Today I wrapped up the second half of the scene “What Kind Of Day Has It Been?” with Kettan discovering WHY everything went wrong. Have posted the scene, and it’ll be out soon to the folks who are caught up on the story, and in sequence to those just getting started.
While I’m pleased with the overall progress through the scene, it came out thin. Even as I was writing it, I could feel the detail it was lacking…but I also had the push to get what mattered in the scene down before it eluded me.
This happens a lot. First draft is a constant tension between catching the ideas and making them real on the page—and making sure they’re beautiful. It’s a bit like chasing butterflies. Every time you stop to admire one for too long, to take in everything that’s wonderful about it, a dozen more slip through your net.
Fortunately, once you have them all on your little garden of butterflies, you get to go back and find all the details you didn’t have time for the first time through.
990 words tonight.
And that was my night.
How are your words coming along?
{ 62 comments… read them below or add one }
401 words.
The Princess spends hours trying to come up with some stratagem to get herself and her fellow prisoners free but can’t think of anything. Until the battle stations alarm sounds. The two guards at the door leave while the third guard, a very fat man, waddles toward the door. The Princess suggests that the prisoners be protected because the powers that be are going to be unhappy if the prisoners die before being tortured. When the fat guard unlocks her shackles, the Princess snatches the keys and knocks the man to the ground. She throws the keys to one of the other prisoners… and misses.
I hadn’t planned on writing tonight. I spent the night working on getting my plots straightened out in the novel I’m revising. I’ve still got a lot of work to do on that before I’m happy with the storyline but it’s much stronger than the original. Much more focused.
302 words.
The Princess tried to fight the guard but, well, she’s not much of a fighter. Luckily for her, the prisoners were able to retrieve the keys and get out of their shackles and take out the guard.
On HTRYN, worked on filling out my new plot layout. Trying to decide on whether to keep or remove the Sheriff from the story. I have a feeling that the next lesson will answer that question.
330 words.
The captain of the ship transporting the prisoners tries to get her surprised crew to their battle stations and tries to get her functioning shields between her and her attacker. And then she realizes her co-pilot hasn’t made it into his vac suit and he’s injured and floating in a spray of his own blood because of the gravity field fluctuations.
Didn’t spend as much time writing as expected tonight because my wife came home from a business trip early because one of her flights got cancelled. So I did the spouse thing tonight instead of the writing thing.
And Holly? Doesn’t this blog have the Notify capability? I don’t see it and I’m not getting any notifications of other people’s responses to this thread.
645 words.
The captain of the prison transport tries to get her unconscious co-pilot into a vac suit. A shuttle attaches to the prison ship and some of The Princess’ crew cut through the hull and board the prison ship in the cell block. But it’s empty. So they have to go looking for her. Can you say “fire fight”?
I’ve been under a lot of pressure and strain at work recently. We have to build some new functionality and get it federally certified. We’ve already had 3 people (2 managers and 1 knowledge domain specialist) resign because of this. But, knock on wood, it looks like we’re going to hit the deadline and actually bring it in 2 weeks early. Unfortunately, 1 of the managers that resigned had miscalculated some things and so, even though we bring our part in, another part unrelated to the programming will slip by 4-5 weeks (which means we have 4-5 more weeks we could actually have used for coding.) Hopefully, my stress level will go down and my word counts will go up.
whoa… no, did you say lose the sheriff? I vote for beef up his role… .LOL. I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I know it’s you’re story; I just got attached.
Yeah, it’s a hard call. Either I beef up his role and really make a bigger/better storyline out of the relationship between the Sheriff, His Wife, and the Thief’s Mother (because the Thief is the Sheriff’s bastard son) or I cut the Sheriff out completely.
When I started writing the story, there was only a tenuous relationship between the Sheriff and the Thief and I couldn’t figure out why he was so doggedly trying to find the Thief’s killers. But… by the end, I realized their relationship. If I go with that, then it could be really interesting.
But I also realized that The Thief, when he’s turned into a vampire, wouldn’t just run away and hide. He’s going to try to get back to his life. I ignored all his old friends and everything except for his relationship with His Girl (which was all sweetness and light until he killed her.) BUT… If she’s not “his girl” but rather a girl that he loves but she’s just playing a bunch of suitors off each other trying to find the right one… well… that could be even more interesting.
So.
I’m looking forward to the next lesson.
