I should explain about my goal for last week. I said I wanted to write 4 chapters. My mom quickly emailed and said I was definitely aiming high. That did seem like a lot. However, the way my story is set up, a chapter is a day, and a day could have anywhere from one to five scenes. I did actually mean to say my goal was to write 4 scenes, not chapters, but even if I did mean chapters, it wouldn’t have been quite as crazy as it sounded! 🙂
I did meet the goal of 4 scenes written this week, and I also put together my tagline, premise and one-sheet, along with getting my submission ready for the Emily contest (first 7000 words). Pretty productive week!
Current Word Count: 24,650! I am in Act 2 of my story now and trucking along.
Little Hints: Playboy Miami cologne. My main boy character wears this, as does my husband. SOO Yummy! If you haven’t smelled this yet, run out to CVS now and do so.
Soundtrack Song of the Week: You Belong With Me, another of the girls favorites. (I realized that those of you who subscribe to my blog via email–thank you by the way for doing that!–the YouTube video does not follow the post. If you click on the link for my blog, you can watch the video on my blog itself, if you want)
Writing or Editing Trick Used This Week That Worked Particularly Well:
Before I started actually writing, when I was still in the planning stages, I sat down and chose actors and actresses who I felt looked like or best represented my characters. At the time, I didn’t watch any CW shows but I went to their website and found a few of my characters there. The biggest is my main boy character, Brandon. I found him from the 90210 site (for those who watch that show, he is Liam). Well, once we got our treadmill, I decided to start Tivo’ing that show–and about 5 others!–to watch while walking. It has been so much fun, watching him in 3D and not just in my head or a picture I pasted on his character sketch. A bonus is that his current love interest is very much like my girl main character as far as personality, so it definitely helps. A fun surprise.
Personal High: Putting together my one-sheet. It was fun and I even used my homeschool teacher supplies to laminate it. Now it sits in front of me while I write as inspiration.
Personal Low: Still being stuck on a particular scene from the beginning of my story. I keep going back and forth on if I should leave it in. It lays important groundwork for later in the book, but it isn’t necessarily immediately obvious, and I am not sure if it is messing with pacing where it currently is. I just rewrote the ending of that scene, and it helped, but I am also leaving it out completely for the Emily contest–and I noticed that the story flowed seamlessly without it. If I do cut it entirely, I will have to go back and work in the important details in other parts of the story, which would be a lot of work, so I am going to procrastinate a while longer and stew on it.
Writing Goal For the Coming Week: Finish Noah Lukeman’s First Five Pages–oops forgot about this part of my goal for last week!!–and I’m gonna say 3 scenes, although that third scene is a biggie and is going to be told from both POV’s.
HAPPY WRITING!
