word-count – Page 2 – Lena Corazon

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ROW80: Rolling Right Along

Happy Sunday, friends! I’m currently feeling a touch under the weather, so it’s going to be a Josh Groban, tea, and fuzzy socks sort of morning for me. 🙂

I want to extend another welcome to the bloggers who are visiting from the SheWrites Blog Hop. It’s gotten bumped down a bit, but my official welcome message is here. I’m looking forward to getting to know you all! For those of you who haven’t checked it out yet, please do. There are many of wonderful writers who have joined up.

I’m slowly trying to give this blog a bit more structure and life instead of only using it for ROW80 updates, so over the next few weeks you will see more posts on non-check-in days, covering a wider variety of topics. I’m toying with the idea of book reviews, wee blurbs about the historical research that I’m doing, discussions of world-building (which is one of my favorite past-times), and maybe a post or two on how I’m using philosophy and sociological theory in my work.

I added my first “experimental post” yesterday — a few idle musings about love and romance in the Odyssey, one of my favorite works out of ancient Greek literature. I’d love to hear any feedback that you may have!

Now then, onto my update:

The Life List Club: I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the ways that I can strive for a more balanced and healthy life, and so I am throwing my hat in the ring for the Life List Club. I’ve created a page for my list, which includes ten goals that I will pursue over the next year. I’ll try and report in on these, maybe during my Wednesday check-ins.

Social Networking: I downloaded TweetDeck on Thursday! I think I spent the first twelve hours just staring at it, because it is so very pretty. I am now learning the ins and outs of hashtags, and twitter communities, and lots of other awesome stuff like that, and I am having an absolute ball chatting with people.

Relevant to this: the Pew Research Center has found that spending time on social networking sites actually leads to a strengthening of interpersonal bonds, and helps to foster trust in others.

Writing continues on. I’ve been meeting (and, at times, exceeding) my goals over the past few days, which is awesome. Strange Bedfellows is coming along quite well, and I’m basically forcing myself to throw down words for Path to the Peacock Throne. I’m trying to lay down the overall skeleton for the final half of the book, and I am ignoring the perfectionist inside of me that keeps wailing that it isn’t absolutely perfect. I’m also struggling to find my MC’s voice, so I’m doing lots of writing exercises in the 1st person… and wondering if the story might actually be better served as a 1st person tale, rather than 3rd person.

Today’s goal includes finally getting around to tell me no lies, the story that is starting to feel like the neglected middle child (yes, my stories have feelings). I’d like to have the first chapter laid out — just the action and the dialogue. I’ll fill in the blanks with description and whatnot later.

Finally, the thesis is slowly taking form. My thesis advisor sent along a list of helpful suggestions and critiques yesterday, and she and I are meeting today to chat about my progress. I think I am going to approach this draft the way I do my fictional work: put the words onto paper, finish the draft, and then sit back, review, and figure out how to make it amazing.

And that’s all from me! I’m off to drink more tea and grade the rest of these papers before I have to dash off to meet my advisor. Enjoy the rest of the weekend, all!

ROW80: Recovering from Vacation

July 20, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 8 Comments

Happy Hump Day!

I’m back home from the family holiday, and it feels good to be snug in my little apartment once again. Flying always takes a lot out of me, especially when I have to deal with layovers (and Santa Barbara airport is so tiny that I almost always have at least one layover), so all I want to do today is curl up with a blanket and a good book and do absolutely nothing. The instructor that I’m TA’ing for is wonderful and told me to go ahead and take today off, so I plan to devour one (or two!) of the Georgette Heyer regency romance novels I have sitting on the shelf. Grading and thesis-work will commence tomorrow once I’m rested up.

The second half of the trip was absolutely wonderful. We left my grandfather’s house in southern Nevada Sunday afternoon and made our way to the Las Vegas Strip, where my parents renewed their vows to mark their 25 wedding anniversary.

The Happy Couple

The event turned into a mini-Jamison reunion, with my mom’s younger brother and sister, niece, and father in attendance.

