Goals update #6

OK, so this is a very long post. But I've been writing it in little bits all week as I achieved various mini-goals that I set for myself in the last week of July.

I feel rather like the Sylvia Plath poem titled "Cut" right now. I wonder why...

Poems written: 0

I'm such a failure, I know. But look below and you'll see why I didn't write any poetry.


World-building achieved:

I outlined all three books of the Sunstone Trilogy as it is now being called. Each book will have its own title, of course, but it's rather unifying to be able to say the name of the series. I abandoned all hope of outlining the way Noah Lukeman said to do in The Plot Thickens. But my outlines are more than just rudimentary chapter titles, fortunately.

I said on Tuesday that I was going to have to scrap much of my initial draft, 6 of the chapters to be exact. I've decided against that for the time being, but I'm opting to simply start from scratch. I will be ignoring what I've already written mainly because my writing has improved so much in the years since I wrote those chapters and nothing but a start-from-scratch rewrite will be able to salvage those storylines. The order of chapters has changed in my outline and I think it will work better. It's still an epic ensemble cast of characters, but I feel it's necessary in order to keep things believable and moving at a good pace.

Somewhere mid-week, though maybe it was Tuesday morning, I realized that there was one more character who I needed to do at least a half-bio on that I'd forgotten about. She's to be a teacher to my MC and I felt like she deserved more attention than what she'd get if I didn't take the time this week to at least note down some physical characteristics and some attributes which justify her being one of my MC's mentors. I did that rather quickly on Thursday after finishing up the outlines for books 2 and 3.

I wrote up some bits and pieces that will be scattered throughout the entirety of the trilogy in order to have them in mind so I can foreshadow some important things from them instead of hitting an "Oops, forgot that" info dump somewhere down the road.

As the week progressed and I got closer and closer to being "done" with my world-building I found myself getting anxious for today to arrive because it meant I got to start writing again.

I haven't been this excited about writing since before I graduated with my bachelor's degree in 2007.

Today is August 1. As per my Authorial Goals Revised post of the 18th, I should be in fever-pace-writing-mode starting today. This is now the start of my month of writing that I've given myself to complete the first draft of my novel. (You read that right, first draft of the novel I've been working on since high school, at least 6-7 years. *bang head on wall*)

Words written: 2,098!!!!!!

And so much easier than I thought it would be! We'll just have to see how it goes the rest of the month. That word count includes a prologue and 1 and something chapters. Boy will I have to cull words from my ms before it's ready to be published. Oh well.