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GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

• My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
• Where I planned to be: Don’t ask
• Where I am: I have no clue
• On Target or Behind: ????? Profit???

How’s It Going:
Haven’t quite gone through all of Matt’s notes yet, but there’s a lot to unpack here.

So far, Keziah – one of the angels – needs a complete overhaul. And I mean complete: dialogue, actions, personality, and purpose. As is, she’s completely useless as an angel and as a character, and it’s really obvious that I’ve written her that way to keep her from being a deus ex machina. (Which is a good thing, but my execution was poor.) But I don’t want to take her out. That may or may not kill me, but Matt gave some good suggestions for fixing her, so I’m gonna try. But it is gonna take some work. Okay, a lot of work.

Probably the next biggest issue is some of the world mechanics I got sloppy with, and now I have to track them down throughout the book and fix them. More annoying than anything. Thankfully I was mostly consistent with the words I used, so a lot of the hunting will be easy to do with a quick word search.

Other than that, there’s a few places where I need to either expand a scene, or insert critical detail that’s going to take more than just tweaking a word or replacing a line. Weirdly enough, that’s gonna be easier than it sounds.

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

• My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks; 3 chapters/13 scenes per day
• Where I planned to be: Lesson 15, finished
• Where I am: Lesson 15 finished, time worked out
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
I think I’ve managed to work out a believeable timeline, shifted some scenes around for maximum effect, and… that leaves one more lesson before write in.

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

• My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
• Where I planned to be: 19500 words
• Where I am: 19610 words
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Monday sucked. I didn’t know what to write and stalled out. I gave up after several hours of trying with only a couple hundred words to show for it. Wednesday I managed to hit my word count for the day, despite spending most of the day out with friends. (We had fun though!) Yesterday was alright too, but my scenes are getting shorter. I’m several thousand words away from what I’m planning for my midpoint, so, not good. I may just throw my hands up and just go with it. That’s what revision is for, right?

Though, I do have a couple of ideas to torture my characters before the midpoint. Maybe I’ll make it.

Snippet, snippet, who’s got– oh, I do.

NOTE: The following material is a copyrighted excerpt from raw, unedited first draft, which may contain typos and spelling or grammar errors. Please do not point out corrections or make suggestions as I will not see them during revision. Please do not quote this material, as it may not survive to final draft.

Just as she was checking the furthest camera from the shelter, Jillian heard a scream from that direction. Worried it was Carly, who’d gone out to tend the garden, Jillian hopped back on the ATV and followed the sound. As she neared it, though, it occurred to her that Carly wasn’t really one to scream in danger, and at least had her pistol handy, but Jillian heard no gunshots.

The closer Jillian got, the screams became more guttural, fainter. They had an almost wet sound to them, as if whatever it was now had blood in its throat. She finally broke into a clearing and found the source of the noise: a large doe, gone quiet now, blood gushing from her throat, the muzzle of a coyote the size of a semi-truck clamped around it as it dragged her into the trees. One of the coyote’s ears was twisted in her direction, but it otherwise paid Jillian no mind, the rest of its focus on its fresh meal.

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

• My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
• Where I planned to be: About halfway through marking up the MS from Matt’s notes
• Where I am: In over my head
• On Target or Behind: Uhhhh?

How’s It Going:

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

• My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks; 3 chapters/13 scenes per day
• Where I planned to be: Lesson 14, finished
• Where I am: Lesson 14 finished
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
This is such a pain in the ass.

On top of that, after finishing Lesson 14, I read through 15 and realized it doesn’t cover what I thought it did. (Come on, the last time I looked at it was… years ago?) Which suddenly made my time issues with SKoS make so much more sense:

There’s nothing to guide me through working out plot arc time or overall time.

How much time is between this scene and the next? How far should this plot arc spread? A week, or two? A month? And how long does the overall story take? A year? Ten? I’ve done some preliminary thinking on this already, but I think I really need to take stock of what’s happening and when if I want this to work. And then nail it down.

As for what Lesson 15 is actually about… it’s really more about structure, playing with time, and finding the best beginning for the story. The techniques to test this won’t take long, thankfully. (And now that I’ve read it again, I remember how it gave me the amazing beginning for SKoS, so I definitely want to at least try some of these.)

