ROW80 Round 2 - 2nd Update

After handing in my survey assignment and research proposal last week, my brain decided to shy away from academic tasks for a few days. I began tinkering around with an actual timeline for my novella, as well as researching things like how far a horse can travel in a day with a single rider or a cart etc (something I've been needing to do for ages) and was pleasantly surprised to find that, as the logistics of the story started to fall into place, so did the story itself (bits of it, anyway). On Saturday night I decided I'd indulge in a glass of Baileys. While on my alcohol-fueled writing rampage, I churned out another thousand words or so for chapters 2, 3 and 4, and, upon reading them over the next morning, discovered that they were actually pretty good words.

Apparently I work best when I'm being a boozehound. This does not bode well for my future.

And then yesterday, while trying to get to and from uni, I had three train cancellations. Though this pissed me off no end, I was able to use the time I spent waiting to write almost six pages of my novella (this translated to maybe two pages of typed text; it was a small notepad but my handwriting is small). Most of these new words were for my epilogue, which is now almost complete.

Overall, I think I've added around 2,500 new words to my novella this week (EDIT: today alone, I've added another 1250 words. WHOOO! [end bragging]), which is more progress than I've made in a long time. I did finish chapter 1 the other week (at least to the point where I can leave it alone for the time being and get on with the rest of the story), but I'm still working on chapter 2; the last few paragraphs of that just won't seem to fall into place yet. Ah well... There's still an almost-full bottle of Baileys in my cupboard :D

Why you always gotta bring me down, Judgemental Dog?

Click here for other ROW80 updates.

P.S. I've received a few suggestions that Judgemental Dog should have a Facebook page. What do people think?

The Judgemental Dog Chronicles - Volume 2

As I promised, my faithful canine companion, Judgemental Dog (known as Rex to those who feed and walk him) is back for ROW80 Round 2! Rather than putting all his photos in one post, I decided to break them up by rounds (otherwise I'd end up with one post that was a complete monster). May good ol' J.D. continue to inspire/intimidate writers with his big brown eyes and sharp white teeth. And you don't even have to be a writer to be welcome in J.D.'s cult; his Furry Highness is happy to give anyone a motivational nip to boost their work, no matter their line of creativity. Writers and artists, musicians and designers... They're all just as juicy... Er, I mean, welcome :D

If you missed out on Judgemental Dog's debut in Round 1, you can get yourself up to speed here.

ROW80 Round 2 - 1st Update

So far this round I've had two good writing days and one bad writing day: On Monday and today I got just over 500 words, but on Tuesday, after being at uni all day, I came home and had one of those migraine/dizzy spell turns, so instead of writing or doing homework I just sat cuddled up with Judgemental Dog, feeling sorry for myself. With an assignment due tomorrow and another due Friday, I'll be fighting for my word counts this week, but since my goals are relatively small, I think it will still be doable. If I can keep my word count climbing (even if it's only in tiny increments), it'll still be better than not doing anything at all.

Aside from keeping up with academic assignments in general, my goal for this round is simply to write between 100 and 500 new words per day on Dark and Silent Waters. Ideally, these words will be written for the earlier chapters, but since I know my own writing habits (I lack the ability to write in chronological order, instead bouncing around through the story like a drug-crazed yo-yo), I'll most likely just end up writing the words for whatever scene happens to be in my head at the time.

I've also decided to add three rules to my goals. The first is that I may not go through editing bits of my novella until I have reached the new word quota for that day (I'll never get anything done, otherwise). The second is that once I start writing, I will only have an hour to complete my word quota (otherwise I'll just stare at the screen all day, agonising over sentences, and not only will my novella not get done, neither will my assignments). The third rule is that if I have ideas for other stories, I may spend no more than five minutes scribbling down notes for it (this is to keep my main story from being hijacked by other stories).

Looks like Judgemental Dog is putting his paw down:

See how the other ROW80ers are going here.

P.S. If anyone's interested in reading author interviews, my writerly friend Lisa has a few over at her blog. Check it out here.

I'm a Writer... So Why Aren't I Writing?

