Sunday Writing

Sunday I had a writing day.  I set up Scrivener in the kitchen, where I can sit without craning my neck or holding my arms out at a funny angle and I put on my older glasses (which don't correct so well for distant objects, but which don't require me to peer at the computer screen through the bottom half of the lenses) and I wrote.

Actually, I edited.  I started out with a rough draft of a space story.  I should have used a timer to see how much time out of the twelve hours I had for writing, but I think that would have been a little distracting.  Also, sometimes when the writing is editing, it's difficult to do things like word count.  

I did take little breaks for snacks, shopping (for tea!), and laundry, but I mostly kept at it for about twelve hours.  I'm going to guess that I was writing/editing for about seven of those hours.  At the end, I synced the story with SimpleNote so I can work on it from the iPad.  At the end, the story came in under 4000 words, which surprised me -- I guess I'm getting better at cutting out the bits that are lyrically descriptive but which don't move the plot forward.  I'll credit Scrivener for making it easier to keep the scenes divided into pieces, and thus easier to focus on scene arc.

I've decided that I like writing to the music of Antonio Scarlatti.  It's interesting music, but not so distracting as Bach can sometimes be, but at the same time it sinks into the background.  It's perfect for keeping the part of my brain that likes to put splice songs like "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" together busy without distracting the part of my head that's writing.

I like the beginning of the piece; I want to submit it to Lightspeed, and I think the first half, at least, has the right voice and strong character interactions.  The second part works, I think.   But I have a feeling I need to do another pass and make sure the characters are doing what they should, and not what the author needs them to do.   


Later:  Yep.  The ending is totally wrong.  Everything up to the very last scene is mostly working.  I know how I want things to go, it's that final stretch that's not working.  Oh well....