A is for Aurelie: A Faerie Tale

Aurelie: A Faerie Tale by Heather Tomlinson

Once a upon a time, three children and a little river dragon were the best of friends--until a promise was broken. Now they are almost grown up and barely speaking to one another. With her country in turmoil, Aurelie is sent on a peacekeeping mission. But how can she prevent a war when she can't even make her friends get along?

Heartsick at losing her dearest companions, especially the handsome Garin, Aurelie finds comfort in her secret, late-night trips to fairyland. But a princess can't hide from her duties forever. Her country needs her, and so do her friends--whether they know it or not.

Now I didn't interpret what happened to split them apart as a broken promise so much as an unfortunate incident when Netta slipped up and recognized Loic's father as a fae. He took her sight, because he couldn't abide a mortal being able to see him, but she'd managed to not give away Garin or Aurelie who could also see fae thanks to Loic who'd given the three of them the magic ointment.

However, since they hadn't wanted to make Loic feel bad, they never told him what happened to Netta and stopped visiting, making him feel as though they'd abandoned him. Then Netta went back to her home, refusing to come back to Lumielle, the capital. And Garin went back to Skoe, completely cutting off all contact. Aurelie was left without any of her friends when her mother died.

The threat of war picked up, so in order to try to negotiate with Skoe and the neighboring country of Alhinsa, Aurelie and Count Sicard travel to Skoe. However, it looks like one particular house in Skoe is working to manipulate their way into total power and seeks to bind Jocondagne, Aurelie's country, in marriage to Captain Inglis's son Hue.

Most chapters are following Aurelie's thoughts, but here and there are chapters following the other three. Eventually, they will have to come together to save Jocondagne and Skoe both. It's not a particularly complicated story, but it is sweet. Not everyone goes for sweet, so I'll say it now. It's a charming YA romantic fantasy. If you don't go for that, that's fine. But I enjoyed the story, and that is part of why. This is the sort of book I can curl up with before bedtime and wind down with its cozy feel-good ending.

Quick edit: I almost forgot my ROW 80 goals.
1: Keep up with daily posts for the A-to-Z challenge. (Today's = met. Yay!)
2: Write 2 paragraphs each day on Meridia.
3: Visit and comment on at least 5 blogs. Starting off on the low end considering there's 2 challenges and I have a bunch I follow normally, but looking for something I can succeed at. Will increase as I get into the groove. (I've already done 3 or 4.)

April challenges bring May confidences

Only a few days left of March, not that it looks like spring outside with winter trying to make a comeback. But I'm working on clearing out the mental cobwebs and preparing my mind for a blossoming of words. I plan to do not one but two challenges in April. First is getting back into regular participation of A Round of Words in 80 Days. Round 2 of 2013 begins April 1. (Hopefully, that day's work won't be a joke.) And secondly is a new one for me: the A-to-Z Challenge.

For those of you unfamiliar with either of these, ROW80 is a challenge to help us with our writing goals, whether it's new draft, revising, or editing. Some people even throw in an exercise goal to go with it. The important thing is to make the goals measurable and achievable and then to share both the goals and the progress (or lack thereof) on them. This is to show ourselves we can succeed, and by being part of a group, we can encourage each other despite the differences in our goals. I haven't decided on mine yet, except that one will be to keep up with the A-to-Z.

The A-to-Z Challenge is a blogfest. Your topics can be random, or you can choose a theme. Mine will be book reviews. The idea is that each day in April, except Sundays, will be a post on a different letter of the alphabet going from, you guessed it, A to Z. I've got some of the letters figured out already and plan to get some of them written ahead of time. A few letters have 2-3 books on my to-read/to-review list. I haven't decided if I will make it a combo day, or pick one for the challenge and do the others in May. Considering how much reading I'm in for, probably the latter. I plan to do as many new-to-me books as I can, though H will be The Hobbit, since it's both classic and current, thanks to the movie.

If you might be interested in either or both of those, check out the links. Even if you don't want to join the challenges, I hope you'll visit each day to root me on.

