Goals: Write five new pages a day; finish the outstanding outline I started; work on the new one; get Deb's cover done And...Celebrate my 13th wedding anniversary Sunday. (Super Bowl, game food, no kids...)

How about you?
 

Next weeks' goals, continue adding new material to my novel and revise and cut the short story.

Happy 13th anniversary IB

[This message has been edited by satate (edited January 31, 2009).]
 

My goal is to get through at least two chapters a day on the revision of Book Two, which is again The Ignored Prophecy. At this point, I'm really just trying to put the story in order and make sure I don't have any logical inconsistencies, so several chapters don't need much revision at all. Others will need a fair amount of new material added, particularly to beef up the antagonist.

Meanwhile, I'm also getting some really good feedback on the beginnning of The Shaman's Curse. I'm also making some revisions on that, but they feel much better, more finished, than the second book. That makes sense.
 

* I sent out one of my short stories. I really enjoy that walk from my workplace to the post office, large envelope in hand.

Not much else got done, unfortunately. This week at work was one I'll look back on when I've become a full-time writer and say: "Bwahahahahaha!"

Goals
* Continue my chapter exchange...and maybe start another one.

* Continue my physics research for my SF novel.

* Begin the world-building and order-of-events overview work on my next novel. Except...it's a mainstream novel. Does that mean I can't be on this board anymore?! The funny part is that I've got plans for two different mainstream novels (I suppose mystery is the best way to describe them for now), but I don't know which one I want to work on first. If, this time, next week, I'm still deciding, I'm going back to SF.

S!
S!...C!

 

Instead of spending my free moments thinking about writing, lately I've been spending them thinking up ways to get some free time for writing.
Melanie
 

The real revisions will start after I settle the story into its proper form. Since I've changed my mind twice, I have to make sure I have a solid foundation before I move ahead.

It's also true that being unemployed at the present gives me more time than usual to devote to writing.

[This message has been edited by Meredith (edited January 31, 2009).]
 

So yeah, goals for this week:
Write chapter 10. Start to revise 8 and 9 and make them readable. Work more on my WOTF entry. Continue idea development for the rest of the second half of the novel.
Also, get critiques back to people. I haven't forgotten, I promise. I'm just slow on those sometimes.

And happy anniversary, IB.
 

I wrote, if I'm rounding up, two whole paragraphs, that were such crap I had to put the novel away for a bit.

I decided for fun I would look at some of the stuff I wrote about a year ago, so I could see how much I've improved.

In therory.

Crap total crap which makes me wonder if what I'm writing now is just that crappy and you people are being too nice.

Perhaps I'm just fooling myself, and wasting my children's childhood by spending my time on the computer.

Oh well. If I could quit, I think I would, but I am still compelled to continue.

I couldn't sleep last night, but kept having prose and prose flow out of my mind. I didn't type it up, because I find what I think at midnight is not as brilliant as I think it is at midnight. Amazingly most of it stuck with me, and now after a good night sleep, some of it I think is pretty good, so I anticipate a good writing day today.

My goal for this week is to jump back in and tackle this next scene. You can do it! You can do it!

Yep that was me talking to myself in a mirror.

~Sheena
 

You're not wasting your children's childhood, you're enriching it by fueling yourself.

Hurry up and write your next chapter, I need to find out what happens next!
 

I know exactly how you feel though. But I figure that if I want to be an author, I've got to keep plugging along or I'll never get any better. It makes me sad to think that all my awesome story ideas are being written in a less than publishable format, but at least they are getting written. I'm a ton better than I used to be, so there is hope for the future, right? This is the right place to be if you want to get better. People here can be brutally honest, but no one has ever made me feel like I should just give up. And when someone who has been harsh gives something I've written a nod of approval, it makes me feel fantastic.
Melanie
 

I'm writing a bit, I'm allowing myself to write crap, just to get the story finished, then I plan on editing and reediting, until it gets to a point I like it better. So don't anticipate a new chapter anytime soon, Sara.

But I'll get it there.

Thanks for the kick in the pants.
~Sheena
 

...starting a new writing project is a heluva lot more fun than I remembered!

This new novel I started just last Saturday is the first I'm building entirely from scratch in many years; all my other projects came from ideas I've had for a while, and evolved (or, in some cases, devolved) over time. I'm thinking the reason this time is so much fun is because I'm not self-imposing past ideas upon my current efforts, but now see only a blank whiteboard and over sixteen million colored markers in front of me.

Last night and so far today, I've been working on character sketches. Knowing me, this phase will take a while, but all is cool when I've got the entire planet in which to draw inspiration.

S!
S!...C!