ROW80 Week 9: Proceeding by Halves

Another ROW80 update (linky).

Once again, I kept up with half my goals last week. I didn’t do reflection, and I didn’t make any progress on Conkers, but I did achieve my word-count and reading quotas.

I wrote a total of about 1800 words, of varying quality: 990 words recording a dream, 450 re-writing the background from last week, and one sonnet; I also did around 300 words on half-finished poems. None of those seemed finished enough to do reflection on, although I could have probably reflected on my edits to the background stuff.

The book I read was Robbery Under Arms, by Rolf Boldrewood. Unlike in Dracula or Worm, it didn’t create suspense by having the characters constantly in danger. Having their plans mostly successful made for a less gripping story, but also a less depressing one.

Also unlike those stories, Robbery Under Arms makes a point of having a moral. That gets a bit annoying at times, and rather dampened my enjoyment of the book.

In retrospect, however, I think pushing the moral may have been necessary to build up the otherwise-lacking suspense. It meant the problem in the story wasn’t to survive, but to live within the law; and having all the characters’ plans succeed actually made that harder.

Good luck and happy writing!

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ROW80 Week 7: Distraction

Here’s my linky for this week.

Although perhaps I should be, I can’t say I’m happy with my progress. I spent most of it reading an online superhero novel called Worm, which was the digital equivalent of unputdownable — I got so wrapped up in that that I didn’t get anywhere with any of the physical books I’m reading, or get my reflection done.

I could arguably count it as my reading for the week, but part of the point of that goal was to spend time away from the Internet. And I haven’t finished reading it yet, anyway.

However, I did try to examine how the story kept me enthralled, as I have been with books. Like The Traitor Queen, Worm cuts away from scenes at moments of suspense, using extra viewpoints and timeskips to break up the first-person narrative. This even applies to the long-term plot: the characters never get a real chance to relax, so I could never go away from the screen and imagine they were safe.

Consequently, I spent most of the time I wasn’t reading thinking about situations in the story. A lot of those raise questions about the place of supernatural powers in society, which particularly interests me. It’s also enough a part of my WIP’s that I was reluctant to work on them, but it did give me a new perspective on one of my other ideas, which I wrote about 1,200 words of background for.

I also managed 470 words on Conkers (before I started reading Worm), and four or five hundred words of miscellaneous poetry (two sonnets, two other poems). That makes a total of 2,100 words for this week, putting me at a total of 12,400 for the round so far. I may yet equal my word count from last round.

So, really, this isn’t that much worse than other weeks from a ROW80 perspective. I’m just frustrated because reading Worm took up all my non-ROW80 free time. Not that it isn’t worth reading, mind you! I just would have preferred to go through it more slowly.

Good luck and happy writing!

ROW80 Weeks 4 & 5: I missed a week :-(

Since I didn’t manage to post an update last week, I’m writing this to cover for both Week 4 and Week 5. I’ll be away on Sunday, so it’s unlikely I’ll get much more done for this week. Consequently, I’m using the Wednesday linky.

Except for missing reflection and the update proper, I’m actually pretty happy with my progress for Week 4. I wrote another 1,500 words on Conkers, plus five or so sonnets (hard to count, because I write them on whatever I have to hand).

I still ended up rushing through my reading on Sunday night, but not for lack of trying; I had three books on the go during the week, didn’t quite make any progress on any of them, and then got drawn in by The Long Earth that evening. Since I was reading throughout the week, I’ll count that as good enough.

As to this week (Week 5): I was away due to work, which meant I didn’t have personal Internet access. The lack of distractions certainly helped my reading goals — I finished China Miéville’s Railsea during the week — but didn’t do as much for writing. I managed two sonnets over , and about 700 words on Conkers today, for a total of only 900 words.

Reflection

While the things I wrote these last two weeks seem fine in isolation, I’m not really happy with how the Conkers scenes fit together with the larger story. My current arc involves the characters having an argument and splitting up, and then encountering the same lion (which they were supposed to be hunting) in different contexts.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think all that much about how the various scenes are occurring in relation to each other (since they can’t just be in chronological order any more), and I think it’s made the arc rather disjointed. I may be able to improve this in editing, but I think I’ll need a better idea of who’s where and doing what to make it more coherent.

I can think of two consequences from this. On the one hand, I’m worried that planning these sorts of thing will distract me from the actual story; several of my previous ideas got lost in daydream ‘planning’. On the other hand, I’m now in a position to try some of the cutting-between-scenes things I noticed in The Traitor Queen last week.

Good luck and happy writing!