Goal: Finish revision by mid-March

The revision is moving right along, and I am really hoping that I can be finished with it by the end of the winter.

I’ve gone back to fill in and integrate all of the scenes that I marked for re-use from the rough draft and earlier re-write attempt. It’s been challenging. I’m the type of writer who hates to delete or overwrite anything. I use Scrivener’s “snapshot” feature obsessively. But there comes a time when it needs to be done. Just cut it, write over it, get rid of what doesn’t work and move on. I’m making progress. The most challenging thing is keeping track of what hasn’t happened yet, since the rewrite that I did in November is still so fresh in my mind. I have so many notes written again. Every time I start to look at the big picture it gets daunting again, and I remind myself to focus on the scene or chapter or week where I am, rather than thinking of the whole right now.

One scary thing is that my word count for the first half (what I think of as the first half anyway) is now 90k words–and I’m not finished adding scenes yet. Obviously some cuts are going have to be made. But first I have to get the whole thing written. I keep reminding myself of that, too.

One more performance next Sunday and I’m finished with lessons and orchestras at least until mid-January. I love to play, but I’m looking forward to the break. There will be ample time for writing.

 

Fingerings

I learned violin in school orchestra, never took lessons except for a couple of weeks during high school, and I was so intimidated by the teacher and her students that I didn’t stick with it. So my entire (violin) music education–until five years ago–was in public schools. And one thing I learned at the very beginning was writing finger numbers above notes in order to aid music reading. Now I was also taught that these finger numbers were a crutch, a tool, and shouldn’t be overused and relied upon. But finger number=note was very, very ingrained in me. A second finger on the D string was always F (or F#). And I carried this into adulthood. I taught myself to play in 3rd position when I was faced with music that went higher than B on the E string. And 3rd position was only for that occurrence. Why would you use it any other time? I was happy with 1st position, thank you, and I would shift constantly in order to be in 1st position. (I also taught myself vibrato–a really bad idea.)

So, as an adult, and taking lessons for the first time, I relied on these crutches and continued these habits as long as I could. I didn’t have to rely on the finger numbers being written, but I definitely thought them, even though I told myself I shouldn’t. And up into Suzuki book 3, which I was using for repertoire, I was happily situated in 1st position. Then my teacher says we’re going to try this piece in 3rd position (one of the Seitz student concertos). And I’m like…why? It perfectly sits in 1st? Why shift to 3rd? What’s the point? My teacher was a professional symphony musician, so I had to trust she knew what she was doing. So I learned it, and I started to understand the why. I also started to learn and understand the whole concept of fingerings and making choices depending on the music written and the timbre of each string. And also working with the strength of the instrument I’m playing.

The first thing I had to learn, or unlearn, was that finger number does not equal a note. Finger number is just a finger number. I also had to learn to  know what I’m doing rather than translate it from 1st position, much like a person learning a foreign language has to at some point get past translating from the native language to the new one and just learn to think in the new language.

Now, this was a long process, and is a continuing one. And fingerings can be a touchy subject among string players. It’s something I’m constantly faced with in orchestra music. In fact, playing in a high level orchestra has been a trial by fire, and has probably really helped the intellectual understanding of these things, if not necessarily the practical application of it.

So I grew comfortable with 3rd and 5th position, to a point. And then was introduced to 2nd and 4th. When I first joined a community orchestra and asked on a violin forum for some help and advice, one of the things I was told was “learn the even numbered positions.” Now, really, what is the point of the even numbered positions? Why not just use 1st or 3rd, or 5th? Don’t they basically do the same things? But, again, these were people who knew what they were talking about. So, when the time came that they were introduced, I diligently worked on them. And sure enough, they were right.

Of course, for the first two years, and still some today, I had to ask the advice of my teacher for fingerings, even in orchestral music, because thinking in terms of positions and fingerings has not been natural to me. However, once joining Play Ethic, I started to challenge myself to try something myself, write in the fingering (back to writing in fingerings!) and then ask for my teacher’s opinion. More and more, it was coming natural, and my fingerings were sensible ones.