Swords and shelves

Been a little busy 'round the dragon cave lately. Between cleaning, organizing, and catching up with old friends, I haven't had much time to get back to answering questions about steampunk. Still more to do, but the cave is looking less cluttered. The fairies are brighter, and the gnomes are humming while they work. We need more shelves around here, but I've gotten them better arranged to get things off the floor. Much nicer when we aren't tripping over things, don't you think? And I'll see about elaborating further on steampunk in my next post.

Last Wednesday, a couple of friendly neighborhood knights took me on, raw beginner that I am, to begin teaching me sword and shield. I didn't hurt all that much, but I had almost no energy the next day. I have another lesson this afternoon. We'll see how well how I keep up today. And least the pixies didn't snicker too much, and the knights both said I did well enough for my first time.

I'm off to do some reading and maybe a bit of gratitude baking. The knights are so patient; they deserve a treat of some kind. Maybe some fairie cookies or brownie biscuits. What do you mean, do they have real fairies and brownies in them? Of course not! Azuranna would flambe me. Oh, that was a joke? Ohhhh. Silly me. ;D

My writing goals are going to have to change. I pulled out my one completed story the other day and started working on revising it. So instead of a word count goal, it's going to be by scene. By Sunday, I want to finish the first scene. My other goals can stay the same.

When magic and detective fiction collide

I finally got around to reading one of my husband's highly recommended books: the first book of the Dresden Files - STORM FRONT by Jim Butcher. We have some overlapping tastes like most of Lackey's and McCaffrey's books (and Harry Potter, go figure), but even though we're both big SF/F fans, we have widely different preferences within spec fic. Well, last night I was browsing through our newly reorganized book collection (with my flashlight since the power had gone out thanks to high winds), and I decided to grab something different.

By the end of the first chapter I was hooked. "Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face." The voice is incredible. I really felt sorry for Harry while he's trying to work with a police contact, keep a gangster from sending his thugs after him, figure out who is cooking up the new drug on the streets (to help with point 2), not reveal anything to a sexy reporter, solve a grisly set of murders caused by magic, and not take the rap for it by the police as well as the White Council and a biased Warden. Oh yeah, and not get killed before the Council even meets to put him on trial. What's a nearly broke wizard to do? Keep moving of course. And have a little faith that he's the good guy.

I really liked the combination of magic in a contemporary world with an old fashioned detective sort of novel. I've been reading more mysteries lately, for variety, and this was well done in more than just voice. The mystery kept me guessing but all of Harry's thoughts made sense as he worked out what was going on and how it all connected. I give this book 5 stars.

As for my ROW 80 goals, I haven't been as on track as I'd like.
Writing 100 words every day: Wed, Sun, Mon - no; Thurs, Fri, Sat, Tues - yes
Exercising 10 mins a day: Wed, Thurs, Sun - yes; Fri, Sat, Mon, Tues - no
New book for the week: yes a few times :D

I haven't counted today for yes or no yet, but I'm going to get on that soon. Dresden tied up my morning.

Fun with kids' books and check-in

While I'm waiting for the books I requested at the library from my TBR list to come in, I picked up some kids' books. I had fun reading them with my son (chosen to share). Got a few more, too, but we haven't read them yet.

Wizard And Wart At Sea by Janice Lee Smith
Wizard and Wart In Trouble by Janice Lee Smith
My Mom Is a Pirate by Jackie French

I also just read Into the Land of Unicorns by Bruce Coville, picked for myself. I'm going to have to snag the other books in the Unicorn Chronicles from the library. It was fun.

So I'm good for my new book for the week. :D

As for my other two goals...
*Writing 100 words every day: check. I haven't written a huge amount over that, but I did do it, about double every day.
*Exercise 10 minutes every day: check. I danced for half an hour on Sun and Tues, and did ten minutes of using my new stretch bands on Monday.

ROW 80: Round 1 of 2012: Goals

Round 1 of ROW 80 has already begun, but I jumped in with some writing before working on my goals this past week, plus I worked on some other non-writing related projects. I'm going very modest on my goals this round. In addition to writing and reading, I'm trying to do more crafting, so I need to give myself time for that as well.

Warmup goal: write 100 words every day. Even when I feel like crud, I can usually scrape out that much.

Read one new book a week. New to me that is, but I'll try to get some new releases in here and there as well. I have a huge list of TBRs to get through that is growing faster than I can knock it down. My over all reading goal for the year is 75 books, but that can include old favorites with the new ones. This will give me more books to write reviews on for this blog, something I feel I need to get back to doing again on a regular basis.

Spend 10 mins a day exercising. Super modest but doable. This is more to build a daily routine since I can boogie for an hour to my favorite music, but it's not a daily thing yet.

I'll probably adjust these and/or add new ones in about a month, but this will be a good start.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays despite the cooling weather. I got to dress up this week twice, since work let us come in costume all week. However, only a few of us did so. But at least I got lots of compliments. Thursday I went as a gypsy and yesterday as a pirate. I cold have dressed up on Saturday when I took my son to the mall for their trick-or-treat event, but I was too tired to mess with changing. We finished in half an hour by skipping the middle shindig. The line was obscene for what he'd be getting. But he was happy with his modest haul anyway, especially the KitKat bar from our first stop. Simple pleasures. :D

This week is going to have different goals. I want to catch up on my expanding reading list, at least to get through my new books. Anything else I get done of my regular goals will be bonus, though I intend to still do my rounds of visiting other check-ins. I'll be doing lots of winter preparedness this week, the joys of living out in the country. We did get the majority of the snow fence put up already. But there's finishing it, attaching the snowblower to the tractor and removing the mower deck, cleaning the garage, packing the emergency essentials bag, fixing the truck and attaching the plow, and so much more. Oh joy. Boo winter.

I finished Fangtales and enjoyed it. Vampires are not my thing, but every story was at least a 3. Don't always get that with an anthology. I've been though some books that ranged from 1-5. I'm currently working my way through CassaStar, up to page 42 so far. Pretty good even if my reading has been so chopped up that my focus hasn't really dug into it yet.

Midweek reflections

I don't really have much to comment on today. Sort of in a reflective mood but it hasn't really come out in words much yet. So check-in goals and random stuff it is then.

However, goals: I did read and comment on at least 5 of Sunday's ROW80 check-ins. I started at the bottom of the list and then popped on a few of the ones I've been on more than once. I've put in at least an hour of ponderings each day since Sunday on Broken Destinies. Haven't written much yet, still brainstorming what the characters are going to be doing in the last third, but after discussion with my husband, we worked out more of the hidden story going on during the already completed part, plus a couple areas I need to develop more. But then most of the completed part was done during NaNo last year, so it's fast and loose and has parts where I have comments like "write more about ___ here." Still going to try to have plot hashed out by this upcoming Sunday, but even if I don't make it, I'm getting back into the feel of the world and the character goals.

This is post 2 for the week, so coming along there. Still have to do my two crits, will try to get one of those done this evening. Had a bit of a scare on Saturday or Sunday when our whole group had been banned from the forum for spam. Turns out to have been a mistake regarding an ISP thing, so in less than a day, it was corrected. But it was still freaky.

Big news for me was getting the books I'd ordered. I'm currently halfway through Fangtales now, and most of the stories have been pretty good so far, which should be taken as high praise since I am NOT a vampire fan at all. I give it a fairly consistent 3-4 throughout the first half.

The other fun thing was today's worldbuilding hangout on Google+ hosted by Juliette Wade. We talked about magic systems. Next Wednesday we'll be talking about gender. So if you want to jump in the discussion or just join to listen, it'll be at 2pm EST. Hope some of you will stop on by.

Have a great rest of the week.

Sleepy week

I'm not going to bother listing each goal individually today. I got little done this week, though I did poke at my story somewhat. My brain just kept fizzling on how to follow up on the suggestions my crit group made.

A couple days ago, I decided to set it aside for a week or two and switch to another WIP, a novel that's supposed to be book 1 of a trilogy. So far I've read through to the end of what I'd already done and now trying to figure out what's going to come next. It's about two thirds of the way through, but I'm not sure if the middle third actually works for the overall plot. The main antagonist for that part isn't developed well enough yet. There's some good stuff though.

This week's goal: plan out the arc for the last third of what I've tentatively titled Broken Destinies. It's actually a co-authored piece I'm doing with my husband, so at some point when he has some spare brain power (he's had a rough week), I'll get him to do some brainstorming with me.

Checking in and other thoughts

For 10/12 check-in: (yes, the fairies are nagging me that I'm a day behind)

goal 1: one hour every day working on a story task, either new material WIP or revising RRH: umm, coming back to this one

goal 2: read and comment on minimum of 5 posts for each check-in: I don't think I did any for Sunday's, and haven't hit any for yesterday yet either. Gonna get on that. Probably won't go back to Sunday but will snag yesterday's.

goal 3: post on my blog 3 times a week, one of which must be a check-in: This post makes 2 so far, should have another tomorrow.

goal 4: Crit 2 posts each week on WD: None so far, but I did go read a few earlier today. I'm thinking what to say on one of them.

goal 5: Have and complete 1 specific goal each week on primary project, this week's being revising scene 1 of RRH. I started tweaking based on comments from last week. Now I have to work on the broader changes like grounding the setting better, clarifying support characters descriptions and relationship roles, and trimming out unnecessarily repeated information/mild info dumps.

Some of what they pointed out surprised me but are valid concerns like the mention I have of a dead character. The way it's written, he could be either her brother or lover, and it makes a big difference. (Her betrothed, just so you know.) So that all is the harder part, but at least everyone likes the style, characters, and world setting. And they want to read more.

Okay back to goal one. I have to admit that while I've been doing lots of writing, it hasn't been on a publishable story. Some of my friends and I are doing a roleplaying game (TORG, for you gamer folks out there who may know it) online via Obsidian Portal where we have a forum and internal wikis of things, people, and places. It's an immense amount of fun, and it's helping me understand in practicality many of the things I've been learning about culture, especially culture clashes, from Juliette Wade's worldbuilding posts on TalkToYoUniverse. But it doesn't exactly help me finish my WIPs. I didn't count the time spent on writing my character's entries when I checked in on Sunday, and I don't really count them now, but I have definitely put in more than an hour a day of writing time.

I think I may talk more about the game sometime next week, because I really have learned some interesting things from the game regarding culture that I'd like to share with you. Even something that appears familiar can be very alien in feel, and that makes for some fascinating culture clashes and culture shock.

ROW 80: Check-In 10/9/11

Okay, first week update:

1. Spend 1 hour every day working on a story task, whether writing new material on any WIPs or revising RRH.
--First half of the week: I kept up. Last part of week: weak. Too much going on and feeling vaguely unwell.

2. Read and comment on a minimum of 5 posts each check-in.
--Success! Checked 8 blogs for Mon check-in, 7 for Wed's.

3. Post on my blog 3 times a week, 1 of which must be a check-in.
--Got 2 of them in: Mon (check-in) and Fri (song/book feature).

4. Critique at least 2 posts each week on the SF/F crit forum over at Writer's Digest.
--Halfway there, got one done.

5. Have a specific smaller goal each week regarding my primary project.
First week's goal: Finish writing the beginning of RRH and connect it to the existing draft.
--It was a bit rushed at the end, but I did finish the scene. Next scene will be right before she goes into the woods, which is essentially where I originally started. Much happier with this draft. My crit group made some minor suggestions of things I overlooked, gave me some ideas on adding more description (my weak area), and pointed out where the scene ending was lacking. I'd call this a success.

This next week's goal: Take suggestions from crit group and revise first scene.

Here we go aROWnd again...

It's time for a new set of goals. Round 4 of ROW80 2011 starts today. After studying the kinds of goals other people had and how vague some of my goals had been, I'm starting off clearer and to more purpose. It also includes care of this blog and support to my fellow writers, since none of us exist in a vacuum.

