Author: writingatlarge

Writer of things

Second draft

I just finished my second draft of my novel today. Yay!

It took me a lot longer than I thought to edit the middle chapters, mostly because there was a lot of rewriting to do there, and I let that discourage me. I froze. I procrastinated. I did everything but push through.

In the end the solution was pretty simple:

I made a plan and set a goal to finish the edit (about 75,000 words to go through) by the end of February. Instead of having a word count for how much I wrote, I had a word count for how much I edited. Instead of counting up (how many words left to write), I counted down (how many words left to edit).

I cut the larger goal to a word count goal for each day, and almost every day I managed to surpass my 1,200 “words edited” goal. I only missed two days for personal reasons, and I missed my daily goal only four times, on exceptionally busy days.

I tracked my progress in a Google sheet, with the following graph illustrating my progress:

Screen Shot 2018-02-03 at 20.06.38

I also managed to cut down my manuscript by 10%, which was another goal for my second draft, and a much more challenging one that I originally thought. It was worth doing, though, as the resulting narrative is better, tighter, and easier to read.

For my next draft I’m going to create a plan from the start, so that hopefully I won’t get bogged down again by my inner demons.

This Week’s Long Run

Started out a bit later than I planned, but got going anyway.

The tide receded so much that you could see the treacherous rocks usually hidden under the waves in the dog beach.

The gulls were out in full force again, taking over the river.

A moorhen paddled in the shadow of a boat.

Halfway point:

Gulls and night heron enjoying the boats.

A cormorant swam in the river, in search of fish.

A pied kingfisher was on the lookout too:

All in all it was a great 10k run in beautiful weather.

This week’s long run

It was cold and windy and boy did I not want to go outside to run, but a training plan is a training plan and I have a race coming up, so…

The beach was still half flooded from last night’s storm.

The waves were incredible and the water was brown with sand and silt.

Seagulls had pushed inland and had taken over most of the river, forcing the other waterfowl away.

Cormorants had moved up the river as well, and a dejected goose took refuge on the banks.

9k done despite the cold weather.

Review: Parker Jotter London Architecture

Before I got into fountain pens and gel ink pens became available in the market, I used to use ballpoint pens for taking notes, and the Parker Jotter was my favourite. It was the first pen I invested “real money” into when I was still in high school, and I still have that purple pen knocking about somewhere in the house. The refills were always a problem, with blobbing, streaking and hard starts something common to all ballpoints, even the Jotter with its “Quinkflow” refills, but you could shade with the pen, which meant that you could doodle in your notebook while bored — a big plus for me.

I switched to fountain pens when I started my BA and my wrist pains got worst than ever, because I was practically carving the words into the page. Since then, gel pens and fountain pens have ruled the roost on my desk, with only a Kara’s Kustoms Render K with a Schmidt easyflow 9000 M in black filling my few ballpoint needs. When they don’t blob, ballpoints are great after all, especially if you want to jot something down and not have to wait for the ink to dry.

But when Jet Pens added four limited edition Parker Jotters, each one celebrating a different London architectural icon (Bronze for Big Ben, Red for Buckingham Palace, Sky Blue for the Shard, and Black for the Gherkin), I knew I had to reopen the ballpoint chapter in my life.

The packaging is stunning, as you can see for yourself:

Not many pens at this price level come in such nice boxes, which makes them perfect gifts (I bought all four pens and intend to give away three of them as gifts).

Ballpoints aren’t much fun for me to write with, because I have RSI problems and they require pressure to use, but they are fun to sketch and doodle with. So much shading with one pen:

The etching on the pen makes it very easy to grip once you start writing or sketching, but it does feel a bit rough on the fingers when you just pick the pen up or fiddle with it. The click mechanism and clip are Parker solid, and colours and design of these pens are fantastic:

The minus is of course the refill, which is smooth with no railroading, but does blob a bit, mostly when you sketch, not so much when you just write with it.

The funniest thing about these pens that celebrate such very British icons, is that they are made in France (until 2011 Parker pens were made in the UK).

If you enjoy ballpoint pens and don’t have a Parker Jotter or like the look of these pens, I recommend these. They are tough workhorses and good looking pens.

If you love London as much as I do, I recommend these.

If you’re looking for a nice gift for someone, particularly an architecture or design student, I recommend these.

For me personally, gel pens and fountain pens will continue to rule the roost.

D&D Game, January 22, 2018

A quick sketch of our DM (we play using Discord):

We found a skeleton key, to go with last session’s skeletons:

And a rotting, not at all suspicious satchel:

Cold run

Last night was cold, very windy, with annoying drizzles. I had an annoying day at work, and I didn’t feel like doing the 6k run that my plan called for. It would have been so easy to just skip it.

But I didn’t, and even though it was a tough run, I pushed through. As usual the toughest part of the run is getting out of the door.