Skip to main content

2022 Q1 Goal Check-in

The past three months have been both incredibly busy in the day job, and also relatively slow. After the hectic holidays, it has been so lovely to stay at home. 

In January I finished the first draft of The Seaming, and revised the opening to The Wedding Crown. I spent the second half of January re-outlining The Seaming, and then from February through March I worked on the second draft of The Seaming. As much as I wanted to focus on cleaning up the story, writing felt like it was either a feast, or a famine. Either I wrote nothing all week, or eked out a meager 200 words a day (for most of February), or I wrote 5,000 words a day, unable to stop thinking about the story (the last week of March).

At the beginning of March, I attended the Futurescapes fantasy writers conference with most of my writing group. While the conference wasn't the most organized event I've ever attended, I made a lot of really great new friends and got a lot of good feedback on The Seaming, so I found the event overall worthwhile. 

One goal that I missed was the zero-draft something in February. Even when I could barely bring myself to look at the computer screen, I wanted to be working on The Seaming, not on anything new. Now that Draft #2 is finished, I'm taking a break from it to give my brain something new. I also barely did any writing out of the house, and didn't do a single craft exercise either. 

Which leads me in to my Q2 goals: For the month of April, instead of working on a long-standing project, I'm going to begin each day with a random writing prompt. I've entered a handful of small scene ideas or pockets of inspiration into an excel sheet, along with all the craft books I own and a fanfic style prompt generator. Each morning I'm going to randomly pull a prompt or writing exercise, and try to have a scene finished by the end of the day. The hope is that by the end of the month, I'll have spawned a few story ideas or characters that might be worth exploring farther, and given myself plenty of opportunities to write with joy. Once freed from lists and schedules, I hope to write for the sake of creating. 

After April is done, I'd like to spend May and June drafting...something. Either to riff one of April's scenes into a longer zero-draft, or doing a third pass on The Seaming. Maybe both! I'm leaving it open. 

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

The baby steps do matter

Last week I posted about finishing my first draft of Beekeeper. Over 79 days, I wrote 57,00 words.  What I didn't say was that drafting Beekeeper was the first time in nearly a year where I was drafting something completely new. I'd spent so long revising Predacide that even last year's full draft was largely cobbled together from old scenes, with a handful of new ones scattered in; and unlike in years past I hadn't managed to draft my August short-story.  And surprising no one, writing is hard.  When I first started drafting in January, it felt like pulling teeth to write 100 words. I'd push myself to write 100, then 200, and wonder at how I ever managed a whole month of Nano sessions.  And as much as I hate to say it, every day it got a little easier. Each morning I wrote a little bit more than I did the day before. There were some stops and starts, of course. We went to Vegas to see the Killers, and then certain executive orders began sending shockwaves through m...
Post a Comment
Read more