ieva melgalve » planning

pre-nanowrimo planning

ieva — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 15:42:58 +0000

Today, I started planning NaNoWriMo. It seems that I’m going with Newil after all–a decision that surprised me both because it came so easily and because it seems WAY too hard to pull off. I started with a sentence for the plot, and three sentences for the three sons of God. (Yes, capital G, since he’s the only god in the Galaxy. And he dies in the first scene or so.) I have very little about what will actually happen–I think that I can envision three of four important meetings between people, but that’s about it.
I think that I’ll start plotting this thing from what I surely know what will happen–what must happen–and work my way back and forth, fitting the pieces in. From that, the characters and the worldbuilding would arise. I know it’s a haphazard way to go about it, but the actual plot has always been the weakest link, so I guess it makes sense to start with it and support it with the stronger parts of my writing.
Anyhow, this feels like something breathtakingly cool, and I’m very glad I chose it for Nano… because I surely wouldn’t have the guts to do this on any other occasion.

of conceiving something (a novel?)

ieva — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:39:29 +0000

So apart from being busy at work, busy with (good) personal life changes and stuff, I have finally found my way back to actual writing. Not the scribbles I sometimes do or an occasional poem (gah!), but something that could be, umm, of some value.
It’s nothing big yet, not even grown to a zygotic stage yet, but yes.
It’s stemming one of my stories (actually, a series of stories) set on a bizarre&hazy SF world loosely based on Bible (it being one of the things I have never been comfortable with, even when I actually was a Christian). The story is named Chana (after the heroine, because I’m so original and creative), and I just typed it from my longhand-notebook. (Note to self: longhand is cool as long as you don’t want to show the thing to anybody else. For stories? Not so much.)
I am not sure I like the story. But I have the basic feel of the characters, and the mystery of this strange plane of existance with humans and lizards and the bloodless, and cyborgs and whatnot. I have the premise of the story, the grain of sand from which the story grows: an evil Buddha. Well, and evil Buddha-as-a-child.
I have his name, Newil. And the first line (one that will probably go away at the edits, but damn me if I’m going to think about edits now): “All the little living things should be cherished and preserved, for they are hard to duplicate.”

That’s a lot more than what I usually have when I’m thinking of starting something new, so I’m good.

(Also, I’ll have to have something to write on my long, long way to Finncon – it seems that I’ll be spending a full day on bus and ferry and train.)

planning vs pantsing

ieva — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:12:08 +0000

Writing Virgin has been very smooth this far, despite the fact that I’ve barely planned anything. I sort of try to do my best at planning but editing and day job gets in the way. So I’ve done, well, almost nothing. The funny thing is that I don’t miss it. I have some things figured out already, some things I just take as they come, and the daily word count is so low I don’t need much to get myself going.
There will be middle swamps, of course, but there are middle swamps anyway, plan as much as you might.

beginning boggle AGAIN

ieva — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:24:49 +0000

Now, cool. I’ve had a fine first scene, and today I struggled to get the second on page, but, while writing is still enjoyable, the forcing myself to write part is a horror. I suspect it’s because of two things: I’ve gotten darn lazy, and I’m still editing Vega (so for every scene write, I have those 93 scenes of Vega that will need to be redone, and thus it’s very hard to allow myself to write crap).
Also, my planning is running thin. Here’s the problem though: as I realized, I cannot conceivably plan characters before writing them, so it seems that I should write them (at least a bit) first, and make the plan right after that, before I swamp myself with loose, open-ended characters.

That, or take my Tarot cards out again. They’ve never failed me before regarding short-term setups, and they won’t do that now, I trust.

december plans

ieva — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:17:35 +0000

Since I don’t want to dwelve on NOW, here are my plans of December:
- edit a couple of short stories (I mean come on, even *I* get bored at rotating three pieces around) and send them out,
- if How To Revise Your Novel course kickstarts by then, I’m planning to be an early bird,
- read some darn books!,
- maybe (maybe!) read Vega for edits, and even less likely, work on another idea (unless my Muse throws me something absolutely brilliant to distract me from Urchin).

