Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Getting things done

I have an outline. I have characters, and even a list of things that I still need to look up. (I worry that putting off starting writing until October will give the story time to slide right out of my head and disappear into the ether). Still, the planning stage seems to be going well enough.

For the current, I mean completed, story, I have put ten-thousand words up on Authonomy, the minimum, where I have yet to figure out what is going on.

There are so many links and messages and places to do stuff that I don't yet understand. I have messages from people and don't know how to answer them! And friend requests from people I don't know, and no idea whether they liked the personality they saw of me in my story or if they are just hoping I'll follow the links and read theirs.

The site is too expansive for me to feel comfortable there yet and they require the story broken down by chapter into separate word documents for uploading, so I'm hesitant to put all that effort into doing the rest of the chapters. It would mean I would have to remember to make any suggested changes not only to the smaller uploadable files, but to the larger working copy as well and I hate having to do that.

Moving on other goals for this month, I have piles of books to read (though I have just finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, go me!)and I'm halfway through editing a short story I'd written nearly a year ago. So I'm making progress.

If only I was doing as well at making progress at the non-writing tasks on my list, my house would be spotless and my baby would be potty-trained. Oh well, one day at a time.

2 comments:

  1. Good for you! It takes guts to put your work out there in a public forum. Would love to hear about you Authonomy experience once you figure it all out.

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  2. I'm not sure about it right now. It seemed like a good place to put the story while I forgot about it for a few months working on the new one, but instead it's another society -- like facebook or twitter, wanting me to be involved. People are asking me to read their books, which I don't mind -- by putting mine up there, I'm asking them to read mine, but I add comments when I do and comment that it wasn't my favorite, it's odd to get another request for me to "back their book" or vote for it.

    The site is also intended for readers to get free reads in order to discover the new talent for HarperCollins to consider signing and I'd meant to try to explore that part of it, but I felt beholden to try the people who'd requested visitation first -- though they're nowhere near my preferred genre, so I don't have any idea why they'd care to have my opinion and I haven't had time to read anything from my preferred area.

    I'll try to check back in a few weeks and give an updated opinion then. Oh, this one was not my style, a little dark future for me, (techno-thriller, was the author's term -- he'd given me advice for the noob, without the request for a read so I was more favorably disposed toward him than others), but it was my favorite so far.

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