Okay…yesterday was a day of decisions. I decided that for the time being the half-revised OFL and the 90% written RFW could take a back seat. I simply couldn’t face working on them any longer. They have some redeeming characteristics, so they’re not definitely gone for good, but they suffer enormously for being stories that I started to tell for exposure to a genre, or for practice. They were never stories I had a burning ambition to tell. KavI still excites me, and the D&D stuff is fun, so I’m cracking on with those for the time being. It feels like giving in, which I hate, but I was on the verge of pushing myself into misery and despair and loss of self-belief.
So no words for yesterday. I spent quite a lot of time asking myself questions and restoring some kind of vision to my life.
Sounds like you made some good decisions. Even letting go of two stories while you continue the other two, seems like a good choice.
270 on WIP
I decided to skip and try to write the heart of the climax. Got a few images and some ideas that work, some that don’t. It was more an experiment in trying out different alternatives. I’m going to work on it some more today.
No new words, still struggling with time and energy. But, I certainly have not stopped thinking about Bx2. In my head and planning, it is getting better and better.
The “awaiting moderation” thing is happening again.
Yeah. I have to manually approve the first comment by every new commenter here. Once that’s done, everyone can post freely.
That and Akismet are the only anti-spam features I’m using on this weblog.
“First draft is a constant tension between catching the ideas and making them real on the page—and making sure they’re beautiful.”
I love this entry. I can relate. I always get so caught up trying to make it perfect and beautiful in the first draft that I never finish any drafts at all (although your HTTS course is helping with this). It’s good to know that even accomplished writers have the same issues as us newbies!
That’s why I show my process—because new writers tend to think pros have some magical other way of getting words on the page that no one but pros know.
We don’t. We figure out processes for getting better words on the page the first time through, and we figure out processes for massively improving our first drafts while we’re in revision.
But the writing itself is always just one word at a time…and the knowledge that not all those words are going to be good or right.
About 2000 words over the past couple days. I’m finding that, as I get more words behind me, the ‘weight’ of it makes everything more difficult to say and continue moving in the right direction. But when I can untwist it in the way I imagined, it is really great feeling.
And I’m right back in another struggley spot. sigh. I think it will be like this until I finally reach The End. I have no idea which next step to take so looks like I’ll be staring at the blinking cursor for awhile/my version of brainstorming… wish me luck…
weird… I came on here to say “I’m still stuck” and then I figure out what’s wrong… errr, rather that possibly nothing is wrong and I should just write it out and stop worrying about whether it will be boring. must be all the writers on here. All the good vibes just waft off the page… (waft? doesn’t sound right but hopefully you know what I mean).
)
Good to hear. Keep going!
thank you for the encouragement!
The biggest part when I’m stuck is applying “butt to chair” (cause it’s easier to just do other things and hope it’ll just magically fix itself). LOL
But I’d really like to finish a story so I suppose it’s time to get to work!
Seemed like a good time to post my first comment. I’ve been quietly writing a book with all of you since October. I expect (hope) to be done with the first draft by the end of April. I’ve enrolled in HTRYN, though I haven’t logged in or accessed it yet, and probably won’t until my first draft is done. Why? For the same reason that all of you are devoted Holly Lisle fans. She’s never met me, surely doesn’t even know I exist as anything other than one of six billion other people on the planet. And yet – I have learned more from her and this website than all of the courses, lessons, and how-to books I’ve ever purchased combined.
I’m no longer struggling on my own – like scratching out horrible sounds on a violin in an empty auditorium. I’m motivated, writing approximately 900 words a day, five days a week. I have a fairly good grasp on so many concepts that previously eluded me – plotting, conflict, dialogue. Because I have a scene-board, a theme, and an ending, I’m not writing myself into pointless corners that frustrate, disappoint, and cause meltdown.
As far as I’m concerned, (sorry to put this onus on you), Holly is my mentor and a saint. She can write a first draft upside down with her toes if that’s the way she wants to do it. Any person with a modicum of intelligence and grace would see that she has shared so much with us, she deserves nothing but praise. Anyone with the appalling lack of couth that would they would write such a negative and ignorant email – good riddance!
Okay. Enough of my rant, I know I’m refering to something that is already old and everyone else has moved on from.
Thank you, Holly. I know this is not a full-blown forum for writers and their problems/questions, but I like the small, personal feel to it. From now on, I’ll try to leave short comments relevant to my writing.
Welcome, Evan. I like the coziness of it, too. I get the feeling that I know the folks who are writing along with me. I read about their struggles, grin at their stories, and wince when they hit the same walls I hit.
It happens, it’s part of the gig, but when you’ve hit that wall, watching someone else run full-tilt into it causes sympathetic pain.
Anyway, I’m glad you said hello. And it’s nice to know you’ve been writing along with us. Welcome. Hang around.
wow, you’re doing a great job!
