Wednesday, April 17, 2019

ROW80 #6: Wednesday already?

I've nearly stopped watching/listening to the news, even avoiding online updates, as much is heartbreaking. This week's fire at Notre Dame, so devastating to so many still brings us together everywhere in efforts to protect, preserve, and reconstruct this wonderful cultural heritage. Though the spire is gone, the two towers remain. So much work lies ahead.

South Wall, Notre Dame (Camp 2004)
I can report a good week and a few breakthroughs.

Round 2, Week 3: Goals and Progress:

  • WRITING: Focused on writing and revision of Sec01. Added +800 words (Goal 1K for this week). 
  • BLOGGING: The week is barely begun, so this update to ROW80 is my first post. (Goal posts x3). Reading posts by others? So far 3/7.
  • NOVELS-L. Would like to do more critiques this week. Goal: 4x/month. So far, have completed 2.
  • MARKETING: No progress. No planned progress other than need to order 2 audiobook covers.
  • OTHER: Swimming and quilting coming along on schedule. Planning for future travels involves much folding and refolding of maps, thinking about weather, and how much we can hike. My office is finally nearly organized and I've given another two boxes of books to the library.
Best writing moment. An e-mailed newsletter from Kristen Lamb, "How Writing Faster Can Vastly Improve Your Storytelling," invited me to register for her online class, but the class was full. So I wrote her, thanking her for her inspirational article, AND SHE WROTE BACK!!!!! 

The gist of her article is that when we write and revise at the same time, we stay somewhat at the surface of our creativity. When we write faster, push ourselves to get more words down on the page, we tap into our own deeper feelings and motivations that move our characters, our story, and our readers (as well as ourselves).

So, I'm switching The Seventh Tapestry back to third person point of view because I want that balanced inner connection to BOTH main characters. This week, I used scaffolding to build the structure of Neil's part of the story and began drafting. So, the verdict? Not sure yet, but I'm happy that more of Neil's story is emerging. My writing sessions are now balanced between drafting AND revision, well supported by comments from my F2F writing buddy and the Novels-L group of the Internet Writing Workshop. The writing goes well.

from Kristen Lamb
May the coming week bring you new words, new insights, and good connections with other writers who encourage and inspire each other with A Round of Words in 80 Days -- also on Facebook. Why not join in?






2 comments:

  1. Beth, just an idea that could allow you to have both viewpoints in the first person at some stages of The Seventh Tapestry: might they write letters? To each other or someone else entirely.
    I'm not saying epistolary novel (though if you feel up to the challenge, why not?) but you could mix third person and first person this way.

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    1. Thank you for your suggestion, Ruichan. In another novel, I did use letter-writing between characters, but the story was set in the 1840's. This story has a contemporary setting with characters more likely to text or e-mail. Not to worry. I'm deep into third person now!

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