ROW80 Week 8: Turning

After Week 8 of this Round of Words in 80 Days (linky), I’m starting to think I’m focussing too much on my WIP.

In Week 3, I made it a goal to re-write a chapter by the end of the round. At the rate I’m going, I think I have to accept that won’t be happening.

The only editing I got done this week this week was the re-reading each night, covering a total of ten pages (and 700 words that weren’t printed out yet). Since the scene I wrote up last week was the last one still on paper, that was enough to meet my goals.

But if I’m meeting my goals that easily, I should be aiming higher.

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ROW80 Week 7: Scarce

Here’s my ROW80 Week 7 linky.

I wrote exactly five days this week. Although I worked on Conkers on four of them, my re-reading progress wasn’t much: only another twenty pages, leaving thirty more to go.

On the bright side, I did do a fair bit of re-writing on the scene I typed up. And while I haven’t read another book yet, that’s mainly because I’m trying to read two at once.

I’ve also got an idea to get more re-reading done:

Often, I read the draft late at night, after turning off my computer, and that means I don’t have time to do much. But if I accept that, there’s no reason I can’t read a paragraph or two every night.

As such, I’m making “re-read every day” an extra goal for this week. We’ll see how that goes.

Good luck and happy writing!

ROW80 Week 5: Resuming

This was my first week of proper editing.

I spent a couple of days drawing up a mind-map of my current plot, then combined all the scenes into one big file to print out. (Well, most of the scenes, anyway. There’s still the missing hardcopy scenes to sort out; but I did get one typed up on Sunday. :-] )

It’s a funny feeling, actually holding the printout in my hands. It’s still got a long way to go before it’s a real book; but now I feel like I’m actually writing a book, rather than a jumble of random scenes.

It’s not really book-sized yet, though; only eighty-nine pages.

Not that that’s a bad thing. I’m planning to read through it and see how it works at the moment before I start re-writing in earnest, and 89 pages isn’t too daunting a number.

And I suppose I should officially recognise that as a goal:

• Read through at least 40 pages of the first draft each week; aim to read through it all this week.

My other goals have pretty much kept up. I wrote a sonnet on Monday, did my four days of editing, and read through the first Skulduggery Pleasant book.

One thing I particularly liked about Skulduggery Pleasant: one of the key plot McGuffins shows while the setting is still being introduced, but in such a way that you don’t realise it’s more than background detail until much later.

Good luck and happy writing!

P.S. There’s something funny going on with the LinkyTools list at the moment; I may have to adjust the link once it’s working.

Update: The linky list was fixed, but I didn’t add the linky in time, so this post will stay stuck without one.

ROW80 Week 3: First draft finished!

My progress this week of ROW80 (linky) wasn’t remarkable. I wrote my usual five days, and read two books. However, I only finished one new scene for Conkers.

That’s partly because I’ve been sick this weekend, and partly because I decided to switch to editing, and was using a lack of editing goals as an excuse for doing nothing.

Switch to Editing

There were two things that prompted this.

Firstly, I got my first feedback on my WIP, from the local writers’ group. They were positive about the overall ideas, but pointed out a lot of details I’d need to fix for the story to make sense.

Secondly, there’s the scene I wrote this week. It was supposed to be an epilogue, and it has established where a few of the characters end up.

However, it also includes a confrontation that feels too climatic to be tacked on at the end like that. At the same time, it doesn’t really have any connection to the main characters. And noticing that made me realise the villain in the actual climax doesn’t either.

The upshot is that I want to bring in these other characters much earlier, which means going back and rewriting things I wrote this time last year. And I might as well fix the details at the same time.

New Goals

Now that I’m editing, the scenes-per-week goal doesn’t fit very well. I like AmyBeth Inverness’s advice on counting editing, but I’d also like to include some measurement of progress more concrete than “write every day”.

Not to mention the fact that my scenes are very disorganised — they’re in a variety of text files with unhelpful names, and a few are still languishing in hardcopy notebooks. I’ll have a hard time finding what I want to edit if I don’t change that.