I started over from scratch yesterday. I was almost 20.000 words into the story but couldn’t get myself motivated to write more. My old Victim self wanted to tell an entirely different story than me as I am now. Once I realised that, I also understood why I couldn’t get myself to continue writing on the first draft I had started; my MC was a passive suicidal whiner… *blushing*
I worked on my sentence with the relentless help and encouragement of my HTTS workgroup, and I’m so glad with the result I would like to publish it here. I hope you guys don’t mind.
<>
Yes, this is a story I can truly love…
I did 1086 words yesterday and 1034 today, and – thanks to Holly’s clarifications about first draft – I feel really good about what I got.
Good writing to y’all!
Oops, didn’t realise the brackets came out as html code and made my sentence disappear. Here it is:
Trainee priestess from Earth must forsake the love of a lifetime to save humanity by breaking the alien A.I. code that is driving the sentient planet towards murder and self-destruction
Yeah. THAT’s a good, solid sentence.
Hi, I’ve just taken the time to see exactly what “Write a novel with me” was about. I like the idea, and I’m going to join, me thinks.
I’m planing two stories at the moment. Both are fantasy, one I’m planing with a friend, so it’s only when both of us have time that I can get anything done with that.
The other one, well… it needs a world, and I want a complete world. So that’s what I’m doing creating a world.
But I thought for this week I should really start writing something more creative, more writing story. Not THE story because the things I’m deciding with the story world very closely relates to the story idea, meaning if I change one element in the world, the whole idea may have to be revised or dumped.
So instead I thought I’d interview my characters, or write short stories about them. Anything to get to know them better, to get me writing, and to get me writing fantasy.
I hope that doesn’t matter.
On that note I wrote just over 1000 words tonight. It’s an interview with the real me interviewing one of the main characters. I only know he is the High Priest of the Goddess/God (they don’t really have sexes) of Fate. The interview is started, even though I haven’t started to ask questions yet. So 1k words set up. Hehe… Questioning begins tomorrow.
Hope everyone is doing good.
Welcome, Felicia,
Glad you’ve joined us.
Thank you, Holly.
I have this “illness” you see, and I think joining you could help.
and now I’ll be more motivated, because I see all of you sharing how it’s going and having fun. I couldn’y help but join in. 
It’s called procastination
342 Words. . .
I was ready and willing to do more, but as I started writing the scene I realized I had no idea what the focus of the scene, a sword, looked like. So, two hours and a sketch later I know what my weapon looks like but I’m half asleep. . .
Tuesday’s words:
D&DII: 791
KavI: 657, which took me over the finishing line for this second take at the first draft (85.5k).
It’s much better than the first effort of a couple of years ago, but some chapters are the same,because I knew the scenes needed to stay, so in terms of prose they’ll need more work in the later stages of revision. But the STORY is pretty solid, and I’ve got a fair few ideas for how to tighten it up and also how to improve the story – a lot of work on some of the characters and the world. So, onto a lengthy, but rewarding, cycle of World, Plot and Character building…
Let’s hear it for second takes on rough drafts! Congrats on finishing that, and happy world building ☺
Hi everybody, I see WABWM has found a new home!
Holly, I’m still pretty weirded out by the rude email you got. That’s just silly. People who take every excuse they can to be bitchy about things they didn’t even bother to look at – they just enrage me. It reminds me of the silly dispute about Harry Potter being satanist (???) there was some time ago. Someone heard about the phrase “there’s no good or evil, only power and those too weak to wield it” from the first book, and thought it was a horrible message for kids – and didn’t even bother digging a second further to discover that the BAD GUY said that. Of course it was a horrible message. The protagonist thought it was, and kids were supposed to as well.
You know, when I stopped trying to make my first draft perfect I actually started to write a lot better. Of course, I write skinny, and sometimes things are foggy, sometimes I feel like I’m placing props on a background instead of making stuff happen – but meh. I’m finally focusing on the important things: characters, conflicts, twists, events. It’s all about laying groundwork and foundations: after I’ve done that, I have all the time I want to make it pretty. It makes no sense to put flowery wallpaper and cool paintings in a house that still lacks the roof or floor or the whole piping system.
Regarding my current project, I’ve done some plotting and now I’m ready to resume writing. Onward!
I write skinny, too. But, right—focusing on being perfect the first time through guarantees you’ll never make it through. Relaxing and acknowledging that it isn’t perfect, but that “finished is fixable” it what allows writers to have careers.
Yesterday I went over my notes and prepared for take off.
