ROW80 Week 12 and Round 2 Wrap-Up

For this, the final week of ROW80 Round 2 (linky), my only progress was 1000 words of writing on Conkers. That wasn’t enough to finish the arc I’d planned for this round, but it did end one story thread — while starting another, but still.

In retrospect, my goal for Conkers might never have been achievable; the scenes grew in the telling, and I’ve decided to insert a whole extra plotline before I get to the point I was originally aiming for.

If I didn’t meet my goal for focus, I balanced it with word count. I wrote 25,000 words this round: 1,500 more than last round, and an average of over 2000 words per week. This was about half on Conkers and sonnets, and half on other material (other WIP’s, research, dreams, etc.).

Reflection, which I only managed in six of the twelve weeks, was balanced out by reading. If Worm is allowed to count, I’ve read a total of 11 books over less than 12 weeks.

What does this mean for my goals next round?

I’ve certainly done more this round, but it’s been spread across arguably lazier things: reading, and writing things that don’t have to be part of a story.

If I’m serious about improving my writing, maybe I need more specific goals. Quality over quantity!

The same could be applied to my reading goals. While I do want to keep reading novels, I’d also like to finish a few of the books I’m reading for research. Again, a more precise focus may be in order.

All this “more precise focus” is sounding like a lot of work, but I suppose that’s necessary if I really want to learn to write.

And do I really want to? I don’t know.

That’s something I need to sort out by the start of the next round. :-)

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ROW80 Week 11: Inching Closer

For the first time since reading Worm, I’ve neatly met all my ROW80 (linky) goals this week.

I wrote another 900 words since Wednesday: two sonnets, and the rest half stream-of-consciousness stuff reacting to Super Crunchers, and half notes on setting for Conkers. That puts me at 2,100 for this week — quite sufficient to make up for the lost writing last week.

I also read The Great Gatsby, for the second time. Re-reading it with knowledge of the ending let me spot a lot of foreshadowing that I’d previously missed. I was also impressed by the way F. Scott Fitzgerald uses imagery: there are some very vivid metaphors used to describe scenes in the book.

I need to keep that in mind for some of the supernatural things in Conkers, which aren’t very easy to describe literally. Although I’d probably need less visual metaphors for that.

My goals also include writing Conkers and reflection, of course; but both of those are covered by things I’ve already posted.

Good luck and happy writing!

ROW80 Week 10.5: Refocusing

I’m making this Wednesday update to catch up after missing Sunday’s. (linky)

My grand plan for Week 10 was to finish two books, so that I could count Worm as one and not actually be behind in my reading. I did in fact finish both Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Jane Austen’s Lady Susan.

However, I fell behind in my writing, managing only 1,200 words. It was all the kind of writing I set out to do, though: about 100 words were from the sonnet I posted last Monday, and the other 1100 were all on Conkers.

ROW80 Week 8: Beating distraction the stupid way

I tried to avoid reading Worm so I could focus on my ROW80 goals, but wasn’t very successful. In the end I gave in and spent the entire weekend reading all of it that’s been published, so there was nothing left to consume my time.

That feels like enough of an accomplishment that I’m happy with what I did this week, even though I didn’t achieve much more than last week goal-wise.

While I didn’t write more for Conkers, I balanced it by getting some reflection done. I also didn’t make progress on my reading goal, but again, Worm does give me a kind of excuse.

I did get plenty of writing done, partly due to attending a poetry slam this week: three-and-a-bit sonnets (I ran out of time to finish one), two other poems, 1700 words expanding on what I wrote had last week, and 350 words of background on another topic. That makes around 2,600 words all told for the week.

Now I think about it, the poetry slam is a big part of what I’m happy with. Not only was good for writing, but hearing other poets work and taking topics from the audience gave me a better perspective of the variety of poetry that I could attempt.

Good luck and happy writing!

(ROW80 linky)

ROW80: Ending Round 1, Starting Round 2

This is my final post for my first round of ROW80 (linky), and also my first post of the new round (Round 2 linky).

I only worked on my new WIP this week, so the old one’s still just short of my 18,000-word goal. But I did at least meet it if you count both WIP’s together, and I well and truly did if you count everything else as well. My total word count for this round was around 23,520 words: 17,100 my old WIP, 2,225 on the new one, 18 sonnets averaging 100 words each, 100 words or so of miscellaneous poetry, and 2,300 words of other writing. This doesn’t include my ROW80 blog posts.