Okay, so I've gotten way off track this last week. I got stuck in the weeds and was just throwing words on the page to make my daily word count quota, which is exactly what I said I wouldn't do in this first draft. I have a lot of information to convey in this section and I'm just floundering around with a probably useless scene. I know what happens about two thousand words from now; I'm just not sure how to get from where I am to there.
Between the stomach flu, holidays, snow storms, a cold, and prospective students' open house, The Son has only been in school intermittently. Five-year-olds cut into your time, man. And then I've also had work commitments, including finishing my article for the local paper. Those were really great, responsible-sounding excuses for not writing.
But really, I stopped because I didn't know what to do next.
But! Ray of hope: It only took me a week this time to figure out how I'm effing myself over, and then drag my sorry ass back on track.
Goals for today:
1) Write the pages that are between where I am now and where I want to be. Even if I have to spin them instead of write them out all novel-like, I need to get through these weeds and back on the road.
2) Make notes/charts/notecards or something to figure out exactly how much information the reader needs in order to understand each chapter, and to figure out where that information should go in the chapter.
3) Make a detailed scene sheet for the upcoming scene (which leads into Plot Point 1).
As for my 30,000 word goal... lesson learned. 30,000 is too much for the amount of writing time I have coupled with what I want to accomplish with this draft. I can easily write 1,000 words a day when I know what I'm doing, but I need to be able to take a day or two to think my way out of dead ends without freaking out about missing the words.
My revised goal for January is to get to the end of Act I, AND to go back and fix this fudged-up section from the moment it went off the rails.
If my initial calculations stay on target, it should come in at about 21,500 words.
No comments:
Post a Comment