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I guess I can get the ball rolling here. I didn't have any goals for last week.
New Goal My goal for this week is to get my first chapter cleaned up enough to send out. It's Young Adult Fantasy. Is anyone interested?
I also just got a copy of The Artist's Way and I might start that this week. The first chapter warns that unblocking your inner artist might result in a lot of pain and grief at first, and I'm not quite sure how much I want that.
I hope everyone had nice holiday season and that you are all ready to get back to work! Melanie
[This message has been edited by Unwritten (edited January 05, 2009).]
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I'm still waiting for the cooling off period...so, I'm outlining a new historical. And kicking around thoughts of a sequel. Of course, I'm still waiting on reader feedback.
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I did good at the beginning of the holidays. I wrote every night and went over my goal of 500 words a day, but then Christmas hit. But unlike most years, after Christmas was busier than before. So it feels like I didn't do much. Then I got hooked on my husband's Christmas present (a video game) and haven't done any writing since. No fear though, the obession will soon end and I will again work on writing.
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I've been editing. For myself or someone like me. All done except for the very last chapter, which needs a re-write. Kinda fun, but no big fat glowing word count to post.
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I'm outlining (on the chapter outlines, and up to chapter 3), so--along with Deb--no word count as of yet. Still letting my first one cool off.
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Christmas was fun and busy, but now it's gone. Back to writing.
Pretty much finished the plotting of my next WotF entry on the bus this afternoon. Going to get to it pretty quick here. I have a lot of catching up to do. Seeing as how I have five more nights in this period, I'll put up a goal of 8k words. For me, that accounts to about 10 hours if I'm writing slow, or 6 1/2 if I really get moving. Man. There's a big difference between those two. I should just learn to write fast all the time, eh?
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I got Characters and View Point, and Writing Sci Fi and Fantasy, and Stephen King's On Writing for Christmas, and I learned a whole bunch. Now I am scared to get back to my novel, and see all the things that are now so glaringly obvious in need of change. It's good though, I think, to learn. Knowing the flaws will only make it stronger once I fix em.
I am a little bit scared of the change though, so I have been procrastinating on my novel. Started two short stories, one is still interesting to me, so hopefully I'll finish that one.
My goal for this week is to bite the bullet and dig in.
In my procrastination though, I would be more than happy to read Melanie or anyone. Heck send me a whole book. I ain't doin nothin.
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I've managed little spurts of writing every day for the past week, which I'll settle for: being able to say I've written every day so far this year makes me happy.
This week, I'd love to get my chapter finished. My problem at the moment seems to be obsessive editing. For every minute of actual writing I do, it feels like I'm spending another ten playing around with sentence structure, words, obsessing over choice of verbs and imagery... it's driving me mad! No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to be able to step back and let it cool.
I think another four pages will do it for this chapter. Not an unreasonable target. Anyone got any anti-self-editing tips; I'd love to hear them!
You just have to force yourself through it. Only allow for corrections in spelling if you find it in a sentence that you've already written. Don't re-read things, except for maybe if you're in the middle of a chapter, you could read the last page your wrote to help with consistency. The first three chapters of the book that I'm writing took me four months to get through. After that, I said enough, and just pushed through it. Don't think a chapter has taken me more than a week or two since. You have to train yourself to get it all out first, and then go back to revise and edit. And SERIOUSLY, don't worry about word-choice and sentence structure at this point. Make that be the farthest thing from your mind. Remember that it's the story that matters. Get the story out, and worry about the nit-picks later. Say, after you've done a draft or three. Or four.
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Marchpane, When I was having an awful time writing anything for Nanowrimo, I started a word war with myself. Could I write 1000 words in an hour? (or maybe it was two hours...I forget) Not only did I do it, but I found that the stuff towards the end was pretty great. And when it's bad it just makes the editing that much more fun. Melanie Thanks IB and shimqua--hopefully I'll get it to you soon.
Posts: 938 | Registered: May 2008
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Hey everyone, I'm still in California, waiting for my niece to be born (my sister's two days overdue). My schedule's a bit wacky; my brain keeps saying, "We're on vacation! We don't have to do anything!" I have been doing some writing.
Um, goals, yeah... I guess to get Ch.6 out to people. If any of our newer members would like to read from the start, let me know! I'd really appreciate it.
And anyone can send me stories to critique. I'm terribly slow on critiques (hi, satate and IB!) but I do get to them eventually.
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One chapter at a time IB, I would love to read more. your thirteen lines had me hooked.
Had a real interesting writing session today. Sara pointed out a question in chapter four, that she thought character A would ask to Character B. Now I didn't have Character A ask this question, because I knew Character B's answer, but thanks to Sara pointing it out I decided to change just a tiny little section of ch. 4. What surprised me was not character B's answer but was how character A reacted to his answer. It was awesome. I got such a better glimpse into her character, and the story is so much stronger in actual truth than it was before. Sadly, this change affects the ENTIRE REST OF THE STORY!! So thanks satate. umm. mostly.
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It's on it's way, Sheena. I don't have space to do separate files for every chapter. But you can read and critique as much as you want at a time.
And Sara, no worries. Anything that makes it better is worth a few hours, or weeks, of revisions to me. Just don't expect a new chapter anytime soon. I'm not going to send out for more critiques till I get this bug fixed.
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Well, I got 5 of my 8k written. Not bad, especially in light of the fact that I was sick for most of the week. I did also bang out a pretty good outline of the rest of the story though. That came to almost 1900 words. Plus I wrote on my blog for a 1k entry. Guess that just about 8k for the week. It just wasn't all for he prose of my story. lol. Ah well, next week.
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