A Day in the Life of the Scribbler, October 5

This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

So last night, instead of worrying about writing, I read my incredibly wonderful beta notes that came back from multiple parties and got one set compared to the document to remember what I'd done. Learned a few things.

Audience

Interestingly enough, the anthology I put together while definitively needing work turns out to have been aimed strongly at a poetry audience, which explains a lot of its failings as a fiction anthology.

En brief, on the tin I go after a fandom audience and aim to appeal to those in my own community (go figure), but in reality, I have three primary audiences I appeal to with different pieces and some overlap: SFF, literary, and poetry. Tone is a bigger part of this than just story. Half of my flashfic appears to be solidly in the poetry camp, which hardly surprises me as that's how I got into flash fiction in the first place.

Proofing

Proofreading, oddly enough, is not the same as copyediting. Proofreading in the vernacular has come to mean typo and grammar cleanup, but that's not what it actually means. Proofreading is where you take that carefully copyedited manuscript and make sure the document going to press didn't do wonky things to your formatting.

When the Clock Chimes had some very wonky things happen to my formatting. I am henceforth adding proofing back into my writing/publishing process. I've got a few edits I could've sworn I made already not present in the file I'm working from and the italics! Oy, the italics. To say nothing of the line spacing. :headdesk:

Will write some on the 6th, but that's primarily devoted to cleaning, shopping, and an all-day virus scan, so we'll see.

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

A Day in the Life of the Scribbler, October 6

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

Stage One: Assess

So there are lovely ficlets waiting to be read in my LJ inbox. There are lovely notes on the story from inferno and my infuriating anthology to be implemented. And there are prompts. Not to mention house-cleaning and other chores—like breakfast.

I've also been thinking about starting up blogging again, but there's the interesting thought of... should I? I'd like to focus on fiction I think.

I'm going to go do necessaries, then hit the story from inferno.

Stage Two: Work

So I'm actually flipping back and forth between cleaning, editing, munching, and going shopping (just got back). So far, it's working. I'm on page 13 out of 27 of my first pass through the manuscript at a little after three o'clock. I can tell this will take a couple passes though.

It's 5:48 p.m. and the first pass is done. I have two big changes to make and a handful of edits to decide on. Sometimes I agree with my beta, every once in a while I don't, and sometimes I figure out how to fix the issue in a way I like that differs from the one suggested. I've got those left.

Writing the new scenes. That's all I can call it, though technically, I'm writing them in and around the old material. It's better, I think. I hope my beta agrees.

Second pass done around 9:45 p.m. Just for the stylistic pass now and those last little decisions... Ten minutes later and we're down to stylistic. And wrapped at 11:00 p.m. Wow. Back to beta. At least, my brain doesn't feel like mush!

On Reading

Better (read, more relevant) blog posts today. Two I felt were necessary to link to:

• "Jigsaw Puzzles and Tinker Toys," P. C. Wrede
• "Sunday Update: Chasing Enthusiasm, Not Dreams," Camille LaGuire

The first one goes through a few ways people plot stories and when you get to this paragraph, just insert my name here:

My first clue is usually that I have an enormous heap of bright shiny bits and pieces (a few of which I absolutely know go into the story somewhere, but most of which I am equally positive are mutually exclusive options) that I can’t make fit with each other.

The second article on enthusiasm is me in a perfect nutshell, except that I find I am simply unable to make progress when I opt for discipline over enthusiasm. If I shut up the muse at all, I shut it up entirely. Needless to say, this is a very bad thing.

 Stage Three: Count

• Total Fiction: 2000 words - Month to Date: 9604 words
• Total Blog: 742 words - Month to Date: 2125 words

365 Challenge

• 198–201/365: Dowse and Bleed – about 13,600 words

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.