RoW80: Round Four - Looking Back and Looking Forward

Before I list my targets for this round of RoW80 I thought I’d get a little something off my chest.

I was a little disappointed in Round Three, mostly with myself. I met most of my targets each week but I just didn’t bother to update. It seems that’s a common flaw with me. I forget to blog, getting so engrossed in my other writing that it completely passes over my head. In fact, looking at the site I’ve not blogged in over 2 months. That is ridiculously disappointing. But I have reasons for not blogging. Some of them are flimsy excuses that don’t really hold up but others are more emotional, based in fear of letting you, my dear readers, down. Some of this is because I feel guilty that all I’m ever doing is telling you all about how well I’m meeting my targets or how bad I feel for being a lazy bugger. The other is that I feel guilty about only blogging about my RoW80 goals. Before I found RoW80 I’d blog about my thoughts on certain areas of writing or show some of my work (mostly the artistic variety) but since January a lot of my blogs have been devoted to RoW80.

But now I’ve decided to change all this. Round 4 of RoW80 is upon us, it’s October, the beginning of autumn (yes I use autumn, not fall. It’s a British/Me thing) and a chance to start afresh. Particularly as I just got back off holiday where I spent an entire day re-seeing the contents of my stomach (but that’s another story). So... onwards.

Goals

1. Plan/write NaNoWriMo 2012
2. Edit one chapter of Darkling Watch Book 1 a day (yes, there is now a book one and this will be explained) 
3. Finish and edit The Feral Diaries; Book 1
4. Plan The Feral Diaries; Book 2 once a week
5. Outline and plan o.S.a.M twice a week
6. Blog at least twice a week.

And now, because I’ve clearly got so much in my head about these goals I’m going to explain them. Partially for you, dear readers, but mostly for me so I finally know what on earth is going on in my crazy little wormhole they call a brain.

1) Plan/Write NaNoWriMo 2012 -  I’ve included this one because even though it’s pretty much a given that I’ll be participating in NaNo again this year I’m a little worried that I’ll forget to actually do any planning or writing what with all my other work that I’m doing. I love NaNoWriMo because it helped me realise that yes, I want to be a writer, and that yes, I can actually finish stuff when I set out to. So it goes in. As target number 1 in fact, so important is it to me. Incidentally I’m trying to beat my word count from last year of 105,000 words.

2) Edit one chapter of Darkling Watch; Book 1 a day - Yes, I’m still chipping away at this bad boy and yes it has now been divided into more than one book. I’m planning on writing an entire post on the Darkling Watch Trilogy as there’s a lot of information and thoughts I want to share with you all. That and, once more, it helps me to figure out what I’m actually thinking when I write it down and get it out there.

3) Finish and edit The Feral Diaries; Book 1 - This is a new work for me, a little different from my usual style and genre so I’m actually pushing myself as a writing with this one. I came up with the idea when I was planning for Camp NaNo (the mini NaNoWriMo that runs in June and August) as I sat at Skegness with a busted ankle. Needless to say that was a boring week for me. Any who, because I’m so excited about this new ‘novel’ and it was such an interesting process for how I’ve been working on it I’ll be doing a separate post about this as well.

4) Plan The Feral Diaries; Book 2 - Yes... there’s more than one for this as well. Or at least there was when I was planning it. Now though, because of how the story has developed it’s not really two books, or even three. Yes I know I’m being vague but I just want to tell you all about this right and to do that I really do need a post all about The Feral Diaries and The Feral Diaries alone.

5) Outline and plan o.S.a.M twice a week - I know, I know. I finished it, at least the originally script. But then I was talking it out with a friend, a fairly gifted storyteller in her own right, because I was having some iffy feelings about it. It didn’t really fit at all my original vision of the story, the characters were good but not really fitting into the roles I’d plonked them in and the entire thing just felt a bit off to me. So, with her advice and the amount of help she gave me as we hashed the problems out I decided to rewrite it, starting from scratch. So there; I’m starting all over again and o.S.a.M is now back at the very first planning stages. It needs a lot of work but I’m taking it slow because it’s a long term project that I’m going to have to live with, possibly for years.

