#2 Tara's Writer Diary: Mayish 2019ish
In continuing to share my writer diary, here is May 2019. As I get more comfortable with sharing my story, I will share profiles on the characters and other details so that you, the reader, will have a better idea of what I am complaining. . . I mean writing about. In the meantime, let's keep going!
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Let this diary be my accountability for working two hours a day on Vampyre. That said, I have a target writing goal of 2 hours a day. So far, I have written/edited for 1.5 hours. I am reading a full chapter, with all scenes, and then going over the Reread Questions to see if anything is relevant for what I just read. The work is slow but productive. I am finding notes that have been repeated in the Reread Questions, and am able to make notes of where else I found the same note, as well as what chapters I made additions to. Physical pain is an issue right now, so I’m going to leave my journal there for now.
It is now 6:23pm and I have done a half hour of map building Tesla. That makes 2 hours today!
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
How easy it is for days to go by without me recording in this journal. I’m not going to apologize; if there is something to report or record for posterity, then I shall. Otherwise, no one wants to hear about the boring minutia of my day, especially me, and I don’t want to record it.
As for Campfyre, I am putting into the script the changes I have made in the reread so far, which is through chapter 3: easy changes, that is. Some are things I have yet to do, per the Camp Continued list in Scrivener. Anything that I can do as I go through this reread, though, I will, which does include medium hard edits that only require me to write them now. It is slow going progress, but it is progress. I work 30 minutes at a time so that I never tire out and am always ready to keep working after a short or longer break. I’m going for consistency, not quantity.
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
I have given myself a quest to find out how to let my thoughts travel into a different medium and change shape and size but not change content, or rather, to have the same intent in the content even though it looks, hears, sees, smells, and feels different in this corporeal world than it did in the ether of my mind. Perhaps I do it enough already, perhaps not. What IS a single thought?
I have a concept for Vampyre, a concept that cannot be expressed in a single sentence, unless that sentence fills a whole page, punctuated with commas, semi-colons, and full colons.
Thursday, May 9, 2019
I fear that I may have to start video blogging. I see other writers doing this, and I know that helps readers connect with them. I still believe that if the writing isn’t good, it won’t matter how personable you are on a video blog or a regular blog. You can have the best website in the world, but if you’re writing sucks, you won’t be the next Virginia Woolf or Stephen King. Who am I kidding, though? This industry has turned into high school. Quality doesn’t matter anymore. It’s a popularity contest. How many successful authors do I attempt to read that have HORRIBLE writing styles? Their stories stink, yet they win awards? HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN? I don’t want to win a popularity contest. I want my writing to mean something, even if no one reads it. I guess I’m saying that I refuse to sacrifice my integrity. I’ll be the writing community’s best kept secret.
Saturday, May 11, 2019
I am editing. . .let me pause a moment to let the enormity of that statement sink in, and also the humor of feeling the need to say that considering I have been editing this book for literally decades. But, I am editing, going through the Reread Questions for the new Chapter 5, and I come upon a note for Ch. 9.3 in which I can’t remember Ed’s wife’s name. It goes like this: “[his wife’s name] happened to have taken a holiday without him.” I find this a humorous way of stating that you can’t remember someone’s name.
Sunday, May 12, 2019
I have gone back to the beginning of the script, going through and adding the parts that I highlighted. This means writing new scenes. Today’s writing is not as fluid as the past few days. Yes, it’s Mother’s Day, and try though I do to have it not affect me for the third year in a row, perhaps it is affecting me anyway. The important thing is that I have worked for an hour and a half on the script. An hour’s worth of writing a new scene with Sherrie going to a Revolutions meeting (Normal operations, in other words). A half-hour of working on the Tesla map. That was even slower going though, so I went back to writing, which, though slow, was productive.
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
I lost this journal for a bit! I was beginning to think it had disappeared into the ether as computer files are wont to do. But then I finally found it tucked away within the Vampyre file. On the bright side, I forgot that I had started another journal, just labeled Writer’s Journal or something, I can’t remember right now. I love what I was doing with it. I was writing fragments, weird and/or notable things that happened to me, six-word stories, poetry, and other “word experiments”. It is quite fun to read through, so maybe not a bad thing that I lost this diary for a time.
Anyway, the further into Virginia Woolf’s journal I get, the more scared I get, suicide-wise, which is a weird phrase: is suicide wise? Some would say no, but I suspect those are the ones left behind with questions and no answers. V.W. struggled with suicide for as long as she wrote a diary. I knew she had killed herself, but gave no thought as to how long these thoughts were with her. She gave us a unique insight, not only into her mind as a writer, but into her thought process and how it took her to very dark places. It shows us how she triumphed time and time again over those thoughts, but they still chased her until they finally caught her in 1941.
As for Vampyre, or “Campfyre”? Slowly but steadily. Work was cray cray busy for Memorial Day Weekend. I got as much writing done as I could, which did not amount to much. A half-hour here, an hour there. But that hell is done for now, so hopefully work goes back to its normal quicks and slow times. Currently, pushing through the re-read. I paused to fix a couple places in the script that required fixing before going on, and to update the Questions for Reread. I believe I am caught up, so started rereading the new chapter 7 yesterday.
Friday, May 31, 2019
Yesterday, when I reached two hours of writing for the second day in a row, I felt like I had worked hard. I got lazy for a week there and fell out of practice apparently. So, looking forward to getting back up to 2 hours a day and NOT “breaking a sweat.”
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Excerpts from 2018 (my first attempt at a writer journal, and possibly . . . no definitely more interesting):
7/20/18
Today I’m going to add a copy of what I did for Vampyre. It’s work on the saboteur, and also realizing that I need to know EXACTLY what New America does and its own hierarchy of scumbag employees. Here’s the saboteur notes:
The company that opted out -- CEO Jules Crenshaw of National Bank
The underling turned informant -- Joseph Piles (48 at time of opting out), Technical Director for their computer systems (much more involved than that, but I’m tired, so good enough FOR NOW.)
The son of the underling -- Scott Piles (18 at time of opting out)
Sherrie encounters Joe Piles at one of the bars.
Scott witnesses the killing, unbeknownst to the killer, and goes to trade school to be able to get a job at New America in the technical department.
I found this in Scrivener, BACKSTORY -- “How the 5 Came into Power”
New America – Agricultural genetic engineering --> Subsidiary companies involved in human bio-engineering, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence.
05/28/19
Six-word story:
“Country for sale. Must love Cheetos.”
-Tara McMillen
12:44am (PST) 9/6/19