LOL Same here. When I write in the mornings, whether it's while getting ready for work or in bed on the weekends, it's always WHILE drinking coffee. The more coffee I've consumed prior to beginning, the better it will go.
The rate I'm going, I don't get to finish my coffee until 1pm, so morning writing is not an option, lol. Except on weekends; I can write and drink my coffee for the most part. We'll see how that goes with football season.
Wow, sounds like you had a productive weekend too! Care to share the names you picked out for OF Howie and Brian, or do you want to keep it a secret until it gets published?
It's a secret, but I'll share the process.
I think it took me so long to pick a name because I was both going through my list of names to find one I liked
and trying to find one that could fit Howie (and Brian/Kevin/AJ). Something like "Yeah, sure, in an alternate universe, Howie could be named Richard." But he can't. He's Howie. And that's when I started thinking, "Well, I have this completely made up language. Maybe I can make up names for them in this made up language instead and maybe it's the act of being given a human nickname that's endearing to these demons, rather than just having a nickname for an already human name."
So I went through my dictionary first to see if I could come up with anything in this language that would sound like root words that names could be derived from and sounded like "Nickolas." Because I figured that if I couldn't get that, then I should stick to the original plan. The "Nick" part was easy, I'd found something I liked a while ago that I mentioned before. And luckily I stumbled on an r-sound word that I loved with it (no words that start with "l" in the language though). And it being meaningful in the idea that his family would have picked it because it meant that made sense with his backstory, where it wouldn't really for other kids (real or fictional). Like there's no kids wandering around like "Oh, I know, it's crazy that my parents named me 'A Football Player' and I actually play football," lol (in real life, that kid is an accountant).
So deciding it could be done, I more generically went over names I liked and figured out the common threads in their root words. Things like "guard," "noble," "ruler," "peace," "gift," etcetera. Then picked combinations I liked for the characters and mashed them together until they made sense as a name and could make someone go "well this human name sounds sort of like that" and go with it. Although I figure "Kevin" would be the type to be like "Absolutely not, my name is Aowgeroigiorod and you will address me as such." (That was a keyboard smash, I haven't picked a "Kevin" or "AJ" name yet.) "Brian" and "AJ" would both be hesitant at first, given their roles in the story. "Howie" would adore being called anything besides "Your Majesty" or what have you. And Nick prompts it in the first place (something like "If it's hard to pronounce, call me whatever."); he's just happy that
someone is talking to him, lol.
It was a process, but overall I'm happy with the choice. It just means that they all have kind of long names with syllable structure and what not.
Sounds like there's some kind of symbiotic relationship going on between your inspiration for various stories, which is cool! The flitting around from story to story sounds like WADD, but at least you're finishing scenes and being productive. Glad to hear you're still writing consistently! Someday you'll be able to post all this stuff!
That's kind of why I figured I'd keep doing it. As long as I'm actually getting through scenes and chapters in some aspect, then there's progress being made. That's pretty much what I used to do with PNecklace/PDemons anyway, just write what felt fun. OF PBox is a little different because it's some new writing, but then a lot of rewriting the same thing in a different way. And then deciding that the chapter should go in a different place and then rewriting everything around it. And then thinking of something new to write and adding that in or replace something else with it. And... it goes on, lol. But the good news is, two characters who were originally the Boys have now been introduced and it doesn't feel too Backstreety. I did catch myself writing "More than that, [rest of sentence]" once and couldn't decide if that was Backstreety or not, lol.
Yes! 00Carter was a nice break from the drama of MBK (even though it was still dramatic in its own right), but it's also been nice to get back into my groove on MBK. The scene I wrote yesterday was one I had been looking forward to for a long time, so I was glad to have the time and inspiration to churn it out. Today I haven't written anything because that was the last chapter I had officially outlined, so I spent some time brainstorming and outlined the next six chapters instead.
Yay! I'm glad one of your "looking forward to it" scenes ended up aligning with time and inspiration! I'm glad you're back in your groove too. I know the end of the streak was sentence-by-sentence. That's crazy that you made it to the end of your official outlining. How many more do you think are past these six? And does your outline past that exist? Is more like my "At the end, there's a ____ and blank happens ____" notes? lol
Yes! I definitely had a moment of panic before I remembered I was using Google Docs and that it should be recoverable even if I had to close out of the doc because it was being glitchy. Thankfully, I didn't even have to do that. But after such a productive writing day, it was terrifying to watch all that work suddenly vanish LOL. I definitely had that experience of losing whole scenes or chapters on Word and having to rewrite them. I learned to save my work frequently!
That's what I did with AHTIM, ten-chapter chunks. And with SAMS, which I started in Word and then switched to Docs partway through, I only wrote the new chapters in Docs and then copied and pasted them into my Word doc of the whole story once they were posted. I prefer to have the whole story in one document so I can look back and find stuff in previous chapters without having to open a bunch of different files. (I frequently use Find and Replace to make sure I'm not repeating exact phrases and descriptions.) It was okay with Heroic Measures and Bethlehem because they were shorter, but MBK is going to be closer to 50 chapters like AHTIM, so at some point I think it's going to get too slow and glitchy for me to stand it. I'll let you know when that time comes LOL.
That does sound helpful to have first and second versions of each chapter of your OF PBox. I could see doing it that way for a novel I was trying to get published because there is so much more revision required there.
Thank goodness. The worst was when the computer froze while you were trying to save. I've shouted "NOOOOOO!!!!!" at my computer more times that I can remember, lol.
Mine would have been chapter ten, lol. I get wanting to find/replace. I just deal with opening the however many documents. I know you hate tabs though. Right now I have 20 open and my laptop is fine; it's apparently great at multitasking. I wonder what page it takes until a document gets unbearable and too slow to function. Or if it's more of a computer thing.
I figured it was better to have it as is if I ever changed my mind and wanted to go back to it. Even though it means that I have a million documents with the same chapter.
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Topic: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4) (Read 349590 times)