After my plot breakthrough at the end of last month and my arse-kicking (in a kind way!) from Mark Leggatt, I set off into the not-so-snowy wastes of December with the goal of having 20k of pretty clean text finished by the end of the year. That seemed a good place to stop and draw breath as it is pretty much the end of Act 1 – the victim has met their reasonably grisly end, all of my main characters have been introduced, we have established that our heroine probably didn’t murder her feckless husband (although I wouldn’t have blamed her to be honest) and we have the first clue that might lead us to the person who did the dreadful deed.
And I’ve done it. 21k words actually because that’s the end of the chapter. And it’s pretty clean text on the whole. Before I do any more editing I’m going to read it out loud as that is the best way for me to spot typos, repetition, run-on sentences and so forth and to see how the rhythm works – are there too many long sentences, or short ones or does it just sound dreary? Then I can do those corrections and my beloved beta readers will have the first chunk to look at. Hopefully they’ll love it and hopefully the ones who’ve also read the last version will think it’s infinitely bettter this time round.
I am really rather impressed with myself for getting a good bit of writing done this month, especially as the last three weeks have been quite chaotic due to my father-in-law’s broken ankle and associated hospital stay. The most productive time has been the last week or so – a combination of vile weather, that blah period between Christmas and New Year and my self-imposed deadline. I really wanted to start 2016 feeling on top of my writing.
So, writing goals for next month…
- Tidy up the opening and get it to my beta readers.
- Plot Act 2 in more detail and outline those chapters – at present I have about two paragraphs, a lot of mental notes and half a dozen cryptic post-its. I know where it’s going but I need to go into that framework in more detail before actually writing it.
- Work on developing a set routine for writing so that I can set realistic targets.
- Join a critique group. I was invited to one after Pitch Perfect but felt a little nervous about letting other people read my work. Ridiculous I know.
- At least another 2ok words actually written.
Your goals?