The challenge is to utilize all the positions, even the ones that aren’t comfortable. And in looking at music, I’m discovering that those even-numbered positions are really, really handy. A couple of programs ago, it seemed like we were constantly in 2nd position, because that’s just where the music lay. I started to go back through the Whistler even-numbered position book again in order to really get it. And I realized that 4th position was still very weak, so challenged myself to work on it on my own. Lo and behold, the last two programs of Play Ethic music have utilized 4th position probably 50% of the time, if not more.

Unfortunately, I do still need to write in fingerings. But I’ve learned that this isn’t always a bad thing. If you rely on them to read the music, it might be a crutch to do away with. But when they’re used to aid in the playing of music, they’re a tool. I write in fingerings where I want to shift, or where my eyes and fingers aren’t quite working together properly. My challenge now is to read the notes. To know the notes and where I am on the fingerboard, but also to read by interval, so I don’t have to think “4th position, 2nd finger, F.” These are two different things, and both useful and necessary as the repertoire gets more and more difficult.

Playing the violin can be a fascinating intellectual exercise, and that part appeals to me, because I’ve always been better at the intellectual than the artistic. Learning to play music (rather than let the music play me, as my teacher likes to put it) is a whole other ball game.

Scrivening :-)

After I reached 50k on Friday, my brain just went to mush. I think this happens a little bit every year, but none worse than this one, where my goal hasn’t been to finish a book. (It would have been nice to finish the revision, but there was no way that was going to happen.) I went to a write-in on Saturday and wrote 300 words, and realized that I had a decision to make: keep on pushing forward, or go back and work more on what I had. I was realizing that I had too many holes in the rewrite to keep on pushing forward. I’d lost a POV character and didn’t know how to get him back in the story (and his presence is crucial). There were certain story arcs I just wasn’t sure of. So finally, Saturday night, I threw in the towel and called my NaNoWriMo 2011 finished. I am now in full revision mode. I think the sooner I can just accept that, the sooner I’ll be able to actually get working again. The last few days have been a bit slow.

Here’s where Scrivener is proving to be indispensable, though. During the course of the month I had kept the scenes I wanted to re-use in two separate files, and my NaNo re-write in a third. The first thing I did was combine them and number them as one whole rather than three separate things. In order to keep track of where they came from (since for now I want to know what was written when) I simply used the “status” label for each file. After I had everything basically where it was going to go, and reorganized by story-week rather than November day, I went through and updated the synopsis and meta-data for each file. I keep story-date and day of the week in the custom meta-data, so I can keep track of the chronology. Basically what this meant that I did, which I didn’t really realize before I started doing it, is that I reviewed the entire story, beginning to middle (I haven’t reached the end yet) and really looked at how each scene fit with the ones around it. It was a really useful review, and helped me realize that I hadn’t lost that POV-character quite as completely as I’d feared. I put a few place-holder files for scenes yet to write, one of them for him, and I was suddenly at the end of the first half. And I have a complete outline and chronology of my novel to this point. I also have a ton of notes, which I also wrote during the process of outlining in this way. So while no words have been written, it’s been a productive couple of days.

Now the question comes up again: what now? There’s a ton of work to be done on the first half. But the second half sits with no work done on it at all. There’s something to be said about working with small chunks, getting the first half cleaned up before moving onto the second. There’s also something to be said about getting through one complete revision before going back to work from the beginning again. What to do?

NaNoWriMo Day 25: 50k!

Woohoo!! Not nearly finished with the revision. Not even the first half rewrite. Still lots of work ahead, but whew! Been a tough fought 50k! Hooray! :::happydance:::

Using Scrivener

I’ve been wanting to talk about Scrivener again, since I have again found it an invaluable tool for NaNoWriMo. I wrote about it some last year, as well. I love love love this program.

I’ve always been a very linear writer. I start at the beginning and write to the end. If I got really stuck, I might skip a scene or two in order to keep writing, especially during November. I used to use MS Word for NaNoWriMo. But I never had a year that Word didn’t end up eating words or freezing or quitting suddenly on me, and I finally got fed up with it. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s losing writing. Especially during NaNoWriMo. So in 2008 (with the original draft of this month’s rewrite, in fact) I decided to use a journaling program called “Journler” which I absolutely loved. It not being a word processor, I found I could do things a little bit differently. I could still write linearly, but I could also skip scenes, and then go back and put them back in. I could break things up by scene or chapter. I could tag things and label things. I could write notes as I went, and they’d be right there within the chronology of the text so that I knew what they were referring to. I started to write a little bit differently. It was a huge success, so I used it again the following year.

