ROW80 Round 4 - 9th Update

Though I've worked almost every day, the last week has been fairly good for me in terms of general productivity (even though I've dropped off the ROW80 radar a bit; don't tell Judgemental Dog or he'll nip me). Earlier in the week I wrote almost another whole chapter for my novel, and though I had to get rid of a few hundred words of stuff I already had, at least it feels like I'm finally moving forward with it.

Now that our new store is open, I'm doing customer service instead of nightfill, which means I'm not lifting and carrying heavy stuff anymore. This certainly seems to be making a difference to my knee, which, though it's still a bit dodgy and achey, seems to be getting better more quickly than it was.

I've been continuing with workshopping my writing group's submissions, and with revising my thesis. Speaking of which, I just got my results for my Honours year: High Distinction for my thesis, and High Distinctions for all of my units, giving me a HD/H1 for Honours overall. This means that if I want to do my PhD in the future, I can :D And I'm also hoping it will give me a bit of an edge when applying for jobs. To celebrate, I decided to crack open the big tub of Connoisseur Chocolate Obsession ice cream that's been sitting in the freezer for nearly a month.

This is basically me right now:

Also, a big bunch of art supplies (mainly watercolour paints) I ordered a while ago arrived this week, and though I haven't really painted anything serious with them yet, I've been having fun experimenting (in case you didn't already know, I'm a bit of an art supplies addict, with several desk drawers full of coloured pencils, paints, pastels and other assorted crap). Here are my new goodies:

(the black tubes were freebies; glad I didn't pay for them because the paint they contain smells utterly feral)

So I'm in a pretty awesome mood at the moment. Basically, imagine me doing a happy dance like this dog:

In light of his mistress's good mood, Judgemental Dog is being a bit more lenient this week:

See how other ROW80ers are going here.

ROW80 Round 4 - 8th Update

It's a bit of a mixed-bag in terms of my achievements this week. Last Sunday and Wednesday I did a fair bit of writing, and probably got around 2,000 new words in total, but aside from that, I've barely touched my novel. I did scribble more random notes for the other novel idea that has been pestering me (the weird Western/Samurai/Steampunk/Fantasy whatever it is one), but it's not as much progress as I would like to have made. Still, at least it's some (and certainly more than I've made in the last several months). I'm working almost every day now, so finding time (and energy) to write will become more of a struggle.

I'll soon be starting the revision/editing process for my thesis. My Honours supervisor wants to see if I can get it published in an academic journal, which means I need to get it down from 75 pages to around 20-25; most of the editing will just be cutting stuff, though some bits will need to be rewritten for the sake of flow/clarity. I'm aiming to have a revised draft ready for my supervisor to look at about two weeks from now. While I'm at it, I'll probably try polishing my conference paper I wrote last semester for an assignment to see if I can get that published as well. Not a huge task in terms of word count, just a lot of shuffling, cutting and rewriting.

I've also made a start on workshopping some of the pieces submitted by my writing group, which I haven't had time to do before now; I'll hopefully be able to start emailing some back this week and be up to date by our next meeting in mid-December.

Because I was bored, I drew/painted a little steampunk dragon:

My knee is also taking its time to recover (having a job that currently involves lifting/carrying boxes all day doesn't help), but the support tape and the exercises seem to be slowly strengthening it. After examining my MRI report, the physio thinks that instead of damaging/twisting a ligament (as originally seemed to be the case), the crappy general structure of my knee and resulting wear of the cartilage resulted in my kneecap partially dislocating. Unfortunately it's something that can't really be fixed by surgery, though hopefully the exercises will help it become less severe and/or frequent. And at least it wasn't a full dislocation (I had that happen once to my other knee as a result of a karate injury; there's a level of "OMG WTF OW" I never want to visit again). Our new store opens next Thursday, so after that I should be just doing non-weight-bearing duties like customer services instead of nightfill.

Hopefully if I finish this chapter tonight, Judgemental Dog won't force-choke me...

Check on other ROW80ers here.

Imperial or Metric in a Medieval Fantasy World

When I had the first chapter of my novella critiqued at my last writing workshop meeting, one of the issues that was brought up was the discrepancy between my use of measurements; I had used metres at one point, only to refer to inches a paragraph or two later. Obviously keeping this consistent is important, so I'm going to have to pick one or the other, but my main issue is this; which system do I use? My novella, Dark and Silent Waters, is set in a medieval fantasy world; so far I haven't given it an exact time period, but it would closely parallel 900-1200AD in our own medieval European history. The Exile trilogy (my other major project) is also set in a medieval fantasy realm, though probably at a slightly more advanced level than in Dark and Silent Waters (perhaps 1200-1500AD).

