(Most of my tech blogging lives at escapewindow.dreamwidth.org.)
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November 2023 in writing
November 2023 in writing Summary I wrote and/or edited 28,786 words for NaNoWriMo before stopping failing.
I struggled with my writing for two weeks, then a conversation with Finn helped point me in the right direction. I’m back to the outlining drawing board to try to solve some of the structural issues I’m hitting that are bogging down the second draft. (I could add the outlining wordcount to the month’s total, but I’m still nowhere near 50k.
October 2023 in writing
October 2023 in writing Progress Summary The second draft is going slower than I want it to, but I’m making good progress. I now have a pretty good Act 1 for each of the three arcs, a beginning that will help propel each story into the second act.
I’m not certain if writing the scenes in chapter order was the best idea at this stage – the first two POVs have gone fairly smoothly, but the problematic third POV kept slowing me down.
September 2023 in writing
September 2023 in writing I had planned to tackle the 2nd draft of the 1st POV in September. I didn’t realize how much I had riding on this second draft. I wanted to:
fix the overall structure of all three POV arcs, tightening them, increasing conflict, making sure they culminate in a satisfying climax; add description and depth where I had glossed over or skipped it the first time around, including many characters’ names; improve the prose, removing any modern day language, terminology, turns of phrase; adding depth to the world by the way characters speak and think; get into each major character’s head, so I would know how each would react, in specifics, to any given situation; have a better understanding of my world; improve my maps; be able to describe the architecture and fashion and currency and units of measurement; go further in depth in the religions, beliefs, rituals, superstitions, parables, ghost stories, … That’s a lot for a draft.
lazyvim and obsidian.nvim
lazyvim and obsidian.nvim Obsidian and obsidian.nvim I’ve spent most of my software career editing text in vi or its successors, vim or neovim. Not only do I feel comfortable in vim, but I find myself missing its functionality when I use other editors. While I generally enjoy using obsidian’s UI, I still reach for vim when I want to refactor or perform complex operations.
My .vimrc has gotten quite crufty over the years, but it’s worked for me, so I haven’t bothered fixing it up.
August 2023 in writing
August 2023 in writing As mentioned earlier, I finished my first draft on August 15.
I’ve spent the last couple weeks re-outlining my first POV, tightening the story, keeping the mystery intact by making sure every suspect has something that they’re hiding.
In September I want to write the second draft for the first POV and possibly re-outline the 2nd POV.
Re-outlining I’m going about this using a number of methods… I have an unpublished blog post draft about this.