Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Writing report

Between June the 26th and July 3rd, I’ve been very disciplined and spent at least one hour each weeknight, plus at least 4 hours each weekend, working on the sequel to The Elemental Odyssey. In that time I’ve written 15,000 more words. Woot!

Unfortunately, I also discovered that I didn’t like act two of my outline, so I had to re-plot it.

My goal is get the sequel published before Christmas to take advantage of all the new YA readers who will be getting an ereader for the Harry Potter ebooks.

In order to achieve this I have to write at least 10-12k words each week to get a first draft complete by the end of July. Then I’ll take about a month or two of rewrites, handing off to editing no later than October.

Well, that’s the plan, anyway.

9 comments:

  1. Considering you're looking at 10-12k words/week, you're in NaNoWriMo territory. Having done that a few years ago (I did my own challenge in July instead of "officially" doing it), I know just how demanding and challenging that can be, especially when you have a regular life to attend to.

    Good luck with wrapping it up, and I hope you don't run into any more massive rewriting problems! There's nothing worse than getting to a point in your manuscript where you realize it took a wrong turn and you have to delete a few chapters and restart things.

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  2. Difficult goal to reach, and I think great strategy regarding HP fans and ereaders. Hope you can reach both :)

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  3. Good luck Derek! You're getting more done than me, for sure! Things have been so crazy... going to have to play catch up :P

    YA: Cheat, Liar, Coward, Thief
    Adult: Shackled

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  4. I've been conducting a similar effort over the summer. I've found it's possible to write more in a small amount of time than I would have imagined. But I'm also learning that the faster I write, the more I seem to want to go back and change. When I write too fast, I hit the plot points but I miss a lot of the smaller stuff.

    I'm still trying to find the healthy balance that maintains the production quota I'd like but keeps the quality where I want it.

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  5. Funny you should post this because I've been doing exactly the same thing since the beginning of July! My goal has been to get 1500 per day to finish a novel by the end of the month. Good luck, I'm cheering for us both.
    JK

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  6. Great plan Derek!

    Challenging, but doable. Just the way it should be.

    ~Graham

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  7. Do you do you own illustrations or do you pay someone to do it for you? The covers look great.

    M.

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  8. All, thanks!

    I’ve written 16,000 words in the first 10 days of the month. I’m up to 50,000 words. But, I still need to kick it up a notch to the first draft done by the end of July. So, no more Dungeons & Dragons Saturdays for the rest of the month. Sacrifices must be made!

    Jamie,

    My plan is to complete my first draft by the end of July. It will require significant work after that, because my first drafts are not good. For example, I sent the 7th draft of The Elemental Odyssey to the editor. I have over 50 comments in the current Where Magic Reigns manuscript of fixes that I need to make.

    I find that I have to burn through it and not fix problems while I write the first draft. Otherwise, I’ll never finish the first draft.

    Mick,

    Igor Kieryluk did the artwork for Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance and The Elemental Odyssey. His website is www.igorkieryluk.com

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