This week’s targets

I was hoping to get quite a bit done this week as I took a couple a of days of work but I came down with a cold and that meant I didn’t really feel like doing much, other than burying myself in a book.  I did have my most productive writing day yet, but I don’t seem to have written since then.  I’ve just been pottering.

My goals were:

• 10 scene ideas for SB (Beth’s Book) – well I’ve sort of done this.  I did some bubble chart brainstorming, which went really well and I have lots of ideas.  Can’t wait to write the book.  I never used to like brainstorming like this for some reason but it seemed to work really well for this book. 

• Hit 4,000 or complete first chapter of fairy story, whichever is greater – done, 5,128 words worth of done.  I will probably cut quite a few of them in the edit.
• Plot second half of short story – haven’t even looked at this I’m afraid.
• Finish character building Beth – Not done, I did do some bubble charting for her too but I’ve definitely not finished getting to know her.  I really want to get into her head as this is going to be a first person book.

• Get a wiki set up for DW- this is underway, I have picked my wiki and I am in the process of copying over and tidying all my hastily typed word documents to do with characters and world-building.

I might start posting my targets at the beginning of the week in an attempt to make myself feel more accountable but that doesn’t seem to have worked in the past so I’ll have a think about that.

3,500 – 4,000 my foot!

I’ve just finished writing 2,185 words of my opening scene, bringing the current total number of words to 5,055.  So much for my prediction of it ending up being 3,500 – 4,000 words long! 

I did want to finish the scene tonight and I sort of have but I’m going to need to do some fiddling and decide what I want to take from my old opening scene and add to this one.  I don’t really want to start that at 25 past 12 on a school night thank you very much! 

Not that I anticipate going to work tomorrow, I have a stinking cold and feel lousy, so I can see myself calling up and asking for an extra day off.  Being ill obviously agrees with me for writing productivity though.  I didn’t even start writing until gone 5 today and I achieved my highest word count yet.

I’m feeling really pleased with myself.  I don’t think all of the words suck either!  I got that tense, anxious feeling while writing again, which I’m choosing to see as a good thing.  I’m hoping it means I’m channelling my character onto the page.

Targets

I had 3 main goals this weekend:

1. Hit 2,500 words on my new opening scene to my fairy novella – Done, I’m currently at 2,838 and I might write some more before going to bed.  I think the whole scene should end up being somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 words.
2. Do a character profile for Beth, the heroine of my book for NaNoWriMo – I did a bit, I have a better idea of who she is but I’m not done by a long stretch.  I think I might work through Holly Lisle’s Create a Character Clinic for her too.
3. Plot out one of my short story ideas – Half way through.

I don’t think I’ve done too bad considering how rubbish I normally am with meeting my targets.  And I didn’t do any writing Saturday so I’m fairly pleased with myself.

Finding the zone?

I’ve had a really good writing day today, my best yet I think. I got a few hundred words written lunchtime and even more tonight. I’ve been on a roll every time I’ve written this week actually, I got almost 500 words written on my lunchbreak on Wednesday as well.

In a fairly tense bit I was writing tonight I got really anxious, that felt strange. It was like I had to get the words out really quickly – as if it was me that was under pressure to act quickly and not my character.

I didn’t even come anywhere near last week’s goal of finishing my new opening scene. I didn’t write at all after that post in fact, I was a bit crud. I’m not very good at the upkeep of this blog either. I’ve actually been posting quite frequently on my other one lately – after a long period of slackness – and I’ve been thinking about stopping.  I dunno. 

I think I’m going to give it another try as I’m writing more now and I do like having somewhere to say, woohoo I wrote such-and-such amount of words.  That’s the sort of thing I like reading about most on writers blogs; that and posts about writing methods – mainly writing methods.  And as I figure out what mine are, I’m sure I’ll write about that sort of thing too.

Oddly proud of myself

I actually got some writing done today! For the first time in a fortnight, possibly more. Okay, so I didn’t write very much – around 100 words, but I did knock them out in around 10 minutes at the end of my lunch break. As I’m generally quite a slow writer, I was pleased with that.

It felt good to get back at it. I have been struggling to get started on writing my new opening scene to my fairy story but now that I’ve made a start I’m hoping it’ll flow easier. I’m going to set myself the goal of writing 100 words during lunch every day this week and 100 words at home too.

My goal by the end of this week is to write the new opening scene and edit the one after it so that it works as a second scene.

Things I’m Working On

1. The story I mentioned a while back about Fairies doesn’t seem to want to be just a short story. It wants to be longer and I think I need to do some more character development and plotting – and by more I mean some at all. I got a basic concept, then came up with some characters I thought rocked, got overexcited and waded straight in, only to get caught up in fuzzy where-is-this-going, story hell. Must plot!

