{"id":2299,"date":"2010-11-10T11:10:02","date_gmt":"2010-11-09T22:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=2299"},"modified":"2010-11-21T11:27:31","modified_gmt":"2010-11-20T22:27:31","slug":"what-ive-been-doing-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/11\/10\/what-ive-been-doing-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What I’ve Been Doing …"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Monday<\/a> I gave you an update on my book related activities and my 15 October goal<\/a> for the month to see if\u00a0 “… I can\u2019t knock off 60,000 words, which should just about see the book done.\u00a0 I\u2019ll keep you posted on how I\u2019m going \u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I had managed 15,000 words up until then and in the subsequent week, up until 8 October, I managed to crank out another 10,800 words so I am definitely picking up speed—and hope to at least make the half way point of 30,000 words by 15 November. A case of aiming for the sky and getting half way up the tree—which is one reason for setting a big target (so long as you don’t freeze, of course.)<\/p>\n

The other important thing I’ve been doing with these words, other than just writing them, is working on the structure of this later part of the book (The Gathering of the Lost<\/em>: The Wall of Night, Book Two.)<\/strong> Structure is one of those critical but almost invisible parts of a story—invisible that is, unless it’s not working, in which case (in my opinion) nothing else will work either. But with Part 3 of Gathering <\/em>I can say that I think the structure is<\/em> working, although not without some effort on my part: not just to put words on the page but to shape them into a coherent whole of action, character development, and making sure the deeper threads of story, running from the first book, The Heir of Night<\/em><\/strong>, through to the third and fourth books of The Wall of Night series<\/strong>, are all safely embedded.<\/p>\n

Hard work? It really is. But it started to go a lot better once I told myself that this isn’t<\/em> just about cranking words out. It’s also about having fun with the story and enjoying writing the song of Malian and Kalan, Tarathan and Jehane Mor, Haimyr and Asantir and The Earl of Night (plus a few other characters in the mix, just one or two, here and there …) And you know what—I am<\/em> enjoying it!<\/p>\n

So what am I doing right now—well at present I am in Auckland, looking out over the wonderful Waitemata Harbour toward Devonport and North Head, with the Harbour bridge off to my left and\u00a0 the volcanic cone of\u00a0 Rangitoto Island in the distance. A magic view. What am I doing here? In the words of poet Michele Leggott from the poem ‘wonderful to relate’<\/em> (from Mirabile Dictu<\/em>, AUP, 2009): “wish us well<\/em> we are going to a wedding.”<\/em><\/p>\n


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Last Monday I gave you an update on my book related activities and my 15 October goal for the month to see if\u00a0 “… I can\u2019t knock off 60,000 words, which should just about see the book done.\u00a0 I\u2019ll keep you posted on how I\u2019m going \u2026\u201d I had managed 15,000 words up until then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books","category-about-what-im-doing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2299"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2414,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2299\/revisions\/2414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}