Writing Report for the Week Ending 29 January 2017





- 2,500 words of new fiction.
- 4 chapters on the final draft pass on Universal Destiny.
- 4 chapters of revision notes for Draugr Rising, taking me to the end of the story.
- Listen to 4 episodes of ISIRTA*.
- Storyline two post for the original BSG** pilot.
- Short Story Submissions: 1.
- Stretch Goal 1: add two chapters to the rough plot for Fallen Heroes.
- Stretch Goal 2: start on the final draft of my Uhura novelette.
The Results:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 2nd 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.
- 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.
- BSG** pilot, storyline 1 posted. Notes complete for storyline 2, but I need to write the post for real.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 2nd 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.
- 2,500 words of new fiction. I still feel like this is the basic correct target for me with my current schedule.
- 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.
- 3,500 words progress on the 2nd 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.
- 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.
- Storyline two post for the original BSG** pilot. Which means I need to finish writing it.
- Short Story Submissions: 1. Let’s try this again.
- Stretch Goal 1: add two chapters to the rough plot for Fallen Heroes. Maybe more.
- 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.
- 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






