May Marathon!

Despite what the title might lead you to believe, I am not actually taking part in a marathon during May. However, a new writing challenge is afoot! All it took was Wiffer Karen*1 to throw out the suggestion of a writing challenge, and a bunch of us jumped on board with the idea (so far Melina, Jen, Davina, and Kim have blogged about it and a bunch more writers have put up theirs in the forums).

The timing for me is pretty darn good, since I decided to do SocNoc*2 this year, but haven't yet had a chance to figure out what I was going to do. Thinking about the writing challenge today (during the brief snippets of time that I had during work) I've decided that before embarking on a new project, I really should move at least one of my two 'works in progress'*3 forward a step. Ever since getting a copy of my 2007 NaNoWriMo manuscript printed out, I've been thinking more and more about that story, so I've decided to revisit it, and then potentially revise and/or add to it during SocNoc. I'm looking forward to applying the things I've learned about the writing process and add things like goals, motivation, conflict, and a plot to my first serious novel attempt.

So, without further ado, my writing goals for May:

• First, before re-reading, I'm going to work up a basic plot outline. No scene details just yet, but the basic outline of events/turning points.
• Second, I know that my characters all had goals, motivations, and conflicts, but I like things concretely written out. If I leave them in my head I'll be constantly considering other ideas and lose track of what is actually going on.
• Third, *grimmace* I'm going to re-read my manuscript and work on outlining the scenes. I know I'll be adding new scenes in what I've already written, and changing a bunch of the stuff that's already there. The big callenge is that he initial re-read is NOT to edit, just to figure out what plot parts stay, where the new stuff will happen, and what will go. I'm hoping the gratuitous use of post-it notes will help get me past the pain of re-reading what I've written. This will be the framework for the beginning of revisions and new writing that will begin in June.
• Fourth, and totally unrelated to creative writing, I need to actually go through the ProBlogger 31 Days to Build a Better Blog exercises. I signed up but haven't gotten through more than the first few exercises yet and I'd like to.

So, there you have it. Writing goals for May. I'm really hoping that now that the main tax rush is over, work will be slightly less stressful and I'll have a bit more time and mental fortitude to work on writing stuff. I'd like to be working on these writing goals daily, though I'm not sure how often I will be blogging updates about it (though I'm going to try to check in daily with the Wiffer forums).

Edit: I went and put the footnote things in the top and then forgot to actually make the footnotes. Silly Jennerosity! Anyway, here are the footnotes:

*1 - For those who aren't in the loop, the Wiffers are a fabulous group of writers who share a passion for writing and wine :)
*2 - SocNoc stands for the Southern Cross Novel Challenge and is very similar to NaNoWriMo.
*3 - I say works in progress with quotes because it is a bit of a misnomer in this case. I haven't actually been doing much work or progressing either of them lately. But it sounded better than "those stale partial stories I wrote". They were written during NaNoWriMo 2007 and 2008 so they are both about 50,000 words long. Since they are both in the fantasy genre, I still have a long way to go until they are done!

Writing Date Results

Ok, so I set up the challenge last week to spend the entire day Monday writing, and here’s how it went . . .

• Was busy on the weekend getting some things done so that they wouldn’t bother me when I was supposed to be writing.  Resulted in two loads of laundry being clean, but unfolded and most other things taken care of.  I can live with that.  (A truth which is well demonstrated by the fact that I’m sitting here blogging, instead of folding laundry.)
• Started around 9:00am.
• Didn’t feel like working out when I got up, and didn’t end up doing much exercise :(
• The phone did not ring once, all day.
• That was kind of disappointing because I was looking forward to ignoring the phone.  I find it liberating to not answer the phone.  Go figure.  I’m odd like that.
• Aside from a break or two for food and hydration, I spent almost 12 hours working on my manuscript.
• When I say ‘working on my manuscript’ I was, more specifically, figuring out what was going to happen in each scene of the novel, and what was important about each one.
• I didn’t take a break to do any laundry.
• But my husband did.
• I didn’t take a break to change it from the washer to the dryer, even when it had been sitting in the washer for a few hours.
• I realized that I need to create not one, but two, TWO more maps for my story.
• I planned out 20 scenes in total on Monday.
• I will probably end up shuffling the order or changing the content for some of the scenes.
• I stopped when I reached my goal for January.  It was just after 9:00pm.
• The book is not yet completely plotted.
• But I’m close.

Overall, it was a very good experience to immerse myself into the novel again.  I think I might be brave enough to set more writing dates in the future.  But I’m not sure exactly when, but I’ll let you know.  For now I’ve got 3 loads of laundry to fold and put away, several stacks of dishes to wash, and 2 chapters to read before class tomorrow.