Weekly Writing Progress Report - M4 Week 6

Hi All--

Another week done. And now I am on my last week (hopefully). After taking three non-writing days for traveling, I completely forgot about my post. I guess I was just too excited to reunite with my sisters for the getaway weekend. Can't wait to post all about it in the following days to come.

Week 6
Project - M4 YA Fantasy
First Draft

Word count this week: 8,596
Word count to date: 62,147

This week in writing & what I've learned:

Last week was a short work week from the three day weekend, but boy did it feel long. Sometimes I felt like I was counting down the hours until my sister weekend. Towards the beginning of the week, I was pretty focused, but once the mid week hit, I think my mind was elsewhere and I started to lose it.

Now that I've entered the 'ending' part of my manuscript, it's proven more complicated than I imagined. Now I keep second guessing myself wondering if there's too much stuff going on that will confuse the reader. I guess that's what CP's and Betas will clarify for me. It can also be a pacing issue too, which is something I can hash out during revision.

This is really bad that the editor side of my brain is pushing my creative side out. I guess, more wine please? Ha. I promise I'm not an alcoholic. The weird thing that happened this week was that I imagined a certain scene unfolding a certain way. But as I wrote it, it kind of took its own turn and the characters revealed one of my twists in a way I hadn't planned. I woke up the next day thinking about what I'd written and wondered if I should leave it alone. Spontaneity is fine, but I just imagined this scene a specific way since I'd started the manuscript. Should I go with my first gut instinct or trust my characters? If I decided on the former, that would mean going back and changing two chapters I wrote after this scene. Oh dear. Cue stress. But this is just the first draft, so what did I learn?

• Stick to your goals, draft and don't look back. If you want to change something suddenly, then do so, but there's no need to go back and revise chapters affected until after getting to 'The End.'

What's even more ironic? I forgot about my second 'twist' I'd planned for the ending. So after another day of overthinking, I realized my characters were right to reveal the first twist when they did, because the second twist was way bigger and more important.

• So trust your characters even when you aren't sure why something happened a certain way. Maybe it was meant to happen differently.
• Oh yeah, and don't forget your plot twists after planting them for like the whole of the manuscript! I swear I don't think I forgot per se, I just knew it as fact for so long I forgot that my characters didn't. Whoops.

All in all, the week has been crazy busy, but I've squeezed in some fun with bubble baths, happy hours, yummy dinners, and books.

Oh yeah, speaking of which. Look who loved my book review of Magonia? Maria Dahvana Headley herself! She even retweeted it! Hahaha. I know. I'm so fangirling right now!