Camp NaNoWriMo total so far 8565 words. This is good because I’m halfway through the month and aiming for 20,000 words.
Category: about writing
Camp NaNoWriMo April 2019
I’ve decided to do Camp NaNo this month- to get some distance on my short story projects.
My top goal is 20,000 words, not fifty thousand because, with my schedule, it is very hard to get to 50k. I have about 4 stories to work on. One of them is very English – with a manor Dragon and a little girl. One is all space opera and cats. Another is based on a fairy tale, which I used, then, just lately realized that the original tale changes lead characters halfway through… so that will have to be fixed.
UPDATE: I’m on April 9th and now about 5 thousand words in. Part of this is my really extended Dragon story. I’m just letting this story unwind as it goes. I’m enjoying it which is terrific. It’s too long already to be sent to most short story markets though, so it will have to go to a novella market or be personally published. I could do a D2D publication again, but promote this one more? I don’t know. I’d like to get some beta readers before I go too far with publication on my own. I’ve read some very bad self-published books by other Canadian authors in SF.
The photos below are from close to my daughter’s high school. It was an astounding day and I got some lovely shots. I met the very elderly woman who planted that thirty foot magnolia when it was just a little twig.
Below, I’m using a new photo from Unsplash, which is a great free photo resource.
Photo by Andy White on Unsplash
March 2019
I’ve been working on submissions this month. Day job has been busy, too. I find March School Break a nice change because we don’t go out to Dance daily.
This is both good and bad. Like a lot of writer mums, I’m using Blenz as my work-product time for creative writing. So I didn’t get a lot done last week.
However, this week, I finished work one day and just switched computers to the ‘home’ one and worked five hours straight on a story. It was great and I could do it because my kid was busy with friends.
Also, this week we cat-sit for our friend Krista. The stately tuxedo cat, Jack was with us for a few days. I always enjoy that.
Publications have been good this month. Polar Borealis has a poem of mine in it (Issue 9 available on http://www.polarborealis.ca ) and they’ve accepted a reprint of “The Pleiades Cat” originally published in the 90s in On Spec.
February 17, 2019
We’re retaining a little snow but the beach was glorious today. Five degrees Celsius and a bit of breeze. Really nice for a walk.
I thought about my work in progress and did manage to get another 1000 words done today so far. I have a few scenes to add to it, then refine. I’d like to have it into a market by February end.
Snow Storm 2019
I am impressed with the amount of snow we had this week.
February 2019 Year of the Pig!
Happy Chinese New Year! We are experiencing a few days of below zero cold! But the sunsets are great!
Creative – Have been reading a bit more lately. I think it’s important to read within your genre as well as outside it. I find as a busy professional single mum with a child to raise, I’m already heavily scheduling time to write my creative work in. Therefore, it’s even harder to find time to keep up with reading!
It is easier because my genre is science fiction and fantasy (SFF). I do love getting free books, like the ones http://www.tor.com gives away monthly. These give me a feel of some of the best writers and novel series out there. There are real disadvantages to writing without knowledge of what else is out there.
Projects on the go:
Got an idea for a tv series yesterday… which I may write up. I’ve wanted to have a pitch ready for a full new tv series for a while. The ones I have now don’t have pilot scripts with them.
Got my first short story drafted for 2019. It’s not done yet and was helped (research-wise) by a Monty Don British gardening show I watched in the middle of the night…so that tells you it’s going to be a fantasy story.
January 2019
It’s been a foggy day here. Plus we had some bad weather that brought down one of the gigantic trees on Larch Street.
Creatively still awaiting word from some magazines, and sent out a new story today. I was struck by how much work rewriting is. Typically I do a rewrite when a story comes back unsold. Also, on tv shows I’ve worked on, the scripts have usually been rewritten maybe 10 times. This is beyond the legal drafts and polishes specified in the contracts, these are the showrunner or story editor passes. So, I’ve always been sceptical of the school of thought that says write it once, then revise once and you’re done. Maybe, too it’s about the style of story one is telling. So some stories are not that complicated I guess.
