revision – Page 36 – Meilo Zaborowski: Author

Goal Update 5/2

How is it already May?

In unrelated news, I’ve finished one class, and I’ll be taking my last final for the other on Tuesday. Then I will have unlimited time to work on all this until I get called back into work. And when that will be, I don’t know.

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: At home, where else?
On Target or Behind: On top, or underneath?

How’s It Going:
You wanna know what the worst part is about Photoshop tutorials on YouTube? I’m using an ancient version of Photoshop, and everyone else is using Creative Cloud. Seriously, I’m probably the only person left on the planet still using CS2. Which means I don’t have a lot of the fancy shit in newer versions.

But I make do. (Because fuck Creative Cloud.)

I’m really taking my time on these covers, tweaking them, leaving them alone for a while, then coming back to tweak some more. Trying to get the feel right. I’m pretty happy with what I’m getting so far.

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 8 finished
Where I am: Lesson 8 finished, Lesson 9 finished
On Target or Behind: On Target (and now way ahead, woo!)

How’s It Going:
The last half of Lesson 8 is always fun. Pretending to be an angry reader and intelligently ripping the book to shreds in a 1-star review? Freeing, I’m telling you. And I forgot how simple Lesson 9 is. Which is good, I like forward movement.

I also think metal music is stimulating to my creative brain or some shit because that’s what I was listening to when I did Lesson 9. I wrote a LOT about what I wanted this book to be, what I learned, and what I want the reader to take away from it. Thank you, Periphery. I love all their stuff, but I was specifically listening to Juggernaut: Alpha, Juggernaut: Omega, and Periphery II. (Links go to YouTube playlists, for anyone interested.)

Fun fact: The lyrics to Periphery’s Scarlet (link to YT, lyrics in the description) weirdly fit this story. I promise it’s not intentional. Ignore the video, though… Actually, you know what. Don’t.

On to Lesson 10… and the dreaded Monastery. Yes, you read that right. And it’s just about as much fun as it sounds. (I still prefer it to Lesson 7, though!) As it is the Monastery, the next post or two will be sparse until I’m done.

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
Where I planned to be: 7500 words
Where I am: 7629 words
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Got a little carried away, but I just can’t stop myself some days. It’s so much fun! And I love these characters already. In fact, I just introduced one during my Friday stint, and she is interesting. I’m excited to see where it all goes.

I think I’ll give y’all a snippet of this new character, whose name right now is Carly.

NOTE: The following material is a copyrighted excerpt from raw, unedited first draft, which may contain typos and spelling or grammar errors. Please do not point out corrections or make suggestions as I will not see them during revision. Please do not quote this material, as it may not survive to final draft.

When the checker had finally scanned and bagged the last can, he tallied up her total. Carly pulled out some cash, quickly counting what she had left. It would be enough for one more store.

Once she was free from the checker, cart now full of double bagged cans, she shoved the cart away and out the door to her car. The trunk and backseat of her Passat were already full, a piece of cardboard shoved behind the seats to prevent the mountain of cans from flying forward over the center console.

She unloaded the cart into the floorboard of the front passenger seat, stacking them until they were level with the seat, then stacking them across.

One more store was probably about all her car would be able to handle too.

Goal Update 4/25

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: Somewhere in the void
On Target or Behind: -shrug emoji-

How’s It Going:
Taking my time working on covers. That’s pretty much it at the moment. This thing’s kinda on the backburner right now until I can get my hands on a printer. (I’m also patiently waiting on the friendly forum-mate who offered to read it to finish. He did check in to let me know he’d read the first couple of chapters and loved it so far, and apologized for taking so long. I knew he was busy with his own revision and family right now, so it was a nice surprise to hear from him.)

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 8, finished with Themes worksheet, Triage Synopsis, and maybe the Triage Theme
Where I am: Lesson 8, finished Themes worksheet and halfway through Triage Synopsis
On Target or Behind: I’m actually a little ahead already, so On Target

How’s It Going:
This lesson is pretty straight-forward, but involves some thinking. The synopsis is taking longer than I thought, but I’m getting some ideas on how I can change things for the better.

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
Where I planned to be: 6000 words
Where I am: 6049 words
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:

Goal Update 4/18

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: Uhh…
On Target or Behind: it is a mystery

How’s It Going:
I started going through Matt’s notes and putting them in comments on my manuscript Google doc… and realized I have no idea how to do an editor’s revision. (I mean. I can guess. But.)

The more I look at it, the more I really want to do it on paper. So I guess it will have to wait.

As for covers, I’m down to the last of my winning batch of titles to do initial mockups for. I’ve been doing some more research, watching a lot of YouTube videos, really investigating what’s been done and how. And I think it’s really just gonna come down to tweaking it until I get it just right.

I’ll be sure to let everyone know when I get there. /s

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 7, through chapter 9
Where I am: Given up on Lesson 7, reading through Lesson 8 to prepare for next week
On Target or Behind: On Target, I guess?

How’s It Going:
Ah, the world triage lesson. This is actually the one lesson I gave up on halfway through and just skipped when I was doing SKoS because it was so tedious and annoying.

