08/30/2010:
Still working, slowly but surely. When I first started this project, I didn't think it'd
take anywhere near this long.
And it wouldn't have, if I made the same amount of time to work on the book each day. Real
life tends to get in the way.
What I'm working on now is going back through and filling in detail where needed. Most writing
sites tend to tell you to write one big draft, then edit out all the filler. I tend to write the
basic story, then come back and fill it in. A few examples:
I'm not very good at character descriptions. Reading back through the draft, I can see that I start
talking about a character, but didn't describe him at all.
I'm also still working on the scene with Jake mentioned a few
posts down.
07/29/2010:
I've been working on the book... slowly. All kinds of things are interfering. I keep telling myself I'm going to makes sure to get at least an hour of writing or editing or something in per day but....
This is kind of cool. There's a website called "I Write Like..." that analyzes your writing to see who you write like. Apparently I write like Arthur Clarke. I was hoping for Anne McCaffery, but I can't complain...
03/22/2010:
Well, I've finished the 2nd draft, and started the 3rd.
Many of you are no doubt wondering what was done in the second draft, what's in the 3rd, and how many drafts there will be.
These are good questions. ;) For the 2nd draft I read through quickly and fixed all the spelling, grammar, and typos that I could
find doing a quick read through. The 3rd draft will be edited for voice, tense, story flow, and showing vs. telling.
No, that probably doesn't require another draft, but this way I have a (reasonably) clean copy to go back to if I royally screw
something up.
For my helpful proofreaders, please send in anything you have to fix. I'm sure I missed a bunch of grammar errors, and what would
be most helpful would be to point out if I brought up a plot point early in the story and didn't follow up on it. (Some of these
are intentional, and will be followed up on completely in later books, but I want to make sure I didn't skip follow up on them
completely.)
One of the main things I'm working on in this draft is editing for showing vs telling. As an example of this, at one point in
the story, Tomed outlines in a meeting some information that Jake got for him. In the third draft I'm adding a scene that follows
along with Jake as he gets this information. This gives us some more action instead of just listening to characters talk about things.
Also, it lets me flesh out the character of Jake some more.
Well, that's all for this update. Hopefully the first of many that actually details what I'm doing instead of just blathering.
I need to add comments to this update feed... in the meantime, please feel free to e-mail updates to me at yoda47 at jedisaber dot com.
03/10/2010:
I've got to get better at updating. Oh well. Only a few people even know about this site
at the moment anyway, and I'm not sure any of them check it. ;)
The first draft is now done! Yay! Now the hard work begins!
5/14/2009:
No, I haven't forgotten about the book. I'm working on Chapter 17 now.
I think at this point I'm going to finish the first draft then send it out to everyone.
Current Word count: 74,126
1/31/2009:
Not much to report. I'm now working on Chapter 15.
Current Word count: 67,429
1/14/2009:
I've gotten a lot done recently. Now working on Chapter 13. I hope to
have the whole first draft done in a month or so.
Current Word count: 61,067
12/2/2008:
The first draft of Chapter 10 is done!
Current Word count: 52,216
10/21/2008:
I haven't had much of a chance to write lately. My wife had our first child!
So I've been busy with that, and not getting much sleep. ;)
I did decide I just had to re-name a character. I have one character named Jack
that I named as such to show Australian ancestry. (A quick web search showed that
Jack is one of the more popular Australian names.) Ever since I created the
character, for some reason I keep wanting to call him Jake. This has resulted
in my referring to him as both Jack and Jake both in person, and in the draft.
Obviously, this has confused everyone. So I finally decided to just give up and
call him Jake.
Current Word count: 50,430
10/7/2008:
Over a year of working on it so far, and I've finally got to the halfway mark.
I'm hoping to have some more time to work on it here shortly. I hope I finish the first
draft before the two year mark! Then the real work can start: editing, re-writing, polishing, etc.
Since I've started writing a novel, I've developed a lot more appreciation for the time between
books in other series I've enjoyed.
Current Word count: 50,020
9/8/2008:
Not much new. I've done some writing...
Current Word count: 49,160
7/30/2008:
Wow, it's been a whole month since the last update! Work and home stuff have been keeping
me busy, and I've only had a little time for writing. Last week I was on vacation and in-between
slacking off and riding my bike I managed to finish Chapter 9.
That was a lot of fun, as it has a battle scene in it that I've been itching to get to. I'm
going to try to keep the pace up, as next month it will be a year since I started writing this. I
hope to be be at least half done with the first draft by then! (Well, the story is roughly around
the halfway mark by now. I'm using 100,000 words as a benchmark goal for the length, though it might
end up and be slightly longer or shorter.)
Current word count: around 44,900
6/30/2008:
A few more updates to the encyclopedia, including maps of SeQish and Alkask.
I've written a little bit more, but I've spent more time planning on where the plot
is going from here. I've planned out up to this point and the ending, but I'm not
quite sure exactly what happens between.
Current word count: 42,100. Or somewhere near that...
6/18/2008:
A few updates to the encyclopedia, and a few more paragraphs.
Current word count: 41,900-ish
5/27/2008:
I haven't got much done lately. Other stuff to do and all. That's the nice thing about
writing a first novel and (for now) doing it for fun - I'm not under any kind of timeline!
Current word count: 41,000 ... or thereabouts....
4/3/2008:
I've started chapter 8 and made several updates to the Encyclopedia section of
the website.
Current word count: 39,300
3/31/2008:
Finished chapter 7! I also sent an update out to the people who have been kind
enough to review it for me.
Current word count: around 38K
3/28/2008:
Last night I finished going over changes and spelling errors and such from one
of my reviewers. I also got a teensy little bit of writing done too.
Current word count: a tad over 36K
3/26/2008:
Finished the site layout. All the pages now have something on them. Things yet to do:
add some CSS code to make the navigation links look smoother, design a logo, add the
rest of the encyclopedia content. All of that is expanded from the glossary in the back
of the book, and I'm keeping that up as I write, so it's just a matter of slapping it in
a web page and uploading it. If I ever find some free time I might put it in an SQL database
eventually.
Most of last night was spent tweaking site design,
but I did get some writing done.
Current word count: about 36K.
3/25/2008:
The website is now in beta.
I'll keep working on it here on Jedisaber.com until I'm closer to finishing.
3/24/2008:
I'm about 35% done with the first draft now.
It's kinda hard to tell exactly at this point though ;) The average length for a novel
is 100,000 words, so that gives me a rough gauge of my progress: 35,000 words equals
35%. Of course, since I haven't finished the first draft, I don't know exactly how close
to done I am. The final story might be a bit over or under 100K words.