• 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'm still working on the basic brainstorming for this new book while my wife ... slowly ... reads Project: Life. I didn't make much progress on the outline / plot because I keep getting hung up on a point in the plot where I force progress. I call this Plot Pushing. In this case, I have a character do something that force the story to move forward but the action makes no sense and is only useful to push the plot. I need to evaluate that section and make it more logical and believable before going forward.

My goals for next week:

• Brainstorm New Book Idea(s)

Basically, continue brainstorming the plot threads and see where they take me.

What did I learn this week?

I found some video recordings of Brandon Sanderson talking about "Description and View Point" and "Plotting" on YouTube from last years JordonCON. Good stuff, so I will say I learned something this week. Still processing all of that though.

On the Shelf:
THE SHAMAN'S CURSE
THE IGNORED PROPHECY

DREAMER'S ROSE: Nothing for this month.
Such an easy goal.

MAGE STORM: Work on the query.
Well, I looked at it and I've thought about it some, but I haven't made a single change, yet.

SEVEN STARS: Let it rest.
Another easy goal.

BLOOD WILL TELL: Keep working through the revisions. Get through Chapter.
Yep. I'm in the middle of Chapter 31 right now.

OTHER:
Update my blog twice a week.
I also have a couple of short stories I need to work on a little and get back out there.
Yes to the blog, no to the stories.

Next Week's Goals:

On the Shelf:
THE SHAMAN'S CURSE
THE IGNORED PROPHECY

Keep jotting down ideas of how these two might be changed.

DREAMER'S ROSE:
Nothing for this month.

MAGE STORM:
Work on the query. Really.

SEVEN STARS:
I hope to be starting the second draft by the end of the week.

BLOOD WILL TELL:
Keep working through the revisions. Get through to the end.

Anyways,

[bold]Last goals:[/bold]
Evangeline: Write 15 pages of new stuff. Not so much because I switched gears after more conclusive reviews to focus on amping up New Arbor Day's first 80 pages. But I did develop a couple of future points in my outline that helped tie some events up.

New Arbor Day: Edit 45 pages of stuff. Started over on the 'amping process', very depressing because I've just been so frustrated on how to make the opening hook. I think I've got the form of a pretty good hook now, but I'm going to have to wholesale slaughter words because I end up taking too many chapters on one act. Sadly though, I think one of the problems is the lack of connection to the characters so I may end up replacing those parts with more character development so the word count might not drop so much.
Hard part for me is that usually when I try to show a character to get to know them, my reviews say nothing is going on. If I narrate from their head, it comes out as "telling." So I'm having trouble balancing that, it seems like it has to be about motivation because that's the one thing you cannot show. You can't simply flashback to show the origin of every behavior and if you did it would be even longer before you got into the "now."

[bold]New Goals[/bold]:

Evangeline: Write as a target of opportunity, visit every day to keep it fresh, but no focused writing.

THE NULL PROPHET: Let it rest, and continue with exchange.
Yes

MINDWALKER: 1,000 words/day, 10,000 words for the week.
I did better than last week, but still didn't quite hit my goal. I got to 1,000 words 4 days, 6,952 total.

Next Week:

THE NULL PROPHET: Let it rest, and continue with exchange.

Baby decided he's going to start getting up at 6:30 again every morning and work is still mad... Leaving me little windows at night when I'm toast.

Anyway - trying...

Axe

Last week's Goals
Didn't really make out a specific goal, I just wanted to write something.

This week's goals
Write at least a 600 words a day to build the habit again. I'll be putting a lot of my time in Chrysalis. I'll still be focusing on Journey to the Lost Universe

very rough Synopsis of Chrysalis
Fantasy 75k words (also a side story of Journey to the Lost Universe)

Today is the annual Festival of the Hunt in Elecorn Village and Baldur and Deeken are competing in a hunting contest. They're hunting a hell boar that was recently spotted near the village. When they kill the hell boar, they take it's tusks to the village chief and win the contest. However what was a seemingly harmless hunt eventually turned into a disaster. An army of demonic, near immortal creatures called Shadow Goblins somehow used the hellboar to track down the "sane minded". They slaughter everyone in the village but Baldur and Deeken, they barely made it out. I don't know much else than that, story wise.

I hadn't read the whole novel in many months, so it actually was a bit of a narcissistic treat. I'm pretty happy to leave it be now.

[Except for two copyright permission letters I need write, and the need to reformat the whole thing back to standard agent/US editor manuscript submission guidelines].

I may even decide to chance querying agents.

For the rest of my vacation week, though, I want to finish a short story, maybe two!

As for my goals from my last post, I did precious little toward finishing the draft of the 2nd half of the "Briar's Day" chapter for Hudson Valley School. I did work quite a lot on the motivations and methods of my villains. I'm not sure how much more I'll need to play with this before I'll feel solid enough with it. (The idea for the novel started with a cast of characters. I started building world & plot around that and came to realize that the conflict I'd created was pretty weak as drama. So, I've spent quite a bit of time on re-creating and developing the antagonists. The other characters have built a lot, as well, while I'm doing this, but I'm still not quite where I need to be with malevolent crew.

So, my goal for next week is... uh... try to nail it down.

I'm having a good time reading about what you all doing. I'm glad to be here.

I see that some of you have really young children (or in utero...). Axe, I commend you for finding time & energy to write, truly. I feel like such a wuss for thinking it's hard with elementary school aged children!

--Ostara

In "Storm Born" I finally figured out a way to get my MC away from the werewolf he was fighting. He's about to figure out where the bad guy is going to call up the demi-god and that Now is the time. That will start the last chapter. I had some reason for him to figure out that this was the last Lightning Storm but than forgot it, so I'm going have to just go with what I have.

I'm further away from the end in "New Mage On The Block" but still starting to close in on it. I would like one more chapter before NA fights the bad guy. Probably be a short one.ÊI may wait 'till that chapter for her to figure out she is under a Trick.