My progress this week of #ROW80 (other people’s progress) was fairly average.
I wrote five days out of seven, got another 900 words written on Conkers, and started reading a new book. That puts me behind my goals, but not by much.
Reflection
I haven’t been getting good word counts on Conkers for a while. While the research project is, sort of, an excuse, I think there’s more to it than that.
I feel as though I’m approaching a good stopping point for the plot; it may just be wishful thinking, but I think I can finish the first story arc within a year of starting it.
But I’m not getting any closer to that point.
I keep writing scenes ahead of the main plot, and introducing side stories that will take their own time to finish, and haven’t really got closer to the climax than I was a month ago.
That’s not for lack of thinking about it; I’ve been making plans for Conkers for most of the month, and just not carrying them out.
I suspect the problem is that I’m too focussed on the plans, and afraid to write it in case it falls short of them. In which case, the solution is to just write something, and worry about it once the scene’s typed up.
That can be my extra goal for this week: write a draft of the climax of Conkers
Good luck and happy writing!
Jenkins Rising 
3 responses to “#ROW80 Week 8: Plain”
I love your idea of writing a draft of the climax. I am a total pantser. The positive: the story develops as it will and editing cleans it up. The negative: I have quite a bit of editing to fix what my characters decide to do. I tried planning, and it stifled me because I felt like I had to stick to it. Just sharing my own madness!
One of the things I’m forcing myself to do on my current draft of my main project is to write the thing in order, start to finish, without writing scenes out of order. I’ve more or less stuck to it, except for one scene, which was at least still part of the chapter I was working on at the time. It’s hard because other scenes will come to mind and then it’s too easy for me to get sidetracked.
I tend to overthink as much as I overwrite, it seems. Sometimes all it needs is some free writing or doing something else creative, though unrelated to your WIP. I’m happily surprised what I end up coming up with.
Most recently, I put aside a WIP to work on a different story for NaNo. I came back fierce and am excited for the newly injected energy I have for the project and new subplots.
Have a great round. Hope you conquer the scene in Conkers, ;)