The Writers Aspirant Accountability Thread

Posted by: @tj_knight

↑

Have you read any books on outlining?

Sorry, I overlooked this question. No, I haven't and I have never outlined in my life. I'll go pantsing an outline then 🤣 

But yes, I've watched podcasts/workshops, read blogs, and downloaded some templates. I'll learn as I go, and if I hit a wall, I'll give you all a shout. This community is so helpful <3

@ease 

January goals

1. Set goals for January

Achieved

2. I *think* of myself as a fantasy writer, but every short story I write is SciFi. Goal 2 for January: Write a FANTASY short story.

I am counting this one as achieved although I did not complete a story - I did start with an idea, plot it out and make a *very* rough draft of 8000 some words which needs almost a complete re-write. But I still count that. The above did not say 'final edited form' 😉

3. @tj_knight was kind enough to launch a writing challenge and I said I would do it, but between Q1 submission and just having my brain explode by the fact he looks at writing a completely different way than me so I've struggled with the tasks so far, I haven't really participated. So Goal 3 is open my mind and really give this other way of developing stories a solid go! (as measured by visiting the discord and actually attempting some of the tasks!)

I predicted this would be my hardest goal and it was. I did *try* to participate (which was the goal) but my brain is still being stubborn about this way of writing so I'm struggling. 

4. Read at least 10 short stories

Well this was achieved on literally day 1.

5. Write another blog entry

I did write another blog entry!

February goals:

1. Set goals for February

2. Re-write/edit Fantasy story above, not to finished form (as part of that process for me involves leaving it for weeks at a time and picking at it, so that can't be done in under a month), but close to it.

3. Actually write something with TJs upside down cake method

4. Write another blog entry

I have Boskone this month so that will wipe out one weekend so I'm being more limited in my goals for this shortest month of the year, though going to Boskone and actually being sociable should maybe be one of my goals lol

My motivation on editing a previous HM and finishing a story I started (something's missing, but I can't figure it out) isn't going well.

On the brighter side, I started a new short story and I like the voice of the character. Scene 1 is wrapped up, scene 2 and 3 I have notes on what I want to happen. Then, hopefully scene 4 will write itself and wrap everything up.

Now to put a bit of life on the shelf to get creative time.

January was a nightmare what with the end of the semester and final exams. Finally through that thicket though, so I'm hoping to get back into writing this month! Since February is a shorter month definitely not an excuse, I'll keep it light:

1. Read 3 short stories (I fully expect myself to fall into a BCS reading binge, but hopefully I can read at least one from some other magazine)

2. I recently loaned a copy of Wonderbook so I'd like to read at least half the book

3. Critique a forumite's story

4. Plot a story for Q2

5. Write the first 450 if I'm feeling frisky

Posted by: @olivia-ava

↑

Hi! I would love to participate. Thank you for making this thread!

Great job! I believe that producing multiple stories each month significantly speeds up my development and boosts my confidence.

You are in! Is that your goal for February, to write multiple stories? That's quite a tall order, though not impossible.

I plan to write bad.  Write lots of bad.  Er... write badly.  Poorly.  Write poorly!

I am going to complete my submission for Q2 rough draft this month, even if it IS written poorly.  I am going to stop being critical of my writing until I finish the first draft.

This is currently my biggest impediment.  I recognize it.  I have been lucky to have written 10,000 words or so in the last month.  The problem is that it is my first 450 words re-written about 20 times in the last month!  I am too critical.  With my plotting notes and outlining I have written in excess of 15,000 words in the last month but have produced nothing worthy of reading, so it gets deleted and rewritten. 

That has changed.  I finally managed to convince myself to just "get it on paper."  And it has been to great effect.  I now have my first 2000 poorly written words, more than 1200 of them coming yesterday.  They are bad.  But, I know what's wrong with them and how to fix them.  The remarkable thing is that new ideas emerge, happy accidents.  This should be my goal going forward, not "finishing my story."

