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.

RoW80 Progress: A Few Revisions Already

Progress in this first week has been a bit mixed. Even in the first day, when excitement was still running high, I only managed to hit a few of my goals. On my best day I still couldn’t reach all of those goals. I’m starting to think that I may have set myself too many goals. I’m trying to do so much that I’m not doing anything. I’m spreading myself thin and not achieving anything as a result. And then on Friday I kind of burned out and haven’t tried to complete my goals since. Most of my goals were aimed at building a work habit and I have managed to create a bit of a work habit. More importantly I’ve actually been waking up earlier and doing more than I was doing before. I’ve also been tracking how I spend my time and making sure that I do daily to do lists and a weekly to do list. But I haven’t reached my goals though. So let’s see how I did do;

Post one blog post other than a ROW80 update a week

I did hit this goal. On Wednesday instead of creating a check in post I began a new blog series about the three act structure. I’m pleased that I managed to reach this goal as it was one of the most important goals that I wanted to complete. The lack of content on my blog lately has been annoying and worrying me so the fact that I’m finally getting some new content up is encouraging. In fact I’ve already begun writing my post for next week.

Spend 30 minutes on social media each day

I’ve been doing a little bit of social media each day, ranging from comments on the LinkedIn Groups that I’m a member in, to spending time on Twitter and taking part in conversations there, to visiting a bunch of blogs from the other RoW80 participants and leaving comments. I may not have been spending 30 minutes each day doing it but I’ve been doing little bits and pieces each day which is a great start. I want to spend more time doing social media so I’m keeping this goal up.

Spend 4 hours each day doing two different creative activities

4 hours a day is actually quite a lot to be spending on creative activities. I’ve done two different creative activities most days but I’ve not spent 4 hours doing it. Mostly I’ve spent a half an hour at most on each activity. While I could get a lot done in 2 hours of writing it’s difficult to stay focused entirely on one thing for that long. I’m going to change this goal or rather these two goals a little to make sure that I actually have a slight chance of reaching them.

New Goal: Spend 2 hours each day doing two different creative activities.

The Two Work Goals

Apply for 3 jobs each day on the freelancing websites I use
Start and try for completion of projects on the order dayI’ve applied for a few jobs but they don’t update as often as they’d need to for me to apply to new jobs each job. For the first few days I was able to apply to three jobs each day but as the days passed and new jobs didn’t come up I had to stop. And when it came to the job completion... well I need to be hired for jobs to try and complete them. So I’m scrapping the application goal. It’s unnecessary and something that I do anyway. But the starting and completing on the first day is one that I will keep and aim for when I get hired again.

As I’ve been writing this I’ve been looking at my diary, trying to see where I went wrong. And then I realised that I was still trying to do too much on top of my goals. I had the RoW80 goals to reach towards and then I had weekly goals on top of that which were in no way linked to the RoW80 goals. I need to tie the goals in to each other, have a list of weekly goals that are what I needed to work towards as part of my RoW80 goals. For instance I can list the blog post that I need to write as the other blog post each week. I can list the two different projects I want to work on each day within my daily to do lists as part of my creative work each day. Once I’ve got those specific goals that link to RoW80 then I can include a couple of other goals to work towards.

Overall this week has been a bit disappointing but there have been a few successes. Also I’ve made a couple of friends through commenting on other blogs and taking part in conversations on Twitter. This is, in my book, a success. Even with the goal revisions this week has been ok. Let’s hope that next week will turn out better.

The Three Act Structure: An Introduction

Everyone’s heard of the Three Act Structure in some form or other. Whether it’s an in depth look or the kind of information you learn as a kid the basics of the three act structure are simple;

• Beginning
• Middle
• End

No muss, no fuss, bada-bing, bada-boom. As you get older, read more, learn more, delve deeper into the realms of writing you learn a lot more about it. Some people have written entire books on the subject in fact, going so in depth that it can give me a headache. They’re also a popular topic for writers to, guess what, blog about! And yes, I have just apparently jumped on that band wagon. What you have to remember when I do these sorts of posts is that they’re not so much instructional, although they can be taken as such, but they’re mostly a way for me to work out how I understand a certain aspect of writing.

What Is the Three Act Structure All About?