Do I know my world? Pretty much. Characters? Check. Conflict? Loads. Theme? Voice? Uh-huh.
Then what am I waiting for? Time to lower the expectations and launch this puppy…
885 words finally starting the WIP, after I scribbled the opening line on a post it at work. It looked considerably better in my head than it did on paper, but what the heck, gotta start somewhere.
Maybe all the discussion on first drafts finally motivated me to get my butt in gear,stop pre writing, and start on Chapter 1?
Kick ass!
567 words starting on a scene that I had sketched out to be off screen. I was curious about how it would play out here in the first chapter. That made me wonder what other stuff might be in my little pile of prewriting, so maybe I’ll make some time to collect it onto scene cards.
The reading assignment for HTRYN is really drawing me in, so I spent quite a bit of time on that too.
Hey Holly. Firstly, thank you. Still working through parts of HTTS, but I have finished the first draft of my first finished novel and HTTS has been a great help. Thanks for the additional content from HTRYN on HTTS, it is now forming the basis for my revision. It is so good to watch writing in process, I think it is an excellent idea – also, as a struggling artisan living on lentils, oh, and beer, it is nice to get something to read for free.
Ok. I’m crash and burn at this point. The major story I was writing broke in the middle of my lovely scene, and I’m back to asking why again. Since it’s killing me not to write, I went ahead and worked on a different story whose only rule is that it can’t get too sci-fi fantasy wierd. That’s basically the opposite of what I normally write, so it’s hard and fun…and NOBODY GETS TO SEE IT TILL IT SELLS. If it sells. It doesn’t even have a title yet, but I wrote 354 words.
“Nobody gets to see it till it sells”.
Lol. Anything I write is like that (well, except my mother and brother). Always. I am a fraidy cat.
Hi, I’m new, but I really love writing! I’m a complete beginner on my first novel, still in High School, but I am detirmined to write, and write, and write.
259 words today, on pre-writing.
I just can’t seem to get off the ground! I have written a few fun scenes that I couldn’t resist writing, but I don’t even know if they will end up in the finished product. Hopefully by the end of March I will have finished pre-writing! Holly, without you, I never would have even started, or known where to go. Thank you so much for all of you wonderful recourses and user-friendly workshops. I love them, and I hope they will help others as much as they help me.
Why … could be because Kettan seems to have a one-track mind. She went from one-dimensional candy Fendles to one-dimensional tank Fendles. In order to thrive, and protect themselves, and be wholesome people — they need variety.
(I amused myself earlier thinking about what would happen to darkling invaders in some of my worlds. Poor Warhellions, they wouldn’t have a chance.)
My current projects are going very nicely. I had an excellent Poetry Fishbowl last week, and then yesterday was the first Torn World Muse Fusion working with multiple contributors — we got a LOT of stuff written. I did 2 poems and 3 short stories, which I think is the first time I ever finished more than one story in a day.
I have a mind like Kettan. My mother calls it ‘hyper-focusing’. I would have created monsters too, lol.
And “wow” is my reply to what you got done.
930-some words,
Finished the scene I got side tracked on last night. The Sword made it’s debute, and one of my character’s actually used it. . .unfortunately for him. *Insert evil laugh here*
Weds:
D&DII: 769
Three more scenes of KavI had their audition to remain in the book. Also got a reasonable chunk of world-building done, as well as setting myself a pretty clear agenda of what else I need to do before the redraft.
Well, I continued the interview yesterday. It’s going good actually. Sometimes I can feel myself projecting a certain personality on him, but I’m resisting. Both my character and I comment when project. I guess I sound a little crazy now. But for me characters come alive, which in some cases can be bad, because I can’t manipulate them, although that could also be very good.
Anyway, I managed to decide/pick up a few character traits my priest has. And I wrote about 800 words. Yay!
Good luck to everyone else!
Well, I know what the turning point of the climax is now. I also figured out how key metals work on the other world (which is important throughout the story in subtle ways). I’m no quantum physicist but I’d like to think that my grasp of advanced chemistry and molecular dynamics is enough to make the magic /look/ like it’s grounded in real theories.
No actual writing though.
Yesterday, the 10th, I did about 100 words, with character dots. Still on Bx2
My day job is taking too much of my time and energy. I am going to back up and implement two new websites that will — hopefully, eventually, soon — be my money so I can write. Crossed fingers …
Crossing fingers and cheering up on you Hanna!
Resumed writing with 700 words on the 10th.
Erthel, my main character, goes to one of her workplaces, the Wilversen’s estate, where she is a tutor to the family’s daughter. There she notices some unexpected reactions of the Wilversen family at the news of what happened the day before. She doesn’t know what’s about to happen (while of course I do, mwahaha), but she feels the tension lurking beneath the surface.
