• What were your goals last week and did you accomplish them?
• Describe what you worked on.
• Set goals for next week.
• Did you learn something during this week?

Here is a list of things that you can do each week as we work on our novels (suggestions welcomed).

• Writing on a novel
• Characterization
• World Building
• Relevant research

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Last Week's Goals

I got very little done at all last week. I'm falling into that slump again. The only thing I did was do some organizing of my outline, which did not give me any new content. I suppose that means I got nothing done, but at least I was working with my novel.

My goals for next week:

• Improve scene details
• Write detailed scenes

Again, same thing as always. Detail a few scenes and write them during my lunch hour.

What did I learn this week?

Again, just keep moving.

Mainstream novel: I cranked out over a thousand new words!

"Agents of the Fourth Wind" (SF): I regrettably didn’t touch this story at all this past week.

UPCOMING WEEK
"Metzgerhund Empire" (YA): Complete the last few scenes of the last chapter, and rewrite the agent query letter.

Mainstream novel: Figure out where I left off, and get back to writing.

"Agents of the Fourth Wind" (SF): Continue my technical research.

BLOGGATHAH
No new postings this past week. I blame the start of the NHL season.

NOTES
Short story overview: My efforts to complete five short story-ish projects is going well. Two are already out the door. One should be finished (first draft) tonight or Saturday night. But, after I finish this current story, I’m going to shift gears and complete my young adult novel rewrites instead.

If you’re interested, check out the details of all my writing exploits on my site.

DREAMER'S ROSE: Let this one rest while I contemplate what almost amounts to a rewrite.
Easy goal.

THE SHAMAN'S CURSE: Let it rest for a while longer. When I've finished the revisions on its sequel, I'll take another look at it.
Another easy goal.

THE IGNORED PROPHECY: Time to start thinking about getting back to this.
Well, I thought about it. I haven't done it, yet, but I did think about it.

BLOOD WILL TELL: Send two new queries out.
No. Got a little side tracked by the request for partial and immediate rejection.

MAGE STORM: Start working on the synopsis. *sigh*
I started. It stinks, but I started.

SEVEN STARS: Complete the world building and outline.
Outline, yes, world building, no. There's still a huge gap about one character's abilities that I need to figure out. I did write a draft of the first chapter to start getting into the MC's head.

First thirteen here.

OTHER:
Update my blog twice a week.
Make some revisions to a short story.

Yes to both.

Next Week's Goals:

DREAMER'S ROSE:
Let this one rest while I contemplate what almost amounts to a rewrite.

THE SHAMAN'S CURSE:
Let it rest for a while longer. When I've finished the revisions on its sequel, I'll take another look at it.

THE IGNORED PROPHECY:
Time to start thinking about getting back to this.

BLOOD WILL TELL:
I may take a shore hiatus with this one and pick up a couple of new readers, at least of the first part. It's possible that I've been marketing this one wrong. I've thought of it as adult, maybe sort of "new adult". But I've been told that my voice, so far as it's been established, is more YA. Maybe I need to take a fresh look at this story in that light. Make a few revisions, and try again.

MAGE STORM:
Get back to work on the synopsis. *sigh*

SEVEN STARS:
Complete the world building.

OTHER:
Update my blog twice a week.
Pull the short story version of "Mage Storm" from Bull Spec after 4 and a half months. Make a few revisions and send it somewhere else.

SANDFISHING - Well, in the last three days I've added about 2000 words. I'm still figuring out the dynamic between the MC and her newly acquired sidekick. I should have Chapter Two finished before the weekend is up, maybe by the end of tonight.

The one thing I've figured out is that this is going rather serious. I need to find a way to work in some humor.

I'm stuck in a little bit of a dilemma about the holocaust story that I've been outlining chapters for. I'm torn between following the story to it's real end, or if I want to make a more hopeful story, and change what was the real inevitable outcome.

Since there is nothing specific about the photograph of the girl at the fence. Just a lot of documentation of what I know really happened isn't it within my poetic license to imagine that maybe this one girl escaped the inevitable or would I be betraying truth if I stretched out that far?

From all the research. The timing of when the photo had to be taken is at least two years before the lodz getto would be liquidated. I followed what, when, how, and everything that would occur and the timeline in which it would happen. It is well documented who the few survivors of chelmno were, so I know it is next to impossible for her to have survived, and yet I can't help but think of her at that fence trying to imagine how she was going to survive her death. (Weird, I just had a deja vu while writing this, as if I had already written what I'm now writing.)

Since the character will be fictitious since I have no real info about the actual girl. Is it wrong for me not to look for some rare crack that maybe, just maybe, she escaped from.

I can't outline my final chapters till I make this decision, and I'm really stuck 50/50.

Strangely all the research into both the Burning Times/The Malleus Maleficarum for my story 'The burning' and the Holocaust for 'Girl on the fence' killed my appetite for my story - The Seeds of Persephone - about the old gods warring across the modern world - now it feels ironically to dark for me. All this study of real evil has left me wanting to spend a little more mental time in the sun. So for now 'Seed's' is on the back burner. Whatever I decide to write next I want it to be a little more hopeful and a brighter kind of story.

W.

My next task is to rewrite Bellia's Journey. This was my NANOWRIMO effort from last year. The length is okay (105K+ words) but I'm going to turn it into a YA novel with a female MC. I think I'll be able to keep focused on this one.

quote:

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I'm stuck in a little bit of a dilemma about the holocaust story that I've been outlining chapters for. I'm torn between following the story to it's real end, or if I want to make a more hopeful story, and change what was the real inevitable outcome.

Since there is nothing specific about the photograph of the girl at the fence. Just a lot of documentation of what I know really happened isn't it within my poetic license to imagine that maybe this one girl escaped the inevitable or would I be betraying truth if I stretched out that far?

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My first thought was that since she is fictional you can do whatever you want, including leaving it open as to whether she survived or not.

But at the same time, since everyone is documented, maybe not in this case. Or is there a way for her to be moved somewhere along the line? Or to be missed in the counting, seems like there would have been a lot of confusion during that time. I think I have read historical fiction that changed little things, like an extra person present at some event. So changing something in history is not unheard of, usually it is explained though.

quote:

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But at the same time, since everyone is documented, maybe not in this case. Or is there a way for her to be moved somewhere along the line? Or to be missed in the counting, seems like there would have been a lot of confusion during that time.

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Unfortunately the Nazi's did a real good job about illuminating the people from the lodz ghetto at the chelmno death camp. There are a total of four documented survivors, even the 48 workers were killed that helped remove and bury or burn bodies. The picture I'm basing my story on is of a girl at a chain link fence about to be deported to the camp, and photographer named Mendel Grossman took a bunch of these secret photos within the lodz ghetto, he died before the its liberation. Later his friend went back and recovered the negatives from the secret places they were hidden. The picture is taken by mendel from the safe side of the fence, she is on the deportation side. It's her look in that picture that has inspired me to write her story. There is zero info on her, but putting time lines together of the events happening from survivor testimony, and record of what life was like within the getto is well documented, her features and her attire have given me a lot of insight into what her life was like until her most certain death. If mendel took her picture she was not part of of the last people of the ghetto to be sent to Auschwitz who survived to tell of life in the ghetto because mendel was already dead by then. I spend a lot of time asking myself why mendel took the picture. He thought with a photographic eye that somehow their was something important being conveyed within the picture. She somehow knows she's doomed even though most people thought they were going to the work camps. Mendel grossman's life is well documented so he may play a part in the novel because he may have known her. In a way he saved her, because without the picture no one ever now would have known she existed.