A rainy Saturday, a cup of coffee, some music. Maybe I can get something done today!
Wish me luck!
Thanks for reading,
Dave
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Progress... At Last!
I've worked my way through a big battle scene involving 2 privateers, a Reska armed transport, and a squadron of warships from Core, led by a battle cruiser and two heavy destroyers. Two weekends and a lot of late evening writing and editing to sort it all out. Maybe I'll send it to someone to see what they think of it. It's too long to post here, unless I made a PDF of it.
I really need a real website where I can post stuff like that.
Now I am rewriting and editing the attack on the T&B construction site on Conborine and the strange disappearance of Lady Annie Tolen. Boy is Elias and the Tycho Star Traders going to be angry when they find out she's gone missing!
Thanks for reading,
Dave
I really need a real website where I can post stuff like that.
Now I am rewriting and editing the attack on the T&B construction site on Conborine and the strange disappearance of Lady Annie Tolen. Boy is Elias and the Tycho Star Traders going to be angry when they find out she's gone missing!
Thanks for reading,
Dave
Saturday, September 8, 2012
StarHawke Enterprises
What is StarHawke Enterprises?
Well, that's the name of my writing empire, if and when it ever turns into a writing empire. Right now all it consists of is a lot of words and ideas. See the table below for details:
How did I figure all that out? Well, its' one of those things I worked out when I was distracted (something that frequently happens), and I started playing with this big spreadsheet file I created. There are multiple tabs with individual spreadsheets to keep track of important information such as character names, starship names, company names, planet and system names, military units, DragonHawks and their Dragons Within. The spreadsheets feature columns by story name so I can track where a character is, anywhere within the DragonHawk Saga, or if they are dead, or haven't been born yet.
Anyway, I got into working out a way to count all of these different categories, so I set up formulas to count rows if there is any information in that row. Then I set up the tab you see above to summarize all of the data. Later on I added tabs to spreadsheet to track old story versions, chapter parts, and out of date manuals. I don't throw away anything I have written. And I often refer back to older versions of stories or chapters for ideas for the current version of the saga.
I got to thinking about all of this when I realized that I have written over 500 new words in the past few days (Thursday night and Friday night through about 1:30 AM this morning. I'm actually editing Dragon Hunters, fixing story discrepancies and poor writing techniques, making the story tighter and flow faster. This story is about about the emergence of the Dragon Hunters after some ten thousand seasons (The end of the first DragonHawk War) and the threat they pose to the current day Drakkon, led by the StarHawke Tycho, Makala Hawkes. The resurgence of the Dragon Hunters is one of signs of a prophecy that calls for the return of the Great Dragon. And that's what this saga is all about, the return of the Great Dragon who will unite the Star Traders and all of the people and worlds of the Thousand Universes.
So that's a good thing. Maybe life will settle down for a while and allow me to get caught up on my writing. Our second grandchild and first granddaughter is due October 17, so I know things won't stay quiet for too long!
But that's okay. I'll just lug the laptop along when we go to Austin and write while Caitlyn and her momma are taking a nap!
Thanks for reading!
Dave
Well, that's the name of my writing empire, if and when it ever turns into a writing empire. Right now all it consists of is a lot of words and ideas. See the table below for details:
Story Name
|
Word Count
|
Page Count
|
00 Dragon Stories
|
8,730
|
41
|
01 Dragon Hunters
|
139,645
|
410
|
02 Dragon Heart
|
33,926
|
111
|
03 Dragon
Betrayal
|
176,802
|
641
|
04 Dragon Revenge
|
18,346
|
92
|
05 Dragon Summer
|
122,078
|
358
|
06 Dragon Return
|
25,188
|
104
|
07 Dragon Trap
|
118,420
|
434
|
08 Dragon Rising
|
88,474
|
347
|
09 Dragon War
|
4,315
|
64
|
10 The Great
Dragon
|
169
|
52
|
Story
Totals
|
727,363
|
2,613
|
Story
Average
|
72,736
|
261
|
01 DragonHawk
Saga Rules Manual
|
6,323
|
42
|
02 DragonHawk
Saga Development Manual
|
14,358
|
72
|
03 DragonHawk
Saga History Manual
|
13,049
|
140
|
04 DragonHawk
Saga Reference Manual
|
34,611
|
13
|
Current
Manuals
|
68,341
|
267
|
Chapter Parts
|
134,612
|
491
|
Old Story
Versions
|
3,403,991
|
12,615
|
Old Manual
Versions
|
355,533
|
1,082
|
Grand
Totals
|
4,689,840
|
17,068
|
Total New Words
|
410,091
|
|
Number of Days
|
252
|
|
Average Writing
Rate Per Day (Since Jan 1, 2012)
|
1,627
|
How did I figure all that out? Well, its' one of those things I worked out when I was distracted (something that frequently happens), and I started playing with this big spreadsheet file I created. There are multiple tabs with individual spreadsheets to keep track of important information such as character names, starship names, company names, planet and system names, military units, DragonHawks and their Dragons Within. The spreadsheets feature columns by story name so I can track where a character is, anywhere within the DragonHawk Saga, or if they are dead, or haven't been born yet.
Anyway, I got into working out a way to count all of these different categories, so I set up formulas to count rows if there is any information in that row. Then I set up the tab you see above to summarize all of the data. Later on I added tabs to spreadsheet to track old story versions, chapter parts, and out of date manuals. I don't throw away anything I have written. And I often refer back to older versions of stories or chapters for ideas for the current version of the saga.
