Skip to main content

Spring Writing Update

Can you believe that we're already halfway through April? I'm going to blink and it'll be July, I can tell. The last few months in writing-land have marched along. I'm making progress, but am not quite where I want to be. 

The writing-related goals that I set in January were to have a beta-ready draft of The Wedding Crown done by the end of March (so I could submit to revpit), to have one zero-draft done by this time, work on focusing my time on craft instead of deadlines, and set up a dedicated writing desk. 

I'm on track with my zero-drafts (wrote a 10,600 short in January), and my brain is whirring with an idea for the upcoming drafting week in May. And my writing desk is up and running--someday I'll share pictures of it. 

In hindsight, goal#1 and goal #3 are a little bit at odds with each other. 

I ended up spending all of the Winter Writing Festival (January 15-February 28) getting to the end of draft 3 of The Wedding Crown (81,440 words). About halfway through the draft I realized I wanted to completely change the pacing, and started writing from the end up, which left me with a stack of revision notes for the first half of the book. 

Knowing that I had a lot to revise, I set a new goal of April 15th to finish draft 4, and dove into one of my writing friend's methods for analyzing plot. I spent a week writing each scene onto a notecard, and then the weekend analyzing each scene and making additional notes. At this point in my draft, my character arc is pretty strong, so I was mostly adding in details on side-character arcs. The story is really starting to get exciting, and as I dove into draft 4 it felt like it was taking shape. I've been getting consistently positive feedback from my critique group, and the end seemed in reach...

And then I hit the end of quarter 1, and suddenly I just Could Not Write. I spent a week floundering and trying to push past the scene where I was stuck, but my heart wasn't in it. I decided to hit pause and waved April 15th goodbye. I spent a day wallowing, and then a week writing out my scene-by-scene synopsis. This is where I realized that I had a problem of stakes. I sent the synopsis out to a couple writing friends, and they helped to point out additional areas where the stakes were lacking, and where twists came out of nowhere. I did some more tweaking, and then on April 15th dove back into drafting with the new slightly tweaked but much stronger outline. I'm calling this draft 4.1, since I never made it all the way through 4. 

Hopefully by the end of today I will be back to the end of quarter 1 and will be able to see the way forward!

With this round I'm trying another new method of tracking. For each scene, there are a set number of passes I need to do. I have 10 scenes (that I'm aware of right now) that I need to completely re-draft, and then I need to revise every scene for adherence to the outline (and world-building, stakes, character arcs, and foreshadowing). A third pass is to run everything through my passive-voice macro and do my version of line-edits. In total, there are 140 "things" to do. My goal is to complete 2 percent of the novel each day from now until the end of May--or 3 "things" (either drafting, revising, or editing). I can choose what I do day-to-day based on what mister brain is in the mood for, without holding myself too rigidly to word count. We'll see in June if this method leaves me with a stronger draft, or if I'm just wasting time playing in excel instead of writing!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for your comments!

Popular posts from this blog

Reading as a Writer: Children of Time

A coworker challenged me to read Children of Time as part of our 2-person sci-fi book club. My heart sank when I opened the cover to read the first line: I'd tried to read this book before as an audiobook on a road trip with my husband the year before. He adored this book and was excited to share it with me, and I couldn't get through a half-chapter without falling asleep.  But, since I'd committed to reading it before realizing which book it was, I sat down to finally read it. And just like my husband suggested, I flew through it. Of course, it did take three mediums to read this--I read the first third in the physical book, then switched to audio book on another road trip, then finished it on e-book during an unexpected train delay. Separate from the experience of reading the book, I felt very lucky to have access to so many different library resources to get me through the finish line! I probably would not have picked this book up if not for the joint cajoling of my hus...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fall writing update - 2

When I last wrote in September I was working on a zero draft of the Wedding Crown, getting my Monster Girls ready for Pitchwars, and trying to find any sort of enthusiasm for my Brigadoon re-write.  I ended up giving up on Brigadoon. At least for now, the story just wasn't sitting well with me. Maybe I tried to push too many drafts too soon. Instead, I focused on the Monster Girls. I did one full pass of the manuscript, cleaning up the emotional details, making sure the tone was as consistent as I could get it. I felt pretty good about it going into the Pitchwars submission.  Then I spent a weekend hard-core workshopping the first chapter and query with my writing group. And the effort was worth it! I ended up getting one request for a partial, which I was thrilled by. That was my goal this year--if I could get at least a request, I would be happy. That ended up being as far as I went--and for good reason. After the extensive workshopping, I re-read my next few chapters before...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reading as a Writer: Hungerstone

I read Kat Dunn's Hungerstone because I had to. I'd exhausted all the other books in my library stack, and half of them were overdue, too. Those I read without joy, as a way to distract myself through a family health crisis. It barely worked. Everything I read for a month left me listless.  So when I picked up Hungerstone, I expected more of the same. I was mistaken! I loved this book. It was exactly what I needed to pull me firmly out of reality and into the mad world of Nethershaw. It was violent without being gory, emotional without tripping any of my sensitive wires. And the voice was excellent. By the middle of this book I was debating whether I should give first person a try too on my next novel.  While reading circumstances weren't great, I really enjoyed this book and will read more of this author. 
Post a Comment
Read more