January Project Motivation

[Philip Overby]

Carrying over from December, a pretty slow month for me admittedly with a flash of 6,000 words when I did a writing marathon, I'd like to continue to offer a place to offer motivation or to keep us accountable. Since the beginning of the year is when people tend to get their nose to the grind and quit screwing around, I would hope everyone gets a great deal done this month.

So far, I've got about 1,100 words on my new "52 First Chapters in 52 Weeks" project. It's weird, without really planning anything, the words are kind of flowing out. That's not typical for me as I have to do lots of planning. But I'm enjoying pantsing these first chapters and seeing how they turn out. I think by doing this, I'll allow myself to branch off from these first chapters with more detailed outlines for those of them I think can become a full-fledged novel in the future.

OK, about to do some work on the current WIP now. Did some pre-writing yesterday, so hopefully this will flow well!

 

[JRFLynn]

Great work Phil, hope you meet your goals. I agree too, most instances I plan chapters ahead of time but lately I've been exploring just writing off the top of my head and seeing where it takes me. Surprisingly, It's become much easier and actually killed a writing block or two. Interesting stuff.

 

[Philip Overby]

Thanks JR! I did some pre-writing today, but it didn't all flow the way I planned it out. Nevertheless, it ended up pretty good what I did write. I got 1,556 words on my current WIP. I wanted to work on my 52 First Chapters project today also, but it's almost 3:30 am. I do think I'll have my first First Chapter wrapped up by tomorrow. I'm liking what I've come up with so far. I really need to start writing during the day though.

 

[Chessie]

I probably wrote like 500 words last week. With my bff and family visiting, plus work stuff, time for writing has been scattered. So I am glad you've started a new thread for January, Phil! I plan on having my novelette finished by the 15th so that is my main goal.

 

[Butterfly]

Missed my target for December, tacking what's left of it on to January's. So I'm aiming for 40,000 words for the month. Hoping to catch up after Christmas and New Year.

 

[Aspasia]

Woohoo, I actually wrote yesterday! I'm planning to do just 750 words a day every day, just to get back into writing. I got over 1K yesterday, which was great! Haven't yet written today, but I should finish off that short story and possibly start another. I've also been thinking about my big worldbuilding project which needs a LOT of work. I am determined to have it completely planned out, all the worldbuilding done, by at least Nov, though I really really want to have it done by April. I tend to plan more than I actually write. I'm determined to switch that around this year and actually get some stuff finished.

Good luck to everyone!

 

[Philip Overby]

Glad to see everyone steaming along here!

I'm of the opinion that at least 500 words a day is a great accomplishment if that's all people can manage. When life is busy, getting anything written is honestly awesome. My life hasn't been so busy, so I have less of an excuse. Just finding that extra hour before going to sleep helps me a lot. An hour a day keeps the procrastination bug away!

 

[Chessie]

What I would really like to do is get back into my blogging. I lost mojo for it during December. I know some of you post updates about what your projects on your blogs. Does anyone have suggestions for this? I think it would be fun to share such things with my readers.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I also didn't reach the target for December. I got a fair bit on the way though. Target for January is to finish the Jim Butcher challenge short I'm working on. Then I'll get back to the outline of my WIP.

 

[Philip Overby]

What I would really like to do is get back into my blogging. I lost mojo for it during December. I know some of you post updates about what your projects on your blogs. Does anyone have suggestions for this? I think it would be fun to share such things with my readers.

I don't have tons of views on my blog, but I mostly use it right now to talk about writing, promote other writers, and try to talk about fantasy related topics. Right now my blog feels kind of too inclusive, meaning I want it to be something readers are interested in and not just writers. There are lots of blogs that tend to focus on writers, so I hope to try different things in order to expand an audience.

That said, one thing I do is put something in front of my blog entries to classify them. For instance:

Fantasy Writing
Fantasy Book Review
Fantasy Games

Another thing I do for specific projects, is tag it as well. So for example, my big 52 first chapters challenge is tagged "52 First Chapters." I like to do one ambitious project a year, so it can be something people can follow along with or even do themselves.

