Merely an Update

Things have been pretty hectic this week, what with starting a new position at work and all, so I’m just going to go with a proogress update for today. Hmm. Let’s see.

2YN: Last week, I caught up with my word count goal. I’ve already hit my goal for this week, and the story is progressing nicely (already a few unexpected twists in there).

Shadows: No progress so far this week, except for printing out the few chapters I’ve edited. I intend to get up early in the morning and revisit at least the first chapter.

Witches: Absolutely no progress to report on this one.

NaNo 2007: (the Atlantis story) No progress yet, but the goal is to start researching names this week, which should be fun. Haven’t quite decided if I’m going to go for Greek-type names or not.

Vampires and King Arthur

One of my favorite things to do in the whole world is read. So, I’ve decided to make blogging about whatever book I’m currently reading a weekly thing. Not that the topic will necessarily be all that interesting or educational, but just because. Currently, I’m reading two books: The Wicked Day, by Mary Stewart; and All Together Dead, by Charlaine Harris.

I’ve had the Mary Stewart books on my TBR pile for a while. (Over a year, in fact.) Once I started reading them, I realized I’d actually read the first two before. Not that that detracted from my enjoyment of them at all. I actually liked them a lot. I enjoyed her take on Merlin, and a lot of the background and mythic stuff I think is great. I’ve always liked when books have layers of background information in them (Tolkien, anyone?), and this just made me like the books more. The writing is sort of formal, but that gives my mind a break if I read something in that style every once in a while. Now I’m on the fourth book, and I’m still enjoying it. I don’t think I’ve read this one before, either. It’s interesting to see things from Mordred’s point of view, and although I know how this has to end, I’d still recommend the series to anyone who loves fantasy. The Arthurian legends have been over-done, but I don’t think Stewart is on that list.

On to All Together Dead. Can I just say that I love this series? I finally borrowed this book from my best friend (who has the same taste in books that I do, so we swap a lot), and it’s been really difficult to put down. Of course, this is the seventh book in the series, so I’ve had plenty of time to get to know the characters. I love Sookie. And Eric. And Quinn. Boo to Bill, though. This book has a good mystery going, and the pacing is great, so I keep telling myself “One more chapter” for hours at a time. I love the close POV Harris sticks to with Sookie, and how real Sookie seems (sometimes I feel like I know her personally). If you like vampires, you should definitely pick this one up (and the rest of the series).

On Goals

I think it’s important to set goals in writing. I don’t mean goals like “Write the next Great American Novel”, or anything like that, either. I do have a list of writing goals, some of which I’ve already accomplished, but many more that I hope to. Finishing the first drafts of Witches and Shadows of Stone are both on there, although on the list Shadows is simply called “the nomad story”. There are other stories on the list right now, five to be exact, and I’m actually working on one of them for my 2YN story. But there are other things on the list as well. Like finding an agent and hopefully getting lucky enough to not have to work full-time at the day job. Stuff like that. Those are the big writing goals, as far as I’m concerned. These goals are always in the back of my mind, and they keep me going.

But what really keeps me motivated are the smaller goals, like word count goals. For most of the first draft of Witches, I didn’t have any sort of goals. When I sat down to write, I just wrote until I felt like stopping. Some days I tried to finish up a chapter, but that was as well defined as my goals got. That is possibly the reason it took me so long to finish writing Witches (that and the total lack of an outline). I was a bit better prepared when I started Shadows last year for NaNo. I had a phase outline, and I had set myself the personal goal of 80k words (Yes, for my first NaNo. I can’t help it; I’m a little bit of an overachiever. I’m trying to overcome that!), which came down to 20k a week, or about 2.9k a day. That was a pretty high goal for someone who had never bothered to keep up with word count before. But it went well, and I hit my goal. Some days I didn’t manage to write at all, but there were a couple of days I hit 7.5k, and I was really proud. Seeing the word count go up was enough to keep me motivated, to keep my butt in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard. And that’s the important part, right? That you’re actually writing. It could be crappy first draft material, but you’re writing, and it’s so much easier to fix something that’s actually written than something that’s not.