1. Spend 1 hour every day working on a story task, whether writing new material on any WIPs or revising RRH.

2. Read and comment on a minimum of 5 posts each check-in.

3. Post on my blog 3 times a week, 1 of which must be a check-in.

4. Critique at least 2 posts each week on the SF/F crit forum over at Writer's Digest.

5. Have a specific smaller goal each week regarding my primary project.

This week's goal: Finish writing the beginning of RRH and connect it to the existing draft. Hoping that third time's the charm. Yes, this is attempt three. First two went to scrap file as they didn't fit overall character and story goals. Feeling good about this one, good enough that my crit group may actually get to see it. Currently, it's sitting at 1557 words. Another 500-1000 should get me where I need it to go.

And happy blog-o-versary! My blog is two years old now. It was technically last week, but I don't care. I'm impressed that I've kept it up this long, that I have more followers, and better yet, more readers. Thanks to all of you for supporting my endeavors.

End of my first Round

My goals for Round 3:

Write an hour a day: certainly feasible but didn't keep it up. I just needed to kick my own tush more. I'm going to have less time at home starting tomorrow (new job), but I think I might be able to give this goal another whack during Round 4. We'll see.

Hmm, I intended to rough out the second half of one novel in chapter summary format. Never worked on that. Oops. Kind forgot that one.

I did finish the first draft of Red Riding Hood. I'd hoped to be done with the first pass through, but I've at least received feedback from my two alpha readers who have given me some ideas.

All in all, though I didn't stick to my goals very well, I did better than I might have. I also have a better ideas of how to make clearer goals for the next round now that I've seen what other people have used. Progress goals will be more incremented to have steps I can check off. And I'm going to post my goals somewhere on my desk where I can see them and remember what they are.

ROW 80: Check-In 8/14/11

This week hasn't been too bad for working. Though I haven't written as much as I'd hoped to, I've made progress. Part of the time spent was on Behind the Name. The MC now has a new name. It took me long enough, but first I had to let myself get pulled deep enough to be more open to names that suited the mood, setting, and her personality. After narrowing it down to two names, I took the one that sounded prettier and tried it out. It fits really well and adds to the flavor of the setting better than I thought.

The new beginning is moving along. I'm still not sure how I'm going to mesh it with what I already have, but I'm not quite up to that point yet. I just hope that my crit group will think it makes sense. They're looking forward to reading it, which is always a nice feeling.

I've also started researching where to send this piece when I get it polished up. Not in depth with that part yet, since I'm only in round 2 of the draft. (Round 3 is my crit group.) But just to start getting ideas and see if there's any deadlines I may want to keep in mind.

My goal for the week: finish the new beginning and connect up to the previous beginning. It'll take a bit of rewriting, since I made a few setting and story changes, but I hope it'll be even stronger.

ROW 80: Check-In 8/7/11

Goal: to begin working on the revision for RRH story. Check. I'm not very far, but I started. I got far enough that I decided I needed to do a bit of research. First was to work on renaming the characters to better fit the feel I was going for. I still haven't settled on the MC's name, but her dead bethrothed has had his name tweaked. The two other named characters haven't been renamed yet, but since their names don't come up much, not a big deal. I'll probably come back to theirs after the current revision round is over. Second bit of research: to read a bunch of other fairy tale type stories for a look at the pacing, language, and tension use. So I cracked open my copy of Happily Ever After, an anthology of fairy tale retellings. I'm about two thirds of the way through it and getting some ideas to keep me on track with my story goals.

Goal: to spend an hour every day on the writing. Err, not great. Sunday I gave myself a break of excitement for finishing the story. M, T, F, and Sat have word counts. I did think about the story on Wed and Thurs, but I spent those days doing a bunch of things with my son, like the weekly trip to the library. So, that was cool. Better than I thought. Today, I haven't done any writing yet, but I'm still reading through my book. I intend to sit down and do a bit of writing later but at least I've decided where I'm going with the first scene.

I've read some great books this week. One of my favorites was Murder and Mayhem: A Doctor Answers Medical and Forensics Questions for Mystery Writers. I posted a review on Tuesday, so if you didn't catch it, I hope you'll check it out. Fantastic book, and not just for mystery writers either. It's for pretty much any genre; the questions simply came from mystery writers. If anyone wants to check out what I read, visit my shelves on Goodreads.

