So a funny thing happened on the way to the smack down between Jessica and Anakaron . . .
I find using my lap top to write on kind of problematic at times. The problem being, it connects to the internet. So instead of just pausing to think about the next few words, I’ll start playing solitaire, or bubble shooter, or check my email, or surf around . . . you get the idea.
This is why I prefer using my Alphasmart Neo for heavy duty writing. The Neo is great in that there’s no bells or whistles or internet to distract me so I get lots of writing done. But the downside to the Neo is that it’s hard to go back and make changes.
You only see four lines of text and to scroll back up is a pain in the butt. Plus the only way to delete text (that I know of) is to use the backspace key. There’s no mouse, so you can’t highlight blocks of text to move or delete. The easiest way to make a lot of changes is to upload the file to a document on the lap top and change it there.
I worked on three separate scenes this week, and in each case they kind of wandered off into oblivion. I had to re-write their endings to get them back on track and to do this I’d upload them from the Neo to the lap top to determine where I started to go wrong. Once I figured out where I needed to rewrite, I’d go back to the Neo and start from that point and finish the scene.
So . . . while I only have 3,600 words to show on Blood Ties for the week, I probably wrote about 5,000 and deleted 1,400 of them.
And speaking of deleting . . . I did a lot of deleting when I was researching for last week’s non-fiction post. That’s one of the disadvantages of doing research on the internet. It may be quicker and easier, but there’s just so much information out there. You get pages and pages of data, and then you have to distil it down into just a few paragraphs.
It was almost easier in the old days when you had to get your research from books or magazine articles. Instead of copy/pasting vast amounts of information into a document file, and then going back and deleting all the repetitions, you jotted down pertinent facts, maybe highlighting a photocopy or two.
Yeah, I know. There’s no reason I couldn’t do it that way. And I have a pretty good reference library myself. But the internet’s right at my fingertips and it makes research so much quicker. It’s just the distilling down that’s time consuming.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Wordage Report
Editing – 0 hours, 0 pages
Maybe this week will be better
Research – 4.5 hours
Blood Ties – 3,612 words
Not bad, but it could have been better
Blog Posts – includes the post for my regular blog, but not the prompt story.
423 (regular blog)+ 946 + 550 = 1,919 words total
Weekly Prompt – 547 words
Total Words – 6,078
New Prompt
The old photos made her conscious of her age, of how much time had passed – and of what an interesting life she’d had.
Goals From Last Week:
Blood Ties is over 100,000 words! And while I had hopes of finishing it last week, The muse just wasn’t co-operating. But I’m getting closer, and that’s the main thing. Right?
Last week’s prompt still didn’t do anything for me, but I found a different prompt that did (as you know if you saw the prompt story. And a truly weird little story it was.
No editing again, big surprise there, and just a little research. I love full moons, hence the Wednesday post about them. And I’ve got enough left over for this week too.
Goals For This Week:
1. Blood Ties, Blood Ties, Blood Ties! I feel like I’m taking one step forward and two steps back, but I swear I’m going to do my best to get this done!
2. It took me a while to find this week’s prompt, so hopefully I’ll feel inspired to write a story using it.
3. Who am I kidding with the editing? But I need to get a jump start on the research for the next non-fiction series.
And there’s what I’ll be up to this week. How about you?
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