Writing Update

Hello and checking in. Not doing as well this week as I was last week. Aside from blog writing, I did no writing over the weekend.  I also haven't been able to go in early to write for an hour before work.  I am still writing for an hour at lunch but not getting in quite 2000 words. Since there are two weekdays left and I am meeting my writer's group for writing time tomorrow night, I'm pretty confident I can make up the slack and be back up to speed by Friday.

Since my last check in, I have written 9518 words and have about 20,000 words to go before the novella is finished. I might even finish it before I get to that mark. I'm close to the final quarter, ready for the big climax.

A few more characters showed up to the party, though. There are a couple of them that even I'm not sure whose side they're actually on but I suspect they are good guys in disguise. I can see them going that way and I think that's what will happen.

This is why I hesitate to do any outlining before I get started. It always seems to happen this way - I'm headed in a certain direction then a character shows up out of nowhere or my main characters do something completely unexpected and suddenly everything changes. Not quite that bad this time, however. I did manage to get them all back on track for the ending I had in mind. We'll see if that lasts.

I have noticed that since I am writing nearly everyday, I have very little trouble picking up where I left off the day before, even if it's in the middle of a conversation. I do finish sentences, however.  I've also not gotten stuck in a scene until today. I know we all have times when we feel as if all that's hitting the page or computer screen is garbage. That's kind of what happened to me today. I say kinda because once I finished the scene I had been working on, I wasn't sure where to go from there. Or more correctly, I knew where I wanted to go, I just couldn't see how to transition the completed scene into the next major scene. There is a lull in the action while they travel from the planet to a ship in orbit so there's really not much going on. I could just jump right into the next scene but there's a few things I need to get straight before I do and I suppose this transition scene is a way of helping me do that. It could probably be eliminated but if it doesn't go on too long, I may just leave it.

But that's an editing issue. Editing is forbidden while free writing. Well, I did do some backtracking on that one scene but I believe that was necessary to keep the rest of the story from going to a place I really didn't want it to go. I like the change much better and it's more fun to write, actually. My hero can shift into a wolf and some scenes require me to write from that point of view. It's a nice change.

That's all I have for this update. I think I will continue to keep Wednesdays as my update day. I think it's good to take stock in the middle of the week so I can plan what I need to do with the remaining days to meet my goals as well as stay on track for the main goal of finishing this first draft by the end of this month.
Then I can begin the second draft August 1.

After that, I get to brainstorm what I'm going write for NANOWRIMO. Oy!