Progress Wednesday: A Row80 Check In and WiPpet Wednesday

So here we are, another Wednesday, another check in. It’s only been a few days since my last check in but given that I changed my goals around a little I think it’s understandable that I want to figure out whether they’re working for me or not. Overall I’d say they have but I think I need to look a little more closely to be sure.

Post 1 blog post other than a RoW80 check in a week – The week’s still young and the post is written. A few edits and it’ll be good to go on Friday. Progress – Good

30 Minutes on social media a day – I’ve been commenting on blogs, joining in LinkedIn discussions and posting on Twitter. It may not be a full 30 minutes that I'm spending though but what I have done is still good. I just need to find a way to not send half the social media time trying to figure out what I'm doing. Progress – needs improvement.

Spend 1 hour doing a creative activity each day – This first one I chose to as writing, trying to get The Novel finished for Autharium. Monday and Tuesday I spent an hour writing and in fact I kept writing past my hour deadline yesterday and had a 4k word day, the first that I've had in a while. Progress – Excellent

Spend 1 hour doing a different creative activity each day – Monday I struggled with this, trying to edit The Feral Diaries while waiting for a client to appear for an interview. Tuesday was excellent and I’m starting to see how sitting down and doing it can just pay off. Progress – Slow but getting there.

Start and try for completion of projects on the order day – I did in fact wake up to two new jobs yesterday morning and started and finished them both very quickly, before I did anything else. It was a great way to start the day, knowing that I’d done my official work as soon as it had arrived. Progress – Excellent.

Overall I'd say I'm definitely doing ok with my goals. There's only really one worry spot and that's the social media goal. I think I need to figure out what I'm doing there so I'm not wandering the internet in dazed confusion for 30 minutes. But there's more green and orange (I do like my colour coding) than there was last check in I believe and that's good. 

Now... I keep seeing the term WiPpet Wednesday bandied around the blogosphere a lot lately. A few of my new blog friends that I’ve made this round have actually taken part and have encouraged me to take part too. I don’t normally share my writing on here, preferring to keep it secret and safe, hidden from anyone. But I decided that I need to break free of some of these self imposed boundaries. So here it is; the first 500 words of The Novel, unedited and totally fresh from the first draft. I wrote this back at the beginning of July and I still really like how it turned out.

The dock of Crown’s Haven swarmed with men, every one of them knowing exactly where they were meant to be and what they were meant to be doing. Ropes were grabbed and tied and the ship slowly lowered towards the ground. The timbers creaked below his feet, the clanking of the chains growing louder and louder as the ship was towed, inevitably, irrevocably down to the ground. Marrick watched from the forecastle of the Dark Tide, watched the dozens of men and women scurrying around the deck, securing lines and bringing up cargo. The women had their long hair tucked up beneath scarves and hats, their curves hidden in billowing shirts and waistcoats.  

“We’re landed Captain,” said the burly quartermaster at his side.

“What do you want me to do Sir?” Marrick lifted an eyebrow at the older man. 

“Really Wallis?” he drawled “Are you actually going to go along with the Sir and Captain thing?” 

“It’s how it’s done Sir,” Wallis said, his eyes glittering with mirth “Wouldn’t do for one of the locals to suspect we were nothing but the honest, hardworking traders that we are, Sir” 

“Oh we work hard all right,” Marrick said, his smirk growing “You and I both know that you run this ship when we’re landed. I’ll let you to it and go and see if I can find us a new bowman or three,” 

“Ay Sir,” Wallis said with a mock salute. 

Marrick walked away laughing beneath his breath. He threw a quick wave at the other man and slung one long leg over the railing of the forecastle before dropping to the deck below. One of the crew stumbled and swore at Marrick as he appeared in front of him suddenly, making the crewman drop his boxes.  

“Language Hicks,” Marrick said with a scowl. “It wouldn’t do for the dock master to hear language like that here,” 

“Sorry Captain,” Hicks muttered, gathering the boxes together again. 

“Lower your voice, man!” Marrick snapped below his breath. 

“Sorry Captain,” Hicks muttered again, his voice gruffer now, deeper. 

Marrick cast a quick glance towards the dock master who was now on deck, deep in conversation with Wallis. He was looking intently at his chalkboard, checking off the log that Wallis had given him against what was being steadily lowered from the ship. The dock master didn’t look up. Marrick breathed a sigh of relief. 

“Wallis!” Marrick called, walking towards the two men, “I’m going landward but I should be back soon,” 

He didn’t wait for a reply, instead leaping onto the railing of the deck and grabbing a nearby rope. As he slid down it, plummeting faster and faster towards the ground he heard Wallis calling out above him. 

“You need to be back by the windshift Sir! Captain Rush will be mighty peeved if you’re late for the next cargo collection!” 

Marrick laughed and continued walking, throwing up an arm to show that he had heard.

I think that the first few pages are good but then again I wrote them so I would say that. What do you think though? Let me know if there’s anything that you would change, fix, jiggle around a bit. I always like to hear people’s opinions on my writing, more often than not they see problems in the prose that I don’t because I’m too close.

