Thesis Diary: Takes a Turn
Update 8 27 July-2 Aug. 2020
So, this update is going to take a different turn than the previous 7. I have a little index card that has a basic layout for these posts staring at me, and every week I give you the word count, what I’m currently writing, and where I’ll be going for the next week. As well as a little talk about school in general.
That’s not going to happen this week.
In the first days of this blog I did a series of world building blogs and writing “behind-the-scenes.” And in one of them I broached the topic of mental health. Check it here if you wish: Learning from my Mistakes.
Word Count
Guess what… ZERO! That’s right, in my previous update I went from being so happy to make almost 9000 words, and in this post, we have zero. Here’s what happened.
I spent all of last Sunday hammering out 4400 of that 8619-word count for Update 7. I pushed myself hard and I was well pleased to do so. And then Monday rolled around and it was 95 f in my office, and I decided I would take the day off. As soon as I did that, I felt bad, and so I pushed myself to get all of my school work done in a single day, and I also started a painting project.
Basically, because I took a day off writing I punished myself to keep working on other things because I had guilt. Tuesday was even worse; the temp was back up and I had a half day of work and when I came home, I had 4 hours in which to write. I game on Tuesday nights, so I had to be ready for that. The heat, general guilt and “bad thought,” I did nothing, felt more guilty and even wanted to skip game. But I forced myself to game and I had a good time.
It was at that point that I realized that perhaps I was going to get nothing done this week and perhaps I could accept that. Thursday was my day off so I decided I would not worry about writing, painting, or anything else. I knew I would be able to get my self together and perhaps make1000-2000 words on Thursday and Sunday. Not a problem?
Plans go Wrong.
I woke up Thursday to find that my co-worker was back in the ER and I rushed to work to take his shift. There would be no writing this week. I was done.
In a weird corollary, my school work was super light this week. 2 workshops, done, and a single discussion post. All finished.
This was also the week that my second final was due, the next 15000 words of my novel needed to be handed in. I had nearly 20K finished for that, and back on Monday I decided to turn it in early, even though it wasn’t due until midnight on 2 Aug.
Second Final
So, the good and the bad.
On the good side, my teacher really enjoyed the read. She finished and graded the final a couple days ago, and all of her feedback was excellent. The story was engaging enough that she read past the 15K mark and finished the whole chapter. There were parts where she left comments that she was so engaged that she forgot to make comments… “oops.”
That was very good for the mental block affecting me last week.
On the bad side of things. I was in such a state on Monday sitting in my near 100-degree office, that I didn’t bother to do a basic read through for typos. Typos! I saw so many typos and errors and fragments that I was mad and disgusted with myself for rushing to hand in the paper.
Literally if I’d taken an hour longer and just read through the paper a second time, I would have found many of the mistakes. Why yes, I am beating myself up over a few lost points. This is a poor mental health week.
This blog is meant to be raw and transparent.
Moving ON
But it is also meant to air out these feelings and get me moving on to better things for THIS week. In a paradox, I have three papers due this week between my two classes, and I already have one of them finished as I write this blog. So, I’m getting in words, not on the novel, but on everything else.
This week is a Discussion, 2 papers, 1 journal, and a little reading. In the novel I have to actually craft new scene cards and plot my way through a section of my novel that is basically open territory.
Plotting versus Pantsing
I think I wrote a few blogs about this last year, and I really should look back and maybe link to them, but I can sum up in a paragraph or two right now.
Plotting is planning out every single part of the book, with a highly detailed outline and tons of notes. Pantsing is starting at a blank screen and just writing everything. Pure pantsing leads to a lot of negative things that I’m not going to get into here.
I am a HYBRID writer. I have LOTS of world building, most of it in my head, and I make a very basic outline. Sometimes that outline is scene by scene and chapter by chapter. The thing is though I only plot out a few of the main scenes, the character backgrounds, and the end/beginning of the book. All of the travel between those plot points are pantsed. Sometimes elements mid chapter/scene are made up on the spot.
So, in my WIP I have the basic ideas for what need to happen in this section of my book, but I have not outlined or broken down the order of the scenes at all. Remember that my book is following five povs and I rotate through them. I need to figure out who gets the next chapter and what order to jump to the various povs. I have goals, but nothing on how to get to those goals or even what the obstacles are. This is a very freeform part of the novel.
This week’s writing goals
Because of all of the school writing I have to do. I am not setting myself a super high word count. Instead I’m setting myself a bunch of craft goals.
#1. Get the pin board set up for the next 4-8 chapters
#2. Update my notebook outline with the next incremental chapters
#3. Flesh out the obstacles and villains in these next few chapters (Mantis, Fleshwarpers, The Fallen, Ashlands Fauna).
If I can get these three things done in my free time or even while at work, then I will consider the week a success and anything I get written in chap 15 will be icing for the cake.
OUTRO
Again, I apologize if this is not the content you were looking for. But this is meant to be a diary, it’s meant to show the whole process and what is going on in my school and writing life. You need to look out for each other right now. We’re all stuck home, or going to stressful jobs, and we’re all kind of on our own.
Thank you for reading this and I hope you stick with me along the entire path.