The family (except for me, as I am taking the picture)

All in all, it was a wonderful trip, especially because it was the first family vacation that we’ve taken since I moved out of the house for grad school, three years ago. Now that my sister has moved out to go to college, finding time for all four of us to be together is a major challenge. It’s good to be back in Santa Barbara and to have a little quiet time (three women in one family = lots of squabbling), but I do miss having all of them around. However, I don’t have to despair for long: summer session ends next Wednesday and fall quarter doesn’t begin until the 3rd week of September, so I’ll be driving back to San Francisco next weekend. I will have six weeks for lots of family time, and even better, lots of non-school time. I’ll also be able to work on the thesis without other distractions, which means that I should be pretty productive.

Now, for my ROW80 check-in. I didn’t have internet access Sunday-Tuesday, so I basically worked my smartphone to the bone. I now know how to utilize my Twitter app, the WordPress app, the MS Word app, and the copy/paste function — all incredibly useful tools for when I’m on-the-go. I also managed to write for an hour or so each night since the last check-in. Yesterday was the exception, as I was basically was sitting in an airport or airplane for six hours straight with nothing but my ipod, a blank notebook, and pen (that sounds like some sort of desert island challenge!), so I did a lot more brainstorming.

The breakdown, project-by-project:

Thesis: I took a break from the behemoth that is my thesis for the last few days. I have a check-in meeting with my advisor by the weekend, so cross your fingers that her feedback is favorable!

Strange Bedfellows: The characters for this story won’t shut up, so at the moment I am a slave to their whims. However, I was able to put a hold on the snappy and snarky dialogue to focus on developing the first couple of chapters, which is good, because I’ve been writing scenes out of order, just to get them out of my head. I added another 1400 words to this, which brings the current MS up to about 12,700 words. I went through my notes the other day and realized that this project took over my life at the beginning of July, so yeah, I’m a little shocked at this total word count.

Path to the Peacock Throne: I haven’t written anything new, but I devoted all of yesterday to working on backstory, world-building, and character development. There’s a lot of stuff that goes down in this tale before the story even begins, so the challenge is (1) getting the details all straightened out and (2) finding a way to allude to the backstory without a major infodump. I now have many handwritten pages with notes about systems of magic, and fictional civil wars, and my MC’s personality. She is shy and a bit aloof, I think, with a secret wish to travel and explore the world. She’ll get her wish in Act 2, though not quite in the way she imagined.

That’s all from me right now. Off to do a bit of bloghopping, and once I am done with that, to grab a book and enjoy a decadently lazy day.

ROW80: Last-Minute Rally!

July 17, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 21 Comments

Another short post from me today. Vacation continues, and we’re having an excellent time. The highlights so far have included catching the midnight showing of Harry Potter, and taking a daytrip to Zion National Park, where we took a short tour via shuttle bus, and took many, many photographs of pretty rocks. I’ll post those sometime in the coming week, when I get the chance to upload them to my computer.

When it comes to progress, I seem to have done better over the past few days than I did earlier in the week. I’ve noticed that it’s easier for me to satisfy my goals between Wednesday – Sunday, probably because the weekend makes my responsibilities a bit lighter, so I’ll have to see how I can take this knowledge and use it to my advantage. I’ll potentially end up saving up my writing for the latter half of the week, when I know I’ll be able to have the time to go beyond 500/night.