It’s a way of structuring your story, whichever form that you want to write in, whether it’s a novel, novella, novelette or a short story. It’s essentially a way of honing down the direction your main plot line goes and remembering what you’re writing towards. You can see how the action builds and releases and builds and releases, keeping that steady flow of tension and action that keeps readers turning the page as they go.

The Three Act Structure at its simplest
Image from Wikipedia

Each Act serves a purpose, a role, in the overall story as well as having their own story in a sense. Each Act needs to be there in order for the story to flow. Each Act has its own flow of tension, gradually building and releasing as the story moves forward and hopefully pulling the reader along with it. It’s simple really, when you step back and don’t over think. Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. Beginning, middle, end. Introduction, build up, climax. But those are the broad terms, the rough one word descriptions that give you only a vague idea of what goes in each, what role each Act poses. I will admit that there are a lot of videos out there, a lot of books, a lot of blog posts, that all boil down the Three Act Structure into something that works for that particular writer. One style doesn’t work for everyone. Like everything in life and in writing, what works for one person may not work for another. But those are the basics, the minimum amount of what you need to know about the Three Act Structure if you just want the general guideline.

But Why Do You Love the Three Act Structure So Much Nicole?

For me the three act structure is wonderful. Even with just filling in the basic stuff you can get an idea of where the story is going. You can go as in depth as you like or stay very vague. Personally I like to go in depth, filling in quite a lot of detail as I go. Sometimes this backfires on me but more often than not it’s a way for me to learn a lot about the story. I use it as a guide line, a way of seeing exactly what I’m writing. It’s the road map to the story. As long as I have something down, a little plot point for each Act then I can’t really go wrong. I might go on veering tangents but I can always find my way back to the story. Especially if I team it up with the logline. Sometimes I use the Three Act Structure when I’m pantsing a story, marking off plot points that I want to include and writing towards them while I make up most of what happens off the top of my head.

A Little bit more complicated screen writing version
Also from the Wikipedia page on Structure

What About Other Structures?

There are a lot of different variations of the Three Act Structure out there, ways of looking at how to structure your three acts. Some are incredibly detailed, encouraging you to plot out 9 different points of action in each Act. Others are very basic, asking for just 3 points of action. Me, I like to use a nice round 5 points of action for each Act, 5 major plot points that have to happen in order for the story to make sense and continue moving. Other minor stuff might appear as I write that can be taken out or moved around but those five plot points have to stay there and rarely can be moved around. If the story is a house then the plot points are load baring walls. You could build without them or put them in the wrong place, but it wouldn’t be long before the walls crumbled around you and you found your bathtub in the kitchen.

And the really complicated version
From the Go Teen Writers blog

So What Next?

I was going to go into a lot more detail on this post, way more than I have already but then I noticed that what initially began as the introduction, that little bit before I began to talk about each Act properly, had turned into a post all of its own. I don’t want to be one of those bloggers that puts up wall after wall of text, I’m trying to get out of that habit. To be fair I should have guessed about how big this post was going to get when I planned it out on paper. There’s no way that I’m going to keep two sides of A4 short enough for a single blog post. So that’s where the new series comes in. Three Acts means three posts, each one about a different act. And more importantly I’m going to start writing them before I’ve even posted this one so keep an eye out for the other three over the next few days/weeks (I haven’t decided on a schedule yet) and you can see how I see the Three Act Structure and how I approach it when writing.

RoW80 Round 3; My Goals for the Round

I haven’t taken part in A Round of Words in 80 Days for about a year. I’ve been focused on other stuff and for a while thought that I couldn’t make a living from my writing. I still can’t yet, but I’m getting there. Things go a little slowly from time to time and at the moment I’m in one of those ebbs. It happens. So I figured that I use the time that I have, use this free time that is making me so very, very bored, and take part in RoW80 once more. Maybe this way I can improve my work ethic and finally use the time that I have in the best way possible. So... on to the goals;

