Meilo Zaborowski: Author

Something Something Patience, Something Something Universe

Long story short, I’m getting my job back!

Which means I’m gonna have to re-calibrate… well, everything. And then do it all over again at the end of August when classes start up again. I expect some bumps in the road as far as my writing goes, and I’m gonna miss the extra crafting time, but I’m super excited to go back to work. And with the CARES Act bonus disappearing… literally next week, I’m going to appreciate a reasonable paycheck over the pittance I’d be getting from regular unemployment while desperately job hunting.

So uh. Woo!

Goal Update 7/25

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
Where I am: I don’t even know anymore
On Target or Behind: What am I even doing

How’s It Going:
While this isn’t nearly as painful as revising SYCU right now, it’s still… tedious and annoying.

On the upside, I’ve gotten most of the kinks worked out, minus the Keziah overhaul. I’m still not sure how I want to go about doing that just yet. It involves the vast majority of the last half of the book so… yeah.

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks (except L17 and L21, which get 4 weeks min)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 17, 20 scenes in
Where I am: Lesson 17, 16 scenes in
On Target or Behind: Behind

How’s It Going:
Bad. I mean, the story’s going great, just.

Oh my god, there’s so much. So much new writing. I literally hit a spot with three new scenes in a row on Thursday, and I had to stop halfway through the second one. And like, I know I did this, I know I added a lot of stuff, it’s just having to actually connect the dots in writing is exhausting. I’m actually adding more new scenes in this one than I did in SKoS, including the stuff I’m adding now in edit.

Thankfully, most of the new scenes are near the beginning, so this should get easier as I go. But I’m definitely adding a fifth week, and maybe even a sixth if I have to. (I also cut a scene, if anyone was wondering about the math.)

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
Where I planned to be: 25500 words
Where I am: 26098 words
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
This week has just been sucky all around, and I realize my word count doesn’t reflect that at all, but the actual writing part here isn’t what I mean. The writing has actually gone rather smoothly. Especially with some help from a friend who works on an ambulance. (Oh yes, I seriously hurt one of my characters. Gotta up the ante, yanno?)

What I mean is, I’m having a horrible time trying to figure out where this story is going. Nothing has come to me and it’s really bumming me out. Or maybe I was bummed before and that’s why I’m having trouble. I don’t know. I’ve just been really off this week and I don’t know why.

Goal Update 7/18

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
Where I am: Blah
On Target or Behind: Pluh

How’s It Going:
Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

It’s slow, but it’s going.

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks (except L17 and L21, which get 4 weeks min)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 17, 13 scenes done
Where I am: Lesson 17, 7 scenes done
On Target or Behind: Behind

How’s It Going:
I did a dumb and forgot to work out how many scenes per day I should be doing before I started. Because I’m definitely giving myself at least four weeks for this. So with 51 scenes, I should be doing 4-5 scenes per day. Which I did not do. Whoops.

I may take an extra week or two for this one. There is a LOT of rewriting going on, and writing fresh words takes me… well, a lot of time. Most of the scenes I’ve already done are completely new. I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up writing half of the final story during this, because it’s a disaster. But I like where it’s going.

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
Where I planned to be: 24000 words
Where I am: 24579 words
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Almost to the midpoint, yay! (I got a little carried away this week… I should not enjoy tormenting these guys this much.) I should have just enough material to hit 25k, and then I’m gonna do the midpoint lesson from HTWAN.

Honesty hour here: I have no idea how this one will end. Like, none whatsoever. Not even an inkling, like I did with Krasnaya. Most of my ideas run out at the midpoint, and I only have some vague thoughts about afterward.

So this should be fun.

Goal Update 7/11

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
Where I am: Eh
On Target or Behind: Eh?

How’s It Going:
I managed to finish up plugging this into a calendar on Sunday and uh- I’m laughing cause not only was Matt right about the stuff he caught, but I realized I made some dumb errors that he didn’t catch. Small stuff, really. One of the characters having class on a Sunday is probably the biggest. And I doubt anyone would catch that on first read (or even be super bothered if they did), but I need to do some other work on that chapter/day and it’s an easy enough fix that I’m gonna fix it anyway.

I didn’t get anything done on Tuesday. Monday I got a new stainless steel archwire on the top half of my braces, and I have one stubborn tooth on the bottom that they had to put in a spring spacer for, so Tuesday was very painful and I couldn’t focus on anything, even with a steady supply of ibuprofen and benzocaine. Me and mouth pain do not get along.