January's goal: Think of a story for Q2
February's goal: Draft my Q2 story
March's goal: Convince myself the story doesn't suck as bad as I think it does. Finish it. Rewrite it. Submit it before the deadline.

Posted by: @morgan-broadhead

↑

January's goal: Think of a story for Q2
February's goal: Draft my Q2 story
March's goal: Convince myself the story doesn't suck as bad as I think it does. Finish it. Rewrite it. Submit it before the deadline.

How's that working for you?  January is over.  Do you have your story idea?

Posted by: @abeona

↑

Posted by: @morgan-broadhead

↑

January's goal: Think of a story for Q2
February's goal: Draft my Q2 story
March's goal: Convince myself the story doesn't suck as bad as I think it does. Finish it. Rewrite it. Submit it before the deadline.

How's that working for you?  January is over.  Do you have your story idea?

 

I do! It's fresh and fun and exciting, mostly because I'm still in the beginning stages of writing it. I'll start hating it as I get further in, and at some point around the middle I'll begin to think I have no business trying to write stories! LOL What can I say? It's my process.

Write a fresh story for another market, check. Make a plan for how to publish my novel or think about it’s sequel? No. Until I’ve written Q2 and another story I’m writing, that will take a backseat.

Goal for February is to finish the story I’m working on and start writing Q2. Both are 98% plotted, and February totally has an extra day this year, so I’m feeling good about my chances. 

@ease I wrote 19,790 words on a new novel, read and edited my latest novel, and wrote a. Vampire short story for an anthology submission.

I’ve written a submission for WOTF just before superstars and attended Superstars! 

For the rest of February I’m finishing g another vampire story, going to write a cryptid story, going to submit my manuscript to at least 20 agents and to the publisher that requested it at superstars. I’m also thinking I’ll do two new paintings for Illustrators before March because I got some cool ideas while at superstars. 

Posted by: @clfors

↑

@ease I wrote 19,790 words on a new novel, read and edited my latest novel, and wrote a. Vampire short story for an anthology submission.

I’ve written a submission for WOTF just before superstars and attended Superstars! 

For the rest of February I’m finishing g another vampire story, going to write a cryptid story, going to submit my manuscript to at least 20 agents and to the publisher that requested it at superstars. I’m also thinking I’ll do two new paintings for Illustrators before March because I got some cool ideas while at superstars. 

don't forget to sleep  

400 words on a brand new novel. Yay!

I've got other things to do, and I don't have even a skeleton outline yet, but the opening scene came to me at SS and it feels like the right one, so I typed it up.

Now I don't have a blank page... Plus, now there's a springboard from which to imagine. Just having something down allowed me to conceive of a possible next scene.

@tj_knight the first word/sentence/paragraph/scene is the hardest. Hard bit done!

@gideonpsmith That's what I figure. And sure enough, just putting that down allowed me to think of the next few scenes.

@ease 

I've been pretty absent from the forum this year. After setting myself goals for January, my wife set me a different challenge of writing a picture book. She's suggested it for awhile now (we have two young children and I have a pretty silly personality). So, during January and February I stepped away from short stories and focussed on writing a picture book for children, and ended up writing TWO! I really enjoyed it (hence why I immediately started on another after completing my goal for 2024 of writing one) and think this is something I will also pursue. I've just started querying agents so I will see how writing in that market pans out.

Now, for March, I plan on submitting a story for this quarter and sending out my "active" stories to new markets (stories I think are done and recently came back from WotF so will try elsewhere). I have not started a new story yet and do not know whether to begin afresh or edit a previous submission.

Posted by: @joel-c-scoberg

↑

@ease 

I've been pretty absent from the forum this year. After setting myself goals for January, my wife set me a different challenge of writing a picture book. She's suggested it for awhile now (we have two young children and I have a pretty silly personality). So, during January and February I stepped away from short stories and focussed on writing a picture book for children, and ended up writing TWO! I really enjoyed it (hence why I immediately started on another after completing my goal for 2024 of writing one) and think this is something I will also pursue. I've just started querying agents so I will see how writing in that market pans out.

