I sat down the other day with my lovely new diary and a notebook and tried to plan out my writing year. I started out with the list of goals I posted in October, and added and amended a few. These are my goals in a nutshell:

JANUARY - Edits
First and foremost, I need to finish typing up my line edits and get them sent out to a couple of beta readers. I was aiming for the 13th of January, but given that I'm now working most of next week I've moved that up - I want to get this done over the weekend. I'm averaging about 30 pages an hour and have about 270 pages to go, so I guess at that rate I'm going to need nine or ten hours... I'm hoping that I've remembered correctly and that there's less red pen on the later pages in the manuscript! And I have serious incentive on this one - I have a 10% discount for the Festival of Writing if I book before the 15th, and unless I get this done, I'm not letting myself go. At all.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY - First Draft
I need to finish the first draft of my NaNoWriMo novel. I've been working on this intermittently since the end of NaNo, mainly on my Alphasmart on the way to work. My solid deadline is the end of February, but ideally I want it done before then. I was aiming for the end of January, but I don't think that's very realistic since I'm at 58K and probably not going to be able to stick to NaNo pace - certainly not until the edits are done. We'll see.

MARCH/APRIL/MAY - Edits
After that, I want to start editing the novel I started for NaNo 2009, The Bonded. I'm looking forward to that. Needs a lot of work, but I'm hoping three months will be enough to get the bulk of that done.

JUNE/JULY/AUGUST - Short Stories
I'd been considering getting another novel draft in here, but then I thought about it and realised that I really don't want that many unedited manuscripts sitting around at once! So I'd like to spend a couple of months working on short stories, partly to give myself a break from the edits and partly because it's a form I'm still not very familiar with. I think I'll go back and work through some of the stuff in Merrilee's Creativity Workshop that I didn't get round to, and revisit the stories I did manage to write. I'd like to get five short stories ready for submission by the time September rolls around.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER - Edits
After that, it'll be back to edits, aiming to get the line edits done for The Bonded.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER - First Draft
NaNoWriMo - the only time of year I seem to be able to sustain a decent writing pace for more than a couple of days, so it will be time to work on something new!

These, of course, are only the bits that I think I'll be able to control. Once I've got feedback from my betas, fixing any problems with Amulet will become the priority again. When that's done, I think it will finally be ready to face the world. So somewhere in all of that, I'll hopefully start querying agents.

The skeleton outline of the year is all very well, but my biggest goal is to make writing a priority. The funny thing is that it already is in many ways - but it's all too easy to let it fall aside from time to time, and that's what I want to avoid. I'm aiming for at least two hours of writing/editing on 'easy' days, i.e. those days when I'm not at work or particularly busy, and 30 minutes a day on busier days. Two hours is a lot, but I think I can do it. Some days, at least. ;)

So far, 2011 is looking like it'll be rather busy!

I like revising, as a general rule. I like the feeling that I'm making something better out of what's already there, and that I have the power to reshape it into what I actually want it to be. But, as you may have gathered if you've been following my blog lately, this particular revision is proving rather arduous. I'm plodding through the woods of the Beyond at a pace I'm finding very frustrating, and although I know that I am still making progress it doesn't really feel like it. On the plus side, it's helping me empathise just a little with Cayden, who is finding his companion's walking pace equally irritating.

One of the really useful things I took away from my one-to-ones at the Festival of Writing was the need to make my world more real to the reader - the characters are solid and grounded, but although I know how the world feels in my head I don't seem to have communicated it very well in the opening chapter. This weekend I managed to get in some extra (unplanned) research and took a whole lot of photos, mainly of trees, which is already really helping to make sure I actually get in some of that subtle show-don't-tell description that I'm missing as I work through the revisions.

I'm now up to 30K of revised/rewritten scenes, but having just realised that adding another point of view will really help the story I suspect I'm probably more like 35-40K into the novel now. My immediate dilemma is whether to go back and write in those additional scenes now, before going further, or instead to power on through with where I'm up to and add the additional PoV in on the next round. I want to go back, I think, especially since the new PoV character's story verges with my protagonist's again fairly soon, but I'm worried that if I do I'll just make this wall harder to break.

I'm pretty sure that I can break through this wall soon - from this point on in the book, the plot's already fairly solid, whereas this first third has been full of new scenes and complete rewrites. I've almost forgotten what it's like to simply edit a scene on a printed manuscript rather than writing it from scratch. Not that I mind new scenes - it keeps the process fresh and interesting and means that the creative side of me isn't entirely submerged under the wave of editing. The critical part tells it what to write with much more certainty than it ever displays in a first draft, but it's still the creative side that gets to actually pour out the words.

