Still NaNo-ing, woot!

Papercuts, my NaNo novel, is still on track and I still don't hate it. Woot!

(Usually I have a stage in a project where I hate my words and swear blind it's the worst thing I've written. I'm still waiting for that moment to hit with this.)

The interesting part about doing it as a NaNo novel is that we're encouraged not to go back and edit, and definitely not to go back and delete stuff. After all, it's the total word count that matters, so removing parts is going to put us behind. That doesn't mean I can't go back and add things, which I had to do last night when I realised that I'd missed out a key bit of information that needed to be passed from one character to another in a scene. Oops.

But that same scene includes some fairly hefty and unnecessary exposition, because it got away from me, and I know a lot of it will be getting cut during revisions. Normally, I'd already have thrown it out (and possibly regretted it later). For NaNo, I'm just highlighting it and leaving myself a comment that it's a section I need to trim down.

Who knows, I may need that information later. So at least I haven't junked it. When I make big cuts in revisions, I'm usually pretty careful about saving the words somewhere else in case I need them or can reuse them somehow. One of my bad habits is being less careful with mid-novel-in-progress revisions, so maybe the NaNo process is going to help me with that.

At some point, I need to do a post about Scrivener, which I'm using to actually write the novel for the first time. I've been using it to organise projects for a while, but still writing in Word. This time I've done the whole thing in Scrivener and I'm starting to understand why so many people love it.

I had this vague idea that I'd have time to edit and post a couple of fics that I've been sitting on for a few weeks. Um, no, this ain't gonna happen. I think they may end up being my Christmas present fics at this rate! All my December words will be going to finish Papercuts and write my Yuletide fics, so maybe it's wise to save those fics for, er, even longer than planned and throw them up on Christmas Eve.

I can pretend that was totally the plan, right? It's not like they were actually intended to be published in October...

Belated Wednesday reading

A day late, but at least I'm doing it this week...

What are you currently reading?

And Then He Kissed Her, a historical romance because I'm just in that place right now. Also, Longbourne by Jo Baker, which I've been meaning to read for ages and happened to be sitting on a shelf in the library the last time I visited. Clearly, it was meant to be.

What did you recently finish?

The Rook by Daniel O'Malley. It was okay. Ish. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, either. The pacing was off and there was an over-reliance on shock body horror, to the detriment of the plot, in my opinion. And the climax left me feeling cold and disappointed, because after all the big build up, I was expecting...more. Yeah. Not a book that I'd strongly recommend, but not something I hated. It suffered from debut novel issues - hopefully the author will get a better handle on the pacing in future books in the series, because he wrote some characters I really enjoyed and wouldn't object to seeing again.

Also, Cold Magic by Kate Elliot, which was another didn't hate/didn't love book. I think the problem was that someone sold it to me as having good queer representation and, er, that was possibly a huge oversell. On the other hand, racial diversity was there in spades, and I did love the set-up of the alternative history with all the steampunk vs. magic elements. I'll probably read more in the series despite not being completely sold on the first book, just to find out more about the world and the characters. It definitely hit the spot better than The Rook did, at least.

I also had The Library: A World History out on inter-library loan (my first ILL!) and I loved it. Highly recommended, just for the gorgeous photography alone. And the information was presented well, giving enough depth to spark a lot of ideas for me and make notes on things I want to investigate in the future, without getting so dry that I fell asleep. Sadly, it had to go back yesterday, and I hadn't actually finished reading it. But when I was putting together the info to request it again, I discovered that Amazon is currently listing it for an amazing discount. Even with shipping, customs, and translation to the Canadian dollar, it was vastly cheaper than buying it up here, so I ordered it. It's a huge, expensive, gorgeous book, and I can totally justify the expense now that I've had my hands on it.

(I may be just a bit in love with it.)

What do you think you'll read next?

I've got a lot of comics to catch up on when I finally get some time, so hopefully that will happen soon. I'm in a historical romance phase, and Tessa Dare's Romancing the Duke is currently on sale for Kindle, so that will probably be my next e-read because I couldn't resist buying it.

When I've finished Longbourne, I've been eyeing up Rabid on my own bookshelves, so that might be the one. Who doesn't love a history of rabies, after all?