This weekend I need to write a book review that's due Monday, and I'm also hoping to at least draft a complete short story. I have four calls for submissions that all have a June 1 deadline. This could be tricky, since there's an entire week of May in which I will not be spending any time writing due to local events and to WisCon. But surely I ( Read more... )

Mostly I edited, but I did write a little. Over the weekend, I finished up a short story which formerly was an excised scene from an unfinished novel. After much editing, which I found very absorbing and satisfying, I got the original 5000-something words down to 4000, which is 500 under the maximum for submissions to this particualr anthology. ( Read more... )

I haven't worked on my current novel since August, 2012. In fact, I haven't written anything but [paid] nonfiction during that period, and one 500-piece of fiction that took work, obviously, but was not a long-term project. This is for a combination of reasons, some of which I understand and some of which I probably don't even realize. But the ( Read more... )

I had a good weekend of writing! As in, it felt good, and I realized some things about the underlying themes. I wrote 1100 on Saturday and 1000 on Sunday ( Read more... )

Poll Techniques to Try

1000 words, barely, on Saturday. I attempted to make an outline of my current novel on Sunday, moving back and forth between the current draft, my two synopses of different lengths, and the new outline document. I am what's called a "pantser" for plot, or maybe a semi-pantser, who tries to be a plotter and flounders...it was brutal. I ended up ( Read more... )

I wrote this weekend, on both Saturday and Sunday, and marked a lot of pages in my research books. I'm sixteen pages into the manuscript and still fighting writing neuroses. One forgets how real these self-doubts feel, in between new projects ( Read more... )

I have piles of research books from the library and am waiting on another one I bought, for the new novel. I started on one of the library books last night after I got home from the gym ( Read more... )

I have achieved a printout of my story draft, the one that's due February 1. This is the part where I read it all in one go, all of it laid out before me, and see where the holes are (and in this case, I know I need a better ending, because right now it has a zero-draft ending). I make notes about larger things I need to change, and I do line ( Read more... )

I have two more weekends in which to write, before my story is due. I would really, really like to have a complete draft at the end of this weekend. That is achievable, because my drafts are usually a little shorter than my final products, and I am very close to the required wordcount. What I have left is, essentially, the final sex scene and ( Read more... )