I was a bit dubious about my ability to stick to my goals for the first few days of this challenge. I was doing what I usually do; staring at the screen of my computer all day but doing little (if any) actual writing. However, today it was like someone was standing behind me with a cattleprod. After bumbling my way through a mediocre scene or two, I suddenly got into a rhythm and managed to belt out almost a full chapter of my novella. So far this puts me ahead of schedule in terms of my goals, in which I was aiming to have one chapter completed every fortnight, to get part 1 of my novella done by the end of Round 1 of this challenge. This is actually a good thing, since I am planning on workshopping chapter 1 with my writing group on Saturday the 15th, which means I need to have it completed a week earlier anyway.
To provide myself (and anyone else who may be following my blog) with a more definitive look at my progress, I have decided to show a running word count tally, both for my novella as a whole and for each chapter (I often jump between chapters, because when I try to write things in order I fail miserably). Therefore, my first DASW tallyboard is as follows:
Prologue - 804 (complete)
Part 1
Chapter 1 - 3,117
Chapter 2 - 1,704
Chapter 3 - 173
Chapter 4 - 0
Part 2
Chapter 5 - 95
Chapter 6 - 933
Chapter 7 - 1,777
Chapter 8 - 1,991 (complete)
Part 3
Chapter 9 - 852
Chapter 10 - 0
Chapter 11 - 0
Chapter 12 - 1,097
Epilogue - 1,373
Total - 14,117
Also... As far as these check-ins go, I'm not sure if I'll do them regularly. Judging by the ROW80 blog it looks like people will be doing them every few days. As I sometimes have a few days where I don't make much progress, I'll probably only do one of these posts every week (unless I do happen to have a really productive run).
EDIT: On a side note, anyone have any opinions on keeping the lengths of chapters uniform throughout a novel? Some of my chapters are little more than a page or two, while others are looking like they'll hit at least 8 or 9 pages. I don't want to pad out the short chapters for the sake of it, nor do I want to cut important stuff from the longer ones. Just wondering if varying chapter lengths is the sort of thing anyone cares about, since I would have preferred them to be about the same (with my outline, however, it's not going to work out that way).
Well done on getting ahead of schedule. I love it when you get into it and the words flow. I'm still waiting for that to happen this round. ;)
ReplyDeleteI always find it hard going after being on a writing hiatus. Takes a few days to get back in the flow.
ReplyDeleteWow, you are in the writing groove! You go!
ReplyDeleteAs far as chapters go, mine are all over the map. I figure if people don't get upset at James Patterson for having some long chapters and some 2-pagers, I can probably get away with it. When the action for that chapter is done, it's done. I also don't like to go back and pad later.
ReplyDeleteI tend to write the whole work based less on chapters and more on scenes (four acts, three-five scenes per act) and then parse out the words into chapters once I've finished the first draft. That way, I can make sure all my chapters end on a moment of tension without getting caught up in that as I write.
ReplyDeleteAlso, WTG on the word count! What is your end goal?
hehe Cheers :D I too plan chapters on scenes/events rather than trying to get them to conform to word lengths. I'd like it if they were even, but I'd rather have chapters end at a suitable/dramatic time than chop the story up randomly.
ReplyDeleteAs for total word count goal, I really don't have one. When I outlined the novella, I estimated that I'd be lucky to get 35,000 words or so, which would make it really short, even for a novella. However, after actually writing a few chapters I seem to have discovered more depth to the story than I expected as the world becomes more detailed in my mind. Ideally I would like it to be at least 50,000 words (will probably improve my chances for publication) and that might be doable, but I also don't want to pad out the story just for the sake of word count (I want to avoid having one of those epic fantasies that rambles on for eight books and doesn't go anywhere haha).
Hope everyone's going well with their own ROW80 challenges!