ROW80 Week 2: Rethinking (my) Reflection

This is my second ROW80 update for the second round (linky). Again, I’m pretty happy with my progress this week. I wrote around 3,300 words: four sonnets, over two thousand words on a short story, and part of a dialogue tree for my computer-game project. In terms of strict word count, I’m well and truly up to speed.

I’m also up to speed with my reading goal, albeit due to a bit of tricky wording. While I did finish Anne Bishop’s novel Heir to the Shadows this week, I actually read half of it last round. That ambiguity is in my goals deliberately, though: if I had to read a new book each week, I’d have no reason to finish things I started earlier.

I wouldn’t say that I’m a raving fan of Heir to the Shadows, but I do admire the way Bishop integrates what her characters do at home into the stories — we don’t only see them in danger and out doing things. Partly, this just involves starting and ending the trips into danger at home, but I think it’s also because she finds more drama in the characters’ relationships. I suppose this is to do with the book being not strictly heroic fiction; if I want to emulate it, I need to be more familiar with non-fantasy genres.

My other two goals are making progress on Conkers, and reflection. I didn’t do any more writing on Conkers this week, but the short story is at least in the same setting. It’s also something of an epilogue for one character, so I might be able to use it to work backwards into the main story. So, better than last week.

However, I think I have to admit it’s too late to get reflection done this week. My problem is that I usually write reflection at the same time as my ROW80 update, so if I run late on the update, I tend to lose sleep writing the reflection. I might be better off setting up a specific time for reflection, and then just posting an update without it if I miss that deadline. For now, I’ll say reflection is due at midnight on Saturdays — no staying up late to finish it then, either.

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