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

• My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
• Where I planned to be: 18000 words
• Where I am: 18301 words
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
This week went well. Got some neat stuff, I think. I’ve always found it hard to torture my characters, but I think I’m getting better at it. Which means better writing!

So… here’s a snippet.

NOTE: The following material is a copyrighted excerpt from raw, unedited first draft, which may contain typos and spelling or grammar errors. Please do not point out corrections or make suggestions as I will not see them during revision. Please do not quote this material, as it may not survive to final draft.

Brandon looked around the room pointedly. “Does it look like they’re here?”

“Smartass,” Aaren muttered as he hauled himself back to his feet and went over to the sink. It was no shower, but it would at least be cold. He lifted the handle of the tap, but nothing came out.

“Runs off a water pump down to a well; won’t work until I turn on the generator,” Brandon said, unpacking their supplies.

Aaren was ready to pop off a snarky, “Go turn it on then,” but a piece of paper on the table beside the sink caught his eye. He picked it up, trying to decipher the elegant but hard to read script.

“What’s that?”

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

• My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
• Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
• Where I am: Somewhere
• On Target or Behind: On Target… ish?

How’s It Going:
I broke down and bought a printer. I’m tired of waiting for all this virus bullshit to blow over so I can use the school library, but apparently they’ve gone full online for fall too, so idek if the library is gonna open any time soon. Of course, I could use the public library (I think they’ve reopened?), or the UPS store (which is more cost effective for printing a lot of pages at once), but an affordable laser printer here at home is… even cheaper in the long run and more convenient. And no page limits. Plus, you know, I can print out my worksheets instead of hand-writing them. And dad can print stuff when he needs it, yadda yadda.

Anyway, it showed up Tuesday (after I spent way too long staring at the UPS tracking map where you can watch the truck drive in circles around your house but never actually get there), and I had to follow some cryptic-ass IKEA instructions to take all the paper and tape off. But I figured out how to get the software and drivers without a CD drive (because who has a CD drive in their laptop anymore, right??? pro tip, the internet is awesome), and managed to print a test page. By then I was tired of messing with it so I waited until Thursday to figure out how to get it to work over the network (so I don’t have to take my laptop in the other room) and print out my final draft so I can go through and make my edits from Matt’s notes.

But after printing everything, having to reorder the pages because I forgot to flip up the paper catch thing so everything fell on the floor, then hole punching almost 200 pages (single sided! but I made the font and line spacing smaller than the standard manuscript format) with my dinky little binder punch that only goes through about 3 pages at a time… I was actually sweating a little so I’ll leave starting the edits for tomorrow. Idk what it is about sitting at the kitchen table to do stuff but I get so hot for some reason.

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

• My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks; 3 chapters/13 scenes per day
• Where I planned to be: Lesson 13, somewhere halfway, fuck if I know
• Where I am: Lesson 13 finished; Lesson 14… getting there
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Turns out, as I was trying to work through my conflicts… I realized I’d already done this in the process of straightening out my plot, just in my own way. No reason to do the work twice. (I swear I’m not trying to rush these!)

So I started on 14, the first of the two time lessons. Pretty simple, really, just tedious and annoying. But I want to avoid the issues I had with SKoS involving time, so I’m really trying to do the work here. Although, most of my problems were between scenes, which is really where Lesson 15 comes in, but because so much of this is either getting reworked or completely rewritten, I need to have my in-scene time down too. It’s just… not the most fun part of this.

I want to cut! Where’s my scissors emoji…

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

• My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
• Where I planned to be: 16500 words
• Where I am: 16725 words
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
If I thought I went dark before, uh… let’s just say this is not a happy story at all. But for some reason I like writing this kind of thing, because this week went really well.

I’m morbid, what can I say?

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

• My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
• Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
• Where I am: Ho hum.
• On Target or Behind: ????

How’s It Going:
Posted my covers Sunday, after some last minute tweaks.

The response was… unexpected, even though I had a bad feeling about this title from the start. But I felt like I had to try to do it justice, since it was the highest voted in my title polls. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really mesh with the genre or my cover images.

That said, I’m fairly certain I nailed at least one image, and maybe have a couple of choices for the font. Now to take the best of what I have and the titles I’ve decided might work best (pretty much 2 out of the original 7) and… decide if I want to test them against each other on a cover or just go with my gut.

