June Writing Contest Results

My writing contest with Nick, Lauren Patrick, and Sean Korsgaard continues. This past month hasn't been particularly productive. I've only written 5,056 words (give or take some new words written during the editing process I didn't track well), which puts me ahead of Lauren (who had RL obligations) but dramatically behind Nick (who totally stomped everybody with 25,000).

Although I spent a lot of the month revising Battle for the Wastelands for the coming #Pitchmas novel-pitching sessions, excuses buy no yams. Looking at my spreadsheet, I didn't do any writing at all for over half the days in the month and most of those days weren't spent marking up the Battle manuscript or working for my freelance clients. I need to get in the habit of writing every day, even if it's only a little. My writer friends James R. Tuck and Delilah S. Dawson are productivity masters (creating first drafts in only a few months, with far more responsibilities than I have) and I would do well to emulate them.

So here's what I did accomplish:

*Battle for the Wastelands manuscript is now fully marked and I've edited the first three chapters. The goal is to get to 100,000 words or less to make it more salable. I did get a nibble from a small press during a previous pitching session that ultimately lead to a rejection, but I did get some useful feedback. The same with an agent rejection that arrived during the same timeframe. I'm optimistic for #Pitchmas. :)

*I've written close to 2,000 words for the sixth Wastelands novel, tentatively entitled Consolidation. Much of this was scenes I've previously written and filed away for later, including villain Falki Grendelsson brooding on the state of race relations in his truncated empire and Catalina Merrill cowing a would-be rapist with a revolver, but a lot of it is new material pertaining to how my development of Catalina's character.

*Written a good bit of material (approximately 3,000 words) for The Thing In The Woods, including much of the fifth chapter where the monster shows up again for the first time since the prologue and a scene taking place in the town library that brings in the American Civil War. I will be bringing the first four chapters before my Lawrenceville group this coming Sunday and the prologue (which the Lawrenceville people have already critiqued) before my Kennesaw group Saturday. All this critiquing and rewriting slows the process down and jeopardizes my plan to have the first draft finished by the time grad school starts in August, but the more finished and polished the early chapters are, the less continuity editing I'll need to do later.

So here's to a better, more productive July.