Friday Update

Last Week's Goals
I ended up with 8,500 words in my outline, 5,100 for the first 25% that I will attempt to write this weekend. I don't have all of the scenes as detailed as I would like but I feel I have enough to start.

My goals for next week

• Write during my "writer's retreat"

Write. For this weekend that's it. :) Yesterday, the first day of my writer's retreat, I was able to write 4,600 words. My wife and I went to lunch for a couple hours so that took away from the "retreat," but I'm not complaining. :) I think I can handle a 5,000 count per day pace should I ever be able to do more full-time writing (as long as my outline is detailed enough). I just don't know how long I would be able to sustaining that sort of pace, however. That's a lot of words. I'll find out today if I can handle 5,000 words. With experience I hope to increase the quality of those words as well. Right now I'm just getting words to the page.

Now, most of the scenes I've written so far have "white room syndrome" because I do not have the world building details that I would like. After this weekend I may try and expand the details on a few scenes to see how the writing process goes when I have those extra details.

What did I learn this week?
One thing I learned so far during the first day of my writer's retreat is what details I would prefer to have in my outline before writing straight like I am doing this weekend. What I will do for future versions is detail the settings where characters are performing so that I can get more details in the first draft.

Another thing I learned yesterday is that I feel that I am a morning writer. Late last night I tried to get that 5,000 word count and it was extremely difficult for me to concentrate. Often I will work on the outline or book in the evening and have found that I do not get much done. I think I work better early in the day.

Friday Update

Last Week's Goals
Again, I am making good progress with my outline. Next week is my mini "writer's retreat" where I hope to sit down and write some of this book. I'm looking forward to that.

The brainstorm sessions have been good and just this morning I came up with a feature of the society that will help solve a problem I had with a scene I developed. Although this feature will solve one problem I had it adds some tension I did not have before between a couple characters, which is great.

I have one more critique I need to do that I was hoping to have already done so I really hope to get that done and returned tonight.

My goals for next week:

• Brainstorm sessions for outline
• Work on Project: Life outline
• Critiquing

This week I intend to increase the detail of the specific scenes I want to write over my five day weekend next week. My goal is to get enough scenes fully detailed so that all I have to do is sit and write as many scenes as I can get through. This is the first time I've put so much detail in an outline so we'll see how that goes. Currently the outline is at 7,300 words, 4,000 of which details the first 25% of the book. I still have some work to detail some of the scenes in that first 25%. It would be so nice if I could actually get that first section done over the next weekend. If I can detail it enough perhaps that is a possibility.

What did I learn this week?
Not much in this section this week but next week I will test this outline as I finally start writing scenes. I'm hoping that I will get the detail I need in this outline so I can just sit and have fun writing. We'll see.

Friday Update

Last Week's Goals
I did very well with my outline goals. Last night I started combining all of the notes I have compiled over the last month or more and put them into the outline. The story has grown quite a bit lately. The brainstorming has helped develop some extra subplots.

My goals for next week

• Brainstorm sessions for outline
• Work on Project: Life outline
• Critiquing

I will continue combining all of my notes into the single outline because those notes are thrown all over the place. I need to get them all centralized. At the end of March I'm using up the last of my vacation days (use it or lose it) so I will have a five day weekend. I'm hoping to have a good solid idea of the first quarter of my novel in this outline because I want to use this long weekend to start writing that part of this novel.

This week I will continue with the critiques as I get the new material. Hopefully my comments will be helpful.

What did I learn this week?
The thing I learned this week is that I need to take things more slowly. As always I get too eager and push forward too fast. In this case, I kept "jumping steps" in this new process I am trying. Because of this I got frustrated that I was not making progress. Well, the last couple days I went back and did these steps slower and got much better results. Sometimes I think I am just too eager to get back to the writing. At least that's what I found this week.

Friday Update

Last Week's Goals
I had some good brainstorming sessions for my outline last week. I'm still trying to get a good focus on a process for developing story ideas but I feel that I'm making progress at least.

My goals for next week:

• Brainstorm sessions for outline
• Work on Project: Life outline
• Critiquing
  

I'm keeping the same primary goals from last week. However, I do need to find the discipline to work on those items more frequently during the week. Much of my excuse lately has been the Olympics. I've often gotten distracted in the evening watching TV. The Olympics are over soon so hopefully that will be one less distraction, maybe.

I will also help critique a fellow writer. This will be good for me also because we all need practice at editing so that we can better analyze our own work, difficult as it may be to turn off our emotions regarding our own work.

What did I learn this week?
Just keep writing. What I *need* to learn is discipline. This will be the hardest aspect for me. :(

Don't Rush Things

One thing I'm learning--and re-learning--is to not rush my writing. So often I do the bare minimum of planning and outlining because I would rather be writing the story. Perhaps I'm more of an organic writer than I would like to admit. However, whenever I do stop my outlining short I find that the scenes I write are not as compelling as I feel they could be. I end up taking short cuts only to get the scene written. When I take the time to slow down both my scene planning and scene writing I find that those sections have more depth than when I give in and rush to writing.

I hope that as I continue writing I can better pace myself so that I can get better scenes written. It is something I need to learn. I also feel that subconsciously I'm focused more on getting published rather than telling stories. That will be a difficult thought to break I think.

A Series of Short Stories

I recently read somewhere that a novel can be viewed as a series of short stories. I think that I heard this before, but it did not have the impact on me then as it has now. Thinking of a novel in this way has some benefits (for me perhaps).

First, thinking of a novel this way may allows me to work on one piece of the work at a time. Since I am someone who likes structure that can be quite useful. I can then concentrate on one short story at a time and truly get a feel for the events that take place within that portion of the novel.

Second, this may help me because there would always be an explicit story arc to grab the reader's interest. Each of these mini story arcs can help a story move along. In addition, breaking a novel in this way could help me focus better on creating tension on every page.

How many short stories a novel can be broken down into depends upon how the novel is organized. Using a three act structure presents several options.

• 2 short stories (acts 1 and 3) and a novella (act 2)
• 4 short stories (one for acts 1 and 3; two for act 2)
• 8 flash fiction stories (two for acts 1 and three; four for act 2)

Although these "short stories" would not be true short stories by definition of word count it shows the general concept I'm trying to portray. The first two options can be useful for novels that need a slower pace (e.g. epic fantasy). The final option could be useful for faster paced novels (e.g. thrillers). My current novel may be fit better with the first two options I think.

I am still experimenting on how to structure and plan my writing. Every day I read advice on blogs and workshops on how other writers are able to write successful novels and stories. Some of this advice has helped me whereas some just does not work for me. I am finishing up the first act of my current novel in progress so I may look at this break down as an option for my next act.

Chapter Outlining

My goal is to write a chapter each week. Last week I wrote two chapters but those were new and had fewer scenes than normal. Since I had not outlined them I struggled to get the scenes written. I had to plan the scenes out as I wrote. No way I could survive as an organic writer.

So, yesterday I outlined the scenes I planned for my next chapter. Previously I had at most a sentence or two describing the scenes. Now I have full paragraphs for all but one of the scenes. In addition, I developed another important scene to add to the chapter.

Friday is the one day of the week I can work as late as I want since I don't have to get up early the next day. I will now use Fridays to plan out the scenes for the upcoming chapter. I hope that this will speed up the actual writing since much of the information will be planned out ahead of time. I think this will also help me speed up my initial outlining phase since I would not need to write out as much detail for early drafts of the outline.