Archive for June, 2010
2nd Draft of my novel — Complete!
My wife and I celebrated the completion of the 2nd draft of my novel last week. We went out to dinner and toasted to my small victory.
Actually, calling it a small victory may not be the best choice of words, since it felt like a pretty significant victory. It was tough to stay committed to this project. I thought writing a novel would be a far easier task than it’s turned out to be; one time through, hand it to an editor, be done with it! I was wrong.
I recently realized how wrong I was when I took a short class on writing a novel. The instructor was a published author who told me she had about 15 drafts before she was able to call it good. FIFTEEN!!!
Personally, I don’t plan to create 15 drafts, but I do anticipate several more drafts on my project. At least one, maybe two or more before I’m ready to hand it over to a select few people for feedback. Once I’ve got some feedback, I plan to do a couple more drafts — including an edit from a professional editor.
Right now, I’m going to put the project away for a short while and wait for inspiration to put draft number 3 in motion. I’m not sure when that will be, but I have a tentative goal to get it done by the next Nanowrimo 2010, in November. A month in which a new book will likely find it’s beginnings.
So, to sum up how I got to this point: when I did Nanowrimo 2009, I completed most of my first draft. I wrote all through November and about two weeks into December. I then harvested the high points from the plot/characters and put them on 3×5 cards that I stuck on a bulliten-board that remains a permanent fixture in my house.
My writing board and my muse
The breakdown:
1st draft – 2.5 months (Working daily, several hours a day)
2nd draft – 4.5 months (Working weekly, on a doable minimum schedule)
The above 7 months of work has actually taken me over 9 months with all the breaks I’ve taken on the project. Completion — if it sees the light of day —will easily take more than a year. I hope it sees the light of day, but I still may decide to shelf it. I reserve the right to shelf it! And if I do, well, all will not be lost.
Writing this novel has been fun, it’s been difficult, but it’s also been a great learning experience. One which I plan to do again and again!
I think if I was a professional author, working only on my project, then 4-6 months would be a reasonable time-frame to complete a novel. Since I work full time and write novels on the side — even though I haven’t finished one yet — I’d say a year and a half to 2 years would be reasonable. But that’s just a projection.
So… if you’re writing a novel, or planning on writing a novel, hopefully my experience will shed some light on the subject. Thanks for reading and keep writing!
Where is “The Fold” in Web Design Today?
I recently needed to find out the optimal height to design for when building a website. This is sometimes called “the fold” height, a term borrowed from newspaper displays. Basically, the fold refers to anything seen on screen without the user scrolling.
Ideally, keeping important content “above the fold” will allow the user to understand what the website is about without having to scroll in their browser — a reasonable goal when laying out a webpage.
Anyway, I thought I’d share some of my results from the research I did. Defining an exact pixel number can be tricky, so I made this graphic to give an idea of heights in pixels. http://www.laughcard.com/hi.html
Go ahead and view the graphic on your friends, coworkers and neighbors computers. This will give you an idea of all the little things you have to keep in mind; toolbars, menu bars, window decoration, system bars, browser window sizes, etc.
There’s a lot to consider, but I want to define a number or at least a range in which to design for. I came across this website boxesandarrows that stated “the three highest fold locations were 570, 590 and 600 pixels—apparently from different browsers running on 1024×768 screens.” It was talking about another study conducted.
Based on my research, I would say less than 600 pixels tall is a good height to design for. If I was to give a range, it would be between 550 and 600 pixels tall. There is a lot to consider, but those are some pretty decent numbers for the time being, which of course is subject to change…
Also, here’s a cool tool I found for measuring the users browser size and placing content:
http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/
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