My apologies for getting this up today instead of Monday.
My week was….well, it was okay. I had hoped to reach 50k by the 20th and didn’t. I’m just not getting the time and the words just aren’t coming as quick as I’ve reached the point in my sequel where I no longer know exactly what’s going to happen next in the story.
I’m a puzzler, a strange combo of a pantser and plotter as I try to fit everything. Often I’ll know specific points I need to hit in a story but won’t know how I’m going to get there. I have an outline but it’s bare bones and I’m unhappy with it. I have had a lot of surprises this week as I write including the appearance of automatons, an airship detour, and a visit to a museum. (I like it when my stories surprise me). A lot of what I’ve been writing is skeleton and I know I’m going to have to go back and do research and change a lot of my cities and destinations and fix all those [insert proper name here] brackets I’ve been leaving myself so I don’t lose valuable writing time to look things up. I’ve never written quite like this before and I’m not sure I like it, but I’m just not getting in the writing time, so every moment counts.
Some of the big challenges I’ve had in the past week are that some POVs (I have three) are just more fun to write than others, so I may drag in one section because I’d rather write in another. (Sorry, I just can’t skip around and write the fun scenes first, I just don’t work like that.) Also, keeping the three timelines straight is *hard*. I really hope they all meet up soon.
Wordcount for the week:
Day 14 762
Day 15 1774
Day 16 2419
Day 17 2577
Day 18 705
Day 19 1167
Day 20 1417
Week total: 47,192
So, how are you doing? What have been your challenges this week?
Suzanne Lazear writes steampunk tales for teens. Her debut novel, INNOCENT DARKNESS, book one of The Aether Chronicles, releases August 2012 from Flux. Visit her personal blog for more adventures.
My challenge has been keeping track of my plot ideas. I would like to put them in a place where I can review them at will – like a thought bank. Sometimes it is simply remembering the link that brought me there in the first place. Sometimes an entire arc. And the ideas come at inconvenient times – yesterday while running and by the time I got back, I had too many other things to do besides sit down and and capture the thoughts. This week, it has been particularly troublesome. But, there are worse things!