Spires of Secrecy–Remaining Block
I have 7 loose sections remaining in this short-ish story. It’s already 6600+ words, and I average about 1K per section. So yeah, I’m like halfway, and the story’s due 7/31. *panic!!* On the up side, I’ve got up to 17,500 words to tell this story, so the size is right on. I just need time to write it!
Here’s a breakdown of the remaining sections only, and I’ll document my progress for Sven this weekend. I WILL FINISH BY THE DEADLINE. Somehow. Alien Goth is too cool to not at least submit for consideration in the anthology.
Edited: Well, I’m already editing my block, because I’m not quite ready to move to The Inner Sanctum section. Added “aaa” below, a bridge to the rest of the block.
| Section | Title | Words |
|---|---|---|
| aaa | Trust Me | 557 |
| 001 | The Inner Sanctum | 1798 |
| 002 | Wakefield’s Murder | 684 |
| 003 | Trapped in Darkness | 1003 |
| 004 | The Red Coat | 460 (in progress) |
| 005 | The Key | |
| 006 | Lay the Ghosts to Rest | |
| 007 | Wake Me To Life | |
| Total Words | 4502 |
Theme Songs: Bring Me to Life, Sweet Sacrifice, and My Immortal by Evanescense
Notes: Yikes, I hope the other sections aren’t as long as the first! Good stuff, though. maybe a little too infodumpy in places, but Link is at last explaining some of the mystery, and Amee’s secret has come out. Quite charming, I hope.
Closing notes for the night: I’ve got two heating pads going, one for my back, one for my neck. My eyes are killing me. But I’m extremely pleased with what I’ve got so far. I locked myself in my office after dinner and only emerged for short breaks. I sat with That Man and watched a brief cooking show so he didn’t feel totally neglected, and then helped put the monsters to bed.
I’m in the big love scene of the story, The Red Coat section. Ah, I love it when a seemingly innocent little item becomes suddenly very important. I love tying things together like that. When I wrote that opening scene (below in Friday Snippets), I had no idea how important that red coat was. At first, I chose red on a whim. Then it became a silent stab at Dr. Linkyn’s pride, tying to his backstory in a significant manner. And now, in the final sections of the story, it’s an instrument of love and healing. Cool stuff.
I should be able to finish the first draft tomorrow. Yay! There’s at least one thread I need to go back and fix that I noted tonight (at the beginning of the Inner Sanctum section, I need that red coat deposited in a significant manner). I’m pretty sure I know how the big mystery plays out. We’ll see tomorrow.








July 28th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
I like the way you organise your writing. Nice, tidy scenes, with titles! I think I may have to try that
July 29th, 2007 at 7:50 am
Sounds fab. Can’t wait to read it somehow, in snippets or an anthology or what.
I didn’t get much writing done at all the second half of the week because I wasn’t feeling well, work was stressful, and we had family over all weekend, but I managed to write a page handwritten on the train to NYC yesterday; that made me happy that I’ve at least written every day, even if it’s only a couple hundred words.
July 29th, 2007 at 9:22 am
I hope ‘That Man’ does not suffer too much for your art?
July 29th, 2007 at 9:56 am
I agree. I like the way you organize too. I may have to try that naming scenes. Good luck with meeting the deadline!
July 29th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Meryl and Anna, this structure is one of the most helpful things The Witch taught me. The DVD sleeve. Even if I don’t know the full movie at the beginning, having sections and titles that mean something to me helps guide me to the end. Behind this table, I’ve got several pages of specific notes fleshed out on what I need to happen where. I can’t always get the details of the sections in the beginning, but having an outline, even rough, helps tremendously.
Jess, sorry to hear you weren’t feeling well. Here’s to a better week!
Sterculian, in his opinion, he suffers too much for my art. Because you know, the world will end if I don’t watch reruns of MASH, Matlock and the Rockford files with him every single night.
July 29th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Pssh. He certainly makes YOU suffer for your art. You could spend all day stroking his head and feeding him grapes by hand and he’d still whine and get cranky when you pulled out your laptop for a quick half-hour’s editing.