Regarding NaNo, my headlights have blanked out again. Or it’s blizzard out there. Anyhow, I can hardly see past the next sentence, and consider myself lucky to see even this far.

flared

ieva — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 10:06:26 +0000

Normally this doesn’t happen like this. Slacking away for 48 hours, doing everything from getting drunk to baking three sorts of cake for house guests without even considering sitting at the keyboard and writing something? That’s not me. (Getting drunk and baking cake is me, but not writing somewhere along the way isn’t.)
I guess I was just too tired, or perhaps I’d put more load on myself than I should have. I was staring at my planned workload until November (finishing Vega, one more story written, 2 stories revised, Urchin planned) and when an additional rewrite request came in, I guess I just flared like a match in heat.
The first thing I am doing today is looking at my schedule (by the way, I found Timeglider to be a great tool for lightweight planning) and re-plan everything so that heavy revision takes MUCH more time than writing does, and writing itself takes much more time than I planned when I was writing furiously.
My plans for today: to sit with a large sheet of paper, figuring I’m able to write ~700 new words a day, I am willing take two week days off writing, and stuff happens. Counting in the short stories I write every month, averaging 3000 words per story..put like this, it means that every story normally should take a week off writing!
I have very little idea how much time does rewriting a scene take. I’m thinking lots of time, considering how painful the editing usually is. Probably I will have to create a full-blown plan for rewarding myself and stuff.

But then again, writing a Big Whole Novel is a lot of job. Writing 700-800 words a day is easy. Perhaps I should think about editing this way.

poetry etc

ieva — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:12:03 +0000

These are the Days of Poetry in Latvia, and I’m doing my best in attending as many events as I can to rejoin the folks I abandoned in my several years long hiatus. Somehow, returning after a while, it’s easier to enjoy my local literature, see things in perspective and relax and have a chat instead of driving myself crazy over stuff I can’t change anyway. Including mistakes I’ve made in the past.
Surprisingly, I still manage to get my writing done, even though the quality is slipping a bit. 700+ words on Tuesday, and today I’m aiming for 700+ too. NaNo novel planning is moving along just fine too. Kids and my own nerves end up slightly frazzled, but I’ll catch up on that next week.

writing a serialized novel

ieva — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:09:05 +0000

So. After my initial worldbuilding of Keir, I realized that I was going to do the same mistake as with my previous NaNo novel, namely, making a very complex world with protagonists that are extremely tricky to write while following at least two storylines.
Which is a breathtaking idea, but not at the speed of 2000 words per day (yes, I take the off-days in account; it’s not 1666 words a day).

So I have to whip up another idea for NaNoWriMo 2009, leaving Keir for when I’ll have the time, and writing it at 300 words per day as a base value, not 500/700 as it is now with Vega.
This far, my “another idea” is a serialized novel written in 1st person POV (these seem to be easiest to write for me). Bear with me while I ponder aloud about what I need for a serialized novel and Nano and my protag and so on. (Or don’t bear. I am not going to attach a secret gift code or anything at the end of this post, I promise.)

What I need, specifically, for NaNoWriMo (considering I’m a rather slow writer; 2500 words a week minimum is the best pacing for me):

a story that doesn’t bore me to death in the middle. Hence the serialization: I figure that if I get to write several different stories then it’s pretty easy to jump to a more interesting one if I wish plus very little middle swamps or large-scale endings that require actual thinking instead of typing away,
a POV easy to write (as I said, 1st person)… and I’ll probably switch it around as I go, because in a serial novel, you can easily have a mini-story told from somebody else’s POV.

A serialized novel in my interpretation: something that could be more readily named “a heap of separate short stories in the same world, with continuous character development and single underlying drive, with an asterix*”.
*Asterix: feel free to disregard one of these elements, e.g. a story set in different world (alternate reality of some kind), with no mention of the underlying drive, or discontinuous character development (eg change that undoes itself by backwards time travel, demonic possession or similar device) is allowed.

What I need for the serialized novel, in planning stages:

main protagonist with a really strong drive instead of my usual slackadaisical “ahh, I could have spent this whole time wandering around, why the hell do you want me to fight for something of even *care* for it or anything at all, for that matter?” protagonists. I don’t know why they come out this way, my secondary characters usually are strong-willed and determined,
at least one antagonist (for the first story) developed well enough to resonate. I tend to shift antagonists around all the time so I doubt that this time, I’ll be able to figure out a cool single antag for the whole piece. (Btw, I keep writing “villain” instead of “antagonist”, so perhaps this will be something with villains. Yes, I don’t know the genre yet.)
ahem. A genre and some setting. I think I will brainstorm/mindmap this one, to see what elements to I want to have in there, ie the stuff I’d be happy to write for a month, a map where I can poke my finger anywhere and say: “Now THIS shows up in the next story!” Oh well, screw the genre, setting/story elements will be enough.
a lot of secondary characters: allies, friends, enemies, family and whatnot. Also for poking purposes,
some story ideas (my feeling is that I could write 20 stories since my short stories usually are 2-3 K long, but that’s not something I could really plan).

And maybe more, but that’s it for the beginning. Secret gift code is… oh, right, I promised not to tell. Well, no secret gift code then.