Imperial terms - inches, feet, miles etc - are generally shorter. They are faster to write and they seem to flow better in a sentence. And they seem to be the norm, for I can't recall seeing the metric system used in any fantasy book that I've read (apart from the Australian urban/steampunk fantasy subgenres, which I don't think can really be counted in this case since it's completely different to the medieval subgenre. But I could be wrong.).

However, I am used to the metric system. Probably because I live in Australia and have been raised to think in terms of centimetres and kilometres and so on. Also, being Australian, I feel a sort of grammatical obligation (is that even a proper phrase?) to use the metric system.

What do people think? Will the story still feel natural if I use my preferred metric system? Or should I stick to convention and go with imperial?

ROW80 Round 1 - 4th Update

hmm... As far as getting new writing done goes, this week hasn't been much better than the last, with health issues still refusing to leave me alone (incidentally, doctors have looked at my MRI and decided that my head isn't likely to explode in the next 24 hours, but beyond that, they have no idea what causes the severe migraine/nausea/dizziness/passing out thingies I keep having). I did (sort of) manage to finish chapter 1. However, while some parts of it were respectable, other bits of it were literally thrown in at the last second so I could say I had finished a chapter; in other words, they're not particularly good hehe Most of these dodgy bits will be more or less thrown out entirely, with those sections being rewritten from scratch.

We did, however, have our first proper writing workshop meeting on Saturday, with two of us presenting work for critiquing. I was up first (the sacrificial lamb, so to speak) and I workshopped my first five pages of chapter 1. Aside from the odd person reading a fragment of my work and sending it back with some basic suggestions, this was the first time in more than three years where I have had the opportunity to submit a piece of writing to rigorous examination and criticism. It was a little nerve-wracking; being away from the workshopping environment for so long had me wondering not only if my writing was still decent (as most people seemed to think in TAFE), but also if I was still up to giving in-depth feedback on other people's writing.

It turned out to be a very productive session, both for the workshoppers and the workshoppees. Everyone there felt driven to write, inspired by the creative atmosphere. I'm really looking forward to seeing what the other writers bring to the table in the future. I got a lot of suggestions for my own piece of writing; some issues pointed out were so obvious I wondered how they'd slipped by in the first place, while others were more subtle but still had a great impact on the effectiveness of the chapter. I have a lot of work ahead of me to improve it for its next incarnation. But this is a good thing. The only real way to make a piece of writing better is to put it in front of others, carefully consider the feedback they give and, where appropriate, make changes that reflect that feedback to bring the writing to the next level. I'm sure we all know writers who believe that their work is Perfect and that any criticism of it is Wrong...

Anyway... Time for this writer to have lunch :)

Judgemental Dog is always so judgemental:

I should probably take him for a walk so he stops guilt-tripping me...

(see other ROW80 blogs here)

Of Writing and Workshopping

Last Saturday we had the first meeting of my new writing workshop group.

The proposal for the group came from one of my fellow writers from TAFE, who said she had been feeling disconnected from the writing community since leaving the course. During the meeting, it became obvious that this was a sentiment shared by all of us; we missed the face-to-face feedback and critiquing, the immediacy of sharing our writing with other people in the same room.

At TAFE, having daily classes meant that we had constant deadlines imposed on us. As much as we complained about being forced to submit poems and short stories, novels and screenplays, the fact that we had to have something to workshop most weeks meant that we were always writing. In the three years since the writing course ended, however, many of us have become a bit slack as far as writing goes - at least, I know I have. I'd set goals for myself and then uni or work or life would get in the way, and I'd just sort of shrug and say "I'll do it next month". Though I did get a bit of my novella done during NaNoWriMo this year, I haven't written nearly as much as I should have. And I pretty much haven't touched my fantasy trilogy since TAFE.

It felt good to be in a room full of writers again. Even though we weren't actually workshopping, it felt as though just talking about the writing and critiquing process was enough to stir my need to create. We now have others to hold us accountable; if we say we want to have a piece done by a given time, the other group members can give us the proverbial kick in the pants we need to reach that goal. The group we've thrown together is full of good writers and workshoppers, so I'm looking forward to seeing what influence it has on my own writing. I'm hoping that with other writers constantly reading and critiquing my work and giving me feedback, it will improve not only the quantity but also the quality of what I write. Maybe, just maybe, it will make the difference between having a few random chapters of a manuscript and having a completed novella ready to publish.

Between writing and doing Honours for IT/Multimedia, it looks like I have an interesting (if hectic) year ahead.

And because it's Christmas, here's a picture of my dog asleep under the Christmas tree: