The two productive weeks I had planned didn’t really pan out how I expected them. Rather than two weeks of creative productivity I had two weeks of day job shenanigans, a return to marathon training and a time consuming reorganisation of the apartment. Still, 4,016 words isn’t disastrous given that a most of that work was revising and it’s almost 300 words more than last week. The Ghost Smuggler is moving forward although I’m still only around 40% of the way through this draft – I’ve been adding a fair amount of words. That’s well short of my goal of 100% but better than nothing and the book is getting longer and more layered which I think is a good thing. I did make another breakthrough regarding the plot on Sunday. I’ve been searching for a way to reveal a key plot point regarding the main character and I finally settled on an approach while soaking in the bath after my Sunday run. I started writing that scene and it seems to be working. I think that’s the last major sticking point but I’ve revised a lot of the story during this draft so there may be new issues to fix. … Read More
Metrics Monday – 17th February 2014
Last week was pretty solid, 4,622 words. I did do a quick bit of work on the outline for the Diary project but otherwise the bulk of that came from a couple of chapters of The Ghost Smuggler that I’m rewriting completely. The next two weeks should be pretty productive. My wife is away in England so I won’t be distracted by TV, movies or theatre. Assuming I can stay away from the Titanfall beta (I’m not a big fan of first person shooters but Titanfall is a lot of fun), I should be able to get a fair amount of work done on The Ghost Smuggler. My goal is to get a second draft finished so that my wife can read it when she gets back. That won’t necessarily mean big word counts because a lot of the work I need to do is revising what’s already there but there are a few chapters that I’m completely rewriting and some completely new content. I’m pretty happy with the way it’s going at the moment but I keep coming up with ideas that a) make the book better b) require me to go back and add to chapters I’ve already revised. At this … Read More
Metrics Monday – 10th February 2014
Work got in the way of writing in a dramatic fashion this week – we have a new title coming out on the 25th of February and there was some final troubleshooting to do. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d even make it past 2,000 words until I made a concerted effort yesterday afternoon and added 1,875 words in one sitting. The first three days were spent on revisions of The Ghost Smuggler, tiny sessions crammed into what little time I could find. By Thursday I was struggling to find any time to work in Scrivener at all so I switched tracks and started a new project, codename Diary. It’s a project I thought of a few months ago but decided not to write. On Friday, I decided to use it as filler to keep my writing streak going until I could get time work on The Ghost Smuggler – more like practice than an actual story intended for publication. But then something interesting happened. Ethel the Muse began working her magic and my practice story became something I’m considering writing as my next project. It’s even changed tone a little bit. It started off as fairly humorous (and will probably stay that way) … Read More