So, I said I was going to be working on those exercises on integral setting, right? Yeah. Well, I started to. I did the first exercise (I chose ancient Athens, incidentally) and found it really interesting - I think Merrilee's post really got some important points through for me. And then yesterday I started on the second, and it looked promising - I decided to do it for the novel I'm currently revising, since it's so fresh in my head. But I didn't get very far. I was going to continue with it this morning, but... well. Somehow I ended up in plotting mode for the second book in the series, and this is what I ended up with:

Essentially, I suppose they're mainly character sheets, with notes on the issues they're all facing and some of the most important things they'll have to do. I had been planning to do some collaging this week, but at the moment I don't have access to a particularly good printer so I haven't been able to do that yet (although I have found a few interesting pictures that I'll be using). But this may well have been the more productive option. I don't yet have my inciting incident, but I do have a good idea of my character goals and motivations (which is very rare for me at this stage) as well as some of the key events plotted out. I know where they're starting from, I know where they're going, and I know some of the places they need to visit along the way.

It was probably the most exhilirating plotting session I've ever had - I was buzzing long before I sat down with my pencil and paper. I learnt some things about the bad guys I hadn't realised before, and I realised that one of the relationships I loved so much in the first book isn't going to survive this one. There were a couple of things I came across that I am going to have to feed back in as I go through and do my (hopefully) final revision on the first book, but that's all to the good - nothing major, more foreshadowing than anything, but important all the same.

I'm excited about this book. I have no intention of starting to actually write it any time soon though - I'll get a more linear plan in place, and then I'll put it away. My current plan is to finish this revision and send it out, and then start working on the revisions for last year's NaNoWriMo book. It takes place in a completely different world, and it's one which I'm itching to get back to. That way, if things go really well, I have a plan for book two of the world of Amulet ready to go; if they don't, I have a whole other book and concept that I can bring up to scratch and start sending out. It does mean that I'm not going to be able to start work on a new book just yet, but I guess this is the year of extensive revisions, and that's okay. Last year I finished one first draft and then a week later jumped straight into the next, so it's only to be expected! If I can get Bonded revised by November, then maybe I'll get to work on another first draft for NaNoWriMo - but that's still some way off, and I don't want to rush anything.

Creativity Workshop Week Seven: Coming Up
This week, though, I need to get back into the workshop. Firstly, that means getting the second exercise on setting done and dusted - I have a feeling it will be useful to have that done before I jump back into the third draft. I think I'm going to put the third exercise aside for now and come back to it for the third block of the workshop, which is going to be about setting.

The block which I'm now in, although a week late, is about relationships. I'm really hoping my plotting frenzy continues tomorrow so I can get some solid ideas, but we'll see! I originally planned to explore four kinds of relationship, but with only three weeks that's a little more difficult, so I'm cutting out the housemates story. This week, I want to try the mother and son relationship - it seems appropriate, since we're spending time with both my parents and my in-laws over the course of this week! I think this is going to be a challenge for me, since, for obvious reasons, I have never been a son, and have yet to be a mother. But it will no doubt be interesting. All I know about the story so far is that it's set in a small town. Tomorrow, hopefully, I will learn a bit more about it.

I've been longing to get an Alphasmart for months. For the last few weeks, I've been watching Ebay like a hawk, and generally losing out at the last minute to sniper bidders. This week, however, I got lucky, and won myself a lovely Alphasmart Dana.

It's already proven invaluable, as my new part time job involves an hour on the bus each way, and I also have an hour once I arrive before I actually start work. So the day after it arrived, I managed 1800 words before I started work. It was a great start to the day!

It was particularly good since I've lost a bit of my lead over the last couple of weeks - I've managed to stay ahead of the minimum NaNoWriMo word count, but there were a few days where I got very few if any words. I'm at 48K now, so overall I'm still pleased with my progress, but life did get a little annoying for a while.

I finally managed to get to a NaNoWriMo meet this week as well, which was great - it's so rare that I get to spend any time physically in the company of other writers that it was a real treat. (All my online writer friends are truly fabulous and I honestly don't think I'd have got nearly this far with my writing without the wonderful community at Will Write For Wine, but there's a special kind of energy that comes from actually being in the same room.) Even better, the group is planning to continue meeting after NaNo finishes, so I may finally have found a writing group.

I also had a rejection this week on my short story, but it was a personal one and said that there was some nice writing in there, so it was actually quite uplifting.

The WIP itself seems to be going okay - I think it would have benefited from a little more planning, but since the idea came together about three days before the start of November there wasn't much time for that. It will need some pretty heavy editing I think, but the story seems pretty strong.

Tomorrow, I have a three hour car journey, and a date with Dana. So if I don't hit 50K tonight, I very much hope to do so tomorrow.

So, that's my fortnight covered. What about yours?

Current word count:

48105 / 50000 words. 96% done!

The writing continues to go well on my NaNo book, despite a couple of stumbling blocks this week. For the first time I'm finding it useful to leave little notes to myself about scenes and passages I need to add in later, which is allowing me to keep going even when I feel I can't quite write the next scene yet. For example, one of the scenes I need is where my MCs are brought up to date on the battle they're going to have to join, but since I haven't quite figured out the details yet I thought I'd leave it for now. So I wrote a few lines in square brackets about the things I need to cover, and just doing that helped me get a better feel for the scene. Usually, when I get to a scene I don't feel ready to write, I go off and do something different and hope the words come next time I sit down at the laptop.

I'm finding my notebook really useful for keeping track of things, especially names of some of the less important characters. There's one name though that I keep forgetting to put in, and since I can't be bothered to scroll up to check what I actually called her I've given her a new name, which will likely become permanent since by the time I get round to checking I'll have used the new one more than the old. Ah well, such is life.

