Already Quite Behind

Well, so far I haven't been doing great at NaNoEdMo. I've only managed 4.32 hours since I signed up - and I should be at 16.17 hours.

Last week I did manage to focus on RoB&F when I got any writing done at all. I'm editing in chronological order and am currently done with 13 of 49 scenes. I will be adding a whole lot of scenes before I'm done, so my scene total should change along with my progress.

There are 21 days left in the month. To win I need to spend 2 hours and 15 minutes a day editing. That shouldn't be hard if I can actually make myself focus.

Progress Update

I've been bad at posting lately, but partially that's because I haven't been making as much progress as I want to.

I've come to the conclusion that E&L is just a slower book to write than RoB&F was. It's a much more complex plot, deals with more difficult themes and takes place in a much more detailed world. It's my "drama," as opposed to RoB&F, which is more of a "romantic adventure." (These are in quotes because they're actually both fantasy - these are my own, random ideas of what subgenres I'd categorise them as.) I'm going to have to adjust to only managing about 500 words an hour or less. But I am making some progress on it, however slow.

I'm not writing down much for TAWS, but it's definitely percolating. I've got a very good grasp of the themes of the books and the interpersonal conflicts the main characters will struggle with. What I need is the actual plot. Well, really, a MacGuffin. The plot so far is very literary and I not only want a primary conflict that will suit a fantasy setting better, but I want the characters to deal with this personal conflict in a pressure cooker of other crises - I want the intensity of a huge threat to motivate them and I want the pressure of a deadline. That way they're not just sitting around moping about it or finding ways to avoid it, which I would find very boring to write or read. I did share what I have so far with the Word DaWGz, which was really fun. I'm very secretive about my work overall, since if I let myself talk about it I'm less motivated to write about it, but this project is still early enough in development that it doesn't feel dangerous to share it. They seemed to really like the idea, which was heartening.

My main focus right now, though, is RoB&F. I realised today that it's March and that's National Novel Editing Month, a spin-off of National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to spend 50 hours editing in 31 days. I was already thinking about doing it, and since I've been needing some motivation lately, I signed up. I'm not going to kill myself to "win," but if I do manage to get 50 hours done that should get me most of my way through the first revision pass. In good news, the more time I spend with this book (so far) the more I like it.

Weekly review

This wasn't a great week for progress on my goals. I did a lot of writing for an unproductive week - 7 1/4 hours and 4,773 words - but that was all on a "fun" project, not anything publishable. Other than that I managed to outline 2 scenes on RoB&F.

I did have a great meeting with my writers' group, the Word DaWGz, though. (I know, the name will never gain us the respectability of something like the Elks Club. It's short for Daytime Writers' Group.) My whole plan for this year was to have three primary projects, one in each major phase - development, writing and editing. And I thought I'd managed it, but I'm really not quite there yet.

I am developing TAWS, which is what I'm supposed to be doing for that novel. But I'm supposed to be writing E&L, and when I tried I realised I needed to almost completely change one of the main characters, add a whole new subplot and move the beginning of the story back significantly. So I'm actually developing that one, too.

And RoB&F, which I'm editing? Well, it's currently right around 50,000 words. In order to make it publishable I need to add about 30,000 more words. Which is actually fine; there were a couple of places in the story that I skimmed where I want to develop it more and I left a huge opportunity for an early, unsuccessful confrontation with the antagonist that I didn't use. But that means that, in figuring out where the spots that need more writing are and what I'm going to do with them, RoB&F is really in the development stage right now, as well.

So what I'm going to do is focus on one project until it's out of the development stage - probably E&L, because I think it's closest. Then I will work on E&L (writing) and RoB&F until I have RoB&F out of the development stage. And then I'll be able to add in TAWS and I'll have a project for whatever mood I'm in. And one of the people in my group, E--, suggested that I block out time for each project instead of waiting for inspiration to strike about which to work on, so I'll be trying to do that as well. And I'll be using my fun project as a reward - I'll only allow myself to work on it if I've met my daily goals.