But right now, I want that critical part to be able to take over, because I really want to power through the rest of this draft now. Another really huge thing I took away from the Festival was that I need to be thinking about series, and I now can't stop - the second and third Amulet books are starting to plan themselves in the back of my mind, and I'm trying really hard not to give in and scribble them down, because I never ever come back to a scribbled note and actually find the joy in it that I felt when I wrote it. I need to wait until I can actually pay the ideas the attention they deserve, and then I'll be fired up because I haven't done anything with them yet and I'll be able to sketch lovely outlines and do some collaging and generally explore the potential for new stories to be told.

But not yet. First, I have a second draft to finish. And then I need to go through the whole manuscript in its new form and do line edits. I'm setting myself a deadline - by the 31st May I want to have this draft done. That gives me over a month to do it. My not-so-secret hope is that I'll manage to get the line edits done as well, but that's not my goal, since looking at how long it's taken me to get this far I'm already challenging myself enough. I'll keep you updated if I have something interesting to say about the process. If not, I'll just keep on updating that word count bar on the left hand side of the page, and that'll tell you all you need to know.

Either way, 31st May, here I come..

I'm now home from the Festival of Writing at York, and boy, was that an incredible weekend. Utterly exhausting and by Sunday night I was feeling completely drained, but so worth it. Absolutely invaluable.

Workshops

Over the weekend I went to six different workshops. Some of them were more practical than others, some of them weren't quite what I was expecting, but they were all very interesting. Literary agent John Jarrold's workshop on the market for SF and fantasy was very useful and illuminating (despite having to miss the first twenty-five minutes for one of my one-to-ones), and I came away with a much better understanding of that aspect of the industry. Author Veronica Henry's talk on multiple protagonists was very entertaining, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for her books in future! More than that, though, it was full of practical advice and gave me a great set of questions to work through on the train home which really helped me understand my character arcs. The other highlight for me was The Business of Publishing, which was run by literary agent Clare Alexander and two of her authors, Emma Darwin and Fiona Shaw. The workshop gave a really fantastic overview of the relationship between an agent and an author, and how that relationship might be different from one author to another.

One-to-Ones

As a whole, I think the one-to-ones were a great success - I certainly got a lot out of mine. I got some very helpful feedback on what's good about my writing and what probably needs work - my voice seems pretty good, my characters seem nicely grounded, my plot and the details of the world need some work. That's all great to hear. I also discovered that I've been working to the wrong rules - I think my problem is that I've been following too many American agent and author blogs, and it seems that things are a little different in the UK fantasy market. This feels like a really great thing for me - it turns out that my word counts should be much longer, and that selling standalone fantasy novels is actually very rare. This gives me new territory to explore - I can make my plots much more complex, and I can stop thinking that everything needs to be tied up perfectly at the end. I can write trilogies! I'm really excited about this, and for me the weekend was probably worth it just for those two ten-minute meetings alone.

Unfortunately I'm not sure everyone could say the same - I was surpriseed to hear that some submissions weren't read by the agents/book doctors before the meetings. I think in the majority of cases this was due to postal problems (although I have to say I would have thought that if there was a chance paper submissions hadn't arrived they should have been emailed through). I don't think there were too many of these overall, and I know lot of the agents and book doctors really did go out of their way to make sure the writers got as much as they could out of the session. One agent sent out feedback before the Festival even started, and then devoted their ten minute sessions to making sure the writers could ask anything they wanted; another who couldn't make it in the end will be holding phone consultations with those writers who had been hoping to meet him. It sounds like some of those agents and book doctors who did have problems getting the material beforehand are making arrangements to deliver feedback in some other way, but I'm not sure if that's true for everyone. I hope it is - for me, the chance to get professional feedback on my work was crucial to my decision to attend the Festival, and I'm sure that's the case for other people as well.

Keynote Speeches
The opening speech was given by the extremely lovely Katie Fforde, and it was entertaining, amusing and helpful. Katie gave a list of ten top tips to guarantee publication, and it was a great way to kick-start the workshops. Later in the day there was a fascinating panel with publisher Barry Cunningham (of JK Rowling fame) and agent Simon Trewin, which gave some really interesting insights into the industry. The final keynote speech was given by RJ Ellory, who encouraged everyone to keep on writing with a well-blended mix of his own words and some great writing quotes.

