/ Writing

Writing Challenge and Writing Tricks

InkQuill

One more week of writing every day. Except for one night when I couldn’t focus and ended up writing the beginnings of a random scene set in a diner—a scene that didn’t really go anywhere and that served as more of a writing exercise than anything else—I’ve been making slow but continual progress on The Devious Astrolabe. I’ve created three new characters and a larger story is beginning to coalesce in my mind. I hesitate to say that this might turn into a novel (partly because to do so would suddenly put all sorts of pressure on myself that won’t, at this particular time, help me as a writer), but the scope of the story is much larger than I had originally planned.

This weeks stats: 2705 words written, with an average of 386 per day. Which brings my totals to 14 days of writing, 5268 words, and an average of 376 words written each day.

One of the tricks that seems to be working, and it’s a trick I’ve read about in a number of different places, is to stop writing before you finish a scene that you’ve worked out in your mind. That way, when you start the next day, you already have a jumping off point. Instead of staring at a blank screen, you start writing with a clear sense of where you are and what needs to happen in the scene. Having this kind of head start at the beginning of each writing session seems to help keep me moving forward (even if I’ve had a few false starts and had to go back the next day and put some of the previous day’s writing in my “cut” file where I keep those sections that I feel simply don’t work but that I don’t delete because something in them might prove useful down the line).

Only 11 days left in this 25 day challenge and I’m feeling extremely confidant that I will succeed.

On this day..