R Canepa

Today was a good day for productivity.  Ideas and energy to do something with them came from all over.  A few were related to things I’m actively working on.  A few got backburnered.

Some ideas and “plot points” (for lack of a better phrase) came together for STRANDED and I got 1000 words out on it without too much wailing or gnashing of teeth.  An okay wordcount by most standards, but a stupendously and massively awesome wordcount on a project that’s been stalled for a while.

I submitted 5 old poems to a publisher yesterday two days ago.  That feels like progress.

First instinct is to mention where I sent stuff.  Is it bad form to do that?  Who knows–could be.  To be safe, I’ll keep it to myself.

I also did another round of edits on PIPES and its now in the hands of a preview reader before I send it out.  That also feels like progress.

* * * * *

There’s a pile of papers on my desk that I should probably go through.  Story notes, random thoughts and scribblings, lists of projects, and so on.  Rooted through it a bit and found a piece of paper hearkening back to my days of heavy editing on the Norton’s Ghost novel.

It’s a collection of “problem words” and whatnot, along with some numbers.  I was going through the manuscript and using search functions to find said words and eliminate them.  I also wrote them down so that I can revisit the list whenever I edit another story and scrub them out.  For instance, in whichever round of editing this was, I went from 364 uses of the word “just” to 126.  That’s a 66% improvement (or thereabouts).

Some of the other words I worked to remove were:

• suddenly
• not
• really (117 down to 21)
• very
• quite (30 down to 9)
• perhaps
• maybe (110 to 78; sometime tells me I could have done better there)
• some of
• seemed
• afterwards
• sat there
• I feel
• continued _____ (verb in blank)

The rest don’t have numbers written next to them.  I feel rather guilty for putting them in there in the first place, but think I vindicated myself pretty well overall by seeing to their removal.

“Murder Your Darlings” is a pretty common bit of writing advice: it’s usually meant in the sense that you need to cut or delete stuff that doesn’t work, even if you just love it to pieces and isn’t it awesome?!

Tonight, though, I think it also has another meaning.  I have too many projects going on, too many to possibly have time for, and so I have to pick and choose which ones will gain the benefit of my time and which ones get back-burnered.

By deciding to not devote time to a particular project, I am in effect murdering it.  Even if I’m really really sorry about it.

* * * * *

In WIP news, I submitted 5 poems to a publisher this evening and did another round of edits on PIPES. I’m thinking it’ll be ready to go out in another few days.

A WIP update.

Codename: Pipes

I finished my first edit on codename: Pipes this evening.  Cleaned up some dialog and smoothed out some transitions that were rough. That’s the awesome thing about writing: it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time.

My planned word limit on the story when I sat down to write it was 1000 words.  The original clocked in somewhere around 950 or so, depending on the program doing the counting.  This puts a little pressure on me. A little squeeze to ensure I don’t add too much.  The story can be told in that amount of words.  I just need to spend some time with it to make sure it shines.

I’ll do one more edit and then I’ll hand it off to close readers for their feedback.

Codename: Morocco and Codename: Nova

These stories are still with my close readers. It’s sometimes difficult to wait on feedback. The stories loom large in my life and I have to remember that they don’t necessarily do so in the lives of my close readers. I want to make them better and then get them out into the world, but these things take time.

I’ve tried to get a good rotation going so that I’m busy working on other stories in various stages while waiting for initial feedback on other works.