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Welcome to this week's Novel Support Group (NSG). Anyone can join. If you're new, tell us a bit about who you are and what project you are working on. Feel free to update the NSG Work in Progress thread with your current projects. Although we can report on any number of things, here is a list of suggestions (suggestions welcomed).
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
Still have no writing goals for now. However, I have continued the reading. I finished, finally, The Way of Kings. Very long but I felt it was well done. My wife liked it as well and she is not a fan of long fantasy.
My programming project continues but I have been thinking of writing ideas more the last couple days. It's good to keep the writing in mind a bit so that when I'm done with this project I hope the transition back to writing will be easier.
My goals for next week:
Read
Just continue reading for fun. I'm seeking the next book now.
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Hi! I'm Ana and I'm working a fantasy novel. It's called "Practice Fantasy Novel." I'm trying to finish it by the end of the summer, because then I'll have to go back to the University of Chicago where I'm (sorta) majoring in English.
Last Week's Stuff
My goal last week was to get my confidence back. I got pretty upset rereading what I'd written, but I know that if I don't at least finish the draft I'll be discouraged. I did accomplish that goal and I am now writing regularly again! I learned about this website this week, which (I hope) will help me stay productive. I also learned that I've got some narrative issues in my story, because I'm writing the whole thing in third person with an omniscient narrator who adapts the voice of a random character in each section. Decently sure it's confusing, but I'll post that somewhere else (fragment section? new to the navigation of the site). I had a spirited debate about the politics in my made up world which REALLY helped me. I defended both sides and realized some contradictions in my plot. I also finished Firefly Island by Daniel Arenson which was pretty awesome, and it was inspiring to see his success. I read an article about how "the Help" was rejected 60 times and that made me feel better too. Listed like this it seems like a lot, but this one one of my least productive weeks. I wrote something like 2,000 words.
Next week:
I'm hoping to write 20-40,000 words, so 3-6,000 a day. I'm also hoping to not get distracted.
quote:I got pretty upset rereading what I'd written, but I know that if I don't at least finish the draft I'll be discouraged.
Don't let that discourage you. And if it does, don't reread what you've written.
The first draft is supposed to be bad. That's why you have all the rounds of revisions to fix it.
Of course, we all strive to make our first drafts a bit better with each story we tell. Somehow, that never seems to reduce the number of revisions required, though.
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Slight change of plans this week, as I spent about half of it going back over some previous scenes and improving characterization. However, I did still manage to revise 6 of the 7 scenes I planned on, and spent awhile thinking about how the last scene should go (looks like it'll be a complete rewrite).
Next week, I'd love to finish revising the last 8 scenes. I've also got at least one unresolved plot issue that I'm going to go back and fix as soon as I figure out which way to go.
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