My opinions have not changed. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that, in this world and in the SKoS world, mostly everything is the same as real life.

I tried. I really, really did. I know this will be important to know for later revisions (Krasnaya is set on a completely different planet). But the first worksheet was driving me crazy, so I moved to the second and kinda modified it a little. It was slightly more redundant, but made more sense to me and used less paper. But it was just as tedious, so I finally just gave up.

I also think part of my issue is I can’t print anything right now; I’m doing all these worksheets on notebook paper… as in, writing out all the questions and THEN my answers. And this involves a lot of paper and a lot of writing.

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
Where I planned to be: 4500 words
Where I am: 4559 words
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Listen, no one can understand how happy this is making me. I feel really good about this story. It’s actually pretty difficult to stop myself when I hit my daily goal when all I want to do is find out what happens next! I love it.

Which is more than I can say about SYCU right now. But I digress.

Goal Update 4/11

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: No one’s paying attention anyway
On Target or Behind: On target?

How’s It Going:
I am SO DAMN CLOSE with these covers, I’m telling you. While I’ve been waiting for all the feedback to come through this week, I’ve been scouring the internet for typography tips, and anything book cover related. Because while I’ve almost pinned down the image part, the main complaints I’m getting now are typography related. And I’ve discovered that the ins and outs of typography are… well, subtle and tedious.

I did rediscover an old bookmark to Matthew Butterick’s Practical Typography. I don’t know when or where I found it, but it’s just been chilling in my bookmarks for who knows how long. I will say it was an interesting read, and may prove useful later (which may have been past-me’s thinking as well), but not so much for my current issue.

YouTube tutorials. It’s all about the YouTube tutorials…

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks; 3 chapters per day
Where I planned to be: Lesson 6, through chapter 9
Where I am: Finished Lesson 6
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
*thumbs up* This lesson went faster than I expected. Since this was all about characters, and I technically did most of the work finding them in Lesson 2, I didn’t even have to read through everything this time.

On to the next.

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
Where I planned to be: 3000 words
Where I am: 3002 words
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
I’m still loving this. It’s stupid and crazy and I haven’t even gotten to the fun parts yet. I feel like I’m doing a great job fleshing out the characters in such a short span, or maybe it’s just in my head. Either way, I love them already, and I can’t wait to ~~make them suffer through hell~~ take them on an interesting adventure!

Snippet time!

NOTE: The following material is a copyrighted excerpt from raw, unedited first draft, which may contain typos and spelling or grammar errors. Please do not point out corrections or make suggestions as I will not see them during revision. Please do not quote this material, as it may not survive to final draft.

“Dude, that’s just a… oh my god, that’s a massive cow.”

Aaren scrambled to his feet, wanting to look again but not wanting to get too close, settling for clutching at one post of his bed and peering around Brandon’s shoulder. Sure enough, the hulking frame of a solid black cow nearly filled the small, grassy area outside their window, almost too long to stand between the trees. Its head was down, calmly grazing on the grass, but its back was almost level with the floor under their feet.

“Allow me to rephrase: that’s a massive bull.”

Aaren glanced at Brandon. “How can you tell?”

Goal Update 4/4

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: Hopeful
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
So, in case someone missed it, I got the edit notes back from Matt the other day, and they were overwhelmingly positive. I’m still a little speechless about it.

There are a few things he’s right about and I’ll definitely need to fix, most likely with his suggestion. A few others that I’ll have to think about. A couple I’m not sure how to fix because his suggestion was good, but still wrong for the story, but I know they need fixing now.

As much as I’d like to do the fixes on paper, unfortunately due to the whole COVID-19 thing and our printer having been sent out to pasture a while back, I’ll have to deal with doing them on the computer. Or maybe I’ll come up with something. I’m still reeling.

Also, he said in his opinion, it’s pure urban fantasy. And I think I’m gonna go with that. So I wasn’t too terribly off-base with the genre, and I can continue working toward that goal with covers. Which I think are going well.

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 5 finished
Where I am: Lesson 5 finished!
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Lots to think about. But it’s going. That’s about it.

Oh, and uh…

GOAL 3) Survival

My clear target is: Write 50,000 words
My reachable deadline is: Dec 31, 2020
My working days are: Mon, Wed, Fri (i.e. my usual work days, so this will have to change when I go back to work. But for now…)
My method of measuring progress: Word count
My end goal: Finish a novel (preferably 50,000 words worth)
My daily goal, and number of available days: Write 500 words, 3 days a week. So 1500 words a week.
My leverage — WHY I need to do this: If I’m gonna be a paid author, this is just part of the gig. And I really want to be a paid author.

And since I already started on this…

My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
Where I planned to be: 1500 words
Where I am: 1544 words
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
~~Ignore the title, it probably won’t be the final one.~~ Two scenes in and I love this already. It’s a little clunky and I may have to hammer out some details, but I’m not gonna let it bother me.

First draft is always crap. First draft is allowed to be crap. Because I know now, thanks to Matt, that I can make it shine.