Either way, we’re getting there!

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

• My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks; 3 chapters/13 scenes per day
• Where I planned to be: Lesson 11, finished
• Where I am: Lesson 11 finished, Lesson 12 finished
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
It’s a royal mess, but I think I finally got my plot nailed down. At least I like what I have so far.

Lesson 12 is for ironing out characters, which… considering the work I’ve already done on the plot and scenes, was cake. Not a lot of characters left, to be honest. Makes it easy on me. See what I meant by some of these lessons being short?

So I’ll start Lesson 13 tomorrow, which involves making sure I’ve got all my conflict present and in line. Lessons 14 and 15 will be about time (and hopefully easier to manage in this story than SKoS), 16 is about consistency, and finally I’ll be at 17, the write in. I’m so ready.

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

• My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
• Where I planned to be: 15000 words
• Where I am: 15029 words
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Not super. Monday was a bad day, idk why, but I just… did not want to write. But I powered through anyway, got a little over my absolute worst-case minimum words (which is 400), and moved on. Some days it be like that.

Wednesday was a little better, but I struggled for words again yesterday. I hit my weekly goal though, and that’s what matters.

So here’s something from Wednesday, when I was actually getting stuff I liked.

NOTE: The following material is a copyrighted excerpt from raw, unedited first draft, which may contain typos and spelling or grammar errors. Please do not point out corrections or make suggestions as I will not see them during revision. Please do not quote this material, as it may not survive to final draft.

“We can’t bury him anywhere,” Carly said, following the same train of thought. “Shit.”

“Maybe if it was off in a far corner of the property, and we fenced it off or something.” Jillian had paused to think, one dishtowel-wrapped hand inside a glass. “Do you think bleach would do anything?”

“Probably not. Too bad we don’t have any hydrochloric acid,” Carly added with a laugh.

Jillian grinned. She knew there was a reason she liked Carly.

Carly rinsed off the last plate and handed it to Jillian. As she dried her hands, she turned to face Jillian, staring through her. “But we do have fire.”

Jillian paused with the plate in her hand. “Do you think that would work?”

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

• My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
• Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
• Where I am: Still working on covers
• On Target or Behind: Where am I even going again?

How’s It Going:
I finished the fourth cover for this last potential title, but I’m holding off posting them to the forums. Why? Because I want to look at them one more time in a couple of days, especially the one I finished Thursday, and really make sure they’re the best I can manage right now and in line with what other covers are doing in the genre right now.

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

• My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks; 3 chapters/13 scenes per day
• Where I planned to be: Lesson 11, finished
• Where I am: Lesson 11, rough plot fixes done, still need to finalize outline
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
My stupid index cards finally showed up on THURSDAY. (Well, okay, the neon ones I use for my Focus Outline got here Wednesday, but the ones I needed for this Interweaving Threads lesson got here Thursday.) They shipped last Friday, took an unnecessary and extended loop around the DFW area including some small town I’ve never heard of before, ending up in the same place they started before coming to me. In the meantime, between Dad and I, we’ve had TWO other Amazon Prime packages show up just fine via USPS. IDK WTH they were smoking with these index cards. But they’re here and I was able to finally do some heavy plot work.

It didn’t take long to thread these together after getting everything made up (I already had what I was going to write on the cards typed up), but it was a lot of brain work, so I’m going to leave working out the final kinks in my outline to next week.

Yes, this puts me at 3 weeks for this lesson, but this is important, and I’m easily ahead on this. Current projection at 2 weeks per lesson has me finishing at the end of October. Even giving myself an extra 2 weeks for Lesson 17 (the write-in) and Lesson 21 (the type-in) would have me finishing by Christmas. And I’m fully expecting some lessons in between to be short, from my experience with SKoS.

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

• My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
• Where I planned to be: 13500 words
• Where I am:  13624 words
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Didn’t get as much out of Lesson 17 as I’d hoped. And I haven’t tried the Interweaving technique on this yet, since I only just got the cards and I like to focus on actually getting my words in.

But. This week was pretty good. I went dark. Considering the subject, that was to be expected. And most of my stories get dark. But this, idk, this felt like the beginning of something even darker. It’s actually a little funny, but… maybe that’s just my dark sense of humor.

I like it.