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A Letter From A Nano-Camper

Dear readers,

Hi! Send Twizzlers and black licorice jelly beans please? Oh, and more coffee of course. Not that I don't have plenty, but one can never have enough.

The weather's great, sun's warm, and the occasional glimpses of Black Hawks and Chinooks are just enough to be a timely distraction. I was sorely tempted to go sit and watch the #soldierporn flying around all afternoon, but that sun-so warm and lovely in an indirect way on my front porch-promised the murder of a thousand lobster-burns if I dared neglect my day's task. So I saluted the Chinook with my Moleskine and went back to writing.


Eight days of "camp" so far, and the extrinsic motivation is, as I expected, working beautifully.
I knew it would because I've known for some time now that me and hard deadlines, we have this love/hate relationship.
And it's not enough for me to just arbitrarily set myself a deadline either. I've tried that. My psyche laughs at me behind my back, frankly.
We're still working on that.


Near the end of May, I did a skim-through of [DC] as it stood and hacked out approximately 10k, backing out of a few scenes in a crucial spot that weren't working as they stood. That lowered the word count to somewhere around 58k.

As of today, I've officially replaced all that and worked back to where I was. CampNano count is just over 12k and [DC] is all but sitting on 70k.

I've notes everywhere in the Scrivener file, so many the thing is slowly turning into a series of highlighted subfiles, but planning ahead for the edit-pass is simplifying the writing going forward from that 58k point. There are a number of scenes that need altered, expanded--extensively, even. But I've the alterations detailed, and it will be a relatively simple matter to flesh them out. (For me, "relatively simple" means about six weeks of writing 500 words a day.)

Right now I'm more concerned with working the characters through the plot arc and reaching the "end." I'm 1300 words shy of where I wanted to be with today's word count, but I'm pleased with my productivity all things considered. Got the weekend to keep the momentum going, so I expect there will be more strange tweets and Facebook updates that make little to no sense for the majority of people. (And the few that have some idea will be staring with their heads canted and wondering what the fuck Rhi's doing.)

I'm doing what I do best. Writing strange shit.
And I'm loving every moment of it.
Here's to hoping you do too, when you finally read it!
Cheers,
Rhi

Comments

  1. *passes coffee, jelly beans and Twizzlers*

    Black Hawks W00T!!!!

    DC Dbl W00T!!!!!!

    Go Rhi, Go Rhi!

    ps: glad to hear it's going well. That's awesome. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. @Amara: It's the tree. It's still giving me all kinds of happy energy! *w00t*

    ReplyDelete
  3. *Provides pixie stix and dark chocolate for the end of the month*

    Good luck and so forth :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Alex: Oh, pixie stix! Jackpot!
    How is the "lounging by the pool in the sun" itinerary proceeding? Soak up some rays for me ;)

    And thank you... it's going spectacularly thus far. Definitely aiming for an August repeat experience, in hopes of gathering more quantitative proof for my hypothesis that all writers are sadomasochists.

    It'll make great fodder for that Doctoral thesis to acquire my PhD in Psychology one day.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I am just now catching up on my blogs. Glad to see you are headed in the direction you wanted!! You write the strange shit and I'll help by reading it (since I LOVE the strange!!).

    My contribution, hrmmmm.......
    *passes espresso and turtle cheesecake along for shear numminess*

    *hugs*

    ReplyDelete

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