4 posts tagged “2008 goals”

My progress on A.C. and Phoenix has been slower than I would like it to be.  Granted, a lot of that was the physical problems that literally slowed me down and forced me to bed.  Without a laptop, doing any kind of writing was particularly hard.  With my iron levels as low as they were, it isn't any surprise that all I wanted to do was sleep.  So, I'm not kicking myself at being so far behind on either book, but I am disappointed in general.  I was hoping to be finalizing v6 of A.C. by now and getting it off the beta readers.  Instead, I'm still floundering my way through v4/5.  And I had hoped to be working on v3 revisions of Phoenix by now, but I don't even have a rough draft done.  Like I said, it couldn't be helped—being sick for 8 months took a lot of wind out of my sails, so to speak.

So the first thing I've done to help myself out is to readjust my goals for the two books for this year.  I'd like to just get the v4/5 version done for A.C.  And a rough draft for Phoenix would be nice, though I suspect that might be pushing it a bit.  I may have to be content with just getting the building draft done plus a whole lot of world building.

Which brings up a point quite briefly: just because you're writing in the same world doesn't mean no more world building.  In this case I need a whole bunch of different locations developed and I'm in a different time period than A.C.  So, yea, a lot more world building on my end.  The good news is that most of the basics are pretty set: magic, the gods, and so on, giving me a ready foundation for what I need to do for the other book.

Anyway, the second thing I'm doing to help get me going is to sign up for some challenges through my writing group.  Now, admittedly, I do this every time they hold a challenge, but I decided to join into this one a bit differently than in the past: I've focused my challenge choices so they apply to these two novels, especially A.C.  Now I do have a critique challenge in there, but the other two are novel revisions and world building specifically.  Neither has a high goal at the moment, but I will push them higher if I can.  I won't know if I can until I'm close to completing the ones I have: revise 7 chapters in 8 weeks and do 24k in world building.  I had to resist adding other goals that could derail me by giving me too much to do—I need to keep my focus on the two novels at hand and what I need to finish for them.

The one down side is that I've cut my weekly word count goal for Phoenix itself, the reason being that I need the world building before I can go too much further into developing the book itself.  That's part of what the building draft is all about: pulling together the information you need for descriptions and whatnot and putting all of it in the where it's needed.  When you get to the rough draft stage later, it's just a matter of working the details in that you need where you need them and spreading them out a bit.

Trust me, it works, for me anyway.

My weekly and daily goals are now adjusted a little to make the challenge goals the priority.  I'm actually not too worried about the world building stuff.  Between the two books, if I can't come up with 24k, then I'm just being lazy. REALLY lazy.  But the revisions do worry me.  I'm in the last 11 chapters, yes, but I'm also in the chapters that are going to require the most change.  Some are going to see drastic cuts.  Others are just plain going to have to be rewritten.  I suspect in the end I'll have 8 or 9 chapters instead of 11, but the chapter a week thing just may not happen with the amount of work that needs to be done to get there.  But I guess that's kind of what challenges are all about:  you reach for something you're not quite sure you can make and hope you actually do get there.  If they were all easy, it wouldn't be a challenge, right?

Phoenix Rising has been sent off to a writing buddy for a plot check.  The notes draft isn't quite done—it needs some actual notes—but the story itself is.  Politics play a big part in this novel and I needed someone who likes that kind of thing to make sure they work. Last thing I want is to get to the point where I'm posting it for crits with my writers workshop and find out that the politics really don't work so the whole thing has to be stripped back to a point where I can fix them—probably back to the outline.  I would have sent it off at the narrative draft stage, but there isn't really enough in that stage to see this kind of thing.  It can help with general plotting, help makes sure the subplots are fairly woven in, stuff like that, but it's not so great at something like this because there's just not enough of it to see how well it works.

While my buddy checks it, I'll be adding notes and starting some character profiles and the like.  I'll also be continuing with A.C. revisions.  The current chapter has gone slower than the previous few, but it also was written out of order and about...7? years ago—and hasn't been touched since being written.  It was originally going to be, get this, chapter 10.  I should finish it by the end of this upcoming week.

Regardless, it's been a wonderfully productive weekend so far.  Tomorrow (erm, later today), I'll work on notes for the notes draft and probably chapter 4 of NPB.  I need 13k/week to make my word count goal for the year.  With a little pushing, I think I can actually make it this week.  We'll see about next week.

