Last week's goals:
Fit in seven writing sessions Reassess short story and see what can be done with it Start on new ficlet Blog post Well, you can see the blog post for yourself; the ficlet was written this morning and tomorrow I'll check it over before posting it - it's a fanfic snippet for a Lord of the Rings forum I'm a member of.

As for the rest, well, I've yet to revisit the short story, but I'm fairly sure I won't be doing anything else with it. Maybe I'll post it here at some point, but it was just a short, fun little piece which I don't think will really find a place in a paying market. And I'm happy with that.

As for the writing sessions - I didn't quite get seven. I didn't write all weekend in fact, but then Monday came around and as I was capturing tapes to the editing PC for the day job I got a lot of writing done - over 10K in the end, which took me past the 70K mark and well towards the end. So on Tuesday, I finished the first draft. It came in a little short, but since I know there are things to be added earlier in the story I'm not too worried about that.

This means that technically, I've now completed two novels. I doubt I'll ever do anything with the first one - I started it nearly exactly a year ago, for NaNoWriMo 2008, but I've learned such a lot since then that I know it would need a complete rewrite to work. I definitely plan to revisit some of the ideas and maybe even one or two of the characters, but I hadn't really grasped the concept of actually telling a story when I first started it.

I'm feeling more positive about the second one. I'm putting it to rest for a while now - after all, NaNoWriMo is nearly here - but when I come back to it in a couple of months I think I can do something with it. I loved the concept and with a bit of TLC I'm sure I can make it work. Finishing it was a bit odd, because I'd been enjoying the writing so much that I felt rather bereft when it was done, so I'm looking forward to diving back in.

First though, I have a new story to write. This week will be dedicated to plotting (having written one book with plotting and one without, I now know which I prefer). This story is going to be very different to the previous two - as far as I can tell, there's nothing magical or paranormal about it. However, there will be a white horse.

So, this week's goals:
Finish ficlet Story plotting using How to Think Sideways methods Collage Final word count:

76358 / 76358 words. 100% done!

I have seven chapters left to edit. Fifty-four pages. And three days to do it if I want to reach my self-imposed deadline.

I've been averaging a chapter in the morning and a chapter in the evening, so in theory if I do one extra chapter in a session (and I know a couple of them are quite short) then I don't need to make any real extra time for it. Of course that doesn't allow for any additional scenes I might need to write in. So far I've added an extra ten or so - well, sort of. Some of them are really extensive rewrites rather than actual new scenes.

Anyway, one way or another I think I should be able to make it. It would be nice to be able to just say I'll take a morning, an afternoon, even a day and get it done, but unfortunately work is rather hectic at the moment so that's not really practical.

Once I'm done with this bit, of course, I'll have to figure out the best way to process the changes - I can't decide on the practicalities. On one hand, working in yWriter 5 is amazing - I love the way I can move scenes around and so on. On the other, though, I don't want to overwrite the original draft in that form, and it doesn't seem to come with a Save As button! If I were to work from an exported file, I'd have to do all the scrolling that comes with a long Word document, but I wouldn't be making any changes to the original. Decisions, decisions.

I decided a while ago that I wanted to try my hand at writing a short story, and with some considerable help from Thinking Sideways I've come up with an idea I really like. I've done some work on the idea and I think I have it pretty well mapped out, so before I start transferring all the edits I think I'm going to try and write that. It should mean that when I get back to it I'm a little more distanced again too, which will hopefully help.

As an extra bonus of the How To Think Sideways course (and yes, I know I'm linking to it a lot, but really, it's wonderful) I had the chance to submit up to 500 words to Holly Lisle for a new concept she's starting, the Writer Crash Test. Essentially, if she picks mine I'll get a free crit - but in video form, on the internet. If you visit the site you'll see that the first crit is up - and even if mine isn't used, I think it's going to prove to be quite a useful resource.

I'm currently on Lesson 7 of the course, which is to do with getting everything you need together before you start writing - pre-planning, if you will. It's not plotting, exactly, more getting particular ideas and conflicts in place. I'm just working through the theory at the moment but it will be interesting to apply it to both the short story and the novel idea I've had recently.

And I think that about wraps it up for now.

The past week has been fairly slow for edits, what with being away and Easter get togethers and so on. Still, I'm half-way through now, and although the really bad bit is still to come (that would be the bit before I completely changed the villian's story) I still think I can reach the end before the 1st May. I think there will still be some tidying up to do after that - mostly making sure that I've actually followed up on all the notes I've made during this process - but to my surprise I'm finding that there's less actual rewriting to do than I expected. I've only got about five A4 pages of completely new material, although of course that's on top of all the bits I've written directly onto the manuscript.