6) Blog at least twice a week – I mentioned at the top of this post how disappointed and guilty I felt because I was only blogging about RoW80 and whether or not I was reaching my goals. Now I’m setting myself an actual blogging RoW target. Once a week I’ll blog about whether I’m reaching my targets or not. The other blogs... well they’re going to be more like the original posts were; thoughts on the creative process, my headway and discoveries about my work, the obvious mentions of the projects I’m working on. Too often I’m really vague about my projects, worried they’ll be silly or stolen. No more. I won’t be telling too many secrets (spoilers darling!) but I plan to give more information about them than I have done. I’ve even got a long list of things I want to blog about that are in no way related to RoW80. Isn’t it exciting?!

I do want to mention that I have other targets for myself that I’ve not included here in my RoW80 targets. The reasons for not including them are multiple.
First off; I don’t like the pressure and restriction of having so many targets written down. I think 6 is a fairly nice amount, not loading me down too heavily but giving me enough things to push at and work towards. More than that and I’d just be looking at this long list of things I feel like I HAVE to do and I lose all love of writing. I don’t want that to happen.
Secondly; the other targets aren’t really measurable. Not in the sense that the ones above are. These ones are more... vague outlines of stuff that I need to do for various projects. World building, timelines, chapter arcing and stuff like that. There’s not really a way to measure how successful I am at meeting them as there is no end game, no point at which I can say ‘There, I’ve done it, I hit my target’ like with Darkling Watch where I know I’ve edited a chapter because I reach a natural chapter break and save it on a separate document (explanations for this will come. I promise).
Lastly; I want some privacy. I know, it’s a little weird. Here I am on the net, blogging and telling you all about my projects and the crazy thoughts that go on in my head. But that’s the thing. I might tell you a lot but there’s got to be something kept back. Something for me that is just mine. Something that only I and my writing journal know. Some of it is also that I’ve got a few things in mind that I want to keep a surprise or that are going to take a while to implement. Know this though. When I do manage to meet one of my secret targets you’ll know about it. Whether you’re seeing it on the blog site itself or reading about it in one of my entries. You’ll know it when you see it.

Mostly because I’ll spell it out for you all.

But for now I’ll leave it be and sign off. I’ve rambled on for well over 1000 words and now I’m just getting to the loopy stage of my writing. So, I’ll go back to my editing and have an early night. Tomorrow I’ll wake with eerie optimism, get back to work and hopefully you’ll hear from me again in a few days.

See you later and keep writing.

RoW80: Round Three Goals

So after 5 days of a family holiday and isolation from the internet I have finally returned home and can, at last, tell you all about my RoW80, Round Three goals. I have started working on all of them already and hopefully I can keep working on them for the next 80 days. I’ve come up with at least 6 and may or may not add a seventh.

First up are the big two:

1) Draw everyday

Even if it’s just a 5 minute doodle I need to do a little bit of drawing every day. So far that’s going well.

2) Write everyday

I plan to write something non-forum related. Whether it’s 100 words of world building, 500 of story planning or even 2,500 words of actual writing, I want to get something written every day.

These two are designed to encourage me to treat writing and drawing as my job, just like I want it to be. Hopefully if I can get into it enough it will become a habit and no longer will I feel as though I’m wasting my time every day.

3) Finish one art piece a week

So often I start to draw something big and never actually get it finished or it takes months to finish. I’m hoping that pushing myself to do this will encourage me to actually finishing things. Plus it’s a great incentive once I start actually drawing the pages of my web-comic. Which leads on to....

4) Work on oSaM daily.

As long as I do 30 minutes of work, at least, on oSaM every day I will be happy. It could be character designs or page thumbnails or anything else related to it. I’m going to make sure that the 30 minutes is uninterrupted and gets something productive out of it. Just thinking about it doesn’t count.

5) Edit 100 words of D.W. daily.

I’ve been putting off editing it and it’s really beginning to annoy me. I know what I need to do and I’ve already thought about things I need to fix/remove.

And finally;

6) Plan for NaNoWriMo

I’ve not got a set amount, time, words or otherwise for this one as it’s sort of an open book. I’ve already got the ideas brewing and a few notes made so from now until November it’s just going to slowly build and build. I’m hoping to work on 3 or 4 novels or short stories throughout NaNo so there are lots of things that I can flick between.

So for now, that’s it on the RoW80 front. I’m hoping that this time I’ll be able to stick to them much better than with Round 1 and who knows, I might actually enjoy it.

