Picspams, Not Novellas, and The Reader
Hello,
First of all, I hope everyone is being safe and careful during such an awful time. I wish everyone the best. We’ll make it through this together!
In other news, I feel like Passpartout from his titular video game. I started selling aesthetic picspams (and one doodle so far) and continue making more. It’s fun.
You may or may not be wondering why I started making them. Well, I have been making some personal picspams ever since I saw some a few years ago on tumblr. I enjoy the process of finding pictures and putting them together to see what works best. I created a personal one a few nights ago and the next day I woke up thinking: “Wait a second, I could sell these!” Normally, I would use my phone’s collage app to create them, but I’ve decided to use Photoshop for these.
On the writing front, I have been working on a story that could be a novella… but isn’t so far. I tried a method of outlining where all the scenes are equal in word count. (Though I didn’t have to be particularly strict on keeping to the word count for each scene.) This was fine when I introduced the main character and plot, but the middle scenes began to drag. I knew I would later cut what wasn’t working in the second draft (or rewrite it all with less concern on words). So, I decided to work through the character’s backstories and give them more detail. This worked fine when I had two characters to a scene, but then my main character was alone. There was only so much I could say. So, I began moving the story along and plan to get to the end, hopefully by the end of today or tomorrow.
Yesterday, I watched something that helped me understand what went so wrong: “Lecture #7: Short Stories -- With Special Guest Instructor Mary Robinette Cowall”. It's a video on Brandon Sanderson's YouTube channel. I actually watched this video to help work out some problems I was having with a piece of flash fiction. It was a great help, but also gave light to something about my ‘novella’. Mary has an equation to help find an approximate word count for a story.
For the 'novella', I had been working with a total word count of 30,000 words. When I checked the equation for this story, it gave me 12,000 words. For the piece of flash fiction, my estimate came to about 1,000 words and I have around 700 words at the moment. This tells me that I am an underwriter who grossly overestimated my word count and wound up having a bad time. The equation is meant to be a rough tool, but it’s very telling in this situation.
With this new equation, I plan to later rewrite this story with that 12,000 word mark. I also want to use the equation and outlining method for a different story. For now, I plan on writing whatever comes to mind each day and prepping for Camp NaNoWriMo in April. My camp ‘story’ will be half of a novel, so I plan on working through 30,000 words in 30 days. (And I plan on using the equation to ensure I don’t have such a bad time.)
And last, but not least, I’m excited to talk about what I’m reading (or am about to continue reading): The Speaker by Traci Chee. I had a blast reading the first book in this series (The Reader) and the first part of this one. I believe I was moving at the time I had stopped reading it because it got lost in the chaos. I recently found it and finished reading The Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas. I’m excited to get back to seeing what Sefia’s up to now!
Again, I wish everyone the best,
Mary Eveline
First of all, I hope everyone is being safe and careful during such an awful time. I wish everyone the best. We’ll make it through this together!
In other news, I feel like Passpartout from his titular video game. I started selling aesthetic picspams (and one doodle so far) and continue making more. It’s fun.
You may or may not be wondering why I started making them. Well, I have been making some personal picspams ever since I saw some a few years ago on tumblr. I enjoy the process of finding pictures and putting them together to see what works best. I created a personal one a few nights ago and the next day I woke up thinking: “Wait a second, I could sell these!” Normally, I would use my phone’s collage app to create them, but I’ve decided to use Photoshop for these.
On the writing front, I have been working on a story that could be a novella… but isn’t so far. I tried a method of outlining where all the scenes are equal in word count. (Though I didn’t have to be particularly strict on keeping to the word count for each scene.) This was fine when I introduced the main character and plot, but the middle scenes began to drag. I knew I would later cut what wasn’t working in the second draft (or rewrite it all with less concern on words). So, I decided to work through the character’s backstories and give them more detail. This worked fine when I had two characters to a scene, but then my main character was alone. There was only so much I could say. So, I began moving the story along and plan to get to the end, hopefully by the end of today or tomorrow.
Yesterday, I watched something that helped me understand what went so wrong: “Lecture #7: Short Stories -- With Special Guest Instructor Mary Robinette Cowall”. It's a video on Brandon Sanderson's YouTube channel. I actually watched this video to help work out some problems I was having with a piece of flash fiction. It was a great help, but also gave light to something about my ‘novella’. Mary has an equation to help find an approximate word count for a story.
For the 'novella', I had been working with a total word count of 30,000 words. When I checked the equation for this story, it gave me 12,000 words. For the piece of flash fiction, my estimate came to about 1,000 words and I have around 700 words at the moment. This tells me that I am an underwriter who grossly overestimated my word count and wound up having a bad time. The equation is meant to be a rough tool, but it’s very telling in this situation.
With this new equation, I plan to later rewrite this story with that 12,000 word mark. I also want to use the equation and outlining method for a different story. For now, I plan on writing whatever comes to mind each day and prepping for Camp NaNoWriMo in April. My camp ‘story’ will be half of a novel, so I plan on working through 30,000 words in 30 days. (And I plan on using the equation to ensure I don’t have such a bad time.)
And last, but not least, I’m excited to talk about what I’m reading (or am about to continue reading): The Speaker by Traci Chee. I had a blast reading the first book in this series (The Reader) and the first part of this one. I believe I was moving at the time I had stopped reading it because it got lost in the chaos. I recently found it and finished reading The Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas. I’m excited to get back to seeing what Sefia’s up to now!
Again, I wish everyone the best,
Mary Eveline
--
You can find “Passpartout: The Starving Artist” here.
You can find Brandon Sanderson’s YouTube channel here.
You can find Traci Chee’s website here.
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