October 2022 Challenge - Build a Writing Habit!

[PraiseRao]

6 pomodoros today, with a few more likely before midnight. Moving to a hybrid paper/digital method means a whole lot of digitization for me. I was going to delegate it to the weekends, but there is so much of it that I might as well try to get a dent into it. It looks like I may be doing that for the next week or so. I could use a break (of sorts) anyway. Wondering if I am going to do NaNoWriMo this year and if I should just push my draft to November. I don't know at this point. Oh, I also updated my Series Bible from things that needed to be harvested from the notebooks I am digitizing. I really don't know how well this 'lets go digital' thing is going to work out. I'm hoping maybe it will be alright, and save me loads of paper, ink, and amount of things sitting on my writing desk.

Edit: Oh, and I did find that power chart, it was in the Series Bible.

 

[Ink-Soul]

Day 3:

Finished the beat-by-beat outline for the prequel and start filling some gaps in the characters' files. After some consideration, I decided on where in Pembrokeshire the MC's farm will be located. Tomorrow I should start outlining the chapters.

Also wrote 987 to WIP 2. Lena's second chapter is getting a substantial cut since I deleted a scene of around 3 pages and chose to move another scene to Book 3. On the other hand, a scene that only happened in Book 2 is being relocated to this chapter in Book 1. Exciting!

 

[Nether]

Day 3 was 1,599 words.

Weak early session, but made up for it (kinda) with the late.

Feels like I'm kinda doing filler by having the MC & BFF find some rooms without anything immediately important in them. However, each room can't be important and I have them doing small stuff, some of which is relevant later or teases something they're trying.

Kinda wrote part of a later scene involving a satanist/cult-decorated room with a confusing -- but ominous -- message.

 

[Cindyt]

Day 1 & 2

I had a spell of unwellness.

Day 3

I was better today but had business to take care of with Microsoft and Norton, and then the dang muscle in my upper back started hurting. I laid down and watched a chunk of The Remaining on PureFlix and it was better by around 10 pm so I got up and started writing again.

A DEADLY SPILL OF SCARLET
(Draft 4)​

WORD COUNT 212

Revisions, trimmings, rewrites, oh my. Added suspense and conflict to the trunk scene instead of just having Billy look inside and say Lolita was not in there.

Billy made it into the house, at last, at last. He pushed through the black vertical blinds into the strong stink of fish and corpse. He cleared the bungalow. I left him gearing up to do a room-by-room CSI.

 

[anaemic_mind]

Day 3
Made a few notes in chapter 15 but had too much else going on to properly do anything.

 

[Pterofan]

It's been two weeks since I challenged myself and I've barely touched the series. But this morning I did some serious editing on a scene, so there is hope! I have a feeling I won't get serious about the series until the side project is done. Better haul buttsky.

Once the side project's out of the way I'll concentrate on writing Book #1, while typing the longhand-written Book #2 will become the new side project. Unless I decide to write something new and go off-genre again. Wish me luck. It's going to be a long October, but never long enough.

 

[LaurieDelancey]

Day 4: Got Chapter 11 whipped into basic shape. It'll need a revisit later but it feels decent to me. Added 2K words to the story, now at 89K. Started Chapter 12, which also needs a lot of surgery.

 

[Ink-Soul]

Day 4:

I wrote 2709 words (my most productive day in a long time!), finishing Lena's chapter with a note of foreboding. Researched a bit about the Preseli Hills, and it seems like a great place to complement the prequel's setting. Also took some time to learn how many miles horses can cover in a day and at what speed - that will come in handy.

 

[Nether]

Day 4 was 1,492 words.

Early session was okay, late session was a bit of a mess.

MC and BFF are still on the fourth floor. They found evidence of the cult, there's more build-up that might kinda-tease what's happening (although I still worry that the antagonist might feel like a RRWARB retread)

The only problem with the cult evidence is I might be doing things in reverse. The other stuff might need to happen THEN the presence of the cult could help tie it together.

EDIT: Also had a minor heart-attack when Word later crashed and it recovered an older, less complete version of the file. Wtf? Thankfully, I found the right version in autorecover

 

[anaemic_mind]

Day 4

Slightly hampered by a household lurgy making everyone a little more needy than normal but carved out some quite time and had a good long read-through of chapters 17, 18, 20 & 21, making loads of notes. There's still lots of little parts that aren't nailed down and I still haven't got solid ideas for them. I then skipped ahead to the first few chapters of act 3. They are in an even worse state with no clear outline in place. As with the niggles in act 2 I'm not quite sure what to do about them. Might have to just plug away with the parts I do know what's happening until inspiration strikes. Tried to think through some scenarios last night in bed. But my brain kept flitting to books 2 & 3.

 

[dansimmonds]

Work and life are still crazy, but I made some progress in September.

Trying to get my first edit finished, and the outline for the short story finished this month. Then as it's being Beta read, I'll be working on the website, ISBNs and cover work.

 

[Taylor Harbin]

October 5: began slowly dipping my toes back into work, brainstorming one story and editing another.

 

[Cindyt]

Day 4 was 1,492 words.

Early session was okay, late session was a bit of a mess.

MC and BFF are still on the fourth floor. They found evidence of the cult, there's more build-up that might kinda-tease what's happening (although I still worry that the antagonist might feel like a RRWARB retread)

The only problem with the cult evidence is I might be doing things in reverse. The other stuff might need to happen THEN the presence of the cult could help tie it together.

