Writing Report for the Week Ending 29 January 2017

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The original goals:

1. 2,500 words of new fiction.
2. 4 chapters on the final draft pass on Universal Destiny.
3. 4 chapters of revision notes for Draugr Rising, taking me to the end of the story.
4. Listen to 4 episodes of ISIRTA*.
5. Storyline two post for the original BSG** pilot.
6. Short Story Submissions: 1.
7. Stretch Goal 1: add two chapters to the rough plot for Fallen Heroes.
8. Stretch Goal 2: start on the final draft of my Uhura novelette.

The Results:

1. 516 words of new fiction, almost finishing Chapter 9 of Shrine. Not what I was hoping for, but I got a lot deeper into editing this week than I’d planned, so that’s okay.
2. 9 chapters on the final draft pass on Universal Destiny. Yes, more doubling the original target. Love that. Fifteen of twenty-nine chapters have had that final read through, and I have made some small additions and adjustments here and there. By raw word count, I’ve made it through 56% of the narrative, and I like how it’s shaped up.
3. Finished the reading and revision notes phase for Draugr Rising. And actually also started the second draft, making it through the first three chapters there. This is a bit more involved than the usual 2^nd draft as I appear to have dictated with worse audio quality than other dictations and there’s a lot of clean up to do at the same time. I did a little during the revision notes phase, but not much.
4. ISIRTA*. Enjoyed the early skits, though the original “pilot”, had worse audio quality than I remember and a couple of bit are cut up a little. It was also recorded on stage and clearly had some visual elements that didn’t come through as well as I might have liked. I wonder if there’s a video version somewhere.
5. BSG** pilot, storyline 1 posted. Notes complete for storyline 2, but I need to write the post for real.
6. Short Story Submissions: 0. I’m not quite going to call this a failure, as I did take some time to refamiliarize myself with a number of submission listing sites and noted some anthologies that interest me.
7. Stretch Goal 1: accomplished. I added two chapters to the rough plot of Fallen Heroes. I’d actually hoped to do more, but got sidetracked one night, staying up until 1 am or so and doing up an entire scene list for Bad Teenage Poetry, my first planned foray into a different genre.
8. Stretch Goal 2: adjusted. I didn’t touch the Uhura novelette. Instead, I started on the third draft of Scattered On the Wind. This is a SF YA story that I did as a NaNoWriMo project a couple of years back and actually come through the process pretty well. I did the read through and 2^nd draft last fall, and I’m still quite enjoying the story as I start on the “make it pretty” draft.

Overall, a very successful week. Maybe not so much in the raw new words measurement, but I got a lot done, and I’m pretty happy with things.

I’m going to mostly keep with the same basic goals for next week, making a couple of adjustments to different drafts here and there.

1. 2,500 words of new fiction. I still feel like this is the basic correct target for me with my current schedule.
2. 5 chapters on the final draft pass on Universal Destiny. By word count, this takes me to the ¾ mark in the story, putting the rush to the ending in sight.
3. 3,500 words progress on the 2^nd draft of Draugr Rising. Putting a word count goal here instead of a chapter count one. With the amount of dictation cleaning that needs to be done, 500 words per day is a good goal.
4. ISIRTA*. Listen to 4 more episodes. 5, if I can manage it. There are 9 episodes in the second series, so I’m looking to be around half way complete this week.
5. Storyline two post for the original BSG** pilot. Which means I need to finish writing it.
6. Short Story Submissions: 1. Let’s try this again.
7. Stretch Goal 1: add two chapters to the rough plot for Fallen Heroes. Maybe more.
8. Stretch Goal 2: continue with the third draft on Scattered on the Wind. I won’t set an actual target here and just be happy with whatever progress I happen to make.
9. Stretch Goal 3: start on the final draft of the Uhura novelette. I’m going to keep putting this goal in here. Sooner or later, I’ll manage it. At some point, I need to decide to do something with my fanfic, too.

Further to that article about Asimov’s writing habits, I remind myself that I’m not Asimov. Maybe I need to learn more focus overall, but I like having a lot of things in progress at once. I’m never bored.

I am trying to more or less focus on one thing per writing session, unless it’s a particularly long one and I finish something short. There should be a primary focus for the week, and one that I go to when I’ve got extra time. Right now, I’m going to make that the final draft of Universal Destiny.

Be well, everyone.

* ISIRTA = I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again

** BSG = Battlestar Galactica

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