Now, for March, I plan on submitting a story for this quarter and sending out my "active" stories to new markets (stories I think are done and recently came back from WotF so will try elsewhere). I have not started a new story yet and do not know whether to begin afresh or edit a previous submission.

Fun! It's always good to try different creative outlets. Last year I tried writing some horror pieces and some humor pieces. 

I had heard querying on picturebooks was different - that you usually query with several projects together. Not sure if that is what you are doing (I got this from watching youtube videos from Bookends Literary Agnecy, which are fairly informative and one of the agents that hosts it is a picture book agent/author)

Let us know how it goes!

February was a bit of a disaster for me goal-wise.

February goals:

1. Set goals for February

Succeeded, but that was self-fulfilling

2. Re-write/edit Fantasy story above, not to finished form (as part of that process for me involves leaving it for weeks at a time and picking at it, so that can't be done in under a month), but close to it.

FAIL. Didn't even touch it.

3. Actually write something with TJs upside down cake method

FAIL. Splashed around in several stories and made no serious progress in any of them. Not sure I was even applying the method correctly, but I did do a lot of 'thinking' because of it lol

4. Write another blog entry

Well, at least I did achieve this one.

March goals:

1. Finish one of the fantasy shorts I have been working on. By 'finish' I mean 1st draft plus 1st edit pass through.

That's it. I'm keeping the goals brief as there's only 30 days till the next WotF deadline and I need to focus!

Posted by: @abeona

↑

I plan to write bad.  Write lots of bad.  Er... write badly.  Poorly.  Write poorly!

Success!

I am going to complete my submission for Q2 rough draft this month, even if it IS written poorly.  I am going to stop being critical of my writing until I finish the first draft.

Partial fail. I had some success with not being as critical.  But, I didn't finish my first draft.

This is currently my biggest impediment.  I recognize it.  I have been lucky to have written 10,000 words or so in the last month.  The problem is that it is my first 450 words re-written about 20 times in the last month!  I am too critical.  With my plotting notes and outlining I have written in excess of 15,000 words in the last month but have produced nothing worthy of reading, so it gets deleted and rewritten. 

That has changed.  I finally managed to convince myself to just "get it on paper."  And it has been to great effect.  I now have my first 2000 poorly written words, more than 1200 of them coming yesterday.  They are bad.  But, I know what's wrong with them and how to fix them.  The remarkable thing is that new ideas emerge, happy accidents.  This should be my goal going forward, not "finishing my story."

I'll take it as a win.  What I recognized as "my biggest impediment" has been greatly curtailed and I liked the result.  So, more of that.

However, I got to 8,000 words and realized I had at least another 1500 left to finish Act I.  Not editing as I go generally leads to me under-writing rather than over-writing.  I leave out almost all writing pertaining to tone, setting, description etc.  Clearly, my Q2 is too large in scope for WotF. I cut as many bullet points from my outline as I could to narrow the scope to under 17,000 words.  Now, I can't make the story work. 

Basically, I haven't written for two weeks.  I keep thinking about the revised outline and it feels flat.  Maybe it only feels flat relative to the full novel.  But, I'm fighting to stay inspired to write it.  I'm not sure where this leave me.  I'm thinking of dropping the story for submitting to WotF, putting the novel on the back burner and starting over with a new story.  I've put so much energy into this story, letting go of it is hard.  KYD on a grand scale.

Posted by: @gideonpsmith

↑

I had heard querying on picturebooks was different - that you usually query with several projects together. Not sure if that is what you are doing (I got this from watching youtube videos from Bookends Literary Agnecy, which are fairly informative and one of the agents that hosts it is a picture book agent/author)

It is indeed what I've done. The agent I identified said to send up to three stories at a time, so I sent both.

I'll let you know! I haven't queried agents for my sci-fi / fantasy work, so it's a step into the unknown. It's exciting (as it feels like progress, of a kind) but I have the thick skin developed through submitting short stories and receiving form rejections to comfort me should it not go anywhere.

