November 2009

november is for writing

Clearly, I fail at blogging during NaNo. This is probably not that surprising.

But now there are pretty little wordcount widgets, look!

Currently at 36k. Now have five different fairy tales (Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, The Six Swans, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, & Bluebeard) incorporated and twisted around into knots. I’m guessing that this draft will round out around 75k, and I’m hoping I can get that done this month. I already have notes for things I want to change, of course.

And now, because I know y’all (& by y’all, I mean the approximately three people who read this regularly. Hi Paul!) are interested, a Great Agent Search update:

At the end of October I sent my revised manuscript back to the three agents who wanted to see it, and within two weeks I had responses & feedback from all three of them.

And… I get to go back to revisionland. Everyone say yay!

It’s really not that bad. I think this time I have a much clearer idea of what needs to happen and a slightly vaguer but still pretty decent idea of how to do that.

The unfortunate part is that it’s going to involve completely dismantling and reworking what I have. And I have no idea how long that will take. I’m hoping to do some structural outlining/planning during December and then start in on the new draft in January.

And when that revision is completed and beta’d and revised again, all three agents want to see it again. So it seems like there’s a good novel in there somewhere. I just need to figure out how to write it.

But other than occasional jotting down of notes & ideas I’m trying not to think about it too much at the moment. I have NaNoing to do. And the circus can wait while I’m busy wandering around my war-torn fairy tale mashup of a NaNovel. I am all Once Upon a Not-So-Happily-Ever-After at the moment.

Here, have my favorite illustration of Rapunzel that I’ve stumbled upon in researching:

gloag_rap

Rapunzel by Isobel Lilian Gloag

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: wishing

wishing

wishing

There isn’t any water left in the well. There was, once, a long time ago. There was probably a bucket, too, but now there is only a rope.

Wells do go dry sometimes.

Can you make wishes in an empty well? Well, I’m certain you can make them, but can they be granted by bucketless emptiness?

Or does it need the water?

What water once was there is now buried in years of accumulated coins. Layers and layers of old wishes.

I suppose there can be too many wishes, even for a wishing well.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, ago

exploratory noveling

It makes me very sad that the NaNoWriMo word count widgets aren’t working yet. So when I say, “I have 17,507 words!” that doesn’t get translated into a pretty little progress bar.

I Googled and I found one! Not the fancypants official ones, but still a visual interpretation of numbers and that makes me inexplicably happy:

17507 / 50000 words. 35% done!

I’m much further ahead than I’d expected to be. I might try to hit 25k sometime over the weekend if I’m feeling particularly motivated. It’s going well but I’m not sure what I think of it yet. But my characters are putting up with a fair amount of pushing them around, and they have a destination that I likely won’t reach for another 10k, and I have a general idea of what might happen after that.

I have more of an outline this year than usual, mostly because I’m structuring it on classic Hero’s Journey framework, so it has a general sort of shape to it. It’s building toward something, there’s all the fun traveling bits and stuff to encounter around the way.

It is sort of a fairy tale mashup, with my main characters taken from fairy tales and pushed far beyond their happy ever afters. So far I’ve pulled from Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Six Swans. I’m likely using Bluebeard at some point.

It’s almost as though I have a map this year, only it’s written in fading ink and has bits missing, and I keep wandering toward those bits that say hic sunt dracones. Still exploratory, still not sure what I might find, but I have a decent idea of where I’m headed.

Unless of course I get attacked by pirates or something. Which has been known to happen.

By erin, ago