Ciao!

Creative Explosion

So what can I say?  My creativity seems to have gone boom. It seems like all of a sudden I’ve got a ton of ideas that I’m working on and I’m actually seeing progress that I’m pleased with. 

My creativite mind... or at least what I imagine it looked like.

Image courtesy of http://pastorhobbins.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/explosion-big-bang.jpg

                My NaNo novel.... is titled and almost finished!! I couldn’t be prouder, my baby is almost fully born. I’m even looking forward to doing the editing and multiple drafts. There is one... flaw, I suppose you would call it. As of right now the total word count is 100,000 words. Now I’m no expert on the lengths of novels, even though I read a lot, but I think that may be too long for just one novel. It may be a case that in publishing it’s split into two. If I manage to get that far anyway. But apart from that things are rolling along nicely. I’m managing to get from my exposition right near the end to the actual climax at last. For weeks I’ve been staring at that part of the story, trying to make myself fill it in. Then in the last few days, as I’ve apparently hit a creative streak it’s started to work, I’m writing 800 to 1000 words of it a day, when I’m pushing myself, more than that when I’m not really trying and the ideas start pinging around my head. I’m glad of this really. It means that I’m on the home stretch and I’m one step closer to reaching my dream or at least trying for it.
                I’m working on my basic groundwork for Script Frenzy. Script Frenzy is ran by the same people who do NaNoWriMo and the basic idea is that you try to write 30 pages of script for a movie, tv series, anything in a month, starting on April 1^st. I decided to give it a go seeing how much success I’ve had with NaNo. I started searching for an idea last week, only wanting to make sure I had one because I didn’t want to leave it until the last minute like with NaNo. The idea got away with me though and now I’ve got the plot... at least most of it... and I’ve got my characters. I have a vague idea of what they look like too and what sort of style I’m going to use. I’m even building up a reference library of things that I can use to do my drawings. I’ve got twists, I’ve got back-story, I’ve got a page limit. All these things give me the feeling that for once, I may actually manage to do it. I don’t start writing the script until April so I’ve got time to develop my characters, draw settings, profiles, expression pages and a chance to test the drawing style. But I’m happy.

              In other news, I’ve canned Witchan. I’m not happy with the story, I haven’t been for a while. The general premise I like but I feel that it just needs more work and I have, as an authorial choice, taken the pages offline and I’m planning to work on the script some more at a later date. I want to rework the characters, rework the script, tweak the plot around. There are parts of the story and the idea that I love, most of the characters I love. But I just have this nagging feeling in the back of my head that I rushed into it all way too quickly. I’ve not even finished writing the thing, I’m not happy with the art and I have no idea what my main characters really look like. I think that I’m just going to have to pause the story, trash the pages and start over. So that’s what I’ve done. Once I’ve got the novel finished and the Script Frenzy idea rolling properly I may well go back to it. Who knows I might even dip in and out of it as I’m working on other things.
                Right now however, as well as Darkling Watch(the NaNo Novel), Of Swords and Magic(the Script Frenzy idea) and Chains in the Basement(a young adult novel I’m currently plotting), I’m working on a new old idea. Love Complications was one of the first stories that I actually finished. I decided that I wanted to turn it into a web-comic. So I did. I managed to get to the second chapter, almost the end of the second chapter in fact before I began to get the feeling that there was something off about the whole thing. The art I actually quite liked, even after it had changed a couple of times. It was the plot I was having issues with. The story was basically the wish fulfilment fantasy of a teenage girl, as I wrote it at 16 when I was having a few... issues with my school life. Now I’ve taken off the pages and I’m reworking the script. The basic idea is the same but the points along the way are changed, the characters are going to be more well-rounded. And most importantly, I’m going to take my time! With everything. Because I’m an impatient bugger.

Me with my ideas... I am a woman

Image courtesy of http://www.activegarage.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/dirty-dozen-6-impatience

              

If I don’t wait I’ll end up unhappy with it all again and just have to repeat this cycle over and over and over and over and over and... well you get the point. Planning needs to be balanced with actually creating and my ideas need to keep flowing. Working on a load of projects at once and giving myself deadlines seems to help spur me on so for now, I'm gonna stick with it.