I’d never been a fan of writing applications, because I didn’t think the way that they did. And I don’t think that Scrivener would have appealed to me prior to my using Journler. But in December 2009, after I won NaNoWriMo, I noticed the Scrivener 50% offer for winners, and out of curiosity, I checked it out. I had been looking for other options, because Journler was a bit clunky. So I downloaded the trial and was blown away. Here was a writing program that was written just for me! It was exactly the way I worked. Well, it was exactly the way I’d come to work since using Journler. Only it was better. I fell in love, bought my copy, and imported each of my NaNo novels into their own projects.

I used Scrivener for the revision of The Third Time’s the Charm during 2010, and it was absolutely wonderful. (And it never crashed. Biggest plus of all.) I then used it during November for the first time in 2010.

Now this was a challenge, because I like to know my daily progress. With MS Word, I just copied the previous day’s file and then added to it, every day, so at the end of the month I had 30 files for the one story. (This was my protection against losing too much work if it froze on me and I lost words! Or if the Word file got corrupted, which also happened.) Also, if I go back and edit, I like to save the unedited version first, in case I end up wanting to revert to it (another reason for copying the file and then working on the copy). So I came up with a way of making this work in Scrivener. It was a learning process, and I came to absolutely love it. I actually managed two stories last November.

So this year posed a new challenge. I decided to do a revision/rewrite on Mancunian Waltz, which, to put it bluntly, was a mess of a rough draft. It was 163k words written in 30 days. Absolute drivel with some good stuff here and there. Some of the good stuff, though, is the character development. And there were scenes here and there that I just nailed and don’t want to lose. I’d also tried rewriting a couple of times, and one of those rewrites was going well until I got frustrated. In other words, there was stuff from those other versions that I want to use. But NaNoWriMo is all about new words, it’s writing a story fresh. And I have plenty that I need to rewrite. So, how to keep the new words–which I can count for NaNoWriMo–separate from the reused words from either the rough draft or the previous rewrite attempts? Once again, Scrivener has an answer. Because, though you can certainly write linearly, from beginning to end, with Scrivener, that’s not what it’s actually designed to do. I imagine if I took the time to really delve into everything that Scrivener can do, I’d find even better ways to do things, but this is what I came up with. And it’s working.

This is how I write in November. Because I like to keep track of my work per day, I simply keep a folder for every day. If I write a scene on November 15th that fits earlier into the story, I just note that in the title of the file. This is what it looks like when I’m just doing straight writing, which I’ve been doing lately, since the rough draft at this point is little more than a detailed outline, so a complete rewrite has been necessary.

This is a shot from earlier in the month, when I was doing more work than the word count indicated. I spent the first four days of November trying to write from scratch, then decided that I’d already done this rewrite and liked what I’d done better than what I was writing new. So that’s when I started scrambling for a way to keep the story going forward, keep the new writing separate from the old, and keep track of what I was reusing and what I wasn’t. I then decided to go through the rough draft and see what I wanted to keep from that. I ended up moving a whole bunch of stuff around. That’s when I started keeping track of the scenes by day. So I might have five files for one story day, and parts of that day come from rough draft, earlier rewrite attempt, and new writing. Right now I just label them, and then at some later point I’ll actually put them in chronological order. But it’s all there for me to see. Everything in red or burgundy needs to be revised to fit in with the rewrite, but it’s not something I’m worried about doing in November. Red is rough draft scenes, burgundy is the rewrite scenes that I wrote last January.)

