Writing...

[panik]

Yes I am, still! Amazing...

I'm getting up at 5am each day to get a good three hours in before the house becomes too noisy and annoying to consider attempting to write original fic. I'm aiming for 1500 words a day and pretty much exceeding the target. Alas the word-counter ain't moving because I've had to up my proposed word-count to the more realistic 200,000.

I have written 10,290 of 200,000 words. I am now 5.14% done! no frills wordmeter

The novel's still a bit of a puzzle to me. I seem to be seeding mysteries all over the place that I don't really know how I'm going to resolve as yet, but I'm enjoying the ride enormously. The last novel I wrote, and the road book that followed it, were so meticulously planned, the writing was just flesh-on the beautifully-constructed bones and they were just hard work and no fun at all. *G* When I started this one, I made the deliberate decision to write it like a fanfic; having an idea of what the story was and where it was going to go - but mostly making sure I knew the characters really well so that they dictate the story and I just follow in their wake and they're constantly surprising me. It's brilliant.

So my master plan seems to be working, at least, I'm really pleased with the way it's going so far and I'm certainly enjoying the ride far more than I have with my other books. Whether the final result will be up to scratch is very much open to question, of course. (o:

Comments

[banbury.livejournal.com]

Yes, journalism, though I like to think of myself as a researcher rather than journalist. I have to know the purpot and main ideas of an article when I begin to write it but i can't detail the structure of it before i write the first variant, I don't know why but i begin to understand how each part combines with others only then. Not very productive way of doing it :-)

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

Whatever works for you is always good and everyone has their own ways of doing things. I could never figure out how the old guys managed, banging a story straight out on to a typewriter - it's a totally different way of thinking and one I never got yo grips with.

I always found, being, by nature, a long writer, that I had to structure articles very firmly and know exactly what points I was going to make at set points of the story or else I was just - lost. Especially if they involved hefty editing of lengthy interviews. I used to get in the most appalling messes sometimes.

Columns, though were pure stream-of-consciousness things for me and always my favourite things to write.

Who do you work for (if you don't mind me asking?) I used to mostly write for The Economist and the UK press; did a lot of freelancing for the glossies - Marie Claire, Cigar Aficionado, Natural Health, stuff like that.

[banbury.livejournal.com]

It's okay, I just think you don't know these editions, cause I live and work in Russia.

I'd begun to write for journals for parents when I was at the university, i was interested in fairy tales then and had written about it and other stuff, i'd even had a year-length project of 'The history of fashion for children' :-)
Later I've wrote several years for the "Moscow news" monthly appendix (is it right word?) and for one of the travels magasines, always as a freelancer.

Now I write for popular scientific journal "Science and Life" though quite lazy, i'm actually lazy writer, sometimes it takes me even month or two to compose article (if i have no deadline). I tried to find a way to one of the glossies, but here it's all work through personal connections and my connections lays in different fields :-)

But mostly i work as a researcher (and rarely author or editor) for TV programms, scientific and documentary, with my father who is well-known in Russia author of documentary and scientific popular films ant Tv programms.

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

Your work sounds really interesting. I used to work as a fixer for documentary makers when I was in Cuba. It was always my favourite part of the work.

[banbury.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's always interesting. We are finishing now big project - history of genetics, I've spent two years reading and translating a lot of literature on it from English and rummaging libraries and it was even fun, i found so many fascinating stories and persons to read about. I was totally in love with Tomas Hunt Morgan for some time :-)