   This is where I went wrong with my many, many attempts to write before. I go completely against my character in the rest of my life – where I plan things to oblivion and make lists for absolutely everything – and start writing without a plan and then I just sort of flounder. I know I do it and I’ve spent a lot of time pre-writing DW to prevent the same thing happening there so I don’t know why I did it with my short story.

   So my main goal for this week is to plot that out and do a little more character development. Ooh and world-building, I’ve really enjoyed the world-building I’ve done for this story so far so I might do a bit more. Reading through what I’ve already written I think some of it is salvageable but the beginning is absolute dross and I’ve deleted my entire first scene. I want to rewrite that this week, starting the story a little sooner.

2. I need to write down all the ideas I keep having for the novel I’m planning to write for NaNoWriMo and work on twisting them into some sort of plot. Concentrate on developing my characters too, especially my main character and her mum.
3. Then have a look at DW and see how I can work in the idea I had for it last night. I’ve had quite a break from it so should be able to look at my ideas and characters with fresh eyes, see if I still think they’re as good.
4. I also want to try and plot some of my other short story ideas.

Things I have learned about my writing so far

• When writing in Third Person I am not great at keeping to the right POV. Well I wasn’t when I started, I’ve got much better already.
• I have a tendency to try to write as if I am looking back on events, telling someone about them. Not intentionally. I do not like this.
• I write fairly dialogue heavy.
• I’m quite good with the old dialogue tags, I get across who’s speaking without resorting to a lot of he said, she said.
• I am most definitely a Plotter.
• I may like physically writing better but I can get more written working directly on the computer – I type much faster than I write. Plus it looks like more handwritten so I’ll think I’ve been far more productive than I actually have. The guilt of seeing how little it adds up to typed is a great motivator.

100 words

For the past few days I have been setting myself the – uber reachable – goal of writing 100 words a day. The idea is only to get into the habit of writing at least something every day. It seems to have worked quite well for me, having such an easily achievable target means that I don’t feel at all daunted by what I have to do and I’ve been surpassing it every day.

Every lunch time this week I’ve been whipping out my trusty notebook and knocking out a page. Writing, as opposed to typing, seems to be working for me. When I’m typing I have a tendency to stop and think a lot, to umm and ahh over sentence structure and word choice, I almost constantly tweak. Writing long hand the words seem to flow better (of course there are lots of scribbles in the margins adding bits and saying things like “look up synonyms for ::insert word I’m currently overusing::”) and editing myself a bit less.

Having said all that, today I didn’t get my words written lunch time. I’m having a rough time at work at the moment (the person covering my boss’s maternity leave is not easy to deal with) so I had a meeting with a manager just before lunch to discuss the possibility of my job moving departments, which meant I spent most of my lunch break filling in a friend on what had happened. I did manage to find the time to do a little brain storming though, which was good, I had some nice ideas – even if I do say so myself ;o)

Well, I’m off to have a bash at getting my actual 100 words down before I fall asleep (am shattered) but I’m not going to beat myself up about it if I don’t manage it.

Change of Plan

I was planning on writing the novel that I’ve talked about here over the next few months, with the aim being to finish it towards the beginning of October.  Or sooner if possible.  The time from then until November was to be spent planning the book I’m intending to write (well, start writing) for NaNoWriMo.  Then November, obviously, doing NaNoWriMo.

 

Having read quite a few things lately about first novels rarely being up to much I’m considering a different plan of action.  I really like this story and I don’t want it to just be practice writing, I want it to be good.  I want to do it justice and be proud to show it to people, not bury it deep on my hard drive and wince whenever I think about anybody reading it – can you spot the person who recently found some stories she wrote years ago? *shudder*

 

So, what I think I’m going to do now is, spend the time between now and October writing short stories and novellas to get myself into a routine of writing often and to let myself get some of the crap writing out of my system.  Then spend October fleshing out my NaNoWriMo idea as planned.  Try and finish that by the end of the year (I don’t think it will be a long book so if I win NaNoWriMo that should be doable) and then write Dreamweaver – yes, I know it sounds cheesy as hell, it’s a working title okay…

 

Tonight I started writing a story about a fairy who bullies a woman into helping her free her friends from a witch who has trapped dozens of them and is selling them as garden lighting.  I’m having fun but I can see already that I had the right idea to do some practice writing.

Away with the fairies

Over the last couple of days I’ve been thinking up ideas for short stories to do some practice writing.  I’ve got quite a few now and I’ve noticed that every single one of them has some sort of magical or supernatural element.  I can’t seem to help it.  I tried giving myself random topics and then I had to come up with a story idea, without fail I managed to find a way to make it magic.  I wonder if that says something about me.