With the beginning of ROW80 Round 2 only a few days away, I thought I'd better get into gear and write my sign-in post :) Also, some of you following my Round 1 ROW80 rants may remember that I was working on a Multimedia Narrative assignment, in which I had to draw five characters for a fictional game of a recognisable genre. I've since finished the assignment, so here are my steampunk characters, in all their finished glory:

The other day I came to a sad realisation. I've been writing seriously for around ten years now (well, maybe seven; not sure if the garbage I wrote in high school counts as 'serious'), and yet I have never finished a story. Not even a first draft. Once this thought entered my head, I freaked out a bit, wondering if I was deluding myself by thinking I'd ever manage to become a published writer. Sure, I do a fair bit of writing in the holidays, but once I start back at uni, I tend to just give up and go, "Well, I have too much homework, I don't have time to write at the moment." But then I think about other writers pumping out a book or two each year, with a full time job and/or kids, and I think to myself, "If they can do it, why can't I?" I don't know what the writer's equivalent of a mid-life crisis is, but I think I just had it. Then I read this post from serial funny bastard, Chuck Wendig, paying close attention to the section on 'Cheating on Your Manuscript' (I know many of my friends will be nodding and smirking as they read this) and thought it could have been aimed at me specifically. I'm a story-whore. I can't help it. When it comes to novel ideas, I'm like that little kid running around the supermarket because she can't decide what lolly she wants, and then throwing a tantrum because she can't have all of them.

The first decent story I worked on was my high fantasy trilogy, Exile, which I wrote and workshopped throughout my years in the TAFE Writing and Editing course. About 25,000 words into that I lost momentum on the story - mainly because I really had no idea what happened next - and didn't write for almost a year. Then I had the idea for my dark fantasy novella, Dark and Silent Waters and, since Exile was still too intimidating to go back to, I more or less abandoned it, focussing instead on my novella. And now, though my main project is still DASW, I keep getting distracted by ideas for more stories. At this rate, I will never finish a book.

Something needs to change. If I want to be taken seriously as a writer, I have to make the time to write. And I have to learn to focus my creative energy on one damn project at a time. Which brings me to... ROW80 Round 2 Goals! *cue trumpet fanfare*

Since I'm working on my thesis as well as completing two other subjects, most of my time is going to be taken up by research, assignments and classes (as well as my part-time job). The most pressing of these are two things I have due Friday next week; my research proposal, and a survey questionnaire. However, I do want to add a small writing-only goal to my academic requirements, and that is to write between 100 and 500 words each day on my work in progress (DASW). This is a much smaller goal than anything I had in Round 1, but I think it's a lot more achievable in light of my workload. Ideally, I will get into the habit of doing this every day during ROW80 and therefore find it easier to continue once the challenge has ended.

I'll also only be doing one weekly ROW80 post, most likely on Wednesdays; writing two posts a week was a bit time consuming, and I can probably communicate my progress just as well with one post as with two.

To finish on a positive note after my emo writerly ramblings, here's an alien I drew during a Data and Networks lecture one day (in my defence, I was high on the sugar of pancakes with syrup, a hot chocolate and two cans of V):

And fear not, ROW80ers, Judgemental Dog will be at my side the whole way, nipping at the heels of all the writers out there to make them write faster :)

ROW80 Round 1 - 23rd Update

I wish I could make my last ROW80 post for Round 1 a tale of blazing success, but unfortutely it's been one of those weeks where one thing after another has gone catastrophically wrong. The worst was being woken up at 7am yesterday by a phone call from my uncle, saying that my nan had been rushed off to hospital with pains in her chest, so I spent the day alternating between worrying about my nan and wondering what was going on and being grizzly(er) because I'd only had about 2 hours sleep. My nan is slightly better tonight, but she's still quite ill and it will probably take her a while to get better. I know that at her age she's likely to face quite a few health problems from now on, but that doesn't make it any easier to prepare for :(

So, yeah... I've done hardly anything this week, on either the writing or academic front. I scratched away at Chapter 1 a bit more, and I've added a few paragraphs to my literature review, as well as scribbling out an outline for my research proposal, but there was so much more I wanted to get done by tonight. However, by the time I got to today, I was in such a foul mood I was ready to butcher someone with a paperclip if they so much as looked at me the wrong way, so concentrating on anything beyond that has been a bit of a chore :)

I did manage to get one thing done though; General Varideus, my fourth steampunk character illustration for my Multimedia Narratives assignment. The act of scribbling away with my Derwent pencils scattered all over my desk was strangely calming, so I was at least able to do something productive without having a mental breakdown.

