Over at Forward Motion there's a regular program of writing dares... I guess there's four every year with a month between each. We're in the middle of the Jan/Feb Dare now. I chose to do three dares: (1) a word-count dare - 60,000 words; (2) a novel 'new material' dare - 8 chapters; and (3) a non-fiction dare - 4 articles. I finished the 8 chapters on January 30 and the 60,000 saleable words tonight. I say 'saleable' because my total word count for the year is higher because I include journal and weblog entries which I don't consider saleable. I don't include email in my total word count. A pity, but I can't include everything.
Anyhow, having done the first two dares I'm still left with that bothersome non-fiction dare. I used to think I was good at writing non-fiction and have written a lot of it. Lately I've had a real block to doing any good article writing, so I have to laugh at myself for choosing to do the master-level non-fiction writing dare this time. I was hoping it would force me out of my lethargy.
In a way it has. I've written two articles - neither of them in what I'd consider publishable condition. I wonder how newspaper journalists do it, writing one to four articles each day. Of course I expect the deadlines, paychecks and editors all combine to help them get the work done. I can't claim to have any of those advantages.
So tonight I went on an internet search for good journalism sites - and found quite a few. I added them to my writing links page in case you're curious to see. While on my research expedition I found some great writing tools you might want to keep in your magic toolbox of writing tricks.
I've also started a lengthy non-fiction writing project... but I've written about that here before. I've been writing on it for almost a month now and doing hours and hours of research. Its taking shape! (A blob's a shape, right?) As I research, my expectations and visions for the project change. I went from a working title of "Why CPS Is Bad For Kids" to "The CAPTA Years" - the later title in the hopes that by the time I get all this research done, CAPTA will be repealed. How's that for visionary and optimistic?
I'm spending more time on non-fiction this year (so far) than I expected. My plan was to do 60% fiction and only 40% non-fiction and its coming out much closer, almost 50/50.
I've been busy and am now done with chapter twelve of River Girl. The manuscript has 23951 words and I've got five more chapters to write. I like the way its going. I've been able to come up with some amusing scenes. One of my goals in writing for children is to include more humor - a skill I hope to develop as time goes by.
I still haven't decided which of my manuscript ideas to go with next. I've got six of them to choose from. Today I browsed our library's holdings for California history and ordered a few books. The more I can learn, the better. A few of my manuscript ideas will dwell on important events in our history and I want to get the stories right!