EDIT: Also had a minor heart-attack when Word later crashed and it recovered an older, less complete version of the file. Wtf? Thankfully, I found the right version in autorecover

Funny, my prayer list doc was up, pinned, and fine one morning this week, then disappeared that evening. I restored it via Onedrive, but the restoration was what they called a Compatibility Version--no links, no table of contents, different format. My research informed me that this happened due to Microsoft updating WORD. It showed me to convert it to what it was before and save it in case I lost something in the conversion. It was fine the next morning. In all my years of using the software, this is the first time that has happened. If it had been my WIP I would have had a heart attack, too, Nether.

 

[LaurieDelancey]

Day 5:

Any Limitless Star: Took a bit of time this morning to hammer at the plot for what I hope to use for NaNo this year. Still stuck on the 'action' part of the plot. I kind of want this to be more heavily focused on the philosophical parts of the story, but it needs to have something active driving it or it'll just meander.

Cape Kennedy: going to tackle more of chapter 12 today; when that gets too tedious, I'll go off to do some more descriptive fill in some of the more sparse sections toward the end of the book, because the front half is way more descriptive than the back half.

The idea file: hoping to toss some more snippets in today if I can.

 

[PraiseRao]

Wednesday, 6 pomodoros so far. Yesterday, I had 8 though it was mostly clerical as I finished digitizing my current documents. I'm mostly set up and ready to restart work on book 2. Except of course, reviewing said documents, rereading the chapters that have been written, and then doing some creative pomodoros harvested from the digitized documents that are in a to-do now.

 

[Cindyt]

Day 5

I had things to do, like laundry, and stay in a Microsoft Customer Service agent chat for I don’t know how long, trying to figure out what he thought was a glitch in my billing. Turned out to be a weird thingy that force me to delete my account and create another one. So, I’m exhausted.

A DEADLY SPILL OF SCARLET
(Draft 4)​

WORD COUNT 147

Added bits of deleted thingies, reoriented a scene and updated my Flashpoint Scene Chart.

 

[Ink-Soul]

Day 5:

Worked on the chapter outline for the prequel. I feel like I could add more stuff to some of the chapters, but I'm pretty sure that's my brain trying to cheat me into writing a novel instead of a novella. No! I'll control myself. I really want this to be short and sweet. Also added around 150 words to the series, very little since I kept getting distracted by the outline D:

 

[Nether]

Day 5 was 2,160 words.

Light early session, but managed to get just under 1,600 words drafted during the late session.

After finding a few more spooky rooms, crap hits the fan and the MC is sent running. During his madcap escape, he runs into two of his friends who'd still been searching and led them downstairs. They don't believe a word... until they see one for themselves when the pursuers appear.

Feels like a solid moment and I realize tying things together like that keeps the pacing a bit faster. It also somewhat explains why a character didn't know to look out (whereas I'd wanted an attack to split that group earlier). And the pursuit proves the MC's claims. (The decision removes a light slowdown, since I'd originally wanted the MC to explore by himself for a bit before finding the other/s. -- and, originally, I'd thought it'd just be him and the LI, but that was before the prank involved a longer search with just the two of them there, so this will feel a bit different and the dynamic will be completely different when it's just them again) All in all, it should be a net improvement.

 

[anaemic_mind]

Day 5

People with man flu still hampering my routine but I dipped in and out of book 1 all day, reading and making yet more notes. Found an old part of chapter 24 that I'd moved to much later and am considering moving it back. Just need to figure out some mobile phone shenanigans to make it work...

 

[Magnus]

Hopping on a bit late, was doing fine but I've noticed I've begun slacking on my morning writing again.

So, starting tomorrow, daily goals are:

• Write after breakfast.
• Meditate 20 mins.

Sundays are off (though I might still do stuff).

 

[Taylor Harbin]

October 6: brainstorming a new science fiction yarn about a crewed mission to the edge of the observable universe. I want to draw parallels between man’s exploration and hubris and the legend of Sun Wukong (in fact, this being the same market that liked The Woodcutter’s Wife, I’d like them to meet God somehow).

This ain’t the first time I’ve come up with themes and parallels before a plot. How do I pull this off without it seeming cliched and contrived? I tried looking for a “meeting with God” section on TV Tropes and couldn’t find one.

 

[LStein]

All right, October. I'm going to make the most of you.

Unfortunately, my wife took a spill and got stitches in her knee so our walks will have to wait. But this is a good excuse to work on my WIP more since I did not do enough in September.

Overall goals:
1. Finish reading and taking notes on 2 books for my WIP
2. Finish reading a YA novel that I started a while ago (just to get back into reading)
3. Continue to query

Plan:
RESEARCH WIP: go to cafe near work Mondays - Thursdays and research.

READ: read for fun during my morning or afternoon commute.

QUERY: send 2-3 queries each weekend. Try to keep obsessing about agents to the weekend.

At a cafe right now, about to dig into research!

 

[Ink-Soul]

Day 6:

933 words to the series. Also worked a bit on the chapter outline for the prequel, but overall, today was a bit slow.

 

[LStein]

4. Try to not fail once again

That's all we can do. Try, I mean.

 

[Cindyt]

Day 6

More laundry today. Plus, tech brainstorming off and on all day with one of my fellow admins on Scott Michaels's dead celeb forum.

A DEADLY SPILL OF SCARLET
(Draft 4)​

WORD COUNT 136

Updated my Flashpoint Scene Chart. Reoriented a scene, trimmed, and worked out some plot bits.

I left Billy observing the disturbance in the dining room. More about that on the 7th.