I had a bit of a breakthrough the other day when I finally got a handle on my single sentence blurb (thank you, Thinking Sideways course!), quickly followed by figuring out my theme. So my sentence is as follows, although I'm sure I'll rework it a few times:

With powers so great they scare even the Guild of Magic, a naive new witch is dragged into a struggle with the ambitious King of the Elves for control of magic itself...

And it turns out that my theme is all about how people deal with the pressure of expectations. I suddenly realised that this affects all of my four main characters in pretty significant ways, but I'd completely missed it until now.

So all in all, I'm feeling fairly positive about things at the moment. I am definitely thinking that this WIP may be veering to YA, but that's okay - my younger sister ought to be able to tell me if that is the case. She loved my sentence and kept trying to steal my manuscript when I went to visit this weekend, so at least I know she's willing to test drive it!

I haven't yet completed another Thinking Sideways lesson, but the next one is all about figuring out your market, so it should be fairly appropriate.

One last thing - a fabulous quote from Dennis Lehane printed in my Writers' News magazine last month:

"It's good not only to realise that you can't please all of the people all of the time, but that you don't want to. There's a certain type of reader that you don't ever want to write for. And that really helps."

I'm more than a quarter of the way through with my edits now and I think it's going quite well. I've scrapped a lot, but rather than being disheartened by that I'm finding it quite exciting. I can't remember where I heard this metaphor, nor indeed exactly what it was - but it's like I've got the rough wood or clay into a vague shape and I'm now smoothing out the bumps, chipping away the bits I don't need and adding the extra details. There are a lot of people who say they hate editing - but the process of refining this is proving rather enjoyable for me. Of course, I haven't got to the really bad bit yet. I've also got back into working on it morning and night, which is much better for me. It means it sort of tops and tails my day very nicely, and I get an extra chapter done each day. Although I'm letting myself off the evenings at weekends!

The only problem I'm considering at the moment is one particular scene. A couple of days ago I decided I should bring it forward, reworking it to fit in before one of the key moments. I was all set to do that this morning, and then I looked at the chapter and a half that would end up happening after it and realised that actually they're pretty key to making that scene happen. So now I'm sort of stuck. On one hand, I was convinced that putting the scene earlier would give a particular decision the extra kick I thought it was missing. On the other hand, this is going to mean a lot of rewriting - and so far, I haven't done more than a paragraph at a time of that since I started edits. (Which is probably why it seems so much easier than I expected.)

So really, I guess this is the bit where it gets difficult. Essentially I'm going to have to rewrite two, maybe three chapters, changing the location and various points which feed in and out of this particular scene. I think I'll have to condense them a bit, since I don't want to push this key moment any further back if possible, and then add some extra bits afterward to fill the void. This morning I almost convinced myself that I didn't need to, but thinking about it now... yes, I do need to. The practicalities are interesting - up til now I've been making my corrections, additions and deletions on the MS itself, and adding notes for clarification in the spiral bound notebook I bought for this very purpose. I think I'll need to use separate lined paper for this though - I don't want to start using the notebook differently as I've got a decent system in place that I'm happy with, and there's going to be too much to write it onto the MS itself.

Right, there's that decision made then. I'll let you know how I get on.

As for Thinking Sideways... ohhhh, I'm loving every minute. The last lesson I did was Lesson Five, which looks at how much you should develop your story idea before you start to write it - how much background information you need, how much worldbuilding you should do, etc. I got some great story development from it for my favourite of the three ideas I mentioned last week and I'm starting to get really excited about the story. It's all about looking for the extraordinary in your ideas and making it unique, and to my surprise I'm getting on really well with Holly's rather unconventional methods. So far, I wholeheartedly recommend the course.

I have started on my edits - and despite all my apprehension, I'm really enjoying it. I don't know if I'm doing it 'right' as such, but it feels pretty satisfying all the same.

To help me get an idea of a good process, I looked over on the NaNoEdMo site for some recommendations, and that was useful. But what really helped was Holly Lisle's article on How to Revise a Novel.

Pause for a serious *duh moment*. I just realised as I went to find the article that although that link is the article I've used so far (and has proved useful as such), it's actually not the one I was intending to use. I was planning to use the One-Pass Manuscript Revision. So, um, I'm going to go over that one tomorrow... I'll let you know how that turns out...

