Writing Updates: February 2008

Another month gone by all ready? Yikes!

I made it all the way through the month without missing a day of writing, which if you remember my plan from last month means I didn’t have any weeks were I wrote more than five thousand words. I did write 14,732 words this month though, which is a few hundred more than last month.

WIP Novel

I added over six thousand words to this month, which is less than I hoped. On the plus side it doesn’t fully reflect the time spent with the material (see below). Also, just the other day some large pieces of the story fell into place in an exciting and unexpected way. I’ve got a bit of work to connect some things up, and as always I still have a few scenes that I don’t have mapped, but I feel good. I see the road to the ending now, and I’m looking forward to the journey.

Effective Viewpoint Workshop

This month I participated in the Effective Viewpoint Workshop offered by Valerie Comer over at the Forward Motion Writers’ Community. It consisted of taking a scene, and rewriting it a number of different points of view. It was excellent, and I learned a lot.

I chose my scene from early in the novel I’m working on (end of Chapter 2), and during the month I rewrote it seven different ways, and then revised the original based on what I learned. I know this is going to be invaluable when I get back into revisions. Perhaps I’ll share some before and after snippets sometime.

If you’re a writer and you aren’t a member of Forward Motion you should check it out. It’s been around for over ten years, and has lots of hidden gems like this if you take the time to look. Oh, and it’s free, so what have you got to lose?

Future Plans

My writing plans are going to stay the same as last month, with a stronger focus on getting the draft of this novel complete. I hope to take a bit of time, look at the numbers and come up with an end date. I think having a goal of finish the novel by X will keep me moving. In the past I’ve chosen dates that seemed reasonable, but weren’t, so I’m holding off until I can figure out what’s realistic.