Week two of working on Project Songbird in a serious and methodical way went reasonably well. I feel like getting into this practice now will get me writing-fit (like fighting-fit, geddit?) for NaNoWriMo, coming up in November. The thought of averaging about 1667 words a day for 30 days is still pretty daunting, so I guess I’ll keep training.
Vital statistics
This week was a reasonable week for writing in the book. There are definitely some bits I am not looking forward to, but I will have to be a big girl and write them.
- Total word count: 12 477 (12%)
- Words this week: 7 182
- Best day: Monday, with 1497.
(See? On my best day I was still 170-ish words light of the average day requirement for NaNo.)
Challenges
A biggie was that I started needing to do a bit of reading and research about some settings to make them historically accurate. I planned something that relied on a building that was only completed seven years after the action is set, so back to the drawing board a little. I am also loosely counting watching period TV as research, and probably shouldn’t rely on it for facts 😀
Other challenge that started to plague me, was that initially my main character was very sweary, but this is starting to feel a bit gimmicky and meh, and I will probably dump it soon, but then will definitely need to do a heavy rewrite of the first 5000 words. It’s not so much the rewrite that’s the problem, because I know I will need to do it, it’s just trying to figure out on the go which characteristics work, and which are awkward. Already had to stop myself from two characters being ‘mock-horrified’ within about 2000 words.
Also, it seems like I struggle to start writing until 9pm, at which point I panic and go “egads! no words for today!” and smash the keyboard a bit. I wanna work on that.
Wins
Weekly win of note was that I hit my goal of 5000 words by today – smashed it, actually.
I’ve also managed to do some more scene-by-scene outlining, so I have a better idea of where I am going for at least the first half of the book. I’m sitting at about an eighth of the way through at the moment, so it’s good to have direction.
This week I got my main character into the 1920s and introduced her to her era friends. They are getting to know each other, and next week, I’ll be writing how they navigate having this odd-2020s-bird in their nest as they go about their daily lives.
Lastly on the wins list – I bought my annual subscription to Writer’s HQ, with their tremendous tagline, “Stop F***ing About and Start Writing!”. They promise encouragement along with their courses, and tea and biscuits seem to be part of the required equipment. Very excited. Now, I’m just torn between going through the Plotstormers course with this book, or using it to plot my NaNoWriMo planned book.
Goals for next week
This coming week, I want to be a little more consistent – I missed a day, and only just made my project session goals one of the days. I am going to aim for at least 800 words per day, but not stress if I only make it to 800 words in any given day.
Everyday Adventures 