Both in life and with my writing.  Life right now is a bunch of annoying, but necessary doctor appointments.  Taking care of a recurring female related problem and finally getting back on my heart medication.  Just can't love being winded all the time.  Kids are out of school, though youngest will be going to summer school in June.  Husband is working.  Things aren't better than they were before, but they aren't worse, so this is good.

I'm on ch. 23 of Assassin's Choice and almost 34k in on Phoenix Rising.  Plus I picked up my Novel Plot Building book again and just started chapter 4.  I'm actually sailing through A.C. at the moment.  I'm still behind but managing a chapter a week (both v4 and v5 revisions), sometimes going into a second chapter.  It looks like I'll finish 2 months after my self-imposed deadline, than I'll need to make the v6 revisions I have planned.  Most of those shouldn't be too hard though—the big ones involve some character/race changes, but even they aren't that big.  I expect the book to go out to beta readers by the end of the year.  I'll take a break and early next year start thinking about the query letter, outline, and synopsis.  NOT looking forward to that, actually.  :P

The night owl schedule is definitely a big part of the productivity.  When I do finally get out of bed, I'm usually quite ready to get to work rather than needing time to wake up and figure out my day.  At night, I use my most creative part of my cycle to make progress in my revisions, which seems to be really helpful in keeping me going despite being at the most difficult part of the novel.

I've given up on shorts for the time being, maybe permanently.  Shorts are a hard length for me, the market hunting frustrating and exhausting, and the pay not worth the time put into the process.  Granted, I don't write to make a living...yet, but, at the same time, I'm not writing to put more money into trying to get published than I get out of it.  I have a few credits, some of them in some pretty decent zines.  For now, I'm content on that front and just want to focus on the books, which I'm more comfortable with anyway.  It may be awhile before I get published again, but I'm okay with that.

We had a wonderful holiday, but I'm glad it's over.  My oldest daughter and her family came down on Christmas Eve and spent a few days with is, middle daughter was over for the day with her boyfriend (who left right after we ate), and the kids father was out for about a week or so.  The gift pile was just scary, even taking into account there were a lot of people doing the giving and a couple of extra people receiving.  Not much writing done in December at all--just too busy.  The kids went back to school on January 3, and I've spent most of this last week trying to catch up on a few things.  But now it's time to get back into the groove...or to find a groove to get back into.  ;)

My first priority is A.C., which I want done and out to beta readers by November.  It's a late date, but I have the current v4/v5 combined revision I'm doing to finish, then some major changes for one of the characters to make in a v6 revision.  I'm keeping a to do list for v6 as I work through v4/v5.  Most of it is nit picky things, but I'm changing the race of a character (dropping the previous race completely out of the Alden world) and that will require some larger changes.  I suspect beta readers will find places where I missed things.  ;)

I'm also working on Phoenix Rising.  The notes draft is going pretty well, but is minus notes and I suspect has some redundancy.  I'll finish it, print it, make notations of what needs to be fixed, and revise the notes draft before moving on to the building draft.  I need to work on world building for it (and A.C. as well).  I've also got Stolen Priest out for me to look at, but it's a pretty low priority for me right now.

Nine shorts are in various stages of being worked on: "A Single Parent In A Married Relationship" (essay), "Blood Whispers" (Vampire), "The Reckoning" (SF), "Gift of Writing" (Supernatural), "Magda" (??), "Iris" (SF), "Rebuilding After Rejection" (Article; being updated), "Promises" (Vampire), and "Fairy Dragon" (brand new Fantasy).  Most of these are in various stages of being revised, although "Fairy Dragon" is so new the rough isn't finished.  Several are a couple of years old, which is my problem with shorts--they aren't a priority for me.  They'll eventually get done; I'm just not one to impose deadlines on them since they tend to get pushed aside more frequently for other things.

The only other project to worry about is fixing Alden.nu.  I tried to give it a start this morning, but there's a problem with the MT install, so I have to wait until the fella who handles the server gets back online to fix it for me.  Alden.nu will take awhile to get back together anyway--most of the areas that have problems have to be restored page by page.  That's a lot of pages to have to get back online.

Goals for 2008:
» 450,000 words
» Finish A.C. and get it out to whole book readers
» Finish Phoenix rough draft and revisions to v3
» at least 1 professional publication (no, I never learn)
» finish "Letters", "Single Parent", and "Blood Whispers"
» write 6 new shorts
» read 1 book a month

The only thing I'm worried about on that list is the 6 new shorts, but the rest should be quite manageable. :)