• 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

One thing I have found with the outlining technique I'm using is that it can be difficult to set goals. This may be because I am new to it so I'm not certain of the best way to use it.

I am making progress on my outline and that's important. For those who are familiar with this technique, I think a good way to set goals with it is to take one of the main story arcs (motivation, means, opportunity) and concentrate on that arc from the end all the way back to the beginning before moving on to another story arc.

I have two more point of view characters that require outlining. Completing one story arc for these characters at a time may be a good way of splitting that technique into goals.

My goals for next week:

• Character #2 Story Arcs Outlining
• Critiques
• Refine PoV character Story Arcs

This week I will work on at least two of the story arcs for another point of view character (motivation and means). I know that I need to refine the story arcs for the main character because I do not have much detail on the scenes in that character's story arcs. However, they do give me a good number of scenes to make the book ending plausible.

I have at least one Hatrack critique to do soon. I have not forgotten about it but have been busy with other things the last couple days. I hope to get that done this weekend.

What did I learn this week?

Using this outlining technique for the last couple weeks has showed me that goal setting can be difficult. Without goals it is hard to make progress. This week I will try breaking this technique into the separate story arcs and see if using those as goals will help me speed up the progress on this outline.

Last Week's Goals:

Dreamer's Rose: Continue to let it rest and (hopefully) ferment.
This is a really easy goal to meet.

The Shaman's Curse: Send out three more queries. Make the revisions to the synopsis.
Nope.
The stats still stand at 21 queries sent, 17 rejections.

The Ignored Prophecy: Start making the revisions.
Again, No.

Blood Will Tell: Finish the first draft.
I did write all the way through to The End. But then I went back and started weaving in a subplot that had occurred to me as I wrote. I've got three or four more scenes to work in and then I'm going to close the file and let it rest a bit before taking another look at it. It's about 65000 words now and may make it almost to 70000 by the time I finish this draft. But there's a lot of detail and probably some more scenes (show, don't tell) that I'll have to add in the revision.

Other: Flash contest.
I'm probably not going to do this. I did get a story idea from the contest. Thank you, Skadder. But it's just not ripe, yet. And, since I have a lot more trouble actually trying to write a short story, let alone a flash, I just need to take my time with it. Later.

Next Week's Goals:

Dreamer's Rose:
Continue to let it ferment. When it's ready and I know how to fix whatever's wrong with where I was going, it'll tell me. It's not like I don't have anything else to work on.

The Shaman's Curse:
I finished Browne and King's SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS this week. It had been sitting on my shelf and I just hadn't gotten to it. Well, there's a lot of stuff in there and no better way to make sure I learn it than to apply it. So, as soon as I finish Blood Will Tell, I'm going to start going through The Shaman's Curse--and for some things, the query and synopsis, too--chapter by chapter with the checklists. I think this one is pretty good, now. But that doesn't mean it couldn't be even better.

The Ignored Prophecy:
Seriously, get to work on those revisions. After I finish going through The Shaman's Curse, I'll probably do the same to this one.

Blood Will Tell:
Finish the first draft and let it rest. I like this story. It's been a lot of fun to write.

I would like to have some people lay their eyes on this thing and let me know if there are massive holes or if the characters are totally unlikeable.

I am more than willing to participate in reading what others have done in return.

Since I haven't done much for novel review, I don't know what is appropriate and what isn't.

Comments?

That would be great. Email yours to me. I wrote this scene by scene so as it presently stands the novel has no chapters. I'll have the scenes organized this weekend. I have four main sections and about 120 scenes to organize.

- Owasm

To my complete surprise, I actually finished last week's goal, which was to turn 150 pages of garbage into a short subplot of my novel. It now stands at about 40 pages, and I actually like it. I'm ready to move on to editing the next few chapters, which are in MUCH better shape. I'm still not sure how well these 2 plots are interweaving, and I'm not sure I'll know until it's finished.

So, my next lofty goal is to: finish the editing up until the scene where Arram says good-bye to his sister, which I believe is the next spot that requires major revision. It's about 100 pages from where I am.

OR

I have been writing, well, since I learned how to. I have never not been writing. My biggest hurdle is to actually submit. Up until now I have never felt I had written anything worthy of being submitted.

I am supposed to be revising my novel, but I often ignore this all important goal of mine. It is 50000 words and expect it will a bit long when I am done, but that is about how long it will be.

The novel itself has been done for a while but is in need of revision to make the ends meet. When I originally wrote it I didn't know my characters and just has a very basic plot. So now I need to fix the inconsistencies.

I have also been dabbling in picture books. I submitted my picture book yesterday (just 200 words).

My goal: Work on my novel - revise first 20.

What I learned: Maybe next week.

quote:

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Partials (first three chapters or first 20 pages plus a synopsis) is another, comparatively painless way to critique a novel.

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Ack! Synopses again. They're monsters, I tell you. They want to eat up all of our writing time. And they can't be killed. We hates them, we hates them, we hates them forever!

1) 3K more on Mudlarks the novel - check! Actually pulled off another 10K before I realized that I needed to step back and decide where I was going with all the cool ideas I was throwing into my plot. Did a lot more research and need to fix a few minor things before they become major problems later on.

2) work on synopsis level prose outline of what I want to do with KS - um, no. But I did sit down with the draft last night and start working on revisions of the originally novelette, so at least I got something done there.

3) figure out if I've got anything for WotF this quarter or not - realized I needed to ditch the trunk stories I was playing around with and do something entirely new. Threw together a complete outline and first 4K of an idea that is actually short story length (instead of a novel in disguise). Yippee!

In completely unplanned progress - I understand now why I got stuck on TSB and have been avoiding it entirely the past few weeks (errr, months?). I really do need multiple viewpoint characters - possibly only 2, possibly more by allowing others to have an occasional chapter. So I just need to decide which of my two brothers should be the 2nd major VP character. Or if they're going to alternate.

I also visited a tall-grass prairie and have a new appreciation for what I have my TSB characters supposedly riding their horses through...

Goals next week:

1) Work out at least one of the Mudlarks revisions I've noted down and write out the storm scene before I lose it.

2) Continue revisions on TKS material; outline is on hold

3) Bang out the rest of a rough draft of the short story

For RITN, I managed to write little: a short character interview, three pages summarizing the plot from the POV of two characters, and less than a page of something meant as story draft.

Next Week’s Goals
Rewrite the opening of RITN chapter 7. The weeks dividing chapter 6 and chapter 7 contain scenes that are important for relationship development. I need to write those scenes.

I hope to do better next week.

So far, I like my results.

I also finally know what the wood surface of my desk looks like.

With this new 'project' underway, I will go back to my regular goal-setting:

Mainstream novel: Write at least 4K more words.

SF novel: finish the physics book I'm currently reading, and begin further researching the topics that I plan to use in the novel.