What are you working on right now?

Just clicked submit on my first ever writers of the future submission. I need a drink.

My plan is to outline three more short stories in the next few weeks. I want to submit to each quarter the rest of the year. I spent way too long on the first one. (About a year!) I am also trying to decide on my plan of action for the next draft of my novel. It needs another good alignment before I start breaking it down for edits.
 
I've a partly written story in the same world as The Beguiler, but I also have a Regency romance which I think I might return to.
 
9C13078D-C7B0-41B0-B397-9696D5A5C753.jpeg
Plotting. My head hurts.
 
night_wrtr said:
Just clicked submit on my first ever writers of the future submission. I need a drink.

My plan is to outline three more short stories in the next few weeks. I want to submit to each quarter the rest of the year. I spent way too long on the first one. (About a year!) I am also trying to decide on my plan of action for the next draft of my novel. It needs another good alignment before I start breaking it down for edits.
Click to expand...
I've had a critique back for what will hopefully be my first WotF entry, next month. It's mostly positive, with a few hundred words to cut (from an 8,000 word story - the second longest I've written (the longest was a WotF attempt from last year I haven't finished)). The hardest thing is I need to come up with a real scientific reason for why a road or path would shred/bite anything that moves in a particular direction (feet, wheels etc.). I could go the fantasy route with the story, but it feels more sci-fi.
 
I'm still working on the 8,000 word story I mentioned above, and my admiration for novel-writers (and longer-short writers) is increasing every minute. Given this is by far the longest story I've edited, I hadn't realised how difficult it is to keep track of what you've written where and when, making sure you're consistent and everything is in the correct order etc. I have to keep reading through chunks of the story to figure out what I can write elsewhere.

I'm writing so much recently - gone are the days when I remembered every scene of every story I'd written!
 
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AlexH said:
I hadn't realized how difficult it is to keep track of what you've written where and when, making sure you're consistent and everything is in the correct order etc. I have to keep reading through chunks of the story to figure out what I can write elsewhere.

I'm writing so much recently - gone are the days when I remembered every scene of every story I'd written!
Click to expand...
Did you write an outline first?
I remember (over twenty-five years ago) I wrote a long plot line for my book , but after a while I noticed gaps, inconsistencies, and things I failed to think about. In spite of this, I still think it's a good idea to have one for it will help some. You may also want to write a list of characters with brief descriptions.
 
AlexH said:
I'm still working on the 8,000 word story I mentioned above, and my admiration for novel-writers (and longer-short writers) is increasing every minute. Given this is by far the longest story I've edited, I hadn't realised how difficult it is to keep track of what you've written where and when, making sure you're consistent and everything is in the correct order etc.
Click to expand...

I ran into that problem, too. I added in a bit of dialogue early to explain something to another character, then realized I had already used it later on in the story. The good thing is that an 8k word story can usually be read fairly quickly from beginning to end.

Honestly, writing these longer shorts is causing me more fits than writing a novel. Mine was around 7k, but I would say the average chapter in my book is around 3k words. That is a much more manageable chunk for me to work with. There are a lot of other variables to consider of course, but in terms of editing, it is a lot easier to clean up!
 
HareBrain said:
BTW, it's worth remembering when "correcting" other people's spelling that their spelling might already be perfectly correct for the English usage in their own country.
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Sorry.:oops::oops::speechless::speechless:
I was just trying to help I didn't realised that you're from the UK or that you are a staff member. I only thought of the red line.

Out of curiosity and edification what other words besides besides 'realise' and 'realize' and 'color' and 'colour' are there that have different spellings?
 
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Lafayette said:
I didn't realised that you're from the UK or that you are a staff member.
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The original post was AlexH's, rather than mine. Incidentally, a lot of members are from the UK (until relatively recently this was a .co.uk site).

Lafayette said:
Out of curiosity and edification what other words besides besides 'realise' and 'realize' and 'color' and 'colour' are there that have different spellings?
Click to expand...

Mostly those types: ize/ise and o/ou. Also some double-l, such as US traveler v British traveller. I'm sure there are others. On a more general point, though I appreciate you were trying to help, it's probably best not to correct even undoubtedly wrong spellings (unless the member has asked for it or you've checked they're happy for you to do so), as they may be dyslexic.
 
Lafayette said:
Did you write an outline first?
I remember (over twenty-five years ago) I wrote a long plot line for my book , but after a while I noticed gaps, inconsistencies, and things I failed to think about. In spite of this, I still think it's a good idea to have one for it will help some. You may also want to write a list of characters with brief descriptions.
Click to expand...
I didn't as I prefer to make things up as I go along. I've been advised to write plot outlines after initial drafts though, to help me figure out if everything needs to be there, or if more is needed. It definitely helped for one story in particular, but I haven't done it for this one.

night_wrtr said:
I ran into that problem, too. I added in a bit of dialogue early to explain something to another character, then realized I had already used it later on in the story. The good thing is that an 8k word story can usually be read fairly quickly from beginning to end.

Honestly, writing these longer shorts is causing me more fits than writing a novel. Mine was around 7k, but I would say the average chapter in my book is around 3k words. That is a much more manageable chunk for me to work with. There are a lot of other variables to consider of course, but in terms of editing, it is a lot easier to clean up!
Click to expand...
It takes me around an hour to read through 8,000 words. I've just Googled and that seems to be average, so maybe I'm not as slow a reader as I think.
 
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