Have a great week on your goals!

An accomplishment for my check-in

I haven't posted a ROW 80 check-in for awhile. I've been a bad writer and blog reader. I got lazy and didn't write much or read other people's check-ins. This past week though I pushed myself to quit messing around and do more work. I decided to pull out my short stories and see what I could finish off for the sake of typing the end to something at long last. (So many WIPs, sigh)

The short story push is partly from reading a bunch of other people's short stories like The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales, The Secret History of Fantasy, and Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded. I also have Dragons and Dreams from the library and Happily Ever After from the bookstore waiting for me to read them.

My troll story didn't pull me much. I'm still not sure how I want to tackle the middle. I gave my wolpertinger story a try and on the 26th I wrote 343 new words on it and then cut them off and moved them to the remnant file. The direction it took didn't sit right with me. I added 195 words to my half-orc bard story on the 27th. Those weren't bad, but my brain didn't want to stick with it.

But on Friday, I pulled out my Red Riding Hood story, determined to get something finished. I knocked out 1685 words, one of my top word tallies. (300-500 is more my typical sort of count) And yesterday I came in with 731 words including The End. Ding ding ding! Yippeeee!

Oh, it still needs massive work: a completely redone beginning and an expanding out of noted bits I'd had to skip to keep me from bogging down. But I completed it. I've proved to myself that I really can finish a story. I was totally giddy yesterday when I did it. And then I went through and read several check-ins from Wed to cheer on other folks.

I'm still way behind on reading my blog roll, taking today to work on that, but I want to say thanks to the unspoken pressure to get something accomplished on my goals. Finishing a story wasn't technically one of them, but it is something I've had hanging over me for the past few years. Everyone who has ever said good luck, or hope you make it, or some other variant of encouragement here on my blog or other online places I hang out: Thank you.

My other goals might get tweaked later since by the end of this round, I intend to finish the first round of revisions on the Red Riding Hood story, maybe even come up with a title other than RRH. I'm not sure how I want to break down the revisions into smaller check-off-able chunks yet, but I'll work on that too. I'm also behind on posting book reviews here, so I intend to have 4 books reviews during the month of August. Hope you'll check back for them. I think I already know which one I want to cover first. It'll be up tomorrow (if I write it tonight) or Tuesday (after I get back from the Buffalo Museum of Science).

Hope everyone has a productive week!

ROW 80: Check-In 7/10/11

Sorry that I didn't do much on Blogger at all this week. It's been crazy here with getting my father-in-law packed up for his new contract job (he'll be gone for a year, aside from breaks) and helping Mom-in-law with "spring" cleaning (not done yet, but getting there). I also did lots of weeding in the front garden. It was overrun with clover.

This meant I didn't get as much accomplished on my writing as I'd intended. So many house projects needed done that I felt bad sitting at my computer when they were working on the list. The past few days have had zero writing time, but at least I wasn't goofing off. Earlier in the week, I did get my daily hour in, but it was hard to stay focused with various interruptions.

The chapter I'd been working on for almost a month is finally done, but I'm going to try writing it again. After looking back over my chapter goals in my plotline, the chapter doesn't match, and what I'd intended makes more sense than what I wrote. The chapter has great stuff in it. My crit group has said that the characters are cool, the tensions interesting, and the woman's backstory revealed in this part fits smoothly. But it's off track. I think that's why the characterizations have been so hard to keep a grip on.

However, it's still useful. I have the woman's backstory in her words and I have some judgements from the old man. I may end up keeping it and then tweaking to fit better, but I want to see what else I can come up with. Most writing advice would say to leave it and just keep charging forward, but this part has critical moments between the two characters. I can't just leave it unless I have the what-happens and what-is-said pegged right. Those matter to how much the two main characters learn about each other, which will affect how chapter 3 plays out.

I'm off to get as much done as I can on the alternate version of chapter 2 before supper. Later tonight, I'll start reading through the blogs I've missed this week and stop by some of the other ROW 80 check-ins. Thanks to those of you who came by on my first check-in.

