Category Archives: Chit-chat

Ramblings about life, writing, and anything else I feel like.

Getting there

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I broke 120,000 words last week.

The end is in sight now, both story-wise, and in the sense that I can actually see what remains of my outline all at once on a single page. This is slightly terrifying (the ever-present worry that it won’t be good/interesting/dramatic enough), and also very motivating, because I’m definitely going to finish this. There will be a lot of work to do then, since this is just a first draft, but that thought usually helps me get past the worries; it doesn’t have to be perfect now, and in fact it can’t be. But it can get better, once I have a full first draft and can go back with a full story to edit and revise.

Mostly, I’m just glad that I’ve been able to make so much progress in just a few months. I’ve found this post from Patricia Wrede to be helpful in my thinking on that regard. She comments:

“Writing takes time. Also some thought and effort, but mainly the whole “butt in chair, fingers on keyboard” thing. Regardless of whether you are an intuitive writer or an analytical one, a plodder or a sprinter, actual words-on-paper/pixels has to happen, and that takes time.”

I really love that “butt in chair, fingers on keyboard” quote, because that’s what I’ve managed to do this year, and that is what has gotten me where I am now. It’ll take a lot more of that, and some “butt in chair, pen on paper” time too, before I’ll consider The Wizard of Suomen an actual finished, polished novel, but having gotten this far makes me confident that I can go the rest of the way. That whole post from Ms. Wrede is inspiring on this point actually, because I’m not just sitting back and waiting for a perfect, “blockbuster” novel to magically appear in my head. Putting in the time and effort takes that time and effort…but it also leaves you much more certain that you are going to get where you want/need to go with something.

I think I can now tentatively estimate that the first draft will be 140K-150K words. Tentatively. Where it will sit after the major edits that need to happen, I have no idea.

Thanks again to everyone who is reading and liking or commenting! It’s my goal to have an even better story for you by the time I get around to a final version, so stay tuned! 🙂

~Ethelinda

HTTYD

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Just finished watching How To Train Your Dragon 2 for the second time; I really meant to see it more than once in theaters, but at least it’s out on blu-ray now. I really, really love these movies, both the first one and this year’s sequel (and am immensely excited that it’s going to be a trilogy eventually). This isn’t a proper review so much as me rambling about that, so I’ll put the rest under a cut in case of spoilers for anyone who hasn’t seen them yet. (In which case, what is wrong with you, go watch them right now.) Continue reading →

Happy Veteran’s Day

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My thanks to those who’ve served!

Both of my grandfathers served. My maternal grandfather was in the Army for a little while towards the end of World War II. I believe that my paternal grandfather joined the Marines late in WWII as well, but he saw action several years later in the Korean War. He was a fighter pilot.

Writing a war story has gotten me thinking about the “after the war” part of the story as well. What do soldiers do once the war is over? Do they suffer from temporary or permanent injury? How does that affect their lives moving forward? Do they even wish to stop being a soldier? If so, what work would they rather pursue? All (to me, at least) very interesting questions, with very different answers depending on the character!

~Ethelinda

Part two, done

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I just finished up what will be part two of TWoS.

Just over 94,500 words for the whole story thus far.

Part three might end up being a bit shorter than the other two, though I’m not quite sure yet. Part two still needs some work as I go along and post it, but it’s a solid draft.

It feels really, really good to be making so much progress on this. I’m excited about this story, and how good it will (hopefully!) be once I’m all done.

~Ethelinda

New followers!

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So, it seems that I’ve gained quite a few followers over the last few weeks and months! Welcome! I don’t know how many of you are following my writing or not, but thanks for the interest. 🙂

For anyone who is interested in following my current story, The Wizard of Suomen, you can find links to all the chapters on the “Land of Winds: The Wizard of Suomen” page. The chapters are each linked to the previous and following chapters within each post as well.

 

Here’s a summary of the story:

The Wizard of Suomen follows Ilari Virtanen, a powerful magic-user in a land prejudiced against magic, as he attempts to defend his country from the aggression of a neighboring country with many strong magic-users.  Throughout a long, cold Suomilen winter, faced with new and terrible magic from enemies getting ever closer to home, Ilari struggles to protect his land with few allies and opposition seemingly on all sides. With Suomen’s King making what seem to be an increasingly unwise series of decisions about the war, the soldiers, statesmen and courtiers around Ilari must make their own choices about where the real danger to Suomen lies. Can the Wizard of Suomen overcome misunderstanding, prejudice and treachery in time to save not only himself, but everything that he cares about?

Come find out which way the Winds will blow….

 

~Ethelinda

Monthly Writing Summary: August 2014

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(Maybe I’ll do a monthly writing summary, just to further motivate myself.)

 

Written in August:

27,121 words – The Wizard of Suomen

 

I do sometimes work on my other stories/writing projects as well, which I’ll indicate in the future, but this past month I really focused on TWoS – obviously a productive choice! 🙂

~Ethelinda

Phew!

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Since I sat down to write last Saturday evening, I have written almost 15,000 words of The Wizard of Suomen; the total word count is now over 70,000. It’s unlikely I’ll have this good a week again for awhile, but it feels wonderful to have made such solid progress.

I’ve got the whole rest of the second part of the story well laid-out in my head now, so I should be able to write that pretty steadily, even if I don’t manage to be quite this prolific! Overall, the story breaks up into roughly three parts, at least in my head. (Chapter 14, as I post it here, will finish out what I think of as part one, in case anyone is wondering.)

Also, this week’s progress means I’ve got a much better “lead” between where I’m posting and where I’m writing, so the chance that I’ll have to switch to posting chapters every other week is greatly lessened.

I hope everyone who’s reading this is enjoying it, and excited about what’s coming up! I definitely am. 🙂

~Ethelinda

Brain at Work

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I’m grateful that the “step away from it for awhile” tactic works as a method for getting over tiredness or writer’s block for me. It has always felt to me as though I say to my brain, “Okay, just run this in the background for awhile, and let’s see what the results are later,” and then I can stop focusing consciously on whatever scene or section is giving me trouble. And my brain does that, it lets the ideas brew subconsciously, and I’ve found that often even just a day later, I suddenly feel much more like I know what I need to write, or like the words are coming to me again. Sometimes it takes longer than a day, of course, but it always works eventually.

Which is probably just a lot of rambling to say: Brains are cool. 🙂

I do think it helps me as a motivational tool as well, though. To not think about it as “I have writer’s block” or “I’m stuck on this scene,” but rather, “My brain just needs some time to work on this subconsciously,” or “Need to let this scene percolate for a bit.” It sounds much less daunting that way, much less negative, which in turn makes motivating myself to try again a day or two later much easier.

For other writers: do you have an experience like this? Or do you deal with feeling stuck in other ways? I’m curious to know how other people think about this issue.

Now, probably time to stop rambling (and mixing my computer and coffee metaphors).

~Ethelinda