Anyway, with the How to Revise a Novel link, editing has been fairly simple so far. (Looking at the second one, though, I think things may be about to change slightly.) I'm finding that although there's a lot of stuff that needs changing, cutting out completely or bringing into line with the rest of the book, what I've got is actually okay stuff. This makes me both nervous and excited about how things will change as I get further into it - I thought the second half was probably a lot better than the first, and I'm a bit worried that perhaps I was wrong and actually the second half is dreadful!

I was expecting it to be harder to cut things out, if for no other reason than losing precious word count, but actually, there's something quite satisfying about it. I'm only five chapters in to the edit (and I will probably go over those again once I've worked through that article) but I feel like I'm really getting rid of the weeds. I am however very much aware that I will probably end up completely scrapping most of the first half of the book - so maybe I'm being unconsciously easy on myself?

As for the Thinking Sideways course - I'm very much enjoying that too. Repeating Lesson Three helped a bit, and after a week I had the three ideas I needed. Lesson Four was all about refining them, and so today I did that with two of them. It was very satisfying, really helping me to get a grasp of what the stories could actually be about. I tried with the third one as well, but it turned out to be a fairly terrible idea that I wouldn't have enjoyed working on at all, so I scrapped it instead. I think the last part of this lesson is about making good ideas great, and I hope to get on to that tomorrow.

My current goal is to finish the first round of edits by May 1st. I'll have to pick up my pace to do that as I'm averaging a chapter a day and I'm on Chapter 5 of about 50 - but I think I can manage that. I'm only writing in the morning at the moment, and if I get back into the habit of working at night too then that ought to solve the problem.

Also, I think I've finally settled on a name for my hero. Hurray!

I finished the first draft on the 8th March, coming in at 106K. Since then, I haven't written a word. Nor have I started editing.

When I wrote the last line, I was surprised to find that I actually knew it was the last line. For about half of the novel, I'd worried that I wouldn't know when I hit the end, and that I'd go on and on about nothing interesting until the whole point was lost. I was very pleased to find that wasn't the case. The last line couldn't have been anything else.

Since this was the first time I'd completed anything of this sort of length, I didn't know what to expect, and when I reached the end, I didn't know how to react. I was slightly stunned, slightly jubilant, and also slightly lost. I've been writing this since November 1st. Since the 26th January, I've even known what was going to happen. Suddenly this thing I'd been creating for over four months had a beginning and an end, and the initial writing was - well, over. It was exciting, but also bewildering.

I'd told myself I wanted to take a couple of weeks away from the MS (manuscript!) once I finished the first draft, partly just because I've heard so many people recommend that. But there's more to it than that. The fact is, I just don't know how to start on the edits.

I can do proof-reading. Thanks to Critters, I think I'm okay on short story critiques. And I can just about do reviews - at least, I try, at Pondering Around. But while editing seems to me like it must be a combination of those, actually sitting down with MY manuscript to start on it is an incredibly daunting task. Should I read it through once first, from beginning to end, without making any notes? Or should I plunge straight in with a red pen? And was the two weeks off really a mistake? It seems very distant now, but I guess that's a good thing.

Holly Lisle's How To Think Sideways course is going quite well for me. At least, it was. Lesson Two was all about getting to know your muse and what you really want to write, and I quite enjoyed that. Lesson Three is causing me more problems, since my muse is being rather contrary and not coming up with the ideas I need, but I think that was partly my own fault as I was rather caught up in Karen Miller's Godspeaker trilogy when I tried to 'call down lightning' as Holly calls it. I think being absorbed in someone else's story while trying to generate new ideas for yourself is possibly not the way to go. So tonight I intend to go over that lesson again, and we'll see how it goes.

Tomorrow, it's on to the editing. I think I may start by reading through some of the articles over at NaNoEdMo. I've given up all hope of reaching any decent editing count for March, but April, I hope, will be a better month for that. And I still have eight days to get as much in as I can.

Of course, the biggest problem I have is that I still haven't settled on a final name for my hero. But let's not dwell on the negative...

I hit 100K today and I am very definitely on the downhill slope now. I know exactly what has to happen from here on out - there may be a few tweaks as I go along, but I can see the path in front of me and it's both exciting and frustrating. Mainly, it's thrilling, because I know I can finish this now. But the fact that the end is in sight isn't actually making it any easier to reach. Every day I'll write a thousand words, maybe two, and although I've written a decent scene that had to be there the end doesn't actually feel any closer. I know I'm going to get there, and that's great, but I really just want to be there now. Knowing you will do something isn't the same as knowing you've done it.