(far left: Captain Elindra, left: Queen Saranthi, right: Pirate Emperor, far right: General Varideus)
These and other illustrations can also be found on my DeviantArt account.

I have really enjoyed the ROW80 challenge, and I've learned something about my own work habits as well. Though having the challenge and the support of other writers in the same boat as me helped motivate me to get stuff done, I think I probably overestimated my abilities when defining my original goals. As I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, wanting to have one thing at least to a reasonable standard before moving on to the next, I probably should have known to start with that I wouldn't get four chapters finished (not to mention my uni workload). Oh well... I'll know for next time.

Judgemental Dog has his eye on you... ROW80 Round 1 may be over, but don't think he's going to let you relax!

Anyhoo, I'm signing out for Round 1, but I'll be back for Round 2 (even though my goals will pretty much be all academic-related)! See how the other ROW80ers went here.

ROW80 Round 1 - 22nd Update

It's been another busy week, where more than once I have wondered what I've got myself into lol I've continued reading journal articles as part of my research, and I've written about another two pages of my literature review. My fourth steampunk character hasn't had much progress made apart from a few alterations to his costume, but I'm hoping to finish him tomorrow and at least start on the fifth character (which will probably take a while since some of his costume/equipment is quite detailed and complex). Still, at least it will be fun (I hope).

We had a workshopping meeting yesterday, and though only two others turned up, we had a good lot of writerly discussion. I didn't get the part of my novella I was working on done in time to workshop, but talking about the piece we were workshopping got me thinking about important elements of my own story, particularly in relation to research. In historical fiction or even in fantasy based in a historical-type world (medieval, ancient Egypt, feudal Japan etc), it is important to have your facts right so that the world you create still feels like it could really exist. And it brings home the old adage that you have to know the rules before you can break them hehe

Also, since the meeting was at my house, my fellow writers got to see firsthand how soft cuddly scary Judgemental Dog is. (he was very intimidating... made them give him lots of pats)

Since yesterday I've been continuing with chapter 1, revising some bits and rewriting others from scratch. For a long time, chapter 1 was more or less complete, but there was one scene that always really bothered me; no matter what I did with it, I just couldn't make it ring true, and since it was an important scene (when the belongings of the protagonist's fiance are found abandoned and she is told that he must have drowned), it's something that I couldn't afford to do halfarsed. Then someone suggested that it could perhaps be shown just as powerfully if it were not shown (in much the same way deaths/severe injuries in ancient Greek plays usually happened off-stage), and simply alluded to with the main character's behaviour throughout the rest of the story. Though I haven't made much progress in terms of word count, I think I've finally made some real progress with the chapter; I'm still writing it, but the words are flowing a lot easier than they were with the other method.

On a completely unrelated but awesome note... New album from Within Temptation! *bounces*

I guess I won't be letting Rex read any Stephen King books...

See how the other ROW80ers are going here.

ROW80 Round 1 - 21st Update

Still not a lot of progress to report this check-in :( With uni and work taking up most of my time, today was going to be my only real chance to get anything done... and it was eaten up by a stream of visitors and phone calls.

I'm still revising chapter 1 of Dark and Silent Waters. A few bits have given me a lot of grief, so even without the interruptions, it's taking me a lot longer to get through than I anticipated (I wasn't lying in my last post when I said it was a trainwreck haha). One section has to be written pretty much from scratch, since no matter what I did with it, it just didn't work. I'm still aiming to get it sent around in time for my workshopping group meeting this Saturday, so with any luck (and a lot of energy drinks), I can still achieve that goal.

I have started drawing my next steampunk character for my assignment, and he's already looking a lot better than my previous attempts, especially since I've been fine-tuning his uniform and weapon design.

I've also chipped away at my literature review, writing about another page for that.

Anyway, I still have a lot to get done tomorrow, so I'll leave it there.

Judgemental Dog was a bit camera-shy this week, so he's left his writerly intimidation chores in the capable paws of Spot and Dash, his somewhat smaller underlings:

Click here to see how other ROW80ers are going.