Hence, my new goals for work on Conkers are:

• Do something towards re-writing Conkers (editing, outlining, or new scenes) at least three days a week;
• Type up at least one hardcopy scene a week, until I run out; and
• Have at least one chapter, of the second draft finished by the end of the round. I would also like to do a full outline — so I know which chapter it is — but I’m not sure how reliable it will be until more scenes are finished.

In addition, my other goals from the start of the round stand: read a book every two weeks; reflect on my writing each week; and write five days out of seven (which will now include editing).

Good luck and happy writing

P.S: I haven’t said anything about the two books. As this post is long enough already, I’ll try and post something about them tomorrow.

ROW80 Goals for Round One, 2014

I’m inclined to just use the same four goals as last round (write 1000 words/week, and five days out of seven; reflect weekly; read six books), since they seemed to work pretty well.

But my real goal isn’t to surpass a word limit each week — it’s to finish writing a story. And that, I didn’t do.

To fix that, I’m aiming specifically to finish Conkers this round. Based on a fairly rough outline, I estimate the full story will be about 50 scenes, 10 of which are still unfinished.

That suggests I can finish Conkers by the end of this round. But I sometimes finish a scene in only 500 words, so I suspect doing two scenes a week should be possible. I’ll see how it goes.

For now, these are my weekly goals:

• Finish two scenes towards Conkers
• Write on at least five days
• Reflect on what I write
• Read half a book (i.e. one every two weeks)

Good luck and happy writing!

Edit: oops, forgot the linky.

#ROW80 Week 10: Away

This is my 10th check-in for this round of #ROW80 (linky).

My biggest progress was in reading: 139 pages of The Three Musketeers. That’s good progress, but I was on holiday; I’m not confident I can manage another 400 pages in the month I have left.

After reading Shan Jeniah’s post on work ethic, I suspect my reading goals this round may have been poorly thought out. I’m trying to force myself to read heavy books quickly, and it isn’t working.

Not to mention, I’ve missed out on entertainment reading for the sake of focussing on those books; and reading more for pleasure was part of my reason for setting reading goals to start with.

To try and make this less of a manacle, I’m going back to aiming for a set number of any books. I’ll try for a book every two weeks, or two more by the end of the round.

My writing was also productive on the holiday, although I didn’t stay focussed on Conkers. I wrote 800 words of narrative — half Conkers, half a scene that doesn’t belong to a plot yet — and at least as much again on miscellaneous non-story projects, many of them new ideas.

I did get a few new ideas for Conkers, though, which I might try and put into writing this week.

Good luck and happy writing!

ROW80 Week 3: Average

Here’s my linky for this week.

I kept pretty close to my goals this week, neither running ahead nor falling behind. My 1,500 words took the form of research notes for a non-fiction project. I got slightly ahead by writing a sonnet, but then put up my reflection slightly later than I’d planned. So all that more or less evened out.

As to my other two goals (make progress on Conkers, and read a book a week): not behind yet, but I do need to focus on these a bit more. With three weeks past and nothing at all written towards Conkers, finishing the arc by the end of Round 2 is starting to look less than certain. I did at least look at it again this weekend, but that won’t mean anything if I don’t follow it up.

Accordingly, I’m setting an extra goal for this coming week: Write something towards Conkers, even if only something short.

Reading isn’t so much ‘behind’ as poorly balanced. I did finish a book — a whole book, this time! — on Saturday, but only because I made an effort to catch up on it after falling behind during the week. That isn’t the way I wanted my reading to work. The idea was to add reading to the list of things I normally do in the evening, not to make it a box to tick when I had the energy. I did get started on several other interesting books this week, though, so it may just be a matter of time.

As to what I actually read: it was The Traitor Queen, by Trudi Canavan. The thing I liked most in it was the way scenes were cut to create suspense. There are a few points where a scene ends with a problem of some kind, and by the time we catch up with characters again, they’ve somehow fixed it. The thing is, we don’t find out what the solution was until its consequences start to matter, which lets the suspense of the scene last (I assume) longer than it otherwise would.

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.