So, without further ado, this week’s accomplishments:

Thesis: I finally managed to tidy up the latest section of my findings and send it off to my advisor. As I’ve warned her, it’s a very, very rough first draft, there are holes and things that are missing, and many things that will need to be cut. All the same, it is 19 pages long (almost 6000 words), which brings the current draft to about 40 pages in length. I estimate that I’ll need another 15-20 pages to talk about the next set of findings, along with another 10-15 pages to encompass other details (methodology, conclusion, etc.) which means that the complete first draft will approach somewhere upwards of 80+ pages. Granted, I don’t know what will happen during the editing process, but I feel rather proud of myself. After three years of stressing and reading and pursuing countless ideas, I’m finally at the point where I feel like I can say, unequivocally, that I will finish this. When I am done, I have promised myself that I am going to utilize my esoteric knowledge of 1920s etiquette and apply it to a new story, one that involves flappers and bootleggers and vampires, or something paranormal. 😀

tell me no lies: I managed to get some research done last night. As a grad student I have access to digital newspaper archives, so I availed myself of the San Francisco Chronicle‘s collection of issues from 1887, when “tell me no lies” takes place. I started combing through all the stories on crime and murder (a cheery topic, let me tell you, though infinitely fascinating), and stumbled upon some real gems, including a trial for the murder of a “Chinese highbinder.” From what I can tell, highbinders seem to have been the Chinese version of the Italian mafia. An article from an 1886 issue of Harper’s Weekly compares the Highbinders to the Freemasons, except with lots more blackmail and bribery. It’s a fascinating read, for anyone who is interested, though it drips with the casual racism that was prevalent during the period.

Strange Bedfellows: I added about 2000 words to this between Wednesday night and late Saturday night. I’d like to say that it was difficult, but at the moment I feel like I’m just eavesdropping on my characters’ conversations and transcribing them. Out of all my WIPs, I know these characters the best. They’ve been salvaged from earlier abandoned projects, and so we’ve managed to “form a rapport,” if you will. The hardest thing about this story is slowing myself down long enough to scrawl out some decent descriptions, but I managed to hammer out an opening scene (the aftermath of a very bloody battle) that will satisfy me until it’s time for rewrites and edits.

All in all, not too bad. If I am doing the math properly, it looks like I more or less squeaked past the goal post by the skin of my teeth this week! I’d say that this is an excellent time to head to Las Vegas, as a bit of partying is in order. 🙂

How’s everyone else holding up? Has anyone met or exceeded their goals for the week? Anyone else need to tweak things a bit?

ROW80 Social Media Roundup + Progress Update

July 15, 2011 / Lena Corazon / Comments Off

Over on the homepage for A Round of Words in 80 Days, Kait Nolan has invited participants to share our Twitter accounts and Google+ pages. I’m trying to get back into the swing of Twitter, and I’ve just picked up a Google+ account that I don’t quite know what to do with (currently poking at it with a stick to see what it will do), but I’ve posted mine over there nonetheless. I love connecting with my fellow writers in all ways possible, so add me on G+ and/or follow me on Twitter. 😀 Better yet, check out the rest of the lovelies from ROW80! They’re listing Google+ accounts, as well as Twitter accounts.

In other news, the whole family made it to Nevada in one piece. We all came together in a rather circuitous way, with Dad leaving San Francisco a day early to drive down (he has to take off a day early to get back to work), Mom and Rowena, my sister, flying from San Francisco on Wednesday, and me flying from Santa Barbara on Wednesday as well. But we’re relaxing at my grandfather’s gorgeously wonderful retirement house, and although the heat is more than our thin-skinned, Pacific Coast-selves can handle, it’s fun for everyone to be together.

On the writing front: On Wednesday night I hammered out 594 words of a new scene for Strange Bedfellows, along with 1379 words worth of brainstorming. I also started drafting a blog post (currently at 704 words) for Sunday’s ROW80 check-in, since I’ll be on the road to Vegas and potentially without internet access until next Wednesday morning. And then yesterday I suffered through a migraine and forced myself to edit twenty pages worth of thesis. I’m not finished with rewrites, sadly, but I abandoned ship to head off and catch the midnight showing of Harry Potter (infinitely more important that limping through edits, I think). Hopefully I can pull things together by tomorrow morning so I can send it off to my advisor.

Anyway, the family is slowly dressing (one thing that I always forget — how long it takes to get four people showered, dressed, and out of the house) so we can drive into Utah for breakfast, and then onwards to Zion National Park to poke around at nature.