@gideonpsmith That is definitely a reminder I need and this list is way too ambitious. But some tasks have been switched out for others...

I finally finished the first draft of a short, just now. I will let it stew for a few weeks while get back on with the novel.

Target for this month is as many chapters of the novel as I can get down, and to edit that short and submit it.

My goal was to finish a draft - I am close, but not quite. Still, I am glad I haven't snuffed out the joy of my current WIP and feel positive I will get it finished! Also had another idea sprout, so I outlined it for future use.

Goal for March is to submit for this quarter.

February is done, and it was a hell of a month. I've had writer block for half of it. Some days were better, some days were nightmare. Anyway:

February objectives:

• Reverse outline my novel draft - Done, finished yesterday (glad there were 29 days in February LOL)
• Start editing the outline once done - FAIL.
• No editing/rewriting the draft as such - I didn't change anything (not even the hilarious typos I found there)
• Write one short story a week - Done. 4 short stories drafted
• One short story edited -> polished -> submitted - Done. In fact, I submitted 2
• Continue workshop - Done
  
• Finish beta reading a fantasy novel I've just started reviewing - Finished, comments sent last week

I only wrote 16k new words, but that's fine as my main objective was to go back to the novel I wrote at the end of last year.

March objectives: I'll be softer on myself. This writer block scared me, and maybe I was pushing myself too hard.

• Write one short story a week.
• One short story edited -> polished -> submitted.
• Continue with the workshop.
• Start a new beta reading (fantasy novel) as soon as the author who contacted me sends me the file.

I'll let the novel aside for now. I might note down some ideas to fill in the plot holes or refine character arcs, but this is not a priority for now. I do know a novel is a very long process, and although I'm quite happy with the overall draft, it needs major rewriting, especially the end (pantser issue lol.)

Only 16k? That's great, IMO.

I got 9k on a potential new novel that I am now fully convinced must be switched to first person. There's two POVs and I'm not a fan of alternating POVs unless clearly delineated, like in a romance, so I'm finding it difficult to start the switch whilst resisting.

@tj_knight I understand how you feel about switching POV as a writer, especially for something like a novella or short story.  But, as a reader how do you find switching POV?  It's common in novels and has been for many years.  It can certainly be done poorly, but most of the ones that I've enjoyed just title each chapter as the POV characters name.  I'm sure you know that.  I'm just curious what about switching POV in a novel, specifically bothers you?  Or, is it like how other axioms in writing like, thou shalt not use adverbs or passive voice that causes a little anxiety every time you 'sin' (one of my personal demons)?

Have you ever seen switching POV implemented successfully in WotF?

List of novels that switch POV

I can't recall POV switches in WotF. They're probably out there, but they're rare. I'll let @ease confirm if that's what his story did or not.

What bugs me with this particular one is that I'd have to write both male and female POVs. That to me feels like stepping on the same toes as any non-experiential POV. I don't mind 3rd person, authors do that all the time, but first feels ... different. I even considered asking another author to write all Aura's scenes, but I'm impatient and just want to get the work done.

So I wrote 700 new words this AM in 3rd. I'm fighting it tooth and nail. Haha.

Though I will offer I went back to chapter one and tried to get deeper into her mind from 3rd. It's possible I just have to get better at it, which is a long-standing issue in my writing 3rd... 1st comes as naturally as breathing. 3rd is running on sand.

Posted by: @tj_knight

↑

I can't recall POV switches in WotF. They're probably out there, but they're rare. 

Right again @tj_knight ! They are rare, true, but they do happen.

@abeona one example is:

Vol 31, “Moonlight One” by Stephen Lawson

Opens in 3rd person female POV, ends in different character 3rd person male POV.

@gideonpsmith Thanks, I'll check it out.  Looks like it's Vol 33 though, for anyone else interested.  Moonlight One

Posted by: @abeona

↑

@gideonpsmith Thanks, I'll check it out.  Looks like it's Vol 33 though, for anyone else interested.  Moonlight One

right! first story in volume 33.  not sure why i said 31. age no doubt