Becoming the writer I want to be

Reading through most recent unfinished chapter. Found a HUMUNGOUS story ruining plothole. Worried about it for a bit then remembered I knew how to address it and forgot to actually write it down in my notes.

 

Three now!

 

I have been using Grammarly today. Just the free web version but it's amazing! And then Hemmingway editor does a really nice job to tidy it all up.
I have written a short story for Reedsys weekly prompts. Just under 2k words. Seems almost ready to submit.
And I think I will spent the day tomorrow editing and doing some planning on my novel. I am kinda writing it as I see it but would it be wise to plan a little more ahead?

 

1251 words today, finishing the chapter.

I have to be honest, I'm not as happy with this chapter as I thought I would be. At least, not the last few pages. The problem with having a character who only has his own chapters half as often as other characters, with every chapter deliberately ending on some sort of high "ooh what happens next?" note, is that when the ending isnt as strong as you imagined, it feels less satisfying.

To be fair to myself, I did this because I made the conscious decision to delay certain things that would have happened in this chapter, to the next one, to make it shorter and to ensure the next chapter has an actual reason to exist at all (without these added reasons the chapter would be utterly pointless.) Having said all that though this chapter ending is still the weakest I think I've written in a while. Not "bad" in any objective sense and I cant really tell if anyone else will have an issue with it at all (honestly probably not), but still.

I suppose as well its becoming tiring having to keep track of so many things that need to slot together for this characters plot to not fall apart, and I kinda wish I had made it less complex from the start. I'm stuck now though because I dont want to go back and make significant changes to prior chapters that have nothing wrong with them just to satisfy my current feelings. Theres a good chance when I reread this chapter it wont seem as messy to me as it does now.

 

A better way of explaining what I mean is that there is a disconnect between what I imagined these chapters were going to be like and what they actually are, and that feels "off" even if I knowingly changed them exactly because my initial vision wouldn't work in reality.

Has anyone else encountered this issue when writing?

 

Had a nice little weekend off from writing. Now it's time to get back at it.

 

Snowfall in the spring!
What an unusual thing,
flowers dusted white.

 

Carved out stones, flowing.
As the stream goes by, constant. Mountain stream, at peace.

 

I've written about 1500 new words tonight. I expect to write another another 1500 new words to setuo the end action better. It has been fun to write new text again. I'm never going to use the same process again.

I used Grammerly one last time on the 1st half. It took a couple of days, but the first half is now complete.

Most of the final formatting was easy. I was a rookie and used tab on new paragraphs, so that will be a pain. I am going to finish the book and experiment with different Word versions to remove the tabs. It's a disaster I've decided to save for the final headache.

I got my form rejection back from the agent who doesn't like books like mine and rejects more than 99%. I am glad I got that out of my system because the letter and book are not ready yet lol.

 

Can you get a stand alone desktop version of grammarly? My writing is on hold until I get into town to fix my filtering program. Unfortunately it's using way to much data and it keeps knocking my hotspot offline. So I may need to check the settings. I run on a mobile hotspot.
The only reason I was gonna wait is I've roughly edited it. And it's saved in reedsys editor. But I want to make it all nice until continue.
What type of book are you writing?

 

577 words today. Not a lot, but the chapter is so short it hardly matters.

 

I've read about this before, and I still dont understand it. I use tab on new paragraphs because to my eyes there is no clear difference between using tab and using an indent, and just clicking the one button was much easier than messing about with indentation. Can you explain why using tabs is bad? Even when I research it I cant find a proper reason.

 

@GottaBFree Just checked and unless I'm still missing something my paragraphs are formatted so the line breaks are half an inch in, which as far as I can tell is standard format. I know my lines are too close together but I can easily fix that later.

Not gonna lie my dude, you had me worried for a second there when I read your post! But I think it's alright. Most likely I set up the indents ages ago and just forgot I did it or something. Or my software just does it right by default? Either way, phew!

 

I think I have discovered what the issue is. Because I write in Google Docs (I dont have MS Word), the formatting on my documents messes up if I import them into a Word compatible document. This is obviously incredibly annoying and ideally should not be a thing that happens, but it is an unavoidable issue it seems. Thankfully, editing the manuscript back to how it was does not seem all that difficult, just tedious, as the majority of the errors are just incorrect gaps between separate paragraphs. As such I wholeheartedly believe it will be possible to simply use an MS Word trial (I dont want to use the online apps as they have less features and lag on my internet) to get all three books done in one tedious chunk right at the end. Literally everything but that last format I can still do in docs.

 

Yeah. That auto indent is the way to go. I wrote the first draft on a free open source word processor, but I'm sure it offered auto indenting too lol.

I may need to fix them all one at a time when it's done. I'm hoping a newer version of word will delete the tabs, but it's not the end of the world if I'm forced to do it manually.

I thought I was done tinkering, but nope lol. I'm changing a major plot point which allows me to sharpen the story. I think it will take 500 words or less but to me it really improves the realism of the least realistic plot/ world rule. Ill do one more front to finish edit and will do this change while I delete tabs lol.

 

@GottaBFree I deleted a post before you had the chance to see it cause I FINALLY found a source that explains properly why tab/indent thing matters. If you use tab, it puts an invisible character on the page that can cause issues when publishing, same as incorrect spacings and page breaks. I was unable to see this because Google Docs has no built in feature to see these errors, but when I shove my document into Word I can see the page is full of them. I am unsure if Word lets you delete them all in one go but even if it doesnt it's not a hard fix, just one that will take a while. I plan on just finishing my second book as is, then going back to fix the issue later. From book 3 onwards I'll just use a new document that uses proper formatting from the start. Not a big deal in the grand scheme, but it sure is aggravating.

 

730 words today. Wanted to finish the chapter but I'm very tired so I wasn't able to muster the energy. I'll get it done tomorrow as there is very little left.

 

I forgot to post yesterday but I've written around 1770 words for my article between yesterday and today. I'm not sure how much I wrote yesterday but today saw me just polishing up and filling in the gaps where I left off yesterday and now I'm ready to write the second half come tomorrow.

 

Yeah that's where I'm at too. It's easier to finish and worry about it later.

Its frustrating because I want this book to be done but all the work seems to help, but it uncovers more work to be done after it.

I've been engaged and working hard BUT IM STILL 50 PAGES from the end lol.

I'm still working it.

 

The new section I've been writing bridged into the existing text tonight.

Today I wrote maybe 1500 words and I edited 10 pages of existing work.

I loved what I read tonight. It was raw first draft stuff but it was world's better than my first drafts when I started the book.

If the rest of the book is this smooth, this draft will be done in 2 more big sessions.

So....
1st half:
Done
- Tabs
- Add minor "world rule"

2nd half
Rewrites done in 40 pages.
Needs 2 more drafts by me (4-7 days each)
Needs a beta read with my wife (I'll probably start when she has time. We only get through 10-22 pages a night together. I'll probably have to start querying before this step is done).