Category: WIP updates

This is where the latest information concerning my WIPs (Work in Progress).

bookmark_borderAnd the Edits Begin

Posted on by PaulaO

I hate editing. I really do. I wish I could say I’ve gotten better at it.

But this is daunting, don’t you think?

That’s 402 pages, double spaced, .5″ margins all around, with a footer. Oy.

That small amount I’ve got separated by my finger is pages 1-83. I’m on page 50. Oy.

My printer did a good job of it. It only got itself hung up once and I hung it up twice trying to feed it paper. I only had to reprint 3 pages! Not bad. It did it really fast because I remembered to put it on “economical/fast draft” setting. Ink is expensive!

I’m doing a slash and dash type of editing right now. If it don’t forward the story, out it goes. I’m thinking a huge chunk of the beginning is going to go. So I’m glad I ended it so big.

Oh, and I’m getting a cross-cut shredder. That stuff will be mulch after I’m done with it.

bookmark_border121,103

Posted on by PaulaO

Sarah waited for the others to finish the preparations for the trip to Whitehaven. She reflected on how far she had come since she had left what seemed to be a lifetime ago. How she had changed during that time. She was more sure of herself, for one. Her faith had gotten stronger and she had no doubt Abbess Irys would be proud of her.

“I left Whitehaven to join the ranks of Servants in the best way I could. I was a simple leather crafter’s daughter. Now I am a Keeper, chosen by the goddess. Me. Sarah, daughter to Eliza.” Sarah whispered.

The Freakin’ End

121,103 words. 402 pages w/ .5″ margins.

(picture me with a glass of ice tea in one hand and 3 Musketeers bar in the other)

(to hell with glucose levels. I’m celebratin’!)

bookmark_borderAlmost There

Posted on by PaulaO

I am now over 115,000 words and still going. I am almost there, though. I’m not changing the word count goal. It will end when it is finished and not because I am over or under an arbitrary number.

Real Life has been getting in the way but hopefully I’ve got the madness down to where I can manage it AND write. I hate it when I can only done one or the other, not both.

bookmark_borderCelebration, but not The End

Posted on by PaulaO

Well, I just went over 100,000 words for this WIP. But I’m not at The End yet. So I moved my goal to 115,000 and am still writing.

Today is my self-imposed deadline to get it finished. I don’t think I will reach The End today but that’s fine. I am more certain now how I will get there and it is just a matter of writing it out.

bookmark_borderJust Say The End, dangit!

Posted on by PaulaO

I am barely 7000 words from my goal. Yet, there it sits. I know, now, I think, maybe, where the end will happen. It will take many more words than those 7000 and that’s just fine. A lot from the beginning will face the chopping block and come out the loser.

The end will be the conclusion of the cliffhanger I mentioned earlier. It will end with survival but with the big “Now What?” question hanging. Just enough to entice the reader to be interested in Book Two but not so much that Elena will hurt me.

I’ve not written much in the past few days. I just feel as if my time is up and I still have a lot to say. Annoying.

bookmark_borderCliffhanger

Posted on by PaulaO

Cliffhanger, n. – An episode that ends in suspense

Since I know that Simple Sarah is Book One, and as I near The End, I am wondering where is the best place to end it. I can end it with a big cliffhanger, leaving the reader clawing my email box with demands for the next book. Or I can end it on a good note, leaving the reader satisfied yet calmly wanting to know happens next.

Personally, I hate it when a book ends with a huge bang and there be tough questions left unanswered. I say bad things about the author. Really bad things about their parents, too.

But now, as an author, I understand why sometimes it is a good thing. In terms of sequels, you want something (called a hook) that will make the reader want the next book. Some say that a good cliffhanger leaves some questions unanswered as applies to that book/episode, not a preview to the next. Others say cliffhangers in books are not good because, unlike the old radio shows or regular films in the movies, the next book will be at least 6 months away.

Most agree that a cliffhanger can be good (they were talking mostly about television series’ end of season) but most fail miserably in the first episode of the next season. Three sites that I looked at all mention the season ending in Star Trek: Next Generation when Riker tells Worf to fire at the Borg ship that has Picard as Lucotus. The season ended with that word: fire. Then the first episode is a total dud. Nothing happens with that shot, literally. All that mentioned this were rather pissed about it. And I agree.

It isn’t just the cliffhanger itself that can be bad, but the strength of it and its follow through. Riker saying Fire was heavy. He was ordering the crew to attack a vessel on which their own Captain was aboard. We watch Eureka on the Sci-Fi channel (I refuse to spell it the “new” way). One season ended with Sheriff Carter being fired. Big ending and he kinda deserved it. We spent the off season wondering how they would get him back. The cliffhanger was enough for us to look forward to the next season, yes, but it wasn’t OMG!! worthy. And when the season started again, they didn’t resolve his employment status that first episode. I think it wasn’t until the second one. The follow through was great. Kept the suspense.

Perhaps that is how I will end Simple Sarah. On a tense note but with few questions left unanswered. And that means that I must get to writing the next book! Oy.

bookmark_borderProgress

Posted on by PaulaO

Simple Sarah is now over 70K words! I want it to get to no less than 100K before I say “The End”.

It is progressing nicely. Editing will be easy-ish I think. This is a book I have written and rewritten so many times a’ready, ya know?

Thing is, at 70K, I am not very far into the book, story wise. There’s still a lot to go. I am now rethinking of where the stopping point will be. Since it is Book One, I am wanting to end it nicely but at a spot where folks will want to figure out what will happen next.