Marketing

•          Post one blog post other than a ROW80 update a week.I’ve been getting a bit down lately, not really knowing what to post about and my blog’s just sitting there on the net with nothing new coming up. It’s important to create new content regularly, it draws in readers and it gives me practice for writing books. I want to post more, create a more regular schedule and have someone to answer to when I don’t update. As a result I’ve sat down and thought up a series of different blog posts that I can put up. They’re all outlined, roughly, now I just need to write them, edit them and then schedule them. I’m not going to do it all at once though, I’m hoping to work on one post each week and then, if I somehow manage to get ahead of myself I have that buffer in place and I can pick up the schedule a little more.
•          Spend 30 minutes on social media each day.Social media is a powerful thing, just look at the way tweets go viral or facebook groups can actually prompt massive social change. If I want to get smart, get my name out there and build a readership and client base I need to start using them all. More importantly I need to start using them properly, like so many ‘marketing gurus’ suggest. I joined LinkedIn a while ago, Twitter I use fairly regularly and Facebook kind of just sits there, the page I created not even live yet. Right now I’ve signed up to a bunch of groups on LinkedIn but I’m not using them at all. So with this goal I want to actually start posting in the groups, creating networks and hopefully friendships and just get the best that I can out of what I have available. I want to get my facebook page finished and going live. I want to build up followers on Twitter, the real way, by making connections and having conversations. Doing a little something on these social media sites each day, even just 30 minutes can help with all of this.

Creativity

•         Spend 4 hours a day doing 2 different creative activities not related to work.I have all of these ideas, all of these things that I want to do and I’m just not using the time to do them properly. I want to improve my time management, improve my output level. If I ever want to be the prolific author that I think I can be then I need to actually start writing. So I need to spend time doing something creative of some sort every day, no matter if it’s actually creating new words, editing and revising old ones or planning and outlining an entirely new story. I just need to do something and take some of these projects that I’ve had sitting in my head and on my desk for so long, and actually finish them at last.

I say four hours because I keep finding myself in slow mode with work. If I can use the time that I have free to do two different activities it’s at least something productive, I’m not sat watching videos on YouTube and getting bored out of my mind. More importantly it doesn’t have to be four straight hours, I can spread them out over the day, taking half an hour between different work projects and doing something of my own. Hopping between projects for me is fun, it keeps my brain going and I always learn something new. Really though, it’s all about increasing my output and creating a shiny new work ethic that can help me reach my dreams.

Work

•          Apply for 3 jobs each day on the freelancing websites I use.I keep waiting too long between jobs, finding myself bored, as I am right now, and I start to worry as I slowly watch my savings trickle away into nothing. Having these big gaps between jobs, between projects means that I fall out of the habit of writing each day, I fall out of the habit of finishing projects quickly and with quality. Regular applications for jobs, even if they don’t pan out can help me keep that work ethic going, that habit going. At least if I’m applying for the jobs, even if I don’t get them, I still know that I’m trying. And if I do get jobs I can have a queue of them, more and more jobs that are lined up and then I can just slip from one into the next with no worry about how long it will be before another job comes along.
•          Start and try for completion of projects on the order daySometimes this can be difficult. I work in 5,000 word batches and although I can, quite easily, write 5,000 words in a day I very rarely do. Writing my own words and writing for projects are so very different that I tend to stretch them out. I sometimes get bored with the writing, looking for any little excuse to stop and do something else. Sometimes I even put off starting the project, waiting until the last possible moment before I begin and that just ends up with me being even more stressed. By starting early, as soon as I get the work, means that those ideas that might have appeared in my mind when I first heard the outline will still be there. I can write fresh, while I’m excited at the project and hopefully avoid the increasingly familiar sensation of staring at the word counter and sigh as it slowly rises. I’m already getting better at this without meaning to since I joined Fiverr. Having that 24 hour deadline, even for something short means that I just don’t have time to put off starting and it’s getting me to approach freelancing with the right mindset.

So there we are, 6 goals to get accomplished in 80 days. I admit that they’re more based around habit building, not specific deadlines. I want to create that mindset, treat my freelance writing and own writing like the job it is while still finding that enjoyment. This way as well I actually have someone to answer to, you guys who can tell me off when I’m making ridiculous excuses and cheer along with me when I actually manage to hit my goals more than once. I might add more later, take some away. I might even include a couple of deadline related goals as they appear, that’s the joy of A Round Of Words in 80 Days. But for now I’m happy with these and I look forward to seeing how I do.

Until next time, have fun, keep reading, keep writing and love your life.