Blog No. 119
I’ve decided to steal something from Christian who borrowed it from someone else. If you go over to his page (http://christianlaforet.com/2015/02/10/hey-im-writing-a-novel-pt-1) you’ll see that he is marking the progress of his novel on his blog and the majority of his updates are going to be centered around that progress. I’m still going to be writing about random things that happen to interest me at the time I sit down to write this blog, but I’m going to be adding some updates of my own (here on my blog). I’m even going to use the word and chapter counter thing that he is (that I’ve seen on plenty of other pages, like on my friend Melissa’s (http://blog.melissaschnarr.com/).
But what novel am I going to be updating? I’m happy to say that I managed to reach my 10,000 words from Saturday to Saturday goal, even though I was called into work on the Friday and didn’t reach my daily goal that day. So if you read last week’s post you’ll know that what I’m talking about is the unnamed adventure novel based on a dream and inspired by stories from places like Studio Ghibli. Now it has a working title though. I’m calling it The Third Map Maker, I’m on chapter four, and like I said, I’m just over 10,000 words in. Realistically, that’s not a lot. I’m expecting the novel to be over 80,000 words (but that’s just a guess) and I’m not dedicating myself to it fully, like I did last week. Now I have Adventure Words, the Collection, the third Zine, and plenty of edits on the back burner.
Now starts the juggling act. I want to get my chores done, but I also want to keep the fire that helped me write so much in what, for me, is a really short amount of time. Really, it means doing double duty, writing fewer words a day but consistently, and adding editing and such. It should be very possible. I’m still getting fewer hours at work (as is the season) and I’m supposed to be doing better this year than last year. If I spend a couple hours a day (when I do work) on writing, I should be able to keep everything in the air (as long as I spend way more time on the days I have free). Having the submissions on Adventure Worlds has been an amazing relief, especially since it’s been mostly Christian and me posting stories for a while. We have regulars who have been huge helps with producing content that people are excited to read, but what started out as a fun project quickly becomes a burden when there isn’t enough help and the founders need to spend more time progressing as writers.
I have to thank the Drink and Draw folks too. I’ve said it before, but they are the ones who have made the zine a viable thing. More people get excited for that the anything on the blog, so having awesome, professional covers and help with Finders is both generous and essential. Also, the writers at WOW have been indispensible with helping Christian and me become the better writers we strived to be when we started this adventure (eh? Yeah?). I have to say, I wouldn’t be writing a novel if I didn’t learn as much as I did from them in the last year.
Novel: The Third Map Maker (working title)
Words: 10 050
Chapters: 4
Ben Van Dongen 