Oh, yeah. I didn't finish by the end of February. Which means hitting 50 hours of editing for NaNoEdMo is fairly impossible. When I do get to the end, I'm going to put it down for a while - maybe a couple of weeks, possibly even longer. This story's been in my head since the beginning of November (although I was rather distracted for most of December) and I think I'm going to need to let it breathe for a while. I already know a lot of things that will need editing, and there are notes on most of my scenes for things to check and change - particularly for the second half. Although in fairness a lot of them are things that have changed halfway through, so the changes will actually be mostly for the first half! The second half though is full of brackets and sidenotes for me to make sure that names and descriptions match up.

I know I haven't finished this yet, but I've learned so much about how to approach writing a novel next time. The main thing is that while I am at heart a pantser*, life is actually far, far easier if you know where you're going. It's not necessarily faster, but I've found that since my plot revelations in January writing has been a lot less stressful. To my delight, I've also found that it doesn't ruin the excitement for me either, because I plotted in quite a general way - they need to get here, she needs to show up, there needs to be a confrontation, etc. That's meant that there's still plenty of room for inspiration to strike and for my elusive muse to take me off down some unexpected road.

There's still so much to learn, but I'm looking forward to that. I know that I've learned loads of tips and tricks as I've been writing this, mainly picked up from podcasts (e.g., Will Write For Wine, I Should Be Writing, The Secrets, The Writing Show), and I'm quite excited about reading back through the manuscript to see how my writing's developed over the last four months. I've also been following a lot of blogs relating to the publishing industry - writers, agents, editors. Some of my favourites are A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, Karen Miller, Editorial Ass, BookEnd Lit Agency and Erica Orloff. There are numerous others, but those just happen to be near the top of my RSS feeds right now!

I'm also just starting Holly Lisle's How To Think Sideways writing course. I'd been eyeing it up for a while, but then it got to the end of February and it was the last chance for new members to get the Charter member benefits, which included free access to a special forum when you graduate and various other bits, so I decided to take the plunge. I've followed through the first lesson, which is very much a mind-orientated one, and it's very interesting so far, looking at some of the mental barriers we can put up which stop us from achieving things. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the more practical exercises.

You know, I think I'm all blogged out. Time to settle down with one of those podcasts and my knitting I think. (Knitting, incidentally, is my most recent pastime. My mother taught me to knit, purl and rib at the weekend and somehow I am now in the process of making a jumper.)

Oh, and my current word count? So glad you asked. 100,963 words and counting down to the end.


* What's a pantser, you ask? The term comes from 'flying by the seat of your pants' and, in writing terms, refers to someone who doesn't plan. Someone who does plan is referred to as a plotter. There are of course many, many people who fall somewhere in between.

I missed posting last week, since I spent the whole of Friday curled up on the sofa with the worst headache I've had in ages. I can't remember why I missed the week before, but you have my apologies!

It's been an odd week - I've only managed to write on three days, but my overall word count for the week is higher than last week. I'm experimenting a little with the best methods to encourage myself to write more, and it turns out that aiming to write for a particular amount of time, rather than aiming for a particular word count, seems to work far better for me. There's something far less pressured about it, but somehow I end up producing more that way.

I'm still fairly pleased with the plot points I've planned out, but I'm happy to report that I've also managed to go 'off piste' a little and have found myself wandering through detours I didn't expect - namely a rather spooky forest. I love the excitement of that - while it's great knowing where I'm going, finding those secret passages is a thrill unlike anything else.

I'm not sure I'm on track to hit my goal at the moment - I have nine days to finish this first draft. I really hope I manage it, if only for the thrill of meeting a deadline. I suppose it wouldn't be the end of the world if I didn't, but that will mean that my next goal - to complete NaNoEdMo - will be made all the more difficult.

Current Status
Current Word Count: 83902
Sentence of the Week: There was no echo, the words falling dead in the air, and not even a murmur came back to me. I looked around carefully, through the trees that were no longer quite so close together but which seemed to go on forever, but he was nowhere in sight. Seconds before our hands had been clasped tightly together, but now he had disappeared and I was completely alone.
Best Moment of the Week: Writing 2K in one sitting. Delicious.
Worst Moment of the Week: Realising that I hadn't written for three days straight. Yuck.

This week's big moment was figuring out my plot. It means there will be a lot of editing to do, but frankly, I knew that anyway. The important thing is that I actually know what needs to happen. I haven't done a full line - I can't work like that - but the key points, including all the details of the face-to-face confrontation, are there. Which means I have things to work towards. And knowing that has left me free to consider other things I could put in, and allowed me to figure out how to deal with other, smaller problems without having to worry about the really major issues.

