I've started my 8000-word worldbuilding project... I'm 1228 words along. I'm writing it in question/answer format, as if I'm interviewing myself about it. Fun.
I did it! I wrote 10,000 words this weekend! I'm so happy I reached my goal!
I reached 10K at the end of chapter 16 (these are short young-child type chapters)... then decided to continue with the story. By the end of chapter 17 the story was finished so I got a double reward... not only did I finish my marathon, I completed a new manuscript that I didn't have any knowledge of on Saturday morning. It was one of those stories that just had to be written though. I could feel it emerging as if propelled by its own power.
This is a fantasy for children (girl protagonist) with a strong religious theme (interfaith: Christian and Pagan). It was a great conflict for a child character to go through and something that's a contemporary problem many children face... except for the fantasy part, that is.
I reached the first level in the Marathon in only 8 hours, not even working at it all the time. I wrote over 5000 words on my new story. This is more fantasy than my other children's stories are. I had to stop to get some webdesign work in, but hope to write another 5000 words tomorrow.
I finished reading this book weeks ago but never wrote anything about it here. It is exquisite. This is the book that Linda Sue Park wrote first. On her website she said it was accepted the first time she submitted it (by Clarion Books) - so I had to check it out to see what was so good. The book is a retelling of Korean myth and 17th-century history. It was well-researched and the characters were likable and compelling. Jade is a mischevous girl who wants more adventure than her aristocrat-parents have planned for her. She gets it too! This is a short chaptered book and doesn't take much time to read.
Why do I do this to myself!? I'm having a hard time achieving my goals these days... so today when I saw this is a writing marathon weekend at Forward Motion I decided to sign up for 10K words. I thought this might knock me out of my slump... get me over the writer's block... you know? So here I am signed up with nothing to write because most of my novels are still in rewrite phase and one is so close to the end I don't think there's another 10K words to write there.
So I started a new story - a sort of magical children's fable... and I'm 1200+ words into that now. I'm writing to a younger audience than I usually do so this manuscript, though chaptered, will be shorter than most of my novels. At least that's how I've got it planned. We'll see what it develops into (you just never know).
Meanwhile I'm signed up for the April-May Dares... and haven't even started that work!! It is apparent that I've never recovered from that major stressful upset that I had on the 29th of January... because my writing life never got back on track since.
Okay, I admit it. With the stress of the war, my daughter's illness, and so much more ... I didn't get to fifty hours of revision work last month, but I did twenty-seven hours and I'm so happy about that!
My April and May goals are (1) to rewrite the same novel including the first 7 chapters I've already gone over once, then write a cover letter and synopsis, and send it all out before the end of May... and (2) write 8000 words about the ancient civilization my two middle grade novels take place in. I'm hoping to write more novels in this series so I want the world-building to be as detailed as possible.
