 Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie MurphyApparently we will begin Week 9 by forgetting to post. That’s not a good start.
Writing: It appears I mostly took April off from writing. Given that I’d done 160K in the previous 3 months, I feel this was probably sensible. Clearly I am not of the Write Every Day school, even though I think as a goal it’s a good one. I have to get back in the saddle, though, as I’ve got 7 short stories, a proposal and a chapter to write. Ideally all by the end of May, but that’s not going to happen.
Work That Isn’t Writing: To my vast triumph I have learned to make an e-book. That’s been a great deal of what I’ve done the past two weeks, and in the long run I’m pretty certain it’s going to be a good use of time. Lisa Cohen’s How to format an [...]
Continue reading A Year in the Life: Week 9
Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie MurphyWriting: Revisions, primarily, these past two weeks. This month is largely about revisions: I had NO DOMINION to get out to my Kickstarter patrons, am working on MOUNTAIN ECHOES (book 8 of the Walker Papers) so it doesn’t embarrass me when I send it to my editor, and once that’s done, there’s “Year of Miracles”, the Old Races novella I’m prepping for e-release.
I would like to now pause and make some comments about revising.
All three of these books have been (or will be) professionally edited, even though two of them are e-releases. What, you say, really? You’re paying somebody to edit your books? But Catie, you’ve written something like 25 books! 18 of them have been published! *Seriously*, you’re still going to editors for revision suggestions?
Yes. Yes, I am, and I assure you that any time I do a novella-or-better length e-release I will be [...]
Continue reading A Year in the Life: Week 8
Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie MurphyWriting: You know how last time I posted I said I was too busy writing to do a decent YitL post? Yeah, well, then I went on a writing retreat and did 36,000 words in 4 days, including one 11.5K day, which was a personal best.
I wrote 91K in 19 days in March. I finished the entire 8th Walker Papers novel in that time. I observed something that I’ve observed before, but which is starting to take more solid hold in my awareness of Catie’s Writing Process now: the more detailed a synopsis I have, the faster and easier it is for me to write a book, which is an idea I’ve resisted quite heartily over the years. But this is probably the 4th book (out of around 25) where I’ve had a quite detailed synopsis, and…well. 91K in 19 days.
Now, it’s true that I did Very Little [...]
Continue reading A Year in the Life: Week 7
Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie MurphyI am too busy writing this week to do a decent YitL post, honestly. By the end of today I will have 40K under my belt in the past 11 days, and after that I’m going on a writing retreat with a theme of Surrender The Manuscript.
This is how that has been going:
Last Monday I got started on MOUNTAIN ECHOES, book 8 of the Walker Papers. “Got started” means I re-read the first 3 chapters and the synopsis, and while the chapters were fine, I thought, “Wow, this synopsis *really* sucks. *Really* sucks. There are major problems with it.”
And then I started to write. And something happened far earlier in the writing than it happened in the synopsis, and I thought, “That’s probably not a bad thing, because the synopsis is so awful,” and by that time I was starting to suspect what was wrong with the [...]
Continue reading A Year in the Life: Week Six
Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie MurphyThis is a series of posts about the day to day detail work that makes up the life of a writer. It’s not glamorous, but it’s real. This week, as last time, I’m also discussing the crowdfunding efforts I’ve been part of, and posting short essays about them. So: onward!
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Writing: Nothing. Zero. Zip, zilch, nada. The past two weeks I have done no writing, no revising, no nothing. Normally this would be called a vacation, except it was caused by a convention sandwiched by two colds, rather than an intention of taking time off.
Work That Isn’t Writing: Hundreds of items have gone onto this list. I have:
- discussed with publishers the grey area where self epublishing meets the hope of a future physical collection of the same material (answer: it behooves you *greatly* to be prepared to have previously unseen content as part of any [...]
Continue reading A Year in the Life: Week Five
Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie MurphyWriting: A not particularly impressive 18K or so, I think, but I’ve finished NO DOMINION, AKA The Novella That Wouldn’t End. At, get this, 60,438 words, I don’t think anybody’s going to be calling it a novella any more. o.O
Up next: Revisions on a short story, a chapter of the graphic novel script I’m working on, and then, starting around the 5th of March, a death march (or Death March, I suppose) toward 100K on the unwritten novel that’s due April 15. Oi!
Work That Isn’t Writing: I’ve finally gotten my crowdfunding experiences written up, and I want to make them a part of the YitL blog posts here. Onward!
Crowdfunding: what is it? Crowdfunding is the modern era’s answer to the artistic patrons of yesteryear. Instead of having a single wildly wealthy patron, right now, thanks to the Internet, artists are discovering an audience willing to chip [...]
Continue reading A Year in the Life: Week Four
Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie MurphyWriting: 25,000 words, all on “No Dominion”, the Kickstarter novella which has tipped over to a novel by breaking the 40K wordcount mark. I was hoping to have it done by today’s posting, but some Life Stuff has happened and I haven’t written since last Saturday.
Along those lines, I mentioned I was doing a “Febnowrimo”, a February 50K. I’m 15.2K into that, which, yes, I did all in the first 4 days of the month. The good news is that Life Happening hasn’t gotten me behind in wordcount because I had that initial surge, but I need to get back to putting words on pixels. How are your Febnowrimos going?
Work That Isn’t Writing: Spent the entire allocated work time of one Sunday packing up books to send out to contest winners. Or, more accuratly, I packed up about two books and some Christmas presents, and no, sadly, I’m [...]
Continue reading A Year in the Life: Week 3
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