{"id":3395,"date":"2016-07-31T12:53:05","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T19:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/?p=3395"},"modified":"2023-03-02T16:19:13","modified_gmt":"2023-03-02T23:19:13","slug":"viiictory-the-fifteenth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/31\/viiictory-the-fifteenth\/","title":{"rendered":"Viiictory the Fifteenth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Print\"<\/p>\n

Once again, I\u2019ve completed the challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month as part of the National Novel Writing Month challenges – this time, the July 2016 Camp Nanowrimo, and the next 50,000 words of Dakota Frost #5, PHANTOM SILVER!<\/p>\n

\n\"Phantom<\/p>\n

This is the reason that I\u2019ve been so far behind on posting on my blog – I simultaneously was working on four projects: edits on THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE, writing PHANTOM SILVER, doing publishing work for Thinking Ink Press, and doing my part at work-work to help bring about the robot apocalypse (it\u2019s busy work, let me tell you). So busy that I didn\u2019t even blog successfully getting TCTM back to the editor. Add to that a much needed old-friends recharge trip to Tahoe kicking off the month, and I ended up more behind than I\u2019ve ever been \u2026 at least, as far as I\u2019ve been behind, and still won:<\/p>\n

\"Camp<\/p>\n

What did I learn this time? Well, I can write over 9,000 words a day, though the text often contains more outline than story; I will frequently stop and do GMC (Goal Motivation Conflict) breakdowns of all the characters in the scene and just leave it in the document as paragraphs of italicized notes, because Nano – I can take it out later, its word count now now now! That\u2019s how you get five times a normal word count in a day, or 500+ times the least productive day in which I actually wrote something.<\/p>\n

\"Camp<\/p>\n

Also, I get really really really sloppy – normally I wordsmith what I write as I write, even in Nano – but that\u2019s when I have the luxury of writing 1000-2000 words a day. When I have to write 9000, I write things like “I want someoent bo elive this whnen ai Mideone\u201d and just keep going, knowing that I can correct the text later to \u201cI want someone to believe this when I am done,\u201d and, more importantly, can use the idea behind that text to craft a better scene on the next draft (in this case, Dakota\u2019s cameraman Ron is filming a bizarre event in which someone\u2019s life is at stake, and when challenged by a bystander he challenges back, saying that he doesn\u2019t have any useful role to fill, but he can at least document what\u2019s happening so they\u2019ll all be believed later).<\/p>\n

\"Camp<\/p>\n

The other thing is, what I am starting to call The Process actually seems to work. I put characters in situations. I think through how they would react, using Goal Motivation Conflict to pull out what they want, why they want it, and why they can\u2019t get it (a method recommended by my editor Debra Dixon in her GMC book). But the critical part of my Process is, when I have to go write something that I don\u2019t know, I look it up – in a lot of detail. Yes, Virginia, even when I was writing 9,000+ words a day, I still went on Wikipedia – and I don\u2019t regret it. Why? Because when I\u2019m spewing around trying to make characters react like they\u2019re in a play, the characters are just emoting, and the beats, no matter how well motivated, could get replaced by something else.<\/p>\n

\"2209942304_e9f94d213a_b.jpg\"<\/p>\n

But when it strikes me that the place my characters area about visit looks like a basilica, I can do more than just write \u201cbasilica.\u201d I can ask myself why I chose that word. I can look up the word \u201cbasilica\u201d on Apple\u2019s Dictionary app. I can drill through to famous basilicas like the Basilica of Saint Peter. I can think about how this place will be different from that, and start pulling out telling details. I can start to craft a space, to create staging, to create an environment that my characters can react to. Because emotions aren\u2019t just inside us, or between us; they\u2019re for something, for navigating this complex world with other humans at our side. If a group of people argues, no matter how charged, it\u2019s just a soap opera. Put them in their own Germanic\/Appalachian heritage family kitchen in the Dark Corner of South Carolina, on on the meditation path near an onsen run continuously by the same family for 42 generations, and the same argument can have a completely different ambiance – and completely different reactions.<\/p>\n

The text I wrote using my characters reacting to the past plot, or even with GMC, may likely need a lot of tweaking: the point was to get them to a particular emotional, conceptual or plot space. The text I wrote with the characters reacting to things that were real, even if it needs tweaking, often crackles off the page, even in very rough form. It\u2019s material I won\u2019t want to lose – more importantly, material I wouldn\u2019t have produced, if I hadn\u2019t pushed myself to do National Novel Writing Month.<\/p>\n

Up next, finishing a few notes and ideas – the book is very close to done – and then diving into contracts for Thinking Ink Press, and reinforcement learning policy gradients for the robot apocalypse, all while waiting for the shoe to drop on TCTM. Keep your fingers crossed that the book is indeed on its way out!<\/p>\n

-the Centaur<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once again, I\u2019ve completed the challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month as part of the National Novel Writing Month challenges – this time, the July 2016 Camp Nanowrimo,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,197,193,43,237,199,1,198,202],"tags":[6,4,165,67,91,66,176,5],"class_list":["post-3395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-challenges","category-fiction","category-real-life","category-research","category-robotics","category-steampunk","category-uncategorized","category-urban-fantasy","category-writing","tag-dakota-frost","tag-dragon-writers","tag-engineering-the-robot-apocalypse","tag-gaslights-and-rayguns","tag-nanowrimo","tag-the-clockwork-time-machine","tag-the-process","tag-we-call-it-living","ratio-2-1","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3619,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3395\/revisions\/3619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}