Jarsto's Writing Blog

February 24, 2006

No Writing Today

Yes, I have sinned. I'm away from home right now, and I just don't feel like writing. So I'm skipping for the day. I have promised myself to work on mentally choreographing the space battle my characters are currently involved in. It's going to be rather tricky, if I want them to come out of it alive.

February 23, 2006

Back To "Normal"

While I don't really believe such a thing as "normal" exists this was a pretty normal night's writing again for the first time this week. I managed to write 500 words without too much extra effort in a reasonable time.

While I'm very tired (and heading for exhausted) for the first time in days it's not because of the writing but just a normal tired feeling. The less emotionally exhausting part of my POV change finally seems to be coming into its own. The problems are so much simpler now: we're back to just having to survive space battles.

February 22, 2006

Struggling, But Made It

The words didn't come as easily as I'd half expected today. It was still a struggle for each word and after I got the first 200 the next 300 seemed like a bloody long way to go. But I managed to get over the line in the end so I can't complain. Today's 500 also lifted me over the 64,000 word mark. It's not bad, but with the end rapidly approaching I think Lightning will end up being a bit on the short side for a novel.

February 21, 2006

Not Many Words, But The Worst Should Be Over

I did a little better today than yesterday, but not much, 276 words in all to be precise. But those 276 have carried me over the point I was half dreading for the last few days. Within 2000 words after my Kevin's father died his older brother just died as well. I knew this was going to happen, I'm the sadistic bastard who thought it up after all, but that didn't make writing it any easier.

Something else should help things go more easily tomorrow as well. This was my final scene from Kevin's POV for the time being, the end of this chapter. That means I get to switch POV and deal with the emotions second hand for a while. It should be easier to write that way, both for my own emotional involvement and for believability.

February 20, 2006

A Little Lightning

Just a little on Lightning today, but at least I managed to pick it right up again. Roughly 200 words for the day is not a great achievement, but I've been quite tired today, partly my own fault, I stayed up reading a bit too long last night. Just long enough that the sleepiness went away again and I had a devil of a time getting any sleep.

Tonight I'm making myself promise to put the lights out in time. It's a little easier tonight; I finished the book I kept reading last night around noon today.

Now on a side note for the day, something I noticed about modern news. Perhaps it just caught my eye today, but when did the news start to be reported in the future tense? I just finished reading an article provided online by BBC news that reports about an upcoming piece in a magazine that "... will accuse... will say (used several times)... will also accuse... will compare... will describe... will add:..." etc.

It reminds me - perhaps I should say it will remind me? - of some pieces of The Hitchhiker's Guide series by Douglas Adams, where the news is reported from the future by reporters travelling through time. I guess I just missed the news flash that the BBC has perfect this technique already.

February 19, 2006

Dangerous Decision

I made a dangerous decision today. Actually I made it about ten minutes before writing this. The decision? I decided not to work on Lightning today. I just can't get focused on Lightning. Keving still has the POV and I can't get anywhere near the emotions he's feeling at this point. I've decided it's just too distant to try to write it now.

I'll be doing some worldbuilding work on other projects instead of the work on Lightning. That makes me feel less guilty about this, but it does little to offset the danger of the decision. The danger is, of course, that what happened last year will repeat itself. That "I'll just take a break today" will suddenly become "I haven't done anything on that in eleven months". Here's hoping it won't happen.