Turkey and Pecan Pie and Writing and Writing and Card Games
I had a lovely, relaxing four day weekend with my family. In addition to a full weekend of fabulous food (half of which was gluten free) — candied yams, leftover turkey sandwiches, leftover turkey soup, cookies, brownies, and four different kinds of pie — we also participated in nightly rounds of 31 (a card game).
On Friday, we went to see The Muppets, which was fabulous. It was exactly what a muppet movie should be: fun, funny, wacky, and heartfelt. Also, “Am I a Man or a Muppet?” has to be the best song ever:
“Am I a man or am I a muppet?
If I’m a man that makes me a muppet of a man.
Am I a muppet or am I a man?
If I’m a muppet, then I’m very manly muppet.”
My whole family was singing this song and quoting from the movie for the rest of the weekend, and we are all in agreement that we want to own it.
When I wasn’t hanging out with the fam, I was on my computer either writing or being distracted from writing by the internets.
I’m currently at 26,700 words on my Untitled Werewolf Novel, which I’ve been trying to pound out in one go for Nano. I probably should have pushed myself a little harder on getting my word count up, but I kind of just let it be what it was in terms of progress. I have a right to have fun, too, and I did manage to get another 10,000 or so words down. I won’t be completing the Nano challenge this year, but I’m planning to keep working on the novel. Hopefully, I’ll manage to get draft zero completed by the end of December.
I am feeling fairly good about this Werwolf novel and there are some good scenes coming out. I can already tell that there is going to be some serious rearranging that’s going to have to take place in order to shift the emphasis on certain relationships and to make sure there’s conflict from page one. I’m not sure that I’m starting at the right place at the moment.
Draft zero writing is practically like outlining for me. Even though I have most of the novel planned out in my head, I spend most of my time figuring out who these people are and where they want to go. It become exploratory, which is an important step in the process. As I go along I insert notes into the text to help me know what I might want to change in previous chapters (such as putting more focus on the father-daughter relationship at the beginning).
In my next draft, I’ll be able to nail things down a little more solidly and will begin to share it with my writing gang.
[Cross-posted to my livejournal.]