 

[ACSmyth]

This month: write 2 short stories, read 4 (pro) short stories and try to work out why they work (if I think they do), and finish the draft novel I set aside to do NaNo.

ETA, and go through my profile to see where the avatar gets added...

 

[Philip Overby]

That's a great idea ACSmyth! (There must be a Google+ group where I could do that...hmm... )

By the way, to set up your avatar, go to the top of the page where you'll see "Settings." Click on that then scroll down a bit on the left hand side you'll see where it says "Edit Avatar." There you can add your avatar pic. I believe you can also set up your signature as well. (Not sure if you need 5 or 10 posts for that though.)

 

[Philip Overby]

One more day to finish up my first week of my 52 First Chapters challenge. I'm giving myself some flexibility a bit since the first week of January was sort of a half-week. In any case, I did some pre-writing that I think is pretty decent, so now I just need to sit down and type it out and I'll have one chapter wrapped up.

As far as my main WIP goes, I'm inching along there. About to have a big conflict that will hopefully lead towards the end of the novel. Probably going to be several more snags before I get there, but the eye is still on the first draft completion prize!

I'm closing in on 100,000 words with 95,223 at the moment. It's looking like when it's all said and done, maybe 150,000 for first draft? Much less in subsequent drafts, I'm guessing.

 

[ACSmyth]

Depends how you write. I tend to do first draft very lean, just to bash the story out. After that I add in description, layering, subplot details, etc. My first two novels weighed in at about 80K for first draft, but 110-115K in final draft.

 

[buyjupiter]

Depends how you write. I tend to do first draft very lean, just to bash the story out. After that I add in description, layering, subplot details, etc. My first two novels weighed in at about 80K for first draft, but 110-115K in final draft.

80k is very lean?! Holy cow, what am I doing then? 60k word short stories? I jest, but I do a similar layered approach. I still need to add a couple of very crucial scenes and add in a bit more description--now that I've figured all of that out--and I think that'll pop me just over the 80k mark.

 

[Philip Overby]

A lot of traditional fantasy publishers tend to want work in the 100,000 and up range. Not all of them, but some that I was researching. This doesn't mean everything has to be in that range, but 80,000 would probably be more of a typical 250-300 page paperback, I think. I'm horrible with math.

 

[buyjupiter]

Yeah, the novel I finished is fantasy with delusions of literary appeal (it's magical realism, but shh, I didn't say that). From what I can tell it'd be a typical pre-GRRM fantasy novel length (i.e. 250-300 pages dependent upon layout).

 

[Philip Overby]

I believe there's a market for any book, regardless of length honestly, but it's just some traditional publishers shy away from lengths that aren't in their guidelines.

Did a little writing today and just made this first chapter a bit more interesting. I have a centaur forest in the middle of an early period Industrial Revolution style town. Well, that was a fun bit of world-building for me anyway.

 

[Chessie]

I've been writing 300 words per day. -_- Not the greatest, but at least its something. Thanks to Phil and his 2014 challenge though, I am determined to finish this story. I've rewritten up to half of it twice already, but this time I've struck gold. Things have changed from the original version and I like this one the best. Its quite a bit darker than I planned though...

One thing: its definitely going to be novella length, even though I have two point of view characters. I'm not sure what to do just yet. My intuition tells me to just finish the rewrite and worry about the length of it afterward. I'm still a bit nervous by it though...most novellas only feature one pov which means my story should probably be longer. Ah, well. At least I'm at a deeper place with the story now. I do wish I wouldn't torture my characters though.

 

[Philip Overby]

Glad things are coming along for you. 300 words a day is pretty decent if you're making good progress. That's the main thing to consider. If you feel like you're getting deeper into your stories and seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, then you're in a better place than you were when you started!

Meanwhile, I've got three things going on:

1. Working on the WIP (which is slowly but surely getting there)
2. 52 Week First Chapter Challenge (which I "outlined" five this week and am going to finish up my second chapter before the weekend is finished)
3. Writing a short story for a competition I'm doing. So far so good on that front also. Let's see if I can get some things finished up by this weekend!

Good luck to everyone!