I got to thinking about all of this when I realized that I have written over 500 new words in the past few days (Thursday night and Friday night through about 1:30 AM this morning. I'm actually editing Dragon Hunters, fixing story discrepancies and poor writing techniques, making the story tighter and flow faster. This story is about about the emergence of the Dragon Hunters after some ten thousand seasons (The end of the first DragonHawk War) and the threat they pose to the current day Drakkon, led by the StarHawke Tycho, Makala Hawkes. The resurgence of the Dragon Hunters is one of signs of a prophecy that calls for the return of the Great Dragon. And that's what this saga is all about, the return of the Great Dragon who will unite the Star Traders and all of the people and worlds of the Thousand Universes.
So that's a good thing. Maybe life will settle down for a while and allow me to get caught up on my writing. Our second grandchild and first granddaughter is due October 17, so I know things won't stay quiet for too long!
But that's okay. I'll just lug the laptop along when we go to Austin and write while Caitlyn and her momma are taking a nap!
Thanks for reading!
Dave
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Just Chuggin' Along
That's what I'm doing. Just chuggin along. Not worrying about time. Doing what I can when I can.
Working my way through Dragon Hunters, deleting more than I am adding for the most part. Incomplete sentences, incomplete thoughts. Still over 138,000 words and not finished yet! I have a number of disparate characters that come into play at various times. I could just background them when I need them, which is what I did when Tycho Station (Now DS03 Dragon Betrayal) was the first story. But I thought I would use their background stories to help show how bad things are in the InWorlds as the Republics War rages on.
At the same time I have to give the Star Traders some reasons to pull out of the InWorlds. Such as more attacks on their starships and their people. Can you imagine what the Reska Elder and his son will do when one of their starships is captured by Privateers? Or if a secret underground group on Core intercepted one of their weapons shipments to the Royal Guards?
And what does an attack on T&B's facility on Conborine have to do with the war in the InWorlds?
Then, there's all that conflict building between the DragonHawks and the resurgent Dragon Hunters.
That's a lot of conflict and drama to fit into one story, but that's why this is a saga. The conflict and drama may start in Dragon Hunters, but the battles will spread to subsequent stories. And it doesn't end until book 10, The Great Dragon. But that's about fifty seasons (years) from now.
Thanks for reading!
Dave
Working my way through Dragon Hunters, deleting more than I am adding for the most part. Incomplete sentences, incomplete thoughts. Still over 138,000 words and not finished yet! I have a number of disparate characters that come into play at various times. I could just background them when I need them, which is what I did when Tycho Station (Now DS03 Dragon Betrayal) was the first story. But I thought I would use their background stories to help show how bad things are in the InWorlds as the Republics War rages on.
At the same time I have to give the Star Traders some reasons to pull out of the InWorlds. Such as more attacks on their starships and their people. Can you imagine what the Reska Elder and his son will do when one of their starships is captured by Privateers? Or if a secret underground group on Core intercepted one of their weapons shipments to the Royal Guards?
And what does an attack on T&B's facility on Conborine have to do with the war in the InWorlds?
Then, there's all that conflict building between the DragonHawks and the resurgent Dragon Hunters.
That's a lot of conflict and drama to fit into one story, but that's why this is a saga. The conflict and drama may start in Dragon Hunters, but the battles will spread to subsequent stories. And it doesn't end until book 10, The Great Dragon. But that's about fifty seasons (years) from now.
Thanks for reading!
Dave
Saturday, August 25, 2012
A Rainy Saturday!
A perfect day to get caught up on Dragon Hunters! The goal today is to streamline and remove the superflurrious garbage! Also I have a space battle in chapter 14 to finish!
Sunday, August 19, 2012
DragonHawk Saga Status Report
Hello! Thanks for visiting!
The graphic at the top of the page below the blog title is a screen capture I made of all ten of the DragonHawk Saga manuscripts. They are MS Word documents open with the Document Map displayed. The blue highlight marks my current work site in each story. If there is no chapter title, just a number, then that chapter is probably empty.
The stories go from left to right, from Dragon Hunters to The Great Dragon. Currently I'm working on the left side, in the first three stories, DS01 Dragon Hunters, DS02 Dragon's Heart, and DS03 Dragon Betrayal.
Lot of work to do. But a lot of work already done.
Enough stalling! Back to work!
Thanks for reading!
Dave
The graphic at the top of the page below the blog title is a screen capture I made of all ten of the DragonHawk Saga manuscripts. They are MS Word documents open with the Document Map displayed. The blue highlight marks my current work site in each story. If there is no chapter title, just a number, then that chapter is probably empty.
The stories go from left to right, from Dragon Hunters to The Great Dragon. Currently I'm working on the left side, in the first three stories, DS01 Dragon Hunters, DS02 Dragon's Heart, and DS03 Dragon Betrayal.
Lot of work to do. But a lot of work already done.
Enough stalling! Back to work!
Thanks for reading!
Dave
Rivendell Writing Challenge Party
Some writer friends of mine and I got together last night to celebrate our July version of NANOWRIMO. We do it in the summer because some of our writers are kids who don't have time to "play" in November.
The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in the 31 days of July. Don't worry about the plot, just write.
It was a small crowd last night, a number of our "seasoned" novelists were busy with life - moving into dorms for college. Some have gotten married and have families of ther own to look after.
Sort of sad in a way, but that's life. Relentlessly moving forward no matter how bad we'd like to hit the brakes and slow things down a bit.
But that's not gonna happen. So, on with the writing!
Thanks for reading!
Dave
The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in the 31 days of July. Don't worry about the plot, just write.
It was a small crowd last night, a number of our "seasoned" novelists were busy with life - moving into dorms for college. Some have gotten married and have families of ther own to look after.
Sort of sad in a way, but that's life. Relentlessly moving forward no matter how bad we'd like to hit the brakes and slow things down a bit.
But that's not gonna happen. So, on with the writing!
Thanks for reading!
Dave
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