ROW80 Round 1 - 10th Update

As I briefly mentioned in my last update, while going over my novella outline and map earlier in the week, the idea for a short story drifted into my head. After having a whinge about it getting in the way of my novella, I dashed out a few hasty scenes of the short story, wanting to at least keep the idea for a later time. Then I opened my novella document and stared at it for a while.

And then I had another short story idea.

Once again I typed out the ideas and scenes I'd thought up, pounding away at my keyboard like a monkey on LSD. As with the first story, I got an almost complete (albeit dodgy) first draft before abandoning it and returning to Dark and Silent Waters. That was on Thursday. Since then, I pretty much haven't touched the short stories, but I have been flying through more of my novella. Chapter 1 has had a good shake-up, with some unnecessary crap cut out and other bits moved to later chapters, where they're more relevant (and to alleviate the too-many-characters-introduced-at-once syndrome). I've also made some good progress on chapter 2, filling in more of the previously abandoned scenes. I also think I've managed to bring a lot more tension into it, which is a big step forward.

Here is my updated word tally thingy:

Dark and Silent Waters
Prologue - 804 (complete)
Part 1
Chapter 1 - 5,674 (complete, but will be cut down during revisions)
Chapter 2 - 3,821
Chapter 3 - 786
Chapter 4 - 0
Part 2
Chapter 5 - 513
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 - 1,240
Epilogue - 1,373

Total - 18,902

The Watch Tower - 666

The Fallen City - 883

Though completing the short stories would be nice - and they are fun for me to look at my novella world from another angle - my main concern is the novella. Providing that nothing disastrous happens between now and then, I think that I should be able to reach the 20,000 word mark by the end of the week. This will fill me with feelings of warm fuzziness and so on, and will incite me into the celebratory consumption of much chocolate and alcohol and possibly another Doctor Who DVD marathon.

Victoria was hit by severe storms on Friday and Saturday as a result of the massive cyclone Yasi in Queensland. This caused flash flooding across some of the Melbourne suburbs, and though my small town escaped the worst of it, parts of it were still under a fair bit of water - including our street and property (luckily the water didn't get into the house though). After seeing his back yard turned into a swamp, Judgemental Dog was not impressed:

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