A new week, a new set of goals! Expect to see the following goals listed throughout the day. The first line for each bullet point will be the same, but the content of each paragraph will be different as I make progress with each goal:

• Write “Snowmelt” and come up with a real name for it. It’s a short story set in the Wendigo universe and focused on the island of Vespast (Known as Westerland by the people of Ursel Province and the freemen of the Tundra Wastes). It’ll basically be a story about a Viking-like people and their new leader, a 15 year-old shieldmaiden who’s thrust into the position with the death of her father. I had hoped to get more done today, but found out that my outline for it has either been misplaced, deleted, or was never saved to begin with. I had to fall back on brainstorming notes and what was rattling around in my head. Didn’t get as much of the draft written today as I would have liked, but I did complete the first scene, or about three pages. More awaits tomorrow!
• Edit my WOTF entry. Didn’t get a chance to look it over today. I plan to spend time on this tomorrow afternoon. My goal is to get it finished before
• Keep working on the Wendigo Novel 1 outlining process, first with Michael A Stackpole’s “21 Days To a Novel“. I wrapped up Day 17’s work over the weekend, and had hoped to start Day 18 today. Wasn’t as efficient as I would like, but tomorrow is another day.
• Keep working on the Wendigo Novel 1 outlining process, this time with the plan in Karen Wiesner’s “First Draft in 30 Days“. Day 5 and 6 in the plan involve a summary outline of the story. Basically, a several page synopsis that goes through the story scene-by-scene. I’m rather verbose when I’m writing up summaries, so this will end up being quite a bit longer than the plan calls for. But, that’s all right. As long as the ideas are down, they can be trimmed and expanded as needed later.
• Read Writing the Blockbuster Novel by Albert Zuckerman. I’ve gotten through the introductory chapter. I plan to read more tomorrow. So far, so good! But, not into it enough to really give a running commentary.
• Read Volume 30 of the Writers of the Future. I’m still finishing up Volume 28, but I expect to start this tomorrow. I’ve read a couple of the stories from it already, so I’m ahead of the game there. In Volume 28 today I finished reading a really good story called “The Poly Islands.” It was heavy on its environmental message, but in a very entertaining way. Very enjoyable.

While today wasn’t as productive as it could have been, it marks the first amount of new writing for 2015. Tomorrow, I expect to write quite a bit on “Snowmelt” and do a good bit of editing on the WOTF entry:

Here are today’s numbers:

Blog Posts: 522
Planning and outlining: 1,700
Short Fiction: 750
Novel Fiction: 0
Salable words: 0

Total Fiction for Month: 750

Total Salable for Month: 0

Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 750

Total Salable for Challenge Year: 0