Exellent, I feel the suspense and can hear the evil laughter.
Thursday:
D&DII: 800 words. Wizards are dying!
Meanwhile, I’ve finished my character work on my MC for KavI, and analysed nearly a quarter of the scenes. I’m also doing a glut of world-building; I wrote the draft with enough to get by, but really fleshing the world out would really help with a sense of realism.
I am working on a new beginning scene, and I can almost see the whole thing now.
I’m attacking the concept of the antagonist having his own POV and good solid reasons for thinking what he thinks, and in the process he split into two people, one who fights outright and one who starts fighting and then switches sides. Once again Holly’s HTTS Modules have been just the ticket. The unnamed story is now codename: Owls, and my main piece which is still broken is PH2. Yes the 2 refers to draft number; draft one was edited to death… So about 1300 words, all pre-write, all necessary, all trying to build an opposing force that isn’t a world-shattering evil, just a different POV. And I’m having more fun writing Owls than I ever did with PH2.
I’ve been reading along on here for a while now and thought maybe I should join you all in sharing the writing experience. I found your site, Holly, and was amazed that someone would give all this information for free! I read the whole site and decided it was time to write that novel I’ve always wanted to write and could never finish.
I started my draft at the beginning of January and so far have written almost 50k words. It feels great. Thank you so much, Holly, your an inspiration.
Wrote 1,200 words today, hoping for at least 2000 tomorrow.
Happy writing!
1437 words!!
I started to write this scene last night, but my computer crashed, dumping everything I wrote. I was so depressed I didn’t even post an estimate of my words, just went to bed.
Tonight made up for all that and then some!!
It was one of those times when the words just Fly, absolutely amazing!!
Hi Holly,
Just joined this! Hope I’m posting to the right place for Write a Novel With me. Just bought your plot clinic too, am reading through it now, and it’s awesome!
My book’s going solidly. I ploughed out a good 1000 word or so scene which was a fresh addition, not featured in the movie script (which I’m still using as a blueprint).
I realised the heroes had a brief, boring journey ahead of them to get to the next port of call. I was going to cut straight to the heroes’ arrival but it seemed too sudden, and I decided to take the chance to hop POV and see what the villains were doing.
The first scene I wrote flopped, and flopped badly, because i was toying with introducing a bunch of throwaway characters for the Rider’s assassin cadre to flex their killing muscles on, but it felt like filler and WAS filler, so I threw it out.
As with my prologue, I took Holly’s advice and started in the middle – cut to the bloody aftermath of the battle, and Rider’s somewhat novel interrogation of the last survivor. In doing so I filled in a plothole (How DO these guys get into the castle later?) I wasn’t even aware of, completely by accident. Win!
Back on track, now.
1109 words on PH2–I found the broken spot, fixed it, and finished my scene. Then I wrote the next one, where MC can’t free his friend who he just had to buy. I hope the agony came through well.
In Owls, I pinned down the source of conflict–two very opposite religions, and what happens when they collide, and one character breaks all the rules of the other religion and has to face some consequences inflicted by the antagonists. No words, but a lot of planning. Note cards on the way!
: D
Got my word count, 2400 for today. It was a really good session, the words just flew onto the screen and time melted away as I worked.
My MC is stuck down in a mine shaft and the entrance just caved in on her. Now she’ll have to find another way to get out. Along the way, she’ll save a man who’s been held captive by a troll, only to have to decide if she can take his life to save her own.
I’m very sad to have to start a new job tomorrow after being laid off for months, it gave me time to write. Now, I’ll have to find a new rhythm,
But, I gots to eat, so work I will.
2463 for Friday 10,099 for the week really pleased with my progress this week the end is nigh only 20k to go. I’m hoping to have the thing nearly finished in the next two weeks then I can go back to the beginning again and again and again.
Dean H
Had a long and successful day. 3330 words.
I remapped/plotted the middle to the end. Shuffled a lot of scenes, old and new. I’m also giving Cait a more pro-active role.
Tomorrow I shift to getting back on track with daily writing.
A warm welcome to all the newcomers / new posters! Good luck with your wip’s and writing goals.
I just saw this project! And it’s awesome!
I’ve got 3 books on the run that I’m working on, and I’m trying to get somewhere between 750 – 1000 words a day… I think that’s about intermediate level.
Either way, I wrote about 1200 words today… I don’t have any exact count, but I’ll start keeping track. This sounds like a great way to keep motivated.