I’m currently working on my 2YN story. I don’t have a daily word count goal, but my weekly goal is 5k. Now, I type fast, and I have a phase outline for this story, so it shouldn’t be too hard to hit a measly 5k. Sadly, I’ve been behind since the first week. Only four weeks in, and I’ve been behind for a month. Sigh. The good news is, I should be caught up today. I only needed 3k to catch up, and I’ve already done 1k of that, so my numbers should all add up by tonight. Which is good, because I hate being behind. It discourages me, makes it harder for me to work.

I figure if I’m caught up on the writing, maybe that will motivate me to work on the editing. I need to finish this draft of Shadows, but I’ve pretty much lost my thoughts on where I was. And then there’s the looming specter of editing the behemoth that is Witches. So, if anyone has any ideas on how set motivating goals for editing, I’d love to hear them.

Why write?

Where does the motivation to write come from? What makes you want to sit down at the computer, the typewriter, or the notebook and struggle to get the words down on paper? For me, it’s the story. The characters and some idea of the plot usually come to me at the same time. Maybe just a brief flash, and I really have no idea who the characters are just yet, but a glimpse of it just pops into my mind. Through Shadowed Stone came to me in a dream. A dream about a nomadic culture that moves around constantly, from place to place. I woke up thinking “Why do they move around so much? What are they running from?” And that was it for several years. In my mind, “the nomad story” just sat there, fermenting. And then one day, I realized that somehow a girl from this world belonged in that other, nomadic world, and that her name was Amaya. Oh, and one of the tribesmen was named Bowyn. Again, the idea sat there and did nothing but stew in its own juices.

Then, last year, around August or so, I think, I heard about NaNo, and thought “Hey, that sounds like a really cool idea.” I’d been struggling with Witches for a long time by then, over six years, and I think my brain needed a break. Suddenly, the nomad story sat up and took notice, raising its hand in the back of my mind and saying “I think I’m almost ready now.” And I knew what the nomads where running from. That’s how Through Shadowed Stone came to be. I wrote 80k words during NaNoWriMo 2006, and finished up the other 23k in December. I know that’s a lot of words, but I enjoyed writing the story. It was exciting to sit down at the computer and start typing. I wanted to know what happened!

That story was the first time I completely outlined a story before I started writing. (Okay, to be honest, Witches is the only other story I’ve ever written, and I had a small, partial outline of it that I strayed away from early in the writing. Say two years in.) I did a phase outline, which worked really well for me, since I could put in a bit of the scene and any really great snippets of detail that occurred to me. About halfway through the outline, I got a huge surprise, then several phases later, another. And still I was excited to start writing it. Couldn’t wait ’til writing time. I finished the story on New Year’s Eve.

Then I went back to Witches, determined to finally, finally finish it. This time my motivation wasn’t the excitement of the story. I’d lost a great deal of that in six years. But the characters wouldn’t leave me alone! (Still aren’t, as a matter of fact.) It was mainly Kahleena berating me, nagging at me to get going. Bali’s quieter, but she was there in the background, supporting Kahleena. And Julien…well, he’s more demanding. He insisted that I work on the story, and wouldn’t let me rest if I didn’t. So I did, and finished it up in February. I’m sort of working on editing it. It’s way too long, so I need to cut about half of it, and that’s a rather intimidating task for me, so I’m procrastinating.

I just started writing the story for my 2YN class on Forward Motion, and this one’s in first person, so it’s a bit of a struggle. The first chapter was hard, and it was only 1500 words! Now I’m working on Chapter Two, and it’s getting a bit easier. Samantha is coming through more clearly to me now. I have this one outlined, too, but it’s not quite as detailed as the outline for Through Shadowed Stone. I left some wiggle room, knowing I’ll need to add some things in (which is kind of new, since I have to cut so much from Witches). Right now, it’s the story that’s motivating me to write. Maybe soon it will be Samantha. Who knows?