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2013 was a great year for Rune Skelley. Our major accomplishment (apart from keeping this blog up to date) was completing the entire first draft of a novel. We took a look back through our Friday collaboration posts here on the Skelleyverse to get an idea of how long the process actually took.<\/p>\n
The first mention of Novel #5 comes on September 14, 2012<\/a>, when we bemoan the fact that we’re having trouble deciding on a story concept. Kent has a Big Idea, Jen has a character name. Turns out both will end up in the novel.<\/p>\n Then, less than a month<\/a> later, we have a solution! All it took was a long bus ride and a Jack White concert. Thanks Jack! Next time, please play for more than 45 minutes, okay?<\/p>\n By late November<\/a> we’re pleased to have roughed in about half the plot, and by the end of the month<\/a>, we’re covering the floor of the family room with a color-coded plot diagram.<\/p>\n In early\u00a0December<\/a> we’re struggling with the ending. We seem to lick that problem pretty quickly, because the next week<\/a> we’re talking about naming our fictional city, and the week after that<\/a> we’re drawing maps.<\/p>\n Early\u00a0January 2013<\/a> finds us scouring the internet for pictures to represent our characters. It’s starting to feel a bit like we’re stalling, doesn’t it? I mean, this idea has been kicking around since September!<\/p>\n Finally – January 25th<\/a> we’ve begun writing Novel #5. Go team!<\/p>\n Through February we seem to struggle<\/a> with distractions<\/a> large and small.<\/p>\n March<\/a> finds us 50,000<\/a> words in, and working to detangle a tricky timeline knot. We’re collaborating<\/a> well, though.<\/p>\n We didn’t mention this project at all during April or May, and in June<\/a> we tell you why. An outside project had our attention. And then it was the new season of Arrested Development that\u00a0took the blame<\/a>.<\/p>\n By the middle of July we were getting back into the swing of things, starting with a read-through<\/a> of the work-in-progress.<\/p>\n In August we were hitting our stride<\/a>\u00a0again, and almost done<\/a> with the first draft!<\/p>\n In September<\/a> we finally finished<\/a>!<\/p>\n Of course, that was just the really rough first draft. It needed a bit of work before we could feel good about showing it to our critique group.<\/p>\n In October<\/a> we were working on some retcon based on a field trip, and getting on each others nerves<\/a> a bit.<\/p>\n And by the end of November, we had written up all the supplementary materials<\/a> the novel called for, and were already getting feedback<\/a> from our critique group.<\/p>\n Whew! A marathon! An entire novel written in under a year! The first mention of the idea was in September 2012, and the rough first draft was completed in September 2013. The sharable first draft took a smidgen longer, if you want to get technical.<\/p>\n Soon it will be time to do it all over again. We’re deep into edits on Novel #4, sometimes called the Music Novel. It has an actual title, but we’re feeling protective at the moment so you’ll just have to wait. As we mentioned, this novel was kind of a mess, so we’re afraid the editing process will be lengthy. But as soon as we’re done with that, we plan to start developing Novel #6 in earnest.<\/p>\n It will be fun to track our progress here, so we can look back over it when we’re done and (hopefully) marvel at how quickly it all comes together.<\/p>\n Happy New Year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2013 was a great year for Rune Skelley. Our major accomplishment (apart from keeping this blog up to date) was completing the entire first draft of a novel. We took a look back through our Friday collaboration posts here on the Skelleyverse to get an idea of how long the process actually took. The first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[326],"tags":[288],"class_list":["post-1600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-as-a-team","tag-science-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1600"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1615,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600\/revisions\/1615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}