Hope everyone has had a grand week! Any exciting developments? Who saw Harry Potter?

ROW80: Hijacked by the Day Job

July 10, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 6 Comments

This is my life right now:

I’ve spent the past couple of days in thesis-land, and for that I’m grateful. I had the sinking feeling that I would find myself inundated with story ideas and completely unable to focus on my day job, but after the spurt of fictional pursuits earlier in the week, I’ve transitioned back to my research.

When it comes to my weekly goals, then, I somehow managed to meet both my thesis and fiction-writing goals. Luckily, I spent the beginning of the week binging on fiction; I wrote about 3475 words for Path to the Peacock Throne, which is a hair under my 3500 word goal. For my thesis I’ve also written roughly 3500 words, so yay! I’ve managed to complete Week 1 of ROW80 and remain on target.

Right now, I’m crossing my fingers that I can have a section of my findings drafted and delivered to my advisor by Tuesday. In case I haven’t mentioned this, I’m a historical/cultural sociologist, and my MA thesis is a textual analysis of 1920s etiquette books. There are a number of things that I’m doing with this project, including a study of wedding etiquette and a larger discussion of the author’s role in interpreting the laws of so-called “polite society” for the reader. I’ve been working on the thesis for almost 3 years now, and I’m ready to be finished, so as much as I’d like to work on fiction, I really do need to tackle my day job first.

I’m also looking forward to going to Las Vegas for my first trip with my parents and younger sister in 3 years. This means that I might be a little absent over the next week, as I’m not sure what internet access is going to look like. If I can, I’ll post ROW80 checkins via mobile, but we’ll see.

At any rate, I hope that everyone has had a wonderful weekend! Good luck on progress for the rest of this week. If you can, hop on over to visit the other ROW80 participants and cheer them on!

Daily Progress Update: Brainstorming and Character Sketches

July 8, 2011 / Lena Corazon / Comments Off

I cheated a bit on my Thursday to-do list and got a little carried away with brainstorming and character sketches. I gave myself a limit of 45 minutes; I ended up working for 2.5 hours, but oh man, I just couldn’t help myself.

As I’ve mentioned before, Path to the Peacock Throne has been in a bit of a muddled spot — I encountered a rather tricksy patch during a really pivotal scene that is necessary for revealing a number of truths and moving the action forward, and I haven’t quite known what to do with it. To top it off, Liandre, my main character, hasn’t been cooperating at all. Upon rereading the first few chapters, I’ve found her rather flat and two-dimensional, prone to such cliched actions like crying in every scene (seriously, I think it occurs in roughly 4 or 5 scenes in a row), and altogether cardboard-like and frustrating.

I’m perhaps being a bit too hard on her (and on myself), but the bottom line is that I’m going to have to do some serious overhauling… but only once this first draft is finished. Until then, I’m moving forward, though with the intent of digging deeper into Liandre’s personality, character, and motivations.

I stumbled upon the Emotion Thesaurus over at The Bookshelf Muse, and reading through the different lists of attitudes and emotions has given me much food for thought. There is hope for salvaging Liandre from the wreckage of cliches and Mary Sue-ness. 😀

With that, the stats for Thursday:

General Brainstorming, Path to the Peacock Throne: 838 words
Character Sketches, PPT: 925 words
Drabbly Scenes, PPT: 411 words

The downside? Nothing done on the thesis, with the exception of a few hastily scrawled words before my afternoon nap. Meh, not something to be proud of, but I suppose ‘tomorrow is always another day.’ I am therefore banning all creative pursuits for Friday, at least until I get some academic stuff done. It’s all about incentives, right?

Daily Progress Update!

July 5, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 1 Comment

Okay, so I’m trying something a bit new. In addition to the bi-weekly ROW80 updates, I thought that perhaps I’d try adding a quick aside each day to sum up the day’s progress, so I can have a more detailed history of what I’ve done and where I’d like to go in the next few days. We’ll see how it goes.

