At the beginning of September I joined a quick online course, 14 Days to a Solid Writing Habit. Since we started the actual writing part of this course, I’ve been setting my Pomodoro Tomato and writing in 25-minute bursts. Some of those bursts have been spent on writing The Fool.
I’ve also been learning more about Scrivener, mostly because I’ve had numerous technological difficulties that meant I had to reinstal it several times, just like I had to reinstal everything else several times. I’ve reinstalled this so many times now I can do the tweaks personal to me much quicker than I could before.
In the past few days, apart from getting Scrivener to compile the pocket novel exactly as I want it, I’ve also written two brand new scenes – 11 and 12 – or the first two scenes of Act 1 Part 1. And I’ve found out how to change double hyphens to en-dashes (Scrivener converts double hyphens to em-dashes but I also worked out how to turn that off but do the en-dash conversion automatically as well).
I had a character called Tina and another character called Georgina. Reading my work aloud highlighted the similarity between these two names (try it, go on), so one of them had to go. I decided to change Tina because I also have a Terry, and I try to keep all the names starting with a different letter as well. So my Tina is now Vanessa. She didn’t have a surname yet, so I decided on the alliterative Vickers.
Did I mention I also have a sausage dog called Ralph?
At the moment, I’m embarking on the “saggy middle”, and it does feel a bit saggy at the moment. But I’m writing by the seat of my pants, which is unusual for me, and I just want to get the story down as much as I can and then go back to it and start filling it out. I call this laying down the bones, and when I go back to it, I’m hanging flesh on the bones, or breathing life into the story.
I’m getting my characters from A to B. I’ll go back and throw in obstacles and corners and about-faces, and so on. At least we have two dead bodies so far, and I’m only on 9,368 words – about a quarter of the way, which is as it should be at the start of the second quarter.
Our internet had to be reset earlier today and when I came to print the latest instalment, the printer had lost its WiFi. At least I knew how to fix it. Blummin technology. All done now, though.
How is your pocket novel coming along?
