#writemotivation & Competition Success

Two pieces of success for me, and afterwards I will ask for your successes of the week.

Firstly, my goal for this month's #writemotivation was to write 25000 words and am currently standing  at 30000 thanks to the Fast Drafting I have been doing. Woo! I will write a post about Fast Draft when I have finished it telling you all how I found it.

How is everyone's #writemotivation going?

Secondly I entered a competition in a local book festival to write a piece of flash fiction. I am one of 12 finalists and I have to go read it out at an event where people vote for the winner! It will just be exciting to be part of it, and it's nice to have a wee boost like that.

What are your successes of the week? Get that difficult chapter done? Finally tidy the front room? :) Let me know!

writemotivation & Guilty Pleasures BlogFest

I am no further ahead with my #writemotivation goals (sadface, not going well this month) and I missed any GUTGAA windows!

So not much to report there. If you are in GUTGAA let me know. Hook me up with your entry so I can admire it ;)

But onto cheery topics, today is the: Genre Favorites Blogfest run by the awesome Alex Cavanaugh.

You pick your fave genre of Movie, Music, Books and a Guilty Pleasure. So here goes!

Movie: Spy movies.

Think Bourne Identity, Mission Impossible, Bond. I love all the intrigue and chasing about. Especially if people wear daft outfits and break into places in an impossible manner. Which brings me onto another genre I love: the heist movie. Oceans Eleven! Who can beat a good heist movie? No one. Spy probably just wins out but they are very closely intertwined I find.

I don’t want you to think I like spying on people and breaking into places. I just like watching it in the movies, honest.

Music: Singalong Indie Rock. Think the Killers, Kasabian, Kaiser Chiefs. Perhaps I just like artists beginning with K as I do like Kylie too. (Though I’m not really a fan of Kanye West or Katie Melua so it falls down there. Back to Indie Rock.) Yes the more jangly guitars and singalong the tune the better. The Killers ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ is the perfect example of this.

Books: Dystopian. I love a good dystopian. I am truly sorry if this genre is on the wane and they won’t publish so many because I have really enjoyed the flood of these in the market. More broadly: I like Sci Fi in general so time travelling parallel world doppelgangers come on down!

And a guilty pleasure genre from any of the three categories: this would be Keanu Reeves Movies. Yes it deserves to be a genre. I don’t just love the good ones like the Matrix, Speed or Bill&Ted. I will happily spend good money even on the rubbish ones like the Lake House and that one with the aliens. (The Matrix sequels upset me a bit, because the first one was so good, but I still went to see them. Even The Matrix 3 when I knew it would be bad). The same goes for early Christian Slater movies btw, I haven’t just seen Heathers and Pump Up the Volume. Or even Gleaming the Cube, but also the likes of The Wizard. *ah happy sigh*

What are your genre faves? And go the contests and monthly goals?

Writemotivation and How Fast Do You Draft?

September is another #writemotivation month and my aim this month is simple:

Write 25,000 words of my WIP.

So far I have about 5k, so a bit behind.

As a result of my general aim to get some of this draft out, I have signed up for Fast Draft Boot Camp (deets here). Hopefully I will learn to get this draft out quicker than the last.

(I don't believe in rushing things in a desperate bid to cross the finish line, but I suspect that the draft won't be too much worse off my usual for speeding it up. We'll SEE.)

I will let you know how it goes!

In the meantime:

How Fast Do you Draft?

Is there an average? Do you knock out a draft in a week you speedy ones? Or do you take six months? How long does your editing take (do you think there's a correlation? Long First Draft = Less edits?)

Fill me in. In the meantime if you have an entry in a contest anywhere good luck, hook me up with the links.

I wanted to be amusing in the above post, however I am tired. Instead, I leave you with a bad joke:
The Scarecrow was outstanding in his field.

#writemotivation update and Camp Nano? Anyone?

Writemotivation Update!

I set myself these goals at the start of the month:

1) Finish line edit of my novel - DONE
2) Continue to post twice a week in blog - DONE
3) Rough outline a new idea - DONE... kinda?

Yay! I do have to read over the line edits to make sure they make sense so there’s a caveat there I guess, but I’m calling them done!

The new idea outline... isn’t quite working but I did DO one. Does that count? I am not sure it does but hey...! I must say I have found setting goals really helps as does the awesome encouragement which goes on on #writemotivation on twitter. Thanks everyone.