Today’s success was facilitated by a video chat session with my best friend who lives in San Francisco, which forced me to sit in my chair and just work for a few hours. I managed to do the following:

Thesis: I managed to hammer out 1000 words discussing the use of mythopoesis (or the use of anecdotes and storytelling) in etiquette books. Okay, so I cheated a little and employed the substantial use of quotes to make it to 1000 words, but excerpts are important, right? Tomorrow’s goal is to clean up what I’ve written and add more, as I’d like to have a rough draft done by the end of the day.
Path to the Peacock Throne: I’ve been horribly stuck with this story, but I was somehow able to add a little over 1300 words in the form of edits and tweaking, as well as starting a new chapter. I’m pretty confident that I’m going to have to rewrite the pivotal chapter where Liandre learns the truth of her parentage and origins, but I’m now convinced that I’m not going to know exactly how it should go until I’m finished. Instead, I’m moving on to the next two chapters, which follow Liandre on her journey across the sea to Vao Artan, the mysterious and legendary land of her birth. The ship is crewed, I’ve decided, by a handful of women who are unlike any that the princess has ever met, and they will help to ease her transition into the new world she will encounter.

And that’s it for me! I’m going to have to switch gears soon to start contemplating my steampunk tale, which is the one downside of trying to juggle multiple WIPs: constantly disengaging and reengaging in different ‘verses and worlds and characters. But it keeps me on my toes, if nothing else!

ROW80: Starting off With a Bang!

July 4, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 5 Comments

Happy Independence Day, all! As I write this, I can hear the echoes from the firework show over at Stow House, about 10 minutes from where I live. I took advantage of the holiday to do a bit of relaxing and ended up writing much, much more than I planned, which is a welcome change from the past few weeks.

I ended Round 2 of ROW80 a bit earlier than I had intended. The end of the quarter, grading papers, traveling, and trying to deal with my schoolwork proved to be a bit more trying than I expected, but that’s why I love ROW80 — I didn’t feel too terrible or guilty taking a brief hiatus from my writing because I knew that Round 3 was right around the corner.

So here I am, tossing my hat into the ring once more. I’m starting at a pretty strong place: Path to the Peacock Throne stands at 20k words, and while I’m gingerly feeling my way through a bit of a sticky section, I know that with a bit of perseverance and patience, I’ll make my way through the rough patch. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve also given in and started scribbling down ideas for two other tales: a steampunk tale set in late 19th century San Francisco, tentatively titled tell me no lies, and a fantasy-esque tale in the vein of Anne Rice’s Claiming of Sleeping Beauty and Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart, called Strange Bedfellows. At the moment, Strange Bedfellows stands at roughly 7.5K words, which have poured out of me over the past few days. I’m not complaining, though!

With that, here are my Round 3 goals:

Write an average of 500 words/day on any project. This means that I’m doubling my Round 2 word count goal, which makes me slightly nervous, but we’ll see how it goes! I found myself exceeding the original 250 words/day goal consistently, so I don’t think this increase will be too burdensome.
Complete Act 2 of Path to the Peacock Throne, and resist the urge to do too much editing to Act 1.
Move from brainstorming and world-building tell me no lies to working on the first draft.

And, for fun, some things that I am eagerly anticipating for Round 3:

Participating in an online writing seminar, “Steampunk from Aether to Zeppelin,” taught by Suzanne Lazear, from July 5th – July 29th.
Celebrating my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary with our first family trip in 3 years, from July 13th – July 19th. (Vegas, baby!)
My annual 6-week summer vacation in San Francisco, from August – mid-September.
Finishing the first draft of my MA thesis, hopefully by September.

I’m looking forward to another 80 days of creativity, scribbling, and imagining, and I’m also excited to connect with everyone else who will be participating in Round 3!

ROW80: Super-short Update

June 2, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 2 Comments

Friends, I’ve had a day. I hit the ground running early this morning with some high-gear multitasking: grading my final set of papers for the week, washing out some clothes in the bathroom sink (cheaper and easier than hauling everything to the laundromat), doing the dishes, and furiously trying to clean up my apartment. I leave tomorrow (today, really) for San Francisco, where my parents live, so packing and cleaning are essential.

