Writing Week Status

After some false starts and a viewpoint change or two, I’m holding steady on my writing word count goal for the week. I’m even a little ahead of the curve at the moment! Being able to delve back into the Jagged Earth Story World lore brought me out of a dry spell in words to page (technically electrons to magnetic media, but I digress). I created some chapter heading quotes and rearranged the order of a few chapters. The key to breaking the block on the latest chapter was changing the the viewpoint of the scene from one character to another. That technique definitely goes into the toolbox for future use.

Continue reading “Status and a little more” →

Quick update

It will be a very short update… last week was spent laid up with the first (and hopefully last) winter ailment, so I completely failed to reach my word count goal. Fortunately, I was in better shape in time for the S3 writing team meeting where I received some excellent feedback and input on the 2nd book. Even better, I’m on track to reach this week’s goal!

DDW

The Good

I hit just over an additional 2000 words for this week. About a third of them ended up in the latest chapter: Interlude the 1st: Downtime. I usually write in the same sequence that I (currently) have the plot. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but then little about writing seems to have hard and fast rules. Research focused around military organizations and actions in the past decade or so, specifically for the background of a new character for the book: Witchwolf Shaman.

Continue reading “Keeping Score 2020 v1.1” →

Ah, New Year’s Resolutions

The holidays, family, a new year…  I hope that you, faithful readers, had a safe and happy wonderful merry of a time during your particular holiday season. For myself, I took an extended break. It’s not often that the stars, and calendars, align and I can spend some extra time visiting family, so I took full advantage when that opportunity knocked.

I have a personal list of resolutions, naturally, but that’s not what this space is for. I’m still holding to not posting just for the sake of posting, so these are my writing resolutions. I won’t inflict perennial favorites such as more exercise and fewer chocolate chip cookies.

That last one hurts a lot by the way, because I REALLY like chocolate chip cookies.

Continue reading “Keeping Score 2020 v1” →

So where has D.D Wolf been hiding? What happened to the site updates? Seriously, what’s the deal?

Hardware

Lately I’ve been working on the best writing process for me. I still use engineering graph paper quite a bit for first cuts, especially for drawings. This works for me at least partially for the classic reasons: it forces me to slow down and it involves more senses than typing on a keyboard. In the past it’s also been simpler for me to carry around pen & paper. The idea now, though, is to shift to using a tablet/laptop small enough to easily carry around and manipulate in tight corners. That’s a big change for me, and it’s taking a while to get comfortable with it. So it’s taking me longer to get the actual story for book #2 moving forward.

Software

I like the writing software that I use. It can track a myriad of story details and let me access them all in one place rather than dragging three-ring binders around. That same capability is also the biggest downside for me. As a research librarian at heart, It’s easy for me to get lost in background details, history, setting, and all the other “bones” of the story. Generally speaking, I find it easier to pull that material together than putting down the story. And I enjoy putting the backstory together, often more than I enjoy getting a full story completed. That’s a weakness I continue to struggle with.

Continue reading “Hardware, Software and Headware” →