Day 22 of the challenge ended with hardly anything written at all, to the point that I skipped a post altogether. To make a long story short, computer problems arose on the PC I use for telecommuting. There was a piece of software my boss asked me to install, and upon installing it the computer crashed with numerous corrupted Windows files. Spent pretty much all day yesterday trying to rectify it, only to find out that Windows will need a complete reinstall. Getting a new hard drive while I’m at it, so the PC will be down for a couple of days. As you can imagine, that messed up any chance for writing or any other chores.
On the plus side I did get a chance to start reading through a little of my Writers of the Future anthologies that I’ve collected. Want to go through those in order to get a better handle on writing tales longer than a short story but shorter than a novel.
Today the problems extended from the computer to my wife’s car. Didn’t want to start when we first ventured out, so tomorrow’s commute will be interesting. I’ll also be making a stop at the dealership at some point to see if we can get this problem fixed. A good bit of the afternoon was devoted to diagnosing the problem, but I was only able to narrow it down to about five or six things. That kept some of the work for today down, but it wasn’t a total loss like yesterday was.
We stopped by the local bookstore to pickup my ordered copies of David Farland’s Million Dollar Outlines and Drawing on the Power of Resonance in Writing. I’ve skimmed through both and like what I’ve seen so far. Looking forward to delving deep into them during the first few days of April, before I get onto the “Into the Wastes” rewrite. I’d like to start reading them sooner, but during this last week of March I want to focus on all of the deadlines I’m trying to meet. Friday’s lethargy and Saturday’s anarchy made a mess of my schedule, so it’ll be tight from here through the 31st!
I finished the revised draft of “The Rabbits of Forest Warren.” The rough draft was around 2,050 words, but this revision clocked in at 4,146 words. I guess the use of a keyboard loosened my thoughts up and let the words flow a bit more. It still needs a lot of polish, but I came up with a couple of improvements on the original idea that will help set up the final battle a bit better as well as bring the moral of the fable into light without being preachy or overly direct. When something I write has an overall moral to it I prefer it be revealed through a combination of actions and organic dialogue between characters, not a situation where the narrator or one of the characters breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the reader. The end result of the story should be around 3,000 words, I think. There’s a lot of fluff and repetition that I can cut out of the story, but I’ll also be adding more descriptive language in parts, so we’ll see what the end result is.
Tomorrow I’m going to spend a bit of time reading through the Redwall series, just to get a better feel of writing about bipedal animals. It’s a great series in its own right, but tomorrow I won’t be reading for pleasure. Not entirely, anyway. In addition to this, my goal is to finish the second revision of “The Rabbits of Forest Warren.” I’m running out of time before the end of the month, and there are still three more stories I want to get finished before then.
- Nonfiction: 658
- Planning and outlining: 000
- Short Fiction: 3,301
- Novel Fiction: 000
- Salable words: 000
Total Fiction for Month: 56,303
Total Salable for Month: 13,940
Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 106,526
Total Salable for Challenge Year: 24,884
No writing was done today due to various factors, but I did hear something positive from the staff over at