Just completed another draft of Becoming Stardust. I think it’s almost ready 🙂 I just need to create an ebook cover, but I’m having trouble picking an image.
Tag: draft
Days 61 – 70
This next draft took some time to get into. I was a little put off by the idea of changing the ending, but those re-writes would only affect the last chapter. In the end, I didn’t do the changes as I’m still undecided. I spent yesterday afternoon working out my synopsis because I didn’t like the one I made. I think it has helped me flesh out my story some more and I might need to tweak some parts of the story. Like adding a bit more of a back story or adding some more characterisation.
I’m also cooking up another story. I haven’t worked out all the genres or plot points yet, but I like what I have. I think I already have a title for it as well 🙂 Anyway, this is what I did during the last ten days 🙂
- Nothing.
- Nothing.
- Edited 2 1/2 pages.
- Nothing.
- Nothing.
- Edited 7 1/2 pages.
- Edited 15 pages.
- Editing 10 pages.
- Re-wrote/updates synopsis.
- Nothing.
Save One is available
Save One is out 🙂 It is 32,230 words long and it sits in the Young Adult and Dystopian genres. It can also be a little bit of a Coming of Age story as well.
It follows one individual Sauska Morin as she is accepted into the cryptanalyst school to become a code breaker. Her country has been at war with the South for the last few decades and she is needed to help break the codes. There she makes a close friend who is not having as good a time as her. During this time her younger brother is sent to army boot camp with the intention of becoming an infantryman. This does not bode well with Sauska because her two older brothers have died while in the army and as she experiences her life she begins to see that maybe her country isn’t as great as she thinks it is.
I began Save One around July of ’17. While it took two years to complete, I was not actively working on it all the time. In fact, I would do a few drafts in close succession and then nothing for months on end. The reason this story took a while to come out was because of; burnout, other stories taking my time and, the fact that it was not my most prized story at the time. I was constantly suffering ‘Shiney New Idea Syndrome’ during this time and it took a bit of a backburner until I finally decided to finish it.
Another reason why it took so long was that I was a bit hesitant in putting out the story was because I made the main character black and I am white. I made her a different race simply because I’ve always written white characters and it was a bit boring. And the idea of having more diverse characters was starting to become a thing that needs to happen. I’m worried that it’ll come off wrong, but I’m not writing a contemporary story from the black experience. That’s why my first book cover was the black and white one. I changed it to the one above because I didn’t want to seem like I was using race to my advantage. Also, I like colour more than black and white and there is a forest scene near the end of the book.
New cover image for Save One
I’ve created a new book cover image for Save One. I changed because I wasn’t fully happy with the black and white one. I like colour and I think that it shows the tone of the book a little more. I’m also doing the eleventh edit and I’m hoping that this will be the last one 🙂
Blast from the past
As my burnout is starting to dissipate I’m beginning to think more about my stories. This one from years ago, a post-apocalyptic survival story, has begun to gain more traction in my mind.
Looking back at the dates on the files I see that one is from ’14, the next is ’15 and the last was from ’16. I pretty much know the ins and outs of the narrative and just need to write a complete first draft. I have a partially completed one, but I think it is only a quarter or a third done.
A few weeks ago I went back and edited the first couple of pages. Below you can see that I’ve ripped apart everything. I pretty much just changed the POV from first to third and elaborated on a few things. I‘m actually pretty impressed with my skill level from a few years ago. It makes me feel better about myself. It’s also the only story I have so far that is sectioned into parts or super long 10,000 words chapters.Â
I also have to do other things like format it to the Smashwords style because this was pre-template age for me. (I made a Smashwords style word doc to make things a lot easier for me). I also came to a little snag in terms of the plot near the beginning, but it’s nothing I can’t fix. I’m not too sure how long this will be or even if I’ve got the right title for it yet. But I’m hoping that maybe I might get this draft done by the end of the year 🙂
Jumpstart draft no. 11
I opened this word doc and to my surprise saw that I was already mostly done with this draft. I guess I gave up some time ago lol. Anyhow, I’ve had this story in the works since mid ’17 and god damn have dragged my feet on this. But I’m worried about when I have it done and there is no sequel ready. I have only written the first chapter and dot points for the next series of events.
I did more editing than I thought I would for something that is supposed to be in its eleventh draft. I think I deleted as much as I added. I know I have more to do with it as Chris has given me some pretty decent comments to go on.
I hope that when this is ready to be released I will have progressed with the next story. Also, I have no idea how that story is going to end and where the third book begins eeeek!
Save One draft 8
I’ve just managed to finish the eight draft of this novella 🙂 It’s been a long time coming. I wasn’t going to be doing any editing at the moment, but after having a talk to one of my friend’s convinced me to push myself. I did 39 pages in one day and the other 15 the next day 🙂
Overall I didn’t need to do that much to it I think it might be ready with three more drafts. I don’t know exactly when I’ll put this one out, but I want it done and dusted by July. It is currently 32,500 words or 54 A4 pages.
I have no attention
Urrgh, I still think I’ve got the burnout. I look at my incomplete stories and have no desire to get into them. I even try to force myself to edit but I only get a page through before losing interest/attention. It’s becoming a real problem because months are going by and I not progressing in any way 😦 Its a downer. When am I going to snap back into my writer mode?
For others who have had burnout, how long did it take for you to get over it completely?
9th draft of Jump Start done
After an unproductive morning, I finally managed to start and finish another draft. I also discovered a feature on Microsoft Word that that shows how long I was editing my story for. It was, I’m not kidding you, 333 minutes. That’s five and half hours long! And in one sitting.
For the most part, it was just line edits and proofreading. There were no structural changes and it’s nearing completion. Thank God. I’m getting tired of this story and just want to move onto the next part in the story.
The Witch’s Room: From start to finish
I completed the seventh draft of my short story The Witch’s Room and I decided that it was ready to be released into the world wide web with my name attached to it. It is currently under review on Amazon and should be up within 72 hours. At the moment I am only putting it on KDP select as a means of trying to get as many people to read it. If all goes well in a few months I’ll put it up on Smashwords 🙂
This story started with the visuals of a character entering the Witch’s Room. I thought that the scene was awesome and IÂ shouldn’t/couldn’t let it go. So I had to work out what needed to happen for this scene to occur in a story. So I wrote it down on my work notepad and when I got home I began working on it.
Looking back on the dates of my word documents, I had the first draft completed just before 5pm on the 15th of February. That’s less than a month ago! Since then I have drafted every 2-5 days. It only took me a few hours every time to draft because of how short it is (I was also working on other stories).
I think the most challenging thing about this process was picking the book cover image. I wanted to have a stone sculpture of a woman to portray the scene in the Witch’s Room. But I was very nitpicky about it. It had to be aged and not too ornate. But I couldn’t seem to find one that fit everything because a lot of stone sculptures of women from the past were of the Virgin Mary or Angels and had religious themes to it. You can see that I found an image as close as possible to what I wanted. It’s not how the statute looks in the story, but it’s the closest.
Stephanie Haggarty 