RoW80 Check In

So it’s another week down and yet more failures on my part. Except... I’m not classing them as failures. I may not have done as much editing or writing as I planned to but I’ve been doing things related, however distantly, to my goals.

I didn’t write any new entries for The Feral Diaries but I did do the long promised blog post about it yesterday. And I received some positive feedback about it. I also did some planning about the storylines and figured out a rough idea of what happens when. So although I didn’t meet the specific goal of writing and editing I made progress, even if it was in a different direction than I planned.

The same is true of Darkling Watch. I’ve done very little editing of it. Barely any of my read-through in fact but the stuff I did do on Monday led to three whole chapters being separated. That’s quite a lot for only three hours work. And I had Jeremy Kyle on in the background, which surprisingly helped with the arguements. Not to mention that I started roughly planning the novel about one of my favourite characters in the book. I plan on plotting that one out properly next year in fact and may share something about it at a later date.

I didn’t do anything related to o.S.a.M this week but I’m not actually bothered by that fact. It’s a series of short story web-comics connected by one long theme. I’m still trying to think of a new name for it as Of Swords And Magic does, as a friend told me, sound like a dissertation title for fantasy literature. I’m thinking something to do with curses. It still needs work. Anywho, the reason I’m not too bothered is that with the new storylines roughly plotted out for the most part I’ve got to let them settle. I need them to come together in my head, not just on the paper. For a good three or four months the story was one direction, not a direction I was really happy with, but it was a certain way. Now that I’ve started again from scratch with a bunch of different genres I’m happier with it. I’ve still got to get used to it in my head.

As for NaNoWriMo... well. It’s going splendidly. I’ve got a rough idea of my characters, the events and a couple of the subplots. The subplots aren’t as clear as the primary plotline but they’re getting there. I’ve also stepped a bit away from the Young Adult genre and into the realms of the completely ridiculous. I spent too much time in the Dares thread of the NaNoWriMo forums and so I’ve got a bunch of small events that I’m planning to put in to the story somewhere. The outlines right now are so rough that I can. For instance I’ve got a very basic scene of someone telling my MCs what’s happening. I don’t know how, I don’t know what’s said or what the characters are all doing. Thanks to the dares though I can expand on it a little, make it funnier. Maybe it won’t work and I’ll have to take those weird sections out but who cares! I’ll have fun doing it. Last year I took NaNoWriMo very seriously, not including any dares or experiencing much of the fun of NaNo that people talk about. Now though, with one whole novel under my belt and another one well on its way to reaching the editing stage I feel happy enough in my abilities to put weird events in and make them work. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a hit on my hands.

And finally, the last goal of blogging more than once a week about topics other than RoW...I nailed it. Not only did I write the promised posts about The Darkling Watch and The Feral Diaries but I also did one more than intended, specifically the Liebster Award entry. I’m still trying to figure out how to get that badge on the site incidentally. I want to put it in one of my sidebars, along with a NaNoWriMo badge/link and a RoW80 badge/link but I don’t have a clue. If you know how let me know.

So it’s been a successful week for me. Not as productive on the writing front as I’d hoped and I didn’t exactly reach my specific goals but I did work around each other them and that makes me happy. Now though I return to my NaNo planning and trawling the NaNo Dare thread for more insanity to put in my novels.

Keep writing!