ROW80 Round 1 - 9th Update

Since the last check-in, I've more or less been doing the same as what I was before; revising my outline and chapter 1. I did add more to chapter 2, filling out a few important scenes (though one will most likely be completely rewritten since it concerns a part of the outline I'm still not happy with). However, chapter 1 got most of my attention; there is so much to be done with it, and I think for the first chapter it's especially important to hook the reader in with not only precise and punchy writing, but with an engaging story that raises questions the reader needs to find answers to. It's still a work in progress; the more I fix, the more I find that needs fixing. *sigh*

I also had a rant about the prevalence of poor grammar in today's society (I figured that if I was going to procrastinate, I might as well still do something useful).

Yesterday as I was going over my novella outline (again), I was looking at my map, trying to work out time taken to travel a certain distance and so on, when the beginnings of other ideas began gnawing at the back of my brain, like crazy little mind termites. I have a history of getting half way through one story and then being distracted by another (I know that some of my school/TAFE/uni friends are nodding as they read this), so I was determined to ignore it and focus only on my current project. I actually said to myself out loud, "I will not touch anything else until Dark and Silent Waters is finished!"

Famous last words.

When I woke up this morning from a strangely eerie dream about the watery Underworld of my story (you know you spend too much time writing when you have nightmares about your own novel), I could see several scenes from it playing out in my mind, with words seeming to curl through them, demanding to be written. With this, I basically resigned myself to the fact that this new idea wasn't going to leave me alone until I wrote about it (damn you, ADHD writer muse!).

As I've said in earlier posts, I don't really write short stories, so I don't know how this one will turn out (probably shite, knowing my history with short stories). I hope to workshop it at either my next workshopping meeting or the one after (depending on how I go with both this short story and my first two chapters of my novella). At this stage, it is tentatively titled The Watch Tower, and it will be set at some point before the events of my novella. So far I have just over 500 words. If I can get it to a high enough standard, I will try submitting it to a few dark fantasy short story anthologies, or at least include it as a 'bonus chapter' in my novella if/when that gets published.

I just realised I haven't included a word count tally for a while, so here it is:

Dark and Silent Waters
Prologue - 804 (complete)
Part 1
Chapter 1 - 6,291 (complete, but will be cut down during revisions)
Chapter 2 - 2,468
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 - 17,865

The Watch Tower - 521

Judgemental Dog being all high and mighty as always:


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