As for August: I am going to join in Camp Nano! So my only goal for August is to complete the necessary words. I am not even going to set myself the goal they have to be on one piece. I am having trouble getting my next idea together, working, so I may have to write several openings to different pieces.


And maybe beg some poor souls to help me work out which of them works. Hope one of them does. ;)


But I am not putting any stress on myself other than to regularly write, try and make the word count, and hopefully by Autumn have a project to focus on further.


It may mean a slightly less regular blogging/commenting scheduling but am going to do my best to keep up!

Do join me in Camp Nano if you are doing it! Are you setting any goals for the summer? What's your next writing project?


PS Oh my forgot to say: 100 followers, a giveaway will follow, likely next week ;)

Critique Partners & Betas, come let me quiz you about yours + writemotivation!

The purpose of this post is twofold.

First, I am curious about your Critique Partner and Beta habits!

For me, I took a local writing course a few years ago (I am lucky enough that local for me is the city of London!). One of the primary things we were taught is the important of critique partners. Several of us have met up once a month since to critique each other’s work in the form of a group. I have started to make some great contacts online too, which is awesome! :)

I’m curious to find out how you met your CPs, or Betas, so I have a few questions. If you could bear to please answer them, that would be very interesting. Send other people to answer them!

1. How many Critique Partners do you have + how did you meet them? Do they all know each other?
2. Do you swap chapters as you go along or run drafts by them or both?
3. Typically how many times will your CP read your work before you query?
4. Do you have beta readers, how many and are these different people to your CPs? How did you meet them?

Second, I have been joining in writemotivation this month and my goals were:

1) Finish line edit of my novel OMG NEARLY DONE
2) Continue to post twice a week in blog: Done so far
3) Rough outline a new idea: Done

So going well. Line edit wise I am so close to the end, I then need to add a new scene (sigh) and read over the entire thing again but hopefully that will be done soon!


Hope you are all having a good week.

#writemotivation; Editing: How Do YOU Do It?

I edited this post about my editing goal for #writemotivation, to include questions about how other people edit. Shall I edit that sentence? Let’s rework it entirely:

My #writemotivation number one goal is to finish the current line edit of my novel. I did have 18 chapters to go, I now have 13 chapters to go. So kind of on target! Yay!

As I edit, I wondered how my method of editing matches up with all of you out there *peers out into the interwebs*. 


At the moment my editing process goes like this:

1) Write draft of novel. This includes some editing, as I usually read the chapter before and do edits before I carry on writing the next chapter.
2) Rewrite entire novel. This includes tutting at Past Viklit for writing in third person, when clearly first was better, or putting in that entire plot twist which made no sense, and that character who’s pointless and...so on.
3) Structural and character edits: Several of these. Bajillion of these. This includes working out kinks in the plot, sorting out the characterisation of minor characters, tightening the dialogue, etc. Also tutting at Original Past Viklit for not noticing and Rewrite Past Viklit for not fixing it in the rewrite.
4) Line edits, tidying up the prose: A couple of these, realistically. This includes some fixes of details of scenes & adding bits as I can’t stop fiddling. It’s a disease.
5) Final read through and fixing of typos I have missed.
This should equal draft + 3-4 edits but it actually equals draft + a bajillion million edits.

How do you do it? Am I missing a crucial step or editing in a weird order? I am genuinely interested to know how you go about it. How many drafts does this equal for you?

Does anybody else love it and hate it at the same time?

Oooh AND at what point do you get critiques/betas/etc though I will post just about that another time.

Now, am going to post this with just ONE EDIT.

#writemotivation & Do You Set Writing Goals?

I have joined in the fun of writemotivation this month and will be aiming to achieve my goals and cheers on others using  Twitter #writemotivation and of course general bloggage fun. If you haven't checked it out, do clicky the linkys if you are curious.

Which brings me to my question for you all, dear readers:

Do You Set Writing Goals?

Does it help you to set goals? Are these goals around chapters or words or time spent? What are your current goals? I’ll be cheering on the #writemotivation crowd but outside of that if you want to be blog/twitter cheered on and encouraged let me know and I’ll do what I can!

My goals for July #writemotivation are:

1) Finish line edit of my novel (18 chapters to go!)
2) Continue to post twice a week in blog
3) Rough outline a new idea

Let’s see if I achieve them! Let me know whether you goal set!