New to the ROW 80 challenge

Well, I haven't been a Monday poster for awhile, but today is the first day of Round 3 of A Round of Words in 80 Days. You can be in the midst of a WIP, starting a new draft, working on revisions, or any combination of steps. Any project counts, even non-fiction. I just heard about it yesterday, so I'm not real sure yet what I'm doing with my goals.

It's very different from NaNoWriMo. Instead of focusing on a huge number of words in 30 days, the idea is to develop long term writing habits that take into account that most of us have lives we can't bail on. As it was described, NaNo is like a sprint, but writing a novel is more like a marathon. And many people, including myself, cannot write quickly or consistently.

I'd done pretty good with NaNo last November. Until Thanksgiving week that is. Then because everyone was underfoot due to first my son being sick and then my mother-in-law getting the crud, they didn't go to my sister-in-law's like they'd planned. That effectively derailed all my plans and threw off my stride for the next few months. Around February, I started to push myself back into a writing schedule, and at the beginning of summer I made some writing goals. I'm not great at following goals, but having reasonable ones pushes me to do more than I might otherwise.

My writing goal had been to write 60,000 words by Aug 31. I'm sitting at 9767. Yeah, I should be about double that by now. If I'd written every day, I probably would be right on track. It wasn't all on my novel, but I counted the words I wrote toward my article for the culture share on Juliette Wade's blog.

The nice thing is that ROW 80 will help me toward my summer word count goal. Here are my tentative goals for the challenge. I may adjust after I see what other people are doing.

1. Finish rough plotting my WIP (it's about half done). My sort of plotting--when I do any in advance--is essentially chapter goals. Any details beyond that are brainstorm ideas that may or may not get used.

2. Write a chapter a week. This may or may not be as silly for me as a word count goal. Some scenes write easily and some are really tough. I have one scene right now that is really long and still not done yet. It's also an emotional one, making it harder to write.

3. Write 60 minutes every day without getting on the internet. This is my BIC goal. It's easy for other distractions to take over my day. And an hour is a reasonable amount of time I can get my family to leave me alone for. Today will be hard with being a holiday, but I will try for at least a portion of that. I'd say 5 days a week, but it's too easy for me to lose momentum if I take a couple days off. Now if I get in a phenomenal day's work, I might take the next day off, but otherwise it's better to keep going.

If anyone wants to join this challenge, here are the rules and the theory behind it. There are check-ins on Sundays and Wednesdays. You can jump in at any time, even midway through the round. You are the one to set what your goals are, so it doesn't matter when you join.

And the writing creeps forward

I haven't gotten very far on the writing goals yet this month. 993 new words written, 1824 if I add in the count from May 31st. I had a good start, then realized my scene had the wrong emotional overtones which meant the characterization didn't fit with the first scene. Even the history and political structure had changed based on the tidbits I'd thrown in. I reread my original notes and decided that I preferred the old context. The whole scene went into my cut file. 3k words=ouch.

After taking a few days to study what pulled it out of alignment and read up on various empires for ideas to solidify my basic concept, I got trickling forward again. Some of what I'd had has been recycled back in. New stuff is trickling in, but I think I'm picking up momentum again. Whether I finish the scene today is questionable, but I will try.

Do any of you have similar stories you'd like to share?

Summer goals 2011

Since many of my fellow bloggers have been talking about summer goals, I came up with some for myself. By the end of August 31:

I will write 60,000 words towards one or more stories. That's an average of 652 words/day, entirely doable for me, even with the days I know I won't have much time to write, such as my birthday this month and the family picnic next month. (Write on those days at all? Mmm, probably not.)

I will get my craft business underway. Writing is slow and painstaking, and my family could use some extra money coming in now. If I can make some without having to go anywhere but the store and the post office, I can stay home to write. And crafts make a nice change of pace from the storytelling.

I will stay positive about my work and not let anyone convince me it's worthless. Okay, so that's an ongoing intangible thing rather than something concrete I can point to as saying I accomplished it. But it is an important thing to remind myself about.

Anybody else have any goals for this summer?