I was aiming to hit 30K by Friday, and I just managed it, scraping in at around 22:30 that night. It feels pretty good to be ahead of the game - minimum word count for yesterday would have been 22K.

My goal for this week is 43K. It would have been 45K, but since I've just got an additional job over the Christmas period I've decided not to push it quite that much. However, if all goes to plan, I'll be getting an Alphasmart this week, which will make the one hour commute perfect writing time.

Current word count:

33367 / 50000 words. 67% done!

My goal for this week was to hit 10K. I did it - and this morning I hit 15K, which means I'm three days ahead of the minimum word count and averaging 2.5K a day. This is great, especially as I'm unlikely to be writing much this weekend so needed that extra buffer really.

For next week, my goal is 30K. That means I really need to keep this momentum going after the weekend. Minimum word count by next Friday (according to official NaNoWriMo recommendations, that is) is 21,671, so if I meet my goal I'll be well ahead.

The last two years I've found hitting 1667 words a day a bit of a struggle, but this year I'm finding it much easier. I think the key is that I've been writing so much more this year. I'm lucky in that I do tend to write quite quickly - inevitably this means there will be that much more editing to do, but that's okay. I'm just hoping this streak continues, because I'm loving every minute.

Last week I mentioned my collage and soundtrack. I've been listening to the soundtrack regularly, although only when I'm about to write - usually in the morning while I'm having breakfast. I've also put a version of my collage into my project notebook, which is fantastic - each place and person has a page in the book with pictures, where I can jot down anything I need to remember. This is already proving invaluable as I try to keep track of everything going on. Anyway, the fabulous Pamela Cayne asked to see my collage. The structure surprised me, as the last collage I did was more just a collection of images. This one has a timeline running through it of all the places involved in the story - starting top left, running to bottom right - pictures for all the key characters, and images for some of the themes as well. It's different, but I like it. Here it is - click on the image to see a larger version.



Current word count:

15394 / 50000 words. 31% done!

I'm a day late posting, but I seem to be a day behind on all my goals this week.
Finish ficlet
Story plotting using How to Think Sideways methods
Collage I did finish the ficlet way back at the beginning of the week. The collage however was put off until today (and first I had to figure out how to transfer the last one from where it was beautifully blu-tacked to the whiteboard to a sheet of paper I could actually keep it on). I did spend a couple of hours mid-week finding pictures, but it wasn't until today that I actually compiled them.

There were two reasons for the delay, and these also explain why I've failed to complete the plotting modules. As you may remember, last week I'd decided that I was going to write a completely non-magical story this time around. Well... that sort of fizzled out. As soon as I tried to take it a step further than concepts and actually work out a story, I realised I didn't care enough to write it. So instead I'm writing a fantasy story that's been hiding in the depths of my imagination for a few years - I finally feel it might be the time to write it. So today I found names for the four key characters, and then I put together a collage.

It's now 21:45. I have two hours and fifteen minutes until NaNoWriMo starts. I really want to get some key plot points outlined on paper before I go to bed - I have a very rough idea in my head, but I want more so that when tomorrow morning rolls around I can get on and write. So... that's tonight's goal. As for my week's goals - well, they're pretty straightforward, given the month.
Hit 10K in NaNo story
Blog post I am choosing to ignore the fact that I'm going to be away from home for the next ten days. Must be optimistic...

Current word count:

0 / 50000 words. 0% done!

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!

Last week I set myself these goals:
Fit in five writing sessions Submit short story to another magazine Start on the next lesson in How to Think Sideways Blog post I've had mixed results. My writing has been going great, and I definitely exceeded the five writing sessions goal, but I'll come back to that. As far as submitting the short story goes, I deliberately haven't, as I'm not really sure where I should send it. It's a 750 word one-shot, probably classified as urban fantasy (or at least something along those lines), but I'm not sure there's that much to it. So I think I need to reassess that one. I haven't started on the next lesson in Think Sideways because I've been spending most of my spare time actually writing, since I'm so deep in the story. And as for the blog post - voíla.

But it's the writing that's the interesting part. After last week's post, where I said that "I need to remember that evenings are available too", I decided that I was going to see what I could do with that. But rather than just doing so when I skipped my morning writing session, I thought I'd try for both. The results were pretty surprising.

I've found this before, and in so many ways it seems entirely obvious, but the more I write, the easier the words flow. I get completely into the story, so that when I come back to the page a few hours later it's still fresh in my head. This is why the rule "write every day" is so important for me - if I don't, I lose track of where I am, and it can take me a whole scene to get back into the story properly. I know there are some writers who work differently, but I'm learning that this is the most important rule for me. And writing twice every day places me even more solidly into the story, and lets me remember how much I love it.

I actually lost track of my number of writing sessions, but my total for the week is about 16K - by far the most I've written in one week since last year's NaNoWriMo. It might actually be my most productive writing week ever, which is a fairly staggering thought, because it's just seemed so easy. There's got to be a stumbling block just around the corner, but for now, I want to keep up this momentum and keep writing. At this rate, the first draft of this story could be done before this year's NaNo starts - and although I haven't got a clue what I'd write if I were to take part, I'm pretty sure I'd have to give it a go. Provided of course I don't run into total burnout, which is probably very likely.

All in all, though, an excellent week, making it a bit more difficult to set next week's goals. I don't want to lose momentum, but I'm not keen on setting daily word count goals, and it isn't practical to aim for two sessions daily, even if it is the best case scenario. Still, I need something to write on my whiteboard, so this week's goals are as follows:
Fit in seven writing sessions Reassess short story and see what can be done with it Start on new ficlet Blog post Current word count:

62587 / 80000 words. 78% done!