Catering & Accommodation
Huge thumbs up to York Conferences, who provided a superb selection of food throughout the weekend, from the get-up-and-go breakfasts to buffet lunches, the beautifully presented Gala Dinner and the numerous crucial tea and coffee breaks. The accommodation was clean and tidy - it was unmistakeably university accommodation, but more than adequate and very comfortable.

The Rest Of It
I met some wonderful people over the weekend, from the moment I got on the bus from the railway station right through to the bus back, and there's no doubt that they played a huge part in how inspired I felt as I came away. I've never been surrounded by so many writers before - and not just writers, but writers who are genuinely and completely passionate about what they're doing. It was a real thrill to be able to wander around and literally ask just about anyone, "What do you write?" And if by some chance they did turn out not to be a writer, they were almost certainly an agent or an editor. I'm slightly worried I'll be asking that to random people I meet for a while now!

As well as the workshops, there was also the Speed Networking (fun, but hectic, and difficult to really make any proper acquaintances when there was less than five minutes to get round eight people), Authonomy Live (really interesting, with some great entries, but went on a little longer than I would have liked) and the Literary Death Match (which I'm sure was wonderful, but I only managed to sit through three entries, since my eyes were drooping before it even started - not helped, I think, by the wine). The best time to actually meet people though was at meals - a different table, a different group. I met some great people at dinner on Friday and Saturday, and because we were sitting together for a decent stretch of time we were actually able to talk properly. A lot of people seem to be on The Word Cloud, which I've now joined - Facebook for writers, apparently. It looks good. I like it.

All In All...
A fantastic weekend. Great people, great place, great work. Time to start saving for next year...

Well, here goes. I'm currently sitting on the train heading to York, going to my first ever writing conference, the Festival of Writing. I think I'll be fine when I get there, but at the moment I'm mainly trying not to think about it! I'm definitely excited, but I'm also pretty nervous. It's an amazing opportunity to meet some fantastic people in the UK writing world and get some helpful input, and I'll try to post some kind of report soon after I get back.

But that's all to come. For the next hour and a half, I'm just aiming to get some revising done. This revision is taking much longer than I'd hoped, for a number of reasons - my routines have been entirely shot to pieces lately, so time hasn't been on my side, but my process is also proving difficult.

For some reason, I'm finding that this time around - perhaps because the revisions and rewrites are just so extensive - I'm having to do a few scenes on paper and then type them up and slot them into place. Last time I was revising I did the whole thing on paper first - I marked up my existing scenes and wrote in new ones, but nothing got typed up until I'd worked through the whole manuscript. This new process is helpful, since it's giving me a much better grasp of how the whole thing fits together, but it does feel much slower and as if I'm stopping and starting a lot.

Still, I'm getting through it, although I'm itching to get this draft done so I can start playing with my new shiny plot idea. All I've let myself do is write down a couple of sentences on what the story's about, and I really just want to get on and start discovering the rest. (Ideally, I'd be doing the discovery along with the Lucy March/Lani Diane Rich workshop over at Storywonk, but unfortunately my budget needs time to recover from the Festival!)

Well, that's where I am. And since I'm now fifteen minutes further into my journey, my manuscript is now screaming for attention.

Have a great weekend!

ETA: All settled in now, have been to afternoon tea and already met lots of people, including (albeit briefly) bestselling novelist Katie Fforde. Will shortly be off to the literary speed networking event!

It has to be said - I never expected to be working to a non-self-imposed revision deadline before even attempting to get anything published. But because attending the Festival of Writing in York this April includes two meetings with agents/editors who have read through a first chapter and synopsis beforehand, I need to get those together. And I now only have three weeks left to do so.

I've been using the How to Revise Your Novel course by Holly Lisle so far, and it's been incredibly useful in highlighting problems I would almost certainly not have noticed without it, but I'm going to have to wing it a bit from this point on. I don't have enough time to put Amulet through the rest of the course, so it's time to take everything I've learned so far and start figuring out how best to use it to ensure that my first chapter is gripping and my synopsis is accurate.

There are a lot of changes that I know need to be made to strengthen the story. By necessity, I need to figure out all the intricacies of my new plot now, so that I can get my synopsis sorted. Then I need to get on with tidying up and rewriting that first scene, before working through the rest of the story. It's far from ideal and obviously if this were for a traditional query I'd be holding off on sending anything out until the story were as ready as I could make it, but under the circumstances... Well, I can't afford to miss out on the opportunity for professional feedback.

Today I've made some decent progress, writing out the scene by scene synopsis of the manuscript as it currently stands and then marking in broad strokes what needs to be kept and what needs to be cut. But there's a long way to go. So I'd better get started.