Word Log – 4th January 2014

Bit of a productive day today: 374 on a short story project (The Afterlife of Objects) and 354 on the novel project.

Progress on the second half of the novel has been glacial compared to the first half, which is partially due to me not knowing the important parts of the middle in advance. So I’m basically discovery writing my way towards the end that I’ve planned and plotted.

I’ve found that I write more when I’m working simultaneously on a short story and the novel, but its frustratingly difficult to change gears from novel writing to short story writing. It feels like my brain is mired in long-form storytelling from committing to the novel project, which means that when I return to the short story I struggle with the different structures and constraints presented by that form.

It’s all good though, the difficulty means that I’m at the very least using and expanding my creative muscles.

Word Log – January 2nd/January 3rd 2014

Missed logging my wordcount for the last two days, so here’s a catch up:

January 2nd: 0 words written, despite best intentions. I was at my laptop, going over my ms in Scrivener, but no words got written. I did some minor plotting/editing but fell short of making my wordcount.

January 3rd: 667 words on the novel. Caught up on the novel today, and met my daily requirement of 300 words. I do have a couple of short stories in WIP right now, and I’ll need to start on them if I want to have one ready to send out by the end of the month.

It still feels weird to write this daily log, but it is motivating me to make sure I don’t miss a day.

Research Help for My Novel in Progress

Hi all. As I mentioned in a recent post, I’m writing a novel this year. Its a first attempt for me and I had no idea what to expect when I started planning it. One of those unexpected surprises was the amount of research I have to do. In a post, I covered the following topics I was researching:

Research Topics:

My actual research list is quite extensive, but here’s a small sample of some of the topics I’m currently researching:

– Architectural design of different types of buildings. [edit: looking specifically at palaces, schools, manors, and ornamental structures]

– True accounts of grave robberies and famous heists.

– Engineering systems of the 18th and 19th century.

-Djinns (mostly folkloric and historical records)

– Tombs/Strongrooms/and Bank Vaults

The novel is a steampunk heist story set in a world influenced by Eastern cultural flavours and traditions. There are a lot of books written on heists, but I haven’t had too much success (besides the Internet) finding books on the other topics. If anyone has a good book recommendation or three, please drop your suggestion in the comments. Alternatively, if you have a book recommendation that doesn’t entirely fit the research topics, but feel that it might be an inspiring diversion–please feel free to let me know in the comments.

Thanks

-A.