Writing Vacay, Day 3

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Slept in dramatically, felt much better, got some stuff done around the house. Still got a late start on anything writing adjacent:

  • Some brainstorming
  • a lot of research on the less feudal bits (Switzerland, Frisia, etc) of medieval Europe, vaguely connected with one of the plot bunnies
  • 100-200 words adjusting earlier scenes in the WIP
  • 972 words moving forward on the WIP
  • lower word target met! yay?

Writing Vacay, Day 2

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So, here’s what happened on day 2 of the writing vacation:

  • Couldn’t focus on writing due to AC issues, now hopefully fixed. I have no patience with people who diss the Industrial Revolution and even less with the air conditioning haters who were fashionable a year or two ago
  • Cut 170 words I wrote yesterday on main WIP
  • Tweaked some other bits of the WIP for continuity issues; mostly related to the structure and layout of the airship in the WIP
  • wrote 116 new words
  • Target word count not achieved

Writing Vacay, Day 1

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I took the four days after Memorial Day off, planning to do kind of a writing staycation. My goal was try and do a thousand words a day, stretch goal of 1300 words a day, preferably on my main WIP (sequel to Wolf’s Trail), but anything really would do. First Day’s results:

  • 300ish words on WIP
  • 1322 words on a long, rambling blog post draft I might not put up.
  • Well, I made word count, but at what cost?

Happy 113th to Mr. Price and 104th to Sir Christopher Lee

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I know there’s nothing lazier than celebrating these gentlemen’s birthday with the clip of them trading insults from the epilogue of House of the Long Shadows (major spoilers for one of the film’s plot twists below), but I’m supposed to be on a writing vacation this week, about which more later. If you want to see the whole film, it’s on ScreenPix as of this writing. It has its moments, but I personally am not a fan of the film overall; too many shots of short guy Desi Arnaz Jr standing halfway up the grand staircase so he can look 6’5″ Sir Christopher or 6’4″ Vincent in the eye, or Desi glaring at 6’ish Peter Cushing for passing too close to him when he’s not standing on his apple box, or, heck, too much shots of Desi flaunting his professional incompetence in the face of people three times his age and a hundred times his talent level…and that’s just in the scenes with the suave publisher played by war hero and forgotten Robin Hood portrayer Richard Todd.

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Weird Wednesday: Doctor Who and the 7 Golden Vampires

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To those who are not familiar with the movies and tv show being referenced, no explanation is possible. To those who are, no explanation is necessary. To those who whine about how awful the source movies are: I have so little respect for your opinions that I am not even doing you the courtesy of putting these beneath the fold.

Likeable and Unlikeable Main Characters

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Elsewhere on the web, there was a discussion going on about whether readers of popular fiction would tolerate an unlikeable main character, and I stuck my oar in – well, a whole galley’s worth of oars actually. I thought I would try to summarize some of my opinions here:

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