The kindness of strangers (well, not really strangers)

[j_cheney]

After my whinging last night, the Esteemed Program Coordinator of ArmadilloCon squeezed me into the BU RFR. Evidently, she was in the midst of a power outage and was outside in her car working on a laptop....that's dedication! I'm always impressed by how hard the FACT people work on their Cons.

I spent another day working on the re-write of Shared Dreams. I discovered that I have a very illogical bias in my head that says writing a 10K story shouldn't take more than 1 day. Where I got this incredibly stupid idea, I don't know. After all, a 150K novel seems to take about 6 months to get through the first draft---not 15 days.

Still, that prejudice is there, and I feel bad that I'm about to launch into the 3rd day of working on this...and it's a re-write, for Heaven's sake! The October story (now entitled "Inheritance of Fire") keeps popping into my head and suggesting plot twists.

Got 7 more critiques this morning on AMOD. Go Critters! Because I'm doing something else, I'm just printing them, popping off a thank you e-mail, and sticking the e-critiques in my oubliette. I'll look at them later when I'm not so involved with SD, although one person who critted me mentioned that she is a friend of a friend on LJ....I'll have to look into that. (I glanced at the printout).

Comments

[spielmadchen.livejournal.com]

dedication... blind stupidity... not knowing how to say no to your best friend...

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Pfft! Last year I served as the Treasurer for the Oklahoma Writers Federation. I was asked to run, but didn't realize that no one else would be running. It ended up being about a 10 hour a week job....

After that my huband told me NO VOLUNTEERING for anything for at least 2 years. Makes a great excuse to say no. ;o)

[spielmadchen.livejournal.com]

I got you beat. Last year, I chaired ArmadilloCon, got married and was Treasurer/Art Show/Pre-Reg for World Fantasy. World Fantasy was by far the hardest of the three. I worked about 20 hours a week on that and I know renegade500 worked even more than me. After doing that, she and I can do ArmadilloCon in our sleep!

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Ouch! 20 hours a week? That's gotta hurt!

[spielmadchen.livejournal.com]

yeah, i'm not going to be that stupid again.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Tell 'em your husband made you say no....

[tchernabyelo.livejournal.com]

For a (self-imposed) challenge, I did write a 12k story in one day (in fact, in about 15 hours) once. Complete, from idea to first draft. It left me in a state of complete mental exhaustion and I don't think I wrote anything else for days afterwards.

And I still haven't got round to polishing it.

Normally, I would expect to take from 7 to 20 days to write a 10k story, from inception to final polish. Of course, it rather depends how much of the day one normally spends writing.

I think anything up to about 3k or a touch over is a "one-sitting" story - a story whose idea is small enough that your brain can hold all of it at once. More than that, and I think it becomes the sort of story you need to assemble from smaller components (this - plus the ideas of scene transition and pacing - is one of the reasons that most of my stories longer than that tend to be written in "mini-chapters", though in a novel I'm happy to write chapters that are 6k or more in length).

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

7 to 20 days...sounds far more reasonable. The first draft of this went pretty quickly, but I'm changing the POV in this draft, which means I'm pretty much writing a different story. I was hoping to havee a first draft finished today....still hope so. But that's just a first draft.... ;o)

[spielmadchen.livejournal.com]

when you get to ArmadilloCon ask Louise and Sharon Shinn how long it takes them to write a chapter. It is a vastly different number. :)

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

::jotting a note::

The odd thing is that for me some chapters go really fast, and others drag along....I'll have to ask around. ;o)

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

Let me know what they say, wouldja? And tell Louise I said Hi!

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Well, if I ever get a chance to talk to her....

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

Have you met her? Nice lady.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Sort of in passing...this is LM, Hi, I'm JKC....yadda yadda

[orogeny.livejournal.com]

My rewriting goes waaaaay slower than first drafting.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm....

I'll have to think about that. Usually, the re-writing is tweaking for me and the first draft is the monster. In this story, though, I'm changing the POV, so it's basically starting over because some of the scenes change, as well as some of what's important to that characters.

BUt I'm willing to do several re-writes.

Dedication

[namelessarchon.livejournal.com]

It is this kind of dedication to a final finished product that matters. Writing is not a lazy persons game, and I have seen nothing but energy were you are concerned. May the re-write run smoothly!

[saycestsay.livejournal.com]

Heh. I just got an email from the BU motherboard saying that there would be no ArmadilloCon BU RFR. BU needs to become a lot more coordinated.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

::shrugs::

You never know! Anyhoo, it looks like it's a go for now. We'll know next Friday. ;o)

[stinabat.livejournal.com]

okay, i give. what's BU RFR?

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading. Sorry. They just stick us broads in a room and let us read....and hopefully someone shows up. ;o)

(I did it at World Fantasy Con last year, and it was really cool)

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

I've done a few readings now, short at WFC and half hour slots at Albacon for the last several years. No Albacon this year, of course, because the lovely dedicated people afflicted with the above-mentioned con-organizing insanity are hard at work putting together World Fantasy. For some reason, they felt they couldn't to a mid-sized con in October and turn around and do WFC three weeks later. Go figure...

I had heard there were plans to do a relaxacon instead.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

After talking with the person who organized WFC last year, I bet they need it!

[displacedtexan.livejournal.com]

I got in trouble once for calling a dame a broad. Is "broad" okay now?

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Meh...