I did get to this on Thursday though. Although at this point I am… really winging it. I have no idea how to do this, because it is nothing like revising first draft. So far, I’m taking each problem I find in order and working on it throughout the whole book before tackling the next one. While this helps keep the consistency, it’s possible I might miss something, as opposed to going through the whole thing in sequence and fixing everything I hit (where I would be more likely to forget something instead). A thorough read-through when I’m done will hopefully minimize issues, but… I haven’t even gotten to overhauling Keziah and this is already a lot of work.

A lot of work that probably should have been done in revision. But, you know, live and learn.

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks; 3 chapters/13 scenes per day
Where I planned to be: Lesson 16 finished
Where I am: Lesson 16 finished; Lesson 17 has begun
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Well, I finalized my outline and laundry list on Sunday, and meant to start the write-in on Tuesday, but like I said above, that didn’t happen. I did take a few moments on Wednesday to print out my laundry list and gather up my file folders and loose leaf paper so I was ready to go Thursday.

My first scene is a brand-new scene (i.e. it does not exist in the original manuscript) and I think it went well. I’m having to flesh out one character that barely exists in the manuscript and creating another that was only mentioned in passing. I like what I got, but I’m definitely looking forward to actually cutting into what’s already there, starting with my next scene, which was the original beginning.

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
Where I planned to be: 22500 words
Where I am: 22747 words
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Getting some interesting stuff. Another decent week, despite everything.

Goal Update 7/4

Okay, no, for real. It cannot be July already. How did this happen?

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
Where I am: Uhhhh
On Target or Behind: Questionable

How’s It Going:
Apparently my time issues will continue to haunt me. *lays down on the floor*

I think I’ve finally figured out a system that works for me (thanks, SYCU), unfortunately, that is not how I did things the first time with this one. I used a combination of Scrivener and Aeon Timeline (and winging it), and I’m having issues with both of them right now. I’ve managed to mostly get over the learning curve on Scrivener, but now it’s giving me hell with the latest update not wanting to install and it telling me it can’t register or something. I can still force it into trial mode, but it’s a royal pain in the ass. As for Aeon Timeline, number one, I don’t know what happened, but I was pretty sure I had a paid version gifted to me the one year I managed to win NaNoWriMo. Now it’s telling me my trial is over and I have to pay $50 for it. Which really isn’t bad if I can’t figure out how to get the serial code somewhere, only my number two is… I hate using it. It is so complicated and I don’t really understand it. Number three, all the information on time that I had is stuck in a file I can only open with Aeon. Woo hoo.

So, I get to go through and reverse engineer what I did so I can put it in my calendar format so I can figure out what the hell I’m doing here.

Yay.

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks; 3 chapters/13 scenes per day
Where I planned to be: Lesson 16, roughly halfway done? These are hard to measure sometimes, jesus
Where I am: Lesson 16, uhhh, almost done? Hopefully?
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
And this is why I love Holly’s method, kids. Lesson 16 is about consistency, making sure you keep everything in mind that you wanted to fix during the write-in. Which includes making what Holly calls a Laundry List, basically a list of everything you want to remember to fix that you keep close by for easy access while doing the write-in. (Easy, right?)

Thankfully for me, this includes going through ALL of my notes, worksheets, notecards, etc, looking for anything I might have forgotten before now. (You know what, maybe this list should be started at the very beginning of the process, adding to it as I go along. Hm.) Anyway, I realized I still had a handful of white notecards (i.e. original first draft scenes) that I still liked and wanted to use at least part of, I just didn’t know how or where when I was transferring everything to the neon cards (my final outline). A couple of them were easy enough to just tack on to existing neon cards because they fit in perfectly, but then I had a couple of others that were a little more difficult. I didn’t have scenes that already pertained to them. But at this point, I can see how much I love them, how good they could be with a little tweaking, and the depth they would add to the story with proper placement, so I know I have to work them in somehow.

Cue me running back to my calendar of scenes to try to figure out where to put these rogue scenes. And realizing I might still have a plot hole. *headdesk* (And this is also why I like using pencil a lot more than Holly does.) But this is good, really, because I want to do the work here, so I have a good working plan during the write-in, and so I don’t have as much to do after I run it past an editor. My ultimate goal is to not have to do anything after running it past an editor, but ah. Dunno how realistic that is. I can try though.

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
Where I planned to be: 21000 words
Where I am: 21171 words
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
It was a decent week. Nothing spectacular, but not bad either. Although I feel I ended on a high note because I started setting up some of the issues my guys will have to work through before getting to the midpoint.