Weekend Update
November 11, 2007 by J.C. Hewitt
I made some decent progress on the novel this weekend. I am now running at 16,500 words. I’m still behind the pace I wanted to set for myself, but I am making progress, and that is what counts. We are a third of the way through the month and I will have to pick up some steam if I want to make the NaNoWriMo deadline. My main issue has been trying to properly introduce all of my characters. There are so many of them – maybe too many of them for me to manage. I spent quite a bit of time working on the characters before the novel began, but I did not anticipate just how hard it would be to get them all to interact.
I don’t have a lot of advice to give today, but here are a few observations about the wide world of writing:
Writers on Strike! The WGA initiated a strike last Monday and its effects are only now starting to have a real impact. At issue is the amount of money they receive for DVDs (close to nothing) and for online/electronic viewings (actually nothing). I will miss some of my favorite television shows, but to be honest, the fall schedule has been so awful that it won’t be that great a loss to me. The major television networks were already having a bad year and this will only make it worse. They are going to lose a lot of viewers if this strike goes on for long, and many of those viewers won’t come back when its over. For the film industry, they won’t truly feel the effects of a writer’s strike for months, but I will do what I can. Until the strike is over, I will not pay to see a movie in the theater. I will go back to the movie theater when the writers go back to work. It’s a small sacrifice compared to what the WGA writers will be going through.
Dumbledore is Gay! I could care less about Dumbledore’s sexuality. If it really mattered, I think she would have brought it up in the books. Frankly, I’m a little tired of J. K. Rowling’s “revelations” about the world of Harry Potter. If she has so much more to say about the characters, then she should re-evaluate her vow to stop writing books for the series or she should rethink and rewrite the last book in order to say what she really had to say. In the end though, I think the works should stand for themselves, good or bad.
House and Garden Buys the Farm! Another pretty magazine with almost nothing to say has fallen. I, for one, won’t miss it. Did anybody out there read it?
Ok, I’m off to start writing again. Good luck everyone still plugging away at NaNoWriMo!
I’m doing good, except no one showed up at our WriMo meeting at Barnes and Nobles in Lubbock, when I got home I learned the bunch of them had gone to a motel to write, they said B&N was too crowded — what’s that about and how weird is that, you’d think they’d have left word, sounds like a WriMo novel to me — . I’m at 20,000 words and praying. I have all my chracters introduced — twelve of them, and I’m waiting on number 13 to appear. Interesting because I just noticed that I am on Chapter 13, so I think that chapter 13 does not exist, probably skip it, I’ll think I”ll go on to Chapter 14 and call it The Number Thirteen. Yup, its a plan. I hate it when these people get in trouble, I keep having to rescue them. Talk about co-dependency.
Ha ha ha, glad to hear you are having so much fun, Connie. Great stuff!
John darling, it’s a first draft. Don’t agonise too much. If need be jump to a point where they have all met and go on from there. (50,000 words is very short for a novel anyway, really, so you can fill in those bits later at your leisure.)
Oh yes, and, who was it told us to interrogate the characters when stuck? Ask some of them how they happened to enter this story!
Yrs truly
The Veteran
(of only one attempt, but let’s ignore that).
LOL, 50,000? I thought it was 75,000! I have GOT to read these things more carefully!
Sometimes I close my eyes really tight and bury my head in my hands and I watch them to see what they are doing, it’s like eavesdropping. I listen really close sometimes they are trying not to be heard. ooops here we go . . . .
Off subject yes I understand, but an important question never the less:
I was wondering how well do poetry/short story reading groups go, can you really get your writings out there like that or is it just to share, either way I think I might do it but I just would like to know what I am getting into. Thanks…….
Rianon,
Writing groups can be very beneficial and a lot of fun. They are an excellent chance to get together with other writers and to keep yourself motivated. There is always a chance that these connections might lead to publication, but the main goal is just to share and develop as writers.
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