Vishata: Beginnings, Sketching, and the Writing Process

[scribblemyname]

Story of the Day

Today was a day of beginnings—the Vardin kind, the kind that will hopefully start a new way of living my world.

On the mundane fronts, I had a job interview today, a job interview yesterday, and a very busy life trying to get thank you and Christmas cards written. Turns out that I'm behind on everything, especially reading other people's books, but I'm hopeful that come January, I will be gainfully employed and financially independent. Yay.

On the writerly front, I was talking (f-locked) to trovia and also to Kira Butler about sketching and layering as a writing process.

I write it as if it's fanfiction, as if everyone in the world knows exactly what I'm saying, then on the next layer, I really think of the ambience and context from my character's POV and layer in more and anything I think must be understood by the reader, then last I really think of the uninitiated reader and tuck in all the necessaries to help them along. Ship to beta, go back and layer in with answers to all her questions.

It got me to thinking, and I decided to do something I hadn't thought of before, hadn't dreamed of—just. write. the. story. down.

Forget the fancy words, the narrative, the dialogue, the beautiful scenes; just get it down! It's a lump of telling just now, split into paragraphs at the appropriate junctures with the occasional nugget of real written story begun. I'm not incorporating the mess of material already written because it bogs me down getting the whole big picture on paper. When it's finally down, we can layer from there.

Vardin Word of the Day

vishata | vishahta [ vi SHAH tah ] or [ vi SHAH tuh ] from v-sh-t (etym. Old Vardin)

ht. n. #p. 1. originating historical events, usually presented in a series or set of stories; 2. the set of records detailing the stories of the founding members of the Houses of Vardin.

vishata, hunter plural, the happenings which cause or originate a particular period of time, usually the present era.. s. vashet, pl. vishata. [from Old Vardin, v-sh-t.]

Written Work of the Day

Yesterday, I began work on sketching out The Rothnen Cycle. It's a sketch, not an outline or a draft in the traditional sense, though it will be once that sketch is fleshed out, so I arbitrarily set 120,000 words as the book word count goal (this is perhaps an understatement), and I will be regularly posting progress counts (unless you all announce that you would rather I not, in which case, I'll throw them on a page somewhere—like my sidebar—instead).

1369/120000 words. 1.1% done.

And a scribble for good measure:

It was a late wind—too blustery, too wintry for the turning of spring to summer. Keisleh closed her mouth against the cold, ragged tickle it left in the back of her throat.

Rec of the Day

So M.C.A. Hogarth has a Pinterest at last!



Anything new going on with your muse or writing process? Any special things you've read or places you've visited?

Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.

Comments

[kirabutler.livejournal.com]

I think that there's a lot of that back-planning happening ALL THE TIME. I do a lot of that in my head too -- and in my notes -- themes, motivations, desires, fears, full backstories for supporting characters that might never make it into the primary manuscript but make me looooove them...

The advice that each "on writing" writing book I've studied to get my thing off the ground has said: write it, edit it later. All of those notes and all of those things that make it WHOLE can come from three or five or ten edits of the thing at your own leisure.

Less pressure. When there are words to work with, you're got something to build on.

(GOOD JOB!)

[scribblemyname]

I've always done it in my head, but I only wrote it down in story form, and that's such a new thing for me, to feel free to write a lump of tell, a description of the story instead of the "story" itself. But to simply realize, duh, I can layer that description into the "story" was so freeing.

And amen, amen. You inspired me. :grins: