Not much to report on today, from a writing perspective. I spent a good deal of the afternoon working on “Evaporated Ocean” some more. It’s been fully transcribed to the computer, and partially edited at the same time. I’m going to let it sit for a couple of weeks while I focus on drafting a new story next week, and work on a line-by-line and scene-by-scene edit of my Writers of the Future entry.

That’s really it. Wanted to work on my novel, but the short story ate into a lot of time. Also, I don’t think tomorrow will be much of a writing day. My wife and I are both off from work, which is rare. We’ll likely spend a good deal of it together, and some of that time will include reading. Maybe I can get caught up on Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.

So, that is it for the next day or so. See you Tuesday!

Blog Posts: 187
Planning and outlining: 0
Short Fiction: 0
Novel Fiction: 0
Salable words: 0

Total Fiction for Month: 14,400

Total Salable for Month: 1,000

Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 14,400

Total Salable for Challenge Year: 1,000

Saturday’s mostly over, and a good bit was accomplished on all fronts except the novel.

• Short Story Writing: The first fully completed draft of “Evaporated Ocean” is done! As I said, quite a bit of the changes have already been implemented in the three different outlines I made before ever putting pen to paper, so I’m fairly happy with the way everything’s turned out. It’s been transcribed, and now it just awaits more research on my part to tighten everything up. I’ve done a fair amount of the research, so I’ll implement the changes I can think of tomorrow into a pseudo final draft. The real final draft will come in a couple of weeks during the final editing phase.
• Short Story Editing: The first round of “The Lone Blue Strand” has been completed and kicked back to Venessa Giunta at Fictionvale. This bit of extra editing during the week taught me that I can get short stories written and edit short stories at the same time. So, I’ve figured out how I can better get short stories finished, I think. I’ll get a story drafted up as much as I possibly can (3rd or 4th draft) during its week of creation, and then set it aside for a minimum of a week. Then during the “edit” week I’ll spend at least an hour a day working on it, getting it as tight as possible. Then, and only then, will it be submitted to its final destination. With that as my goal, next week I will finally finish my WOTF entry for Q2 and get it submitted.
• Novel Outlining: No new work again. Hate falling behind, but those short stories knocked out my day more than I thought they would. Sometimes, short stories aren’t so short! Not on the time investment, anyway.
• Fiction Reading: Read another chapter of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. Still not as quickly as I would like, but I plan to spend some time doing nothing but quality reading soon.

Blog Posts: 320
Planning and outlining: 500
Short Fiction: 2,750
Novel Fiction: 0
Salable words: 0

Total Fiction for Month: 14,400

Total Salable for Month: 1,000

Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 14,400

Total Salable for Challenge Year: 1,000

Yay, it’s Friday! Except, not yay. It’s another day, and Saturday will be just as busy. So, get back to work!

Not too much to say about today. Most of my time was spent between two different short stories, “Evaporated Oceans” and “The Lone Blue Strand.” Unfortunately my novel time got eaten up through a combination of chores and general time mismanagement. But, as always, stuff was accomplished:

• Short Story Writing: I started what should have been the second draft of “Evaporated Oceans” and ended up becoming a redrafting of the outline and the beginnings of the third draft. Interesting how things develop that way, right? I had just written a line of description on page one, only to have that single line turn the story in a completely different direction from what I’ve planned. Because of that I lost a lot of my actual writing time and only completed four pages. But, I’m in a good spot to finish it tomorrow, and then get to work on the first round of edits Sunday.
• Short Story Editing: I’m still down to the last couple of scenes here. Got some stuff accomplished, but a few paragraphs bogged me down for much of my time. Still, I’m on target for finishing it tomorrow.
• Novel Outlining: No new work today, other than reading over stuff that was done before and thinking on some different ideas.
• Nonfiction Reading: Writing the Blockbuster Novel by Albert Zuckerman. As expected, I didn’t get any of this read today. Shame, but such is life. I’ll at least finish a chapter tomorrow.
• Fiction Reading: Read another chapter of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. Going slower than I would like, but even with the 3-52 challenge reading takes a backseat to writing. Maybe I should just schedule a catch-up day and that’s all I do.

Blog Posts: 805
Planning and outlining: 500
Short Fiction: 1,100
Novel Fiction: 0
Salable words: 0

Total Fiction for Month: 11,650

Total Salable for Month: 1,000

Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 11,650

Total Salable for Challenge Year: 1,000

Today was another day where not everything went according to plan, but a good bit of work still managed to get done. Let’s see what happened:

• Short Story Writing: I decided not to finish the rough draft of “Evaporated Oceans” and instead focused on a revised outline based on what I already knew of the story. It shaped up quite nicely, with the appropriate (I hope) amount of rises and falls in the action, and a satisfying climax. The story is really about two friends reconciling with one another, but it’s set on the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic world and a dangerous situation. Tomorrow morning I will dive into the second draft and get all of it written before lunch. That’s my goal, and I’m sticking to it! I’m estimating it will be around 15 pages or so.
• Short Story Editing: I’m down to the last couple of scenes in “The Lone Blue Strand” before I go back and finish up any other areas I thought were soft. It’s amazing how you can write and rewrite something, and it’s not until much, much later that you realize what you wrote doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. At least, not in parts. That was the bulk of today’s edits. Not the edits given, but things I noticed and wanted to change. Cutting a paragraph here, adding a couple there. It’s shaping up nicely, though!
• Novel Outlining: Today began what Karen Wiesner calls the story evolution process in her book “First Draft in 30 Days.” During the next two or three days I’ll be going over the scene outline and my other notes to determine – and then tweak – the overall flow of the story, from the first mentioning of conflict and the story’s goal to the climax and resolution of the tale. All in all, it’s around 29 different points spread across Beginning, Middle, and End. I didn’t have as much afternoon time as I would have liked today, so I could only tackle the first 3 points in the Beginning. That is, a description of the initial conflict that starts off the story, a description of the true story goal (Not minor subplot goals and the short-term goals), and a description of the main protagonists who will attempt to achieve the story goal. This is likely an area that will be revised and edited as I go through the points in the Middle and End, so I’m curious to see how everything will turn out in the end. This is an area where I absolutely do not want to rush or screw things up. The last thing I want to do is get to the end of the rough draft and realize I’ll need to rewrite at least half of it from scratch because it needs to go in a completely different direction.
• Nonfiction Reading: I read a little bit more of Writing the Blockbuster Novel by Albert Zuckerman, and likely won’t get to read any more until Saturday.
• Fiction Reading: Now six chapters into my rereading of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. Enjoying every page of it so far!

Blog Posts: 485
Planning and outlining: 1,391
Short Fiction: 0
Novel Fiction: 0
Salable words: 0

Total Fiction for Month: 10,550

Total Salable for Month: 1,000

Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 10,550

Total Salable for Challenge Year: 1,000

• Short Story Writing: It had been my intent to finish the rough draft for “Evaporated Ocean” today, but it didn’t happen. Got sidetracked completely by other things, namely outlining the novel. I’m trying to break up my day into three big chunks: short stories in the morning (Planning, writing, and editing), novel in the afternoon, and reading in the evening. Rigid adherence to this will likely be impossible, but it’s a good goal to push for. If I run out of time for one activity, shift gears to the next activity and keep going. Make up for lost time later.
• Short Story Editing: I’m 3/4 through the first round of edits of “The Lone Blue Strand” for Fictionvale. I expect to finish the last couple of scenes tomorrow, and then Friday I’ll go back through it again to see if there were any soft spots that I either didn’t touch on, or didn’t notice before.
• Novel Outlining: I’ve finished the first scene-by-scene outline for the first Wendigo novel. The story is currently coming in at around 90,000 planned words, or 360 pages. Already I see areas where this can be tightened and made more dramatic, so I’m looking forward to the next run-through on the outline. I’m going to continue forward with the plan from Karen Wiesner’s “First Draft in 30 Days” and see where we get with that before I go back and edit the outline. Once again, it’s getting me excited for the actual drafting process to come. But, I don’t want to rush it. The next two weeks or so are critical to getting this outline as close to perfect as possible. That’ll mean a lot less time wasted in the drafting – and then editing – process.
• Nonfiction Reading: I’m halfway through Writing the Blockbuster Novel by Albert Zuckerman. This book is great. The chapter I’m currently wrapping up is the longest one detailing the outlining process. He uses Ken Follett’s The Man From St. Petersburg as his example, and goes through four different outlines for the book. It’s amazing what changed between the original draft idea and the final outline. It’s also heartening for anyone writing something for the first time (Be it their first novel ever or just the first time on this particular novel) because there are a lot of weak areas in the original draft, things I noticed immediately that I could tie into the outline I’m working on currently.
• Fiction Reading: Three chapters into my rereading of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. Still as great as I remember it, and it’s been years. I’m trying to go through it at a slower pace this time around, to analyze story structure, character development, dialogue, etc. So far, an illuminating journey.

Blog Posts: 869
Planning and outlining: 2,847
Short Fiction: 0
Novel Fiction: 0
Salable words: 0

Total Fiction for Month: 10,550

Total Salable for Month: 1,000

Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 10,550

Total Salable for Challenge Year: 1,000

Today has been a day full of (mostly) uninterrupted writing and reading. Quite a bit was accomplished on multiple fronts:

• Short Story Writing: I’m halfway through the rough draft of “Evaporated Ocean.” It’s rough as rough can be, but I’m starting to see where the story will really shape up in the second draft. I’m looking forward to finishing and outlining the rough draft tomorrow, so I can get onto the second draft Thursday. In all, around 2,000 words were written, or 7 handwritten pages.
• Short Story Editing: I’m also halfway through the first round of edits of “The Lone Blue Strand” for Fictionvale. Man, looking back on something I wrote in March of 2014 is painful, and I know it was better than what I was writing even in December of 2013. My craft has improved, but it still has a long way to go! So, yeah. Editing older stories can cause much cringing, but it is always therapeutic in its own way.
• Novel Outlining: I’m now halfway through my scene-by-scene outline for the first Wendigo novel. Roughly 55,000 words, or 215 pages, is planned out. In a rough sense, anyway. There’s still much work to be done over the rest of the month, including finishing this summary outline. I hope to mostly finish with it tomorrow, and the rest on Thursday. Then the real work begins: bringing all of these scenes together in ways that further the three POV characters’ arcs, and the overall plot. Scenes that do not do at least one of those things (And preferably two or more) will be altered or cast out, and new scenes will take their place.
• Nonfiction Reading: I have finally gotten back to reading Writing the Blockbuster Novel by Albert Zuckerman. I want to get this finished in the next few days, then move on to my next nonfiction book: Word-Loss Diet by Rayne Hall
• Fiction Reading: Volume 30 of the Writers of the Future is finished! The book has many excellent short stories in it. Better yet, I’m finally starting to see what makes some short stories better than others, other than the nebulous, “Wow, I really liked that.” The more I study other people’s works – as well as my own – the more I start to see the framework of the story. Its beginning, middle, and end. It’s quite a bit of fun looking back at stories and trying to figure out exactly where all of that is.

Blog Posts: 413
Planning and outlining: 3,432
Short Fiction: 2,000
Novel Fiction: 0
Salable words: 0

Total Fiction for Month: 10,550

Total Salable for Month: 1,000

Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 10,550

Total Salable for Challenge Year: 1,000

All right, a new week. Mondays are always slow from a words-written standpoint. It’s my plan-the-attack day, where I try and come up with the game plan for the rest of the week. Outlining, organizing, reading. Still, I had hoped to get more actual stuff written, but life came up and I had to step into that role instead.

Still, a few things were accomplished:

• Short Story Writing: I’ve decided on this week’s story. It’s going to be a post-apocalyptic choosing-one’s-path kind of tale, a story about two lovers reconciling with one another in the midst of very dangerous work. It’s ambitious, but I hope something good will come of it. The rough draft outline is finished. Tomorrow the actual drafting begins.
• Editing: Last night I received the first round of editing notes for “The Lone Blue Strand.” As always, Venessa Giunta at Fictionvale is thorough. The edits are due back on Saturday, so I have broken the story up into manageable pieces each day this week. I’ll have it finished by Friday, if not a little sooner.
• Editing: I also had a bit of time to work on editing “Snowmelt.” The story is gelling together quite nicely in its fourth draft. A fifth draft might still be necessary, but we’ll see.
• Read Volume 30 of the Writers of the Future. I had some time to sit outside the house whilst waiting on things, so I brought my copy and kept reading. I read several great stories, ranging from fantasy (“The Clouds in Her Eyes” by Liz Colter) to science fiction (“What Moves the Sun and Other Stars” by K.C. Norton) to those written by established authors (“Robots Don’t Cry” by Mike Resnick). I will finish this book tomorrow, thus catching me up to this week. Then I can get back on track with Mistborn.

Tomorrow we get back on schedule with rough drafts, more edits, and novel planning.

Blog Posts: 673
Planning and outlining: 619
Short Fiction: 0
Novel Fiction: 0
Salable words: 0

Total Fiction for Month: 8,550

Total Salable for Month: 1,000

Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 8,550

Total Salable for Challenge Year: 1,000

The fourth draft of “Snowmelt” is finished. This will likely be the final draft of the story, but I’m thinking of letting it sit for a few days before I do any more with it. Sometimes it pays to come back with a fresh set of eyes and read it all over again. Either that, or I’ll get so sick of looking at it that I’ll send it out. “Whatever! Just go!” We’ll see!

Managed to read a few more stories in Volume 30 of the Writers of the Future. It’s amazing how varied the stories are between volumes. I’m not sure which one I like better between 28 and 30, but I’ve enjoyed the tales so far. Some are the kind of stories I wouldn’t normally seek out, but are worth the read.

Blog Posts: 160
Planning and outlining: 0
Short Fiction: 0
Novel Fiction: 0
Salable words: 0

Total Fiction for Month: 8,550

Total Salable for Month: 1,000

Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 8,550

Total Salable for Challenge Year: 1,000

My goals for today were to finish the third draft of “Snowmelt” and begin the fourth draft. The fourth draft didn’t happen, but the third draft has been finished. The second draft was around 4,000 words, and the third draft is about 5,300. I didn’t think new words would be written during this phase, or at least not this many. But, it has, so that’s been added to the list.

I also read a couple of stories in Volume 30 of the Writers of the Future. Keeping up with my novel reading is going to be difficult this year, unless I manage my time more effectively. Writing takes priority, but I can’t just leave enough time during the day for writing. Reading must also happen.

So, there we have it. Some writing, some reading:

Blog Posts: 160
Planning and outlining: 0
Short Fiction: 1,300
Novel Fiction: 0
Salable words: 0

Total Fiction for Month: 8,550

Total Salable for Month: 1,000

Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 8,550

Total Salable for Challenge Year: 1,000

Once again, the focus for the day rested with the short story “Snowmelt.” Nothing else was completed on the reading or novel outlining front. I think this weekend is going to be quite a bit busier than I planned as I play catch-up, but that’s all right.

I started on the third draft of “Snowmelt” today, this time with a computer file copy of it rather than a handwritten copy. The first 4 scenes are done. 4 more need to be finished, and will be tomorrow morning.

Nothing new added to the numbers, since I can’t say that this is the final draft for sure. All of the “salable” words out of this story will be posted up on Sunday when it is finished and submitted.

Blog Posts: 631
Planning and outlining: 0
Short Fiction: 0
Novel Fiction: 0
Salable words: 0

Total Fiction for Month: 7,250

Total Salable for Month: 1,000

Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 7,250

Total Salable for Challenge Year: 1,000