disgruntled_owl | Entries tagged with resources

Helpful Resources:
- How I Stopped Sabotaging My Writing Goals: Confessions of a Late Bloomer by Andrea Jarrell at Writer's Digest
- Twenty Steps to Writing Great Love Scenes by Karen Wiesner on Writing-World.com
- Maximizing Writing Productivity While Working Full-Time by Audrey Wick at Writer's Digest

Status Update:

1. Words written this week: 2,450. I met or exceeded my GYWO daily quota (411 words) four times.

2. Write 4+ mornings a week: Achieved.

3. Friday Morning Writer Date: Achieved. Unfortunately, during the date I discovered that my laptop may be dying, so I have mixed feelings about this event this week.

4. Write two original stories: No specific progress this week. However, I created a character and wrote a scene for my Gotham Writers Workshop Character Development course this week, so I did do some work in this family.

5. Write to prompts for story ideas: Achieved. I had to make a lot of lists for my Character Development course and I started doing some exercises from the book Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer, which features prompts and exercises provided by a variety of fiction (and perhaps also nonfiction) authors. The exercises in this book are similar to the ones in Steering the Craft in that they include a lot of introductory material and context, which I like.

6. Post personal fanfic: No specific progress this week. I'm still working on the same recipient-oriented gothic horror project from a few weeks ago. I wrote a first draft longhand and now I'm rewriting it as I type it up, and things are going slooooooow.

7. Craft on My Commute: Achieved. This week was a mix of Gotham Writers Workshop lecture content, the Story Grid and podcasts (DIY MFA and Writing Excuses). The Writing Excuses podcasts are particularly useful for commuting because they are about 15-20 minutes long (the length of a painful Green Line connection) and there a ton of them.

Helpful Resources:
- #5onFri: Five Vehicles for Showing Emotion by Becca Puglisi at DIYMFA
- 7 Misconceptions About Revision at Writer's Digest
- 6 Tips for Reading Like a Writer by Chuck Sambuchino at Writer's Digest
- Want to be a Great Writer? Then Don’t Focus on Writing. (Do This Instead) by Sarah Cy at The Writing Cooperative

Status Update:

This was not a good week for writing, given work stress during the week and family stress over the weekend. But here’s an update anyway, because it’s important to record the weeks that don’t go well along with the ones that do.

1. Words written this week: 1,271 words. I missed several writing days this week and met or exceeded my GYWO daily quota (411 words) only one time. I kept going on my longhand first draft of a fic.

2. Write 4+ mornings per week: Nope.

3. Friday Morning Writer Date: Achieved, thankfully.

4. Write two original stories: No progress this week.

5. Write to prompts for story ideas: No progress this week, but my Gotham Writers Workshop online course starts tomorrow, so hopefully activity in this area will pick up next week.

6. Post Personal Fanfic: No progress this week.

7. Craft on My Commute: Achieved. I continued reading The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know. More notes on this book to come.

Status Update:

1. Words written this week: 3,127. I wrote every day this week and met or exceeded my GYWO daily quota (411 words) five times, up from previous weeks. This week I wrote most of a shitty first draft, as Hemingway would say, longhand for a fic in a Gothic horror fandom. I find that it’s easier to plow through a story idea when I write on paper as opposed to on a computer, mostly because it’s materially more difficult to tinker or go backward. I know my next draft is going to need a lot of clean up, which is intimidating, but my hope is that I'll be able to give every section of my story a consistent amount of revisions and edits.

2. Write 4+ mornings per week: Close but no cigar according to the rules I established last week.

3. Friday Morning Writer Date: Achieved! I actually got my act together the night before and got in a whole hour-and-a-half of writing time Friday morning.

4. Write two original stories: No progress this week.

5. Write to prompts for story ideas: No progress this week—all of my writing energy went to working on the fic. I’m starting a three-week Gotham Writers Workshop online course on character development soon, so hopefully that will enable me to check this box in future weeks.

6. Post Personal Fanfic: No progress this week. I realized that the fic I'm writing is one that I'll want to give to a specific recipient because 1) they offered the specific prompt that inspired me to write it, and 2) I am really encouraged by the fact that I can find fans of the source material that may actually want to read it. The recipient I had in mind included the prompt in their recent Yuletide sign-up, so this may be a good candidate for the New Years Resolutions collection. Fortunately I have a slew of other WIPs that would meet the criteria for this personal fic goal, as long as I can make myself finish them.

7. Craft on My Commute: This week I started The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know by Shawn Coyne, who also created the Story Grid website. This book is geared much more toward questions of structure than the LeGuin book. It also is written by an editor rather than a novelist. I've found it helpful to include books by editors and sometimes even agents in my reading list because they see a large volume of manuscripts and can common on patterns, particularly in stories that don't quite work.

I decided this week that this writing goal needs some structure, too. I can mark this goal complete for the week if I read a Craft on My Commute book for at least four of my 10 commute trips per week.

Helpful articles and resources this week:

- Interviewing Techniques for Researching Your Novel by Stephen Harper at Writer's Digest
- Character description: 7 ways to avoid weak imagery at the Now Novel blog

Status Update:

1. Words Written this Week: 2,288. This week I mostly wrote for prompts and did some "shadow story" (documentation of "off-screen" events) writing for a fic I'd like to post around Valentine's Day/International Fanworks Day. I achieved the GYWO daily word quota for my pledge level (411 words) two days this week. I'm feeling a bit behind on my word count but I did start my pledge in the middle of the month, so I'll be satisfied if I can hit half the January goal (6,370 words) by February 1.

2. Write in the Morning 4+ Days per Week: Achieved, just barely.

3. Friday Morning Writer Date: Achieved! Going forward, I am going to try to wake up earlier so I can make these sessions a little longer.

4. Write Two Original Stories: Some progress this week. I started writing for an idea that I'm not sure will crack the 1,000 word story threshold I've set, but I'm interested to see where the concept goes.

5. Write to Prompts for Story Ideas: Achieved! I wrote responses to several prose style exercises from my current Craft on My Commute book (see #7). I also kept doing the art postcard exercises, which have been fruitful for me thus far (and give me an excuse to buy more art postcards).

6. Post Personal Fanfic: Some progress this week (see #1).

7. Craft on My Commute: Achieved! I started a new book this week: Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story by Ursula K. LeGuin. I also listened to Episode 236 of the DIY MFA Radio podcast on writing on a morning when reading proved difficult. It was pretty good; I'll try out a few more episodes to see if I'll want to keep listening on a regular basis.

Helpful articles and resources this week:
- #5onFri: Five Steps to Creating Characters of Color by Andrea J. Johnson at DIY MFA
- One Simple Tip To Improve Your Description by Robert Wood at the Standout Books blog

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disgruntledowl

Entries tagged with resources

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