After grading and handling my chores, I somehow found the time to work out, shower, dress, run errands, and then drive to campus for the end-of-the-year department potluck. Afterwards I hung out for a couple of hours before going to my weekly reading group meeting, which ran over two hours, ending at 9:30. Then it was back home to do more cleaning and pack. I have way more than any sensible person will need for a 1 week stay, but given that it has been 55 degrees and raining in SF, I need to have winter and summer options available. Whew.

At any rate, writing! I feel like I’ve got whiplash from how fast this year seems to be speeding by; I’m not quite sure where May went, and here we are, half-way through the year! What has astonished me is how much progress I’ve made with this novel in such a short period of time. I began writing at the beginning of May, and it’s really taken shape over the past few weeks. To illustrate:

Daily writing output

Wordcount graph

I’ve done my best to add on a little bit each day since my last check-in, and I’ve found that writing first thing in the morning seems to work really well. My mind is fresh, I’ve had a chance to “sleep on” the problems or challenges I may have run into the day before, and after a little tweaking here, and a bit of adding there, I end up reaching my daily word count goal without too much strain.

Once I’ve dealt with grading final papers and the like, I may bump up my daily goal to 500 words, since I’m surpassing 300 words so easily. Now that my confidence has been built up a bit, I can make myself work a little harder.

I’m excited for my 5 hour drive tomorrow, since I’ll be able to let my mind wander. I’ve got a pocket recorder downloaded on my cell phone so I can record any interesting writing ideas that come to mind. In the days to come, I’m going to be focused on characterization. My protagonist, Liandre, has just discovered that her whole life is a lie, and I want to make sure that her reaction to this news is realistic. We’ll see how it goes!

ROW80: Motoring Along

May 29, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 3 Comments

Another Sunday, another ROW80 check-in! I’m currently lamenting the weather for this year’s Memorial Day Weekend: blue skies, sun… and winds up to 45 MPH. We’ve been under a severe wind advisory for days now, and it’s such a downer, because the weather would be perfect for the beach otherwise. As it is, I have to stay shut up inside because the wind is wreaking havoc with my allergies.

But let’s talk writing! I finally broke through the block that was holding me back with that coronation scene (well, to be honest, I abandoned it, though it’s mostly finished) and sketched out the next four scenes. I’m working with the wide paintbrush at the moment (or, to return to last Wednesday’s analogy, my machete) and aiming for getting the main points of each scene onto paper: dialogue, action and movement, and other “big” developments. I’ve found that working on the finer points, like sensory details and description, take more time than I actually want to spend, so I am going to set those aside and fill in the blanks when I return for edits.

The current manuscript stands at 15,529 words, which means that I’ve written something like 5,000 words since Wednesday. I’m really over-the-moon with this, though I know my output will probably slow down over the next couple of weeks, between the final papers I will have to grade, and the traveling I will be doing to my parents’ place and back.

However, I have the first “Act” of the book outlined. It will be 5 chapters long, and traces the beginning of Liandre’s journey from the comfort and safety of the “Ordinary World” to the start of her adventure in Peridion. As I move forward, I am going to have to give plenty of thought to the development of Liandre as a character. She is going to have a lot of hard truths to adjust to — the truth of her parentage, being forced to abandon everything that she knows and loves in order to return to the land of her birth — and I want to make sure that she responds to these changes in a way that feels realistic.

But those are concerns for another day! I will spend this Sunday grading (blech) and luxuriating in the wonderful feeling of reaching 15k. And, er, I’m not going to think about the new story idea that won’t leave me alone… or the fact that I’ve given it a title, and a cast of characters, or the fact that I know exactly who the murderer is going to be. We’ll see how strong my willpower is, lol.

Happy Memorial Day weekend to everyone!

Lena Corazon

Flights of Fancy