And here’s the best part of Scrivener. All of my notes and research are right here within the project file. No more having to flip from program to program or file to file. It’s all right here. And for this particular page shown, I even get the active URLs so I just click and go to the website I need to go to. You can import HTML Word, TXT, and PDF files (and others) into Scrivener. The only thing I can’t get in there is Excel files, and I wish there was a way to do so, because I keep my calenders in Excel. Maybe I’ll do some looking at some point to see if there is an alternative. You can keep track of dates and such in Scrivener, but it’s not as visually easy to see as with an actual calendar where the events are all there to see.

So, that’s how I use Scrivener, and how I’m keeping track of this monster of a rewrite. I just can’t say enough how much i love this program.

NaNoWriMo Progress Day 20

Well, the characters are finally in Bath! (Bath, UK, that is.) I thought they’d never get there. I kept writing and writing and they kept staying in place. Or going to new places. Basically having minds of their own rather than getting to the next place I wanted them to get. (How did they end up in Plymouth anyway? Who’s in charge here?)

So, they’re going to spend a few days in Bath to see the sights and visit all the Jane Austen related places, and then they go back to Manchester where things progress pretty much as the rough draft does, so I think I’ll be reusing scenes again. And then there’s the whole climax, which needs to be rewritten (or maybe just revised?) and the end of the first half. And that is all that is really my NaNoWriMo goal. Rewrite the first half. The ending needs rewriting, too, but I’m not as concerned with that.

So, I’m in a good place. I hope to have them back in Manchester by the end of the week.

Road trips are amazingly difficult to write during NaNoWriMo. Especially when they’re through places I’ve never been. GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth (and all the people who have contributed to both) have been invaluable!

10 days and 11k words to go. Maybe I’ll just finish by the end of Thanksgiving weekend.

Getting paid to play music.

When I started playing the violin I didn’t have any expectation to play for money, and I still don’t. But sometimes opportunities just fall into your lap. I am playing my first true paying gig in December. It’s a Christmas concert of religious Christmas music, and I think it will be lovely. It’s been a long time since I’ve played in a church. Of course, this also means that I’ve added one more thing to an already busy schedule. Getting paid to play adds a whole new level of expectation and accountability. We’ll see how it goes!

NaNoWriMo Day 17 Progress

Moving right along. I’m nearing the point where I sort of slow down on the words, though, because there’s a lot that I can reuse from the rough draft with just some minor revising. I’m almost finished with the first half, which was what needed the major rewrite. I keep thinking I am, anyway. Things just keep getting added…

NaNoWriMo Day 14 Progress – Halfway there

So I’m a full day ahead now. I thought about not writing today, but revising instead. I had the day off, and when I got to Starbucks (my writing place) at 8:00, the new scenes started flowing. There was a heavy dose of GoogleEarth research to be done (virtually touring London while my characters were really doing so), and in 4 hours I wrote 3k words. I was surprised it was so many. So, that worked. I guess I’ll save the revising for Thanksgiving weekend, if I don’t still have new writing to do.

I’m halfway through–chronologically–the first half of the story. The second half of the story is what mostly just needs revising rather than rewriting–until the end, which needs to be completely redone. So I think I’m more confident that I’ll have the 50k new words. I’m concerned I’ll still be at too many words over 100k for the whole things, but that’s not something to fret about this month. Cuts can be done later.

NaNoWriMo Day 12: Progress

Well, I’m moving right along, and I’m pretty happy with what I’ve written. I hope the pace is good, that’s my one concern. I have a romance developing, and I’m a little concerned that I’m doing too much too soon (I had the same problem with Love Bytes, the novel that I just revised.) It’s tricky, but I won’t know if it’s okay until I’ve gone back and revised the scenes that I’ve marked for re-use from the rough draft, and then re-read the thing. So I’m just plowing ahead and hoping for the best.

This is a crazy weekend, but it’s been good. The Philharmonic has a concert tomorrow, so this morning was a rehearsal, then I spent about three hours at Starbucks writing. Tomorrow I’ll spend the morning at Starbucks, then be downtown by 2:30. The other normal weekend stuff has to fit in there as well. I don’t know how we did it the years Steve was doing NaNoWriMo, too. He’s not doing it this year, so we’ve kept up with everything! (I do miss my write-in partner tho’.)

My characters are in London at last! I think I’m going to end up with too many words in the first half, but I can always cut later.