It's been an okay week words wise too, although not as good as I'd like. Tomorrow is the end of WinoWriMo, during which I've written around 20K. It's not quite up to NaNo standards, but it's pretty good considering there were about ten days in total where I didn't write a word. Some of those days, I plotted - not all of them, but since I actually started on the 5th I have managed to do something every day. That was my goal, so I guess I've done okay.

For February, my goal is to finish this. I don't know how many words that's going to take, but I know that it's approximately 15 days in my characters' timeline, most of which don't need to actually be shown. I feel like I'm about three quarters of the way there, maybe slightly more, which works quite nicely at 72K.

Current Status
Current Word Count: 72189
Sentence of the Week: As always, I disguised myself carefully, making the most of a spell I could actually use to my advantage. A lightening of the hair, lengthening of the eyelashes, and slight reductions around the waist always made me feel rather more self-confident as I walked through the city, and the addition of my pretty blue cloak completed the look to my satisfaction.
Best Moment of the Week: My plotting breakthrough. Utterly exhilirating.
Worst Moment of the Week: Last night when I realised that despite my plotting, I couldn't write properly when I was completely caught up in someone else's story.

For the last couple of days I've stuck with the getting-up-earlier plan, and it seems to be working. My daily average has gone up from 700 to 1100, and although that still doesn't quite feel like enough it seems to be working with the rather 'bitty' way this is progressing. I know there's a lot left to do, but I'm struggling a bit with seeing far enough ahead to just write for more than a few minutes without pausing to collect my thoughts. And it's really frustrating. I've made notes all over the place about things I'll need to go back and change later though, and every time I've done that it's helped clarify where I am, which is good.

My aim's to reach the end of this story before the end of February, so that I can have a couple of days off before jumping in to NaNoEdMo. After that... well, I'm not sure. I think I might let it sit for a while and work on one of the other ideas swirling around, but I'll see how I feel when I get to that point.

Current Status
Current word count: 66537
Sentence of the week: I couldn't see anything in the dark misty world of our minds, but I could almost feel the world we were passing over below us as we headed west. I could sense when we were above a large town, and when we passed a pack of wolves hiding sleepily in their den. Most vividly though, I sensed when we began to approach the Elves. - It's not that it's particularly well written - it's just that it really feels like fantasy, and I think that's something I've been struggling with a bit.

This week has been a bit slow really - I've had lots of work to do, although I have been extremely bad about putting most of it off (don't mention tax to me right now). But just knowing it's there makes me put other stuff off too, which means that I end up not getting round to writing until 10 or 1030 at night. Today I made a point of getting up earlier than normal, and got about 400 words written before I started work. In total, I've only managed about 3K since my last post.

More positively, though, I've also done scene summaries for everything so far, and gone through everything to make sure that I know what I need to tie up with the rest of the story. That does mean that I've also spotted a few fairly big problems with the story so far, but so far I'm resisting the urge to edit. I really want to get to the end of this one. (Partly because I haven't managed that yet, but also because I then really want to write the backstory for one of the other characters - her history is fascinating me and I am desperate to find out more about it, but at the moment it's not fitting in to the current story.)

So far today, it's a total of 765, which is about what I've managed the last couple of days. But since it's only 10, I have a bit longer to stretch out my writing time, and I think I'd better go make the most of that!

Current Status:
Current word count: 63980 (with a few more later tonight hopefully)
Favourite sentence this week: Finally her eyes wandered down to settle on the quivering ball of fur I was holding, and a soft smile crept over her face. Because in context, it says so much more than the words.
Best moment of the week: Realising that despite the feeling I've been having of not knowing where to go, I do actually have a lot of places left to visit in this story.
Worst moment of the week: Realising that the villain's destructive plan needs a LOT of work.

A year on, and I'm almost exactly where I was this time last year. Except this time last year was about when I ground to a halt. And this time my word count, only about 1K off what I was on when I just about gave up last year, is for a different story entirely. Thank goodness for NaNoWriMo kickstarting me again.

So I've been writing again since November, despite a lull in December due to crazy work hours, but I didn't want to start posting here again too soon for fear that the same thing would happen all over again. I made a total of ten posts before abandoning this place altogether. Fortunately the wonderful girls over at Will Write For Wine are keeping me honest now, so I am hopeful that maybe this year, I'll keep at it. By 'it' I mean the writing - but as long as I keep writing, maybe I'll manage to keep this updated too. I've also subscribed to a writing magazine at last, so at least once a month I'm getting a timely prod and reminder. I do now have a nifty new iPod, which means I can listen to relevant podcasts when actual writing isn't an option.

So, I'm wishing myself luck for the new year. Maybe I'll even call it a resolution.