means now I have to actually come up with them (although not while ALSO coming up with the general shape/movement of the story, since those bones are what the 'and then and then' consists of), and B) I always wind up 'and then and then'ing in vaguely omniscient third person present tense, but the story is in tight-POV third person past tense. This requires some tweaking. *wry*
Anyway, back to the salt mines!
-----
~7pm, ~19,400 words.
It would have been more, but I ran into a section where my rough draft had something completely factually inaccurate and I had to figure out a replacement that would serve a similar narrative function. *sigh*
And I think I'm going to have similar trouble in the next hour, because I've hit a place where my draft reads, more or less, 'quick summary of events in [place], this is where Character Y's Big Damn Heroes moment should kick off,' without any details about what that Big Damn Heroes moment should be, nor how to logistically pull it off. *headdesk*
Why do I do this to myself???
-----
~8pm, no change.
I took an hour off for dinner... and also got interrupted by Mormon missionaries, which was MUCH less intentional, but whatever. *wry*
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~9pm, 19,800 words.
I got past one part that I thought would be ridiculously melodramatic and impossible to pull off, and it was... surprisingly not? I mean, I DID lay setup for it several sections earlier, though I think I should probably make that even more pointed on my next revision pass-through.
I also cheated and completely elided the Big Damn Heroes thing because hello, SPACE BATTLE STILL GOING ON HERE. It turns out 'spaceships attack!' is a pretty good functional equivalent of 'ninjas break down the door!' when it comes to abruptly getting out of narrative corners. :p
-----
~10pm, 20,250 words.
It would have been more, but I got ambitious and spent about twenty minutes looking up some basic stuff about orbital mechanics because occasionally I have delusions that scientific verisimilitude is relevant to space operas. *wry*
Anyway, I think I am nearly done with phase one of the space battle (aka, ships and more ships) and will knock off for the night once I finish that. Tomorrow we move on to phase two (aka, boarding and negotiations), and then the aftermath (during which I will have to finally detail the logistics of the Big Damn Heroes thing I keep cheating my way around *sigh*).
-----
Okay, done for the night at 20,400 words and ~10:45pm.
Tomorrow, the rest of the space battle PLUS an exciting and dramatic cameo from the crew of the one and only (haha) Enterprise!
...
These space battle scenes are ridiculously long and are going to completely unbalance the story unless I go back and edit in a bunch more stuff in the medical plot. Which I should do. I also need to edit in more character stuff and foreshadowing for the eventual space battle plot so the story doesn't feel so much like it completely jumps genres halfway through, whoops.
(The space battle is necessary because of the original prompt that is the reason I am writing the story at all. I just kind of... got really carried away with the medical plot, so now the fic has two plots that I can hopefully get to work together instead of just kind of lying there giving each other weird looks. *headdesk*)
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
I am trying to get my WIP Big Bang draft into shape to send to my betas. Saturday evening is my absolute down-to-the-wire final deadline, but I would strongly prefer to get this done sooner -- tonight or sometime on Friday.
So I'm going to post every hour(ish) with a current word count and general progress report, in the hope that this will be enough external motivation to kick me into flow state instead of what I've been doing, which is progress by about three paragraphs per day. *headdesk*
As of ~5pm EDT, the story is at ~18,600 words and I am still bashing the space battle into functional prose instead of its current 'and then and then and then' state.
-----
~6pm, EDT: 19,050 words, still fighting the stupid space battle.
The problem with translating 'and then and then and then' into actual narrative is A) I elided a LOT of details in the rough version (intentionally; that is what it is FOR) which means now I have to actually come up with them (although not while ALSO coming up with the general shape/movement of the story, since those bones are what the 'and then and then' consists of), and B) I always wind up 'and then and then'ing in vaguely omniscient third person present tense, but the story is in tight-POV third person past tense. This requires some tweaking. *wry*
Anyway, back to the salt mines!
-----
~7pm, ~19,400 words.
It would have been more, but I ran into a section where my rough draft had something completely factually inaccurate and I had to figure out a replacement that would serve a similar narrative function. *sigh*
And I think I'm going to have similar trouble in the next hour, because I've hit a place where my draft reads, more or less, 'quick summary of events in [place], this is where Character Y's Big Damn Heroes moment should kick off,' without any details about what that Big Damn Heroes moment should be, nor how to logistically pull it off. *headdesk*
Why do I do this to myself???
-----
~8pm, no change.
I took an hour off for dinner... and also got interrupted by Mormon missionaries, which was MUCH less intentional, but whatever. *wry*
-----
~9pm, 19,800 words.
I got past one part that I thought would be ridiculously melodramatic and impossible to pull off, and it was... surprisingly not? I mean, I DID lay setup for it several sections earlier, though I think I should probably make that even more pointed on my next revision pass-through.
I also cheated and completely elided the Big Damn Heroes thing because hello, SPACE BATTLE STILL GOING ON HERE. It turns out 'spaceships attack!' is a pretty good functional equivalent of 'ninjas break down the door!' when it comes to abruptly getting out of narrative corners. :p
-----
~10pm, 20,250 words.
It would have been more, but I got ambitious and spent about twenty minutes looking up some basic stuff about orbital mechanics because occasionally I have delusions that scientific verisimilitude is relevant to space operas. *wry*
Anyway, I think I am nearly done with phase one of the space battle (aka, ships and more ships) and will knock off for the night once I finish that. Tomorrow we move on to phase two (aka, boarding and negotiations), and then the aftermath (during which I will have to finally detail the logistics of the Big Damn Heroes thing I keep cheating my way around *sigh*).
-----
Okay, done for the night at 20,400 words and ~10:45pm.
Tomorrow, the rest of the space battle PLUS an exciting and dramatic cameo from the crew of the one and only (haha) Enterprise!
...
These space battle scenes are ridiculously long and are going to completely unbalance the story unless I go back and edit in a bunch more stuff in the medical plot. Which I should do. I also need to edit in more character stuff and foreshadowing for the eventual space battle plot so the story doesn't feel so much like it completely jumps genres halfway through, whoops.
(The space battle is necessary because of the original prompt that is the reason I am writing the story at all. I just kind of... got really carried away with the medical plot, so now the fic has two plots that I can hopefully get to work together instead of just kind of lying there giving each other weird looks. *headdesk*)
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)