Monday, July 27, 2015

Ready, Set, WRITE! Week 8


Ready. Set. WRITE! is a summer writing intensive that encourages goal-setting and accountability, and provides an opportunity for us to cheer each other on wherever we’re at with our writing projects—planning, drafting, revising, or polishing.  This year, your RSW hosts are Alison MillerJaime MorrowErin FunkElodie Nowodazkij, and Katy Upperman.
 
How I did on last week's goals: I just barely reached 4K by the end of last night's writing time, but the exciting part is that the day before, I hit 40K! Saturday was a great writing day. I reached my daily word count goal, recorded it in my calendar, and then decided to keep writing...twice! Normally just reaching my daily word count is a struggle, so anytime I go beyond that feels like a victory!
 
My goals for this week: 4K again. The usual! I'd love to have closer to 5K though, so I might make that extra 1,000 words my stretch goal.
 
A favorite line from my story OR one word/phrase that sums up what I wrote/revised:
I sit under the purple comforter in Carla and Jeff’s guest room and don’t sleep. It’s quiet and still and weird. I’ve never spent the night at Carla’s and slept in a separate room where I can’t whisper back and forth with her in the dark. We’d always be exhausted until turning out the lights. Then something about the darkness reenergized us, and we’d talk for another hour about school and guys and the future.
 
Biggest challenge this week: Realizing just how much work this manuscript will be even after my first draft is done. I already see plot revisions that need to be made, structural ones, characters I don't fully understand yet. And it looks like it's going to wind up longer than 60K, so I might not finish by the end of RSW...Trying not to let it damper my fun, though!
 
Something I love about my WiPMehhh, it wasn't one of those super lovey weeks with me and my WiP, unfortunately. My growing list of things to fix in revisions is making me keep my story at arm's length right now. Don't want to get too attached to anything and then have to cut it later.
 
 
Okay, so how did everyone else do this week? Anyone else got the messy draft blues?


5 comments:

  1. I can relate so much to what you said about keeping your story at arm's length because of a growing list of revisions. Yep, I'm totally right there with you. This was not a super lovey week for me and my WiP either. :-/ Hope that changes for both of us. But congrats on getting 4K words down this week AND hitting that 40K mark! Awesome job, Kaitlin! Hope you have another super productive week ahead! :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, haha. I always have messy draft blues! It usually takes me at least a draft and then one revision before it's not so messy. But you get there! And you will! And yay for that 4K! That's awesome! Hope you have another great week!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I do that, too, look back and groan internally over all that's still left to do. *sigh* But we'll get there! =) Good luck this week!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm a total revision junkie - my 1st drafts stink, but that's okay. It's that much nicer to watch them shine up into real stories later on. Enjoy writing!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I also have the first draft blues, which is why I needed to do a read-through, those plot problems were keeping me from writing anymore! But glad you are trucking through it! I wish I was at 40K like you! Have a great week!!! :)

    ReplyDelete