The second part of the blog series on the Three Act Structure should be up on Friday so keep an eye out for that and make sure that you come back next Wednesday for more WiPpet Wednesday and maybe you’ll get to see more of The Novel. Or maybe I’ll be cruel and post something from another Work in Progress.

How do you think I’ve done with my goals? Am I being too easy on myself? Too hard? Am I trying to do too many things each day? Let me know what you think in the comments below. I always try to reply to them, even if it takes me a little while.

Progress Wednesday: in which everything has gone to pot.

As the title says, all my grand plans for my personal challenge have gone KaPoof.  I’ve not gotten any more of the Sketchbook Project worked on and no more comic pages planned or drawn.

       It is, however, all self-imposed. I’ve signed up for NaNoWriMo, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, with only a little over a week to go. This was back on Friday. It starts 1^st November and if I’m to have any success or hope of reaching the 50,000 word goal I’m going to need a fair bit of planning sorted. I’m not one of those people who can just write as they go, not even for something that, to them, is a bit of fun. I tried that already with the novel I’m currently working on and I’ve just ended up stuck in two places (not good as I need to join the two together at some point). 

        Anyway, I digress. This week has been solely devoted to outlining and planning and plotting. I’ve filled several pages of a lovely purple notebook with notes on the world of my story and the races in it. I’ve gone for a slightly different genre for NaNo in the hope of challenging myself and also as an experiment to see if I can write better in another genre. I’ve got a complete outline, information on races, information on organisation, a ton of reference pages online and main Character-character profiles. What I don’t have however is, a setting, support characters (no, not even names or appearance) or even a working title. At the moment I’m referring to it by the name of one of the unnamed characters (if that makes no sense, I’m calling the novel the same thing that I call one of the characters).

        Half of the week is gone though and the next few days are looking crazy busy. If I’m to have any hope of finishing I either need Bernard’s Watch (did anyone else ever watch that show?), a Time-Turner, or just to cut myself off completely. Monday and tonight is looking like my best bet to be able to finish the planning stages. Trouble is that there’s just so much to do. It’s my own fault though, I should have signed up sooner and planned a bit more, or you know, used one of my existing plots (what?! No! That’d be too easy, crazy writing girl!).

         For now though, it’s back to the plotting board and the notebook, in the hopes of achieving more material ready to be shoved into a novel’s first draft.

Until next time chums.

Progress Wednesday: Personal challenge, general crafting and a bit of baking.

So this week I've been up to a fair bit of fun and creative stuff. A fair bit of it is related to my Personal Challenge and the October targets. Firstly I've managed to finish another chapter-type thing for my novel. It's a bit tricky to tell this sort of thing now because I've removed the chapter seperations from my first draft. Either way, I've managed to write a large amount since I last posted about the novel. It's tricky because I still wanna research and create my world but at the same time I'm writing. The great thing is that I've found a load of history programs on BT Vision that I can watch as part of research regarding the world itself. As I've been writing though my characters' histories have been revealing parts of my world's culture. I guess that's the way sometimes, when the writing itself runs away and takes on a life of its own.

 For the Sketchbook Project I've managed to finish another page. This one will be in the first few pages and is part of a series of 'Wonder Images' a bunch of pictures linked by the theme of the Wonders of the World. I figured I'd start from England and work my way eastward acround the world from there. This was drawn with soluble watercolour and ink. I sketched the design first before I shaded in the sky and ground with the colour crayons before running over with a wet paintbrush. I then outlined the stones with a fineliner and used a brush pen that was running out to lightly scrub in the texture of the stones.
The lines on the other page, around the date-stamp, is the next in the series, the Eiffel Tower in France. Talking about this has made me think that maybe I need to start taking pictures of my progress as I create a piece.

The picture to the right ---> is also another image for the Sketchbook Project. This comes much later in the book.
In other Personal Challenge news, I've managed to finish the colour for the first full page of Witchan. I need to go over the colour with water as I've used water-soluble pencil crayon again. There will be a white border around it all once I've scanned and editted it on the computer. First though, I've got to fiddle with scanning settings so that the pages scan properly. The comic's on hiatus now, as I said before, while I try to sort things out.
 I spent most of today playing with glue, tissue paper, pom-poms, pipe-cleaners, foam, lolly sticks and goggley eyes. I'll probably pop a few pictures up of my creations once I've finished making them. For now, enjoy these images of my mince pies, I spent Monday afternoon making them by hand. They're surprisingly tasty and now all gone. The big one with the shooting star hole is big enough for two!

Progress Wednesday: A fair bit done.

So it's Wednesday again. I've gotten a fair bit of progress made once more. Sadly, due to being in an interview all day means that I've not got any pictures. For the Sketchbook Project I've finished another picture and planned two more. That's further success for my personal challenge. I've also planned three more pages of Witchan and plan to sketch them up tomorrow, as well as finishing the colour for the pages I have. Hopefully I'll be able to finish altering the two pages I've scanned too. For my novels, I finished the first draft for one chapter and I've also started another. Research into the world itself and my creation of it is also going well, as is the research for the new idea I came up with.

Well, that's it for today, I may blog again tomorrow and expand on this but right now I'm just exhausted.
So, good night.