Wednesday, May 16, 2012

ROW80 Update - May 16

A Round of Words in 80 Days update:


Sunday Day 42 - 76 minutes.  Did final edit and posting of Episode 3.  Then some work on the art and text for Episode 4.  I also played a little with some existing material for 5-6.  I've got to decide if that bit really should take two episodes -- I think it does, but I may need to push one of the episodes a little further.

Monday Day 43 - 24 minutes.  Yes, I did my writing, but I've got to take time out for a moment.

We've been working without a contract for two years. After hundreds of thousands (well over a million, actually) spent on blocking negotiations, the college finally came to the table, and we now apparently have a tentative agreement.  I. Am. Not. Pleased. With. It.  On the surface, anyway, it is stunningly bad.  Shockingly bad.  But there are ameliorating aspects if you read more closely.  And since the membership did not show up in support of the bargaining team, we were lucky to get that.

But the legal language is squishy and it's going to be a couple of days reading through it.


Tuesday Day 44 - 45 minutes.  That's approximate.  Still reading through the contract, but I did get a little work done. Unfortunately, it was mostly for further down the road, so I still haven't fully got Episode 4 polished up for posting yet.

Writing Short and Long

One of the things I did Monday (before we saw the contract) was play again with how many episodes this story might be.  I think it will be a little longer, so I'm aiming to finish it in August.

And that brings the overall length up to novella length.

Furthermore, I am writing very short here.  I would certainly take more time with a few things (especially atmosphere) if this were a regular novel.  And if I were to plump it up to suit the style of a regular book.... it would definitely be a decent novella length.

That's important, because it makes it more worth my while to create an ebook out of it to sell.  And that helps keep me on task.  I'll talk more about the remuneration issues for blog fiction in a post later on. 

In the meantime, stay tuned for tomorrow's episode: "The Outrage of Old Thorny."

See you in the funny papers.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Argh!
I feel your pain. Wanting a contract, but when it finally arrives, it's crap.

The Daring Novelist said...

Thanks, Amy.

I should point out (for those who may not realize it) that I'm not talking about a publishing contract.

I'm talking about a union contract. We currently have an administration who is working straight out of the playbook of an extremely anti-union think tank. They spent hundreds of thousands on their lawyers to simply stall the negotiations, and named a building after them.

It wasn't like I wasn't expecting it to be crap. It's just that it was crappy in different ways than I expected.