I know the graph on the side says “Trilogy” but I am thinking it will be only two books. The middle one was to be Lea’s story in the form of storytelling as they travel along. But it’s a bad idea. Instead, it may wind up being just two books with Lea’s story standing on its own. I will have to advise readers of the chronological order vs order it should be read.

Details! The devil is in ’em. And I hate it.

During editing, I will be working on the synopsis. I hate synopsiseseses, too. If I had to do a synopsis now, it would be far too long and not say much but say everything. And I have to do it right because synopsises tend to be what is put on the back of the book to entice the reader to fork over nearly $17.

bookmark_borderAnother NaNo Ends

Posted on by PaulaO

And this year I won.

I won not just by writing 50K words, but I won it because I found I could write again. I didn’t know if I could. I thought perhaps I had lost the ability. My jokes of “one book wonder” was becoming not a joke.

I wrote over 4385 words today to end with 50,210 words. I didn’t write much the past few days because I realized I didn’t know where the end was. I didn’t have a clue what was to happen on the last page. Finally, at some point yesterday, it came to me. I didn’t have a chance to sit down and to it until today. And I did it. I wrote the ending.

The story’s not a bad one. It has great potential. But it is missing a lot. And it has so much dialogue it’s sad. It is a very emotional story but still feels flat. At least to me it does. Lorna likes it and wants me to hurry up and finish it. I will poke around on it a few more days, maybe fill in between where I left off the other day and to where I started today. Then in January, I’ll do the rewrite (or 2).

I cannot express how I feel about being able to write again. It feels good. Solid. Real.

I didn’t do a daily word count. I had a small section in a spreadsheet that had the global goals but no daily stuff. I don’t want to turn into a Word Count Queen again.

bookmark_borderSynopsis Biopsis

Posted on by PaulaO

I hate writing synopsises…synopsi…those things.

The synopsis is smashing down the entire novel into a single paragraph or two into a summary. Part of its purpose is to tease the reader and publisher into wanting more. Think of the synopsis as what’s on the back cover of a book with just a wee bit more added in.

Another part is to help the writer to figure out just what the hell she is aiming for. Which is probably why I hate them.

Someone asked what this latest book of mine was about. And I couldn’t quite answer that question. “Earth is about to end, aliens come and rescue a bunch of people in time…you know.” I think that’s what I said.

I don’t think I can write a synopsis until the book is finished. Too many variables. Too many plot holes. Too many untied strings. But there comes a point when I feel the urge to start narrowing it down. Almost always it happens about 30K words. Exodus is at ~29K so I am feelin’ it. I am doing it in my head for now. It has helped to fix some of the problems I’m having.

One problem was the sheer numbers of people. The world’s population right now is just under 7 billion. I at first was thinking that maybe 22% of them would be genetically homosexual. And of that amount, 45% were lesbians. That came out to be 672,885,369 lesbians.

Think about it. 672.8 MILLION lesbians/humans. That’s a shit load of people. So I did some research on just what is the percentage of homosexuals? That number depends on the country/region. Some countries have a high percentage (up to 45%) and others have a really low one (as low as 2%). Then I was thinking that perhaps not everyone who identifies as being homosexual may not be genetic homosexuals. So I dropped the numbers down to half to 11%. Still left me with 336.4 million lesbians. Oy.

Okay, plot change. No way could they have gotten everyone. Yeah, sure they could have if all were put into cryogenic suspension. But still, what to do with all of them? So I changed the plot. They didn’t have time to take everyone off. I looked at 25% of all lesbians had been rescued (84 million) and of those, only 1% would be woken up (brought out of cryogenic suspension). They would help the aliens to decide what to do with them all. That meant 841,107 would be awake and moving around. Still a huge number but somewhat more manageable. Slightly more than the population of San Francisco.

Now my synopsis is starting to form. Plot knots are being combed out to nicer looking threads. Plot holes are being patched with more information. I still couldn’t write it out but it is there like a ghost. Just don’t ask me to come up with it.

Linkages:
What Percentage of Population is Gay? (Gallup poll)
Demographics of Sexual Orientation (Wikipedia)
Modern Survey Results (part of above article; interesting section)

bookmark_borderTeaser

Posted on by PaulaO

I’m writing again. Started working on Harri and Liz’s story, aka BG3, aka “Butch Girls and Stereotypes”. Yes, another damn romance. Here’s the beginning:

Liz Marsh refused to cry. Closing and taping shut the last box would make her cry. She could feel it. Her cheeks hurt. Her eyes burned. No words were capable of coming out of her mouth. Not happening. Unless she cried. That wasn’t happening either. She’d not cried when he’d died. She’d not cried at the funeral service or at the graveside. She’d heard whispers of how brave she was and others saying she just was a cold bitch.

She sat on the edge of the desk and picked up the picture frame closest to her. The photograph was of a small girl—herself–holding a cane fishing pole in one hand and the line with the six pound catfish in the other. She put the photo down and picked up the next one. It was of herself and an older man sitting at a table outdoors. It was at one of the church homecomings or something. Her grandfather was laughing and pointing at the pile of chicken bones next to Liz’s plate.

God how she missed him.

She clutched the photo to her chest and squeezed her eyes shut.

It’s not like he died suddenly. The cancer had been draining Tobias Marsh dry for a while, the last six months being the hardest. He had died at last, his body a ravaged husk, just two weeks ago. With him had died a huge chunk of Liz’s reason for living. She clutched the photograph in a half-hearted attempt to hold what was left of her together.

“Told you it was too soon to be dealing with this mess.” Someone spoke from the doorway.

Now she could cry.