It’s the end of March, which means time to report in on the WIP again. Once again, I had high hopes of finishing this draft by today’s check-in and once again, that didn’t happen. But the month wasn’t a complete loss. Here are the stats…
Last report wordcount: 54, 754
Current report WC: 54, 426 – yip, the WC has decreased somewhat, more about that below…
WIP Issues This Month:
I came to the startling realisation that the story was far too convoluted and was getting away from me. A major rewrite was required, a rewrite that got rid of extraneous characters and streamlines the focus of the story without getting hung up on superfluous melodrama. This rewrite resulted in going from an almost finished 56k to a not-even-a-novel word count of 43k. So I’ve actually written more 10k words of fresh scenes this month despite the dwindling word count. And as frustrating and demoralizing as it is to axe large sections of the manuscript, the story is so much better for it
Four things I learned this month in writing:
1. Writing is rewriting. I’ve embraced this fact.
2. Occam’s Razor – sometimes the simplest solution really is the best, and creating complication in the character’s life doesn’t always make for a better or more interesting story.
3. I’m a YA writer. The moment I stopped trying to force my story to be New Adult, the voices became so much clearer and I became so much more comfortable writing these characters.
4. I am going to fall in and out of love with my characters and that’s okay. I can actually still write even if I’m not currently in love with said characters. Sometimes, it’s better to be a little more removed from the story, better able to see its strengths and weakness and write accordingly.
What distracted me this month while writing:
That other story I shouldn’t be working on, but can’t stop thinking about. I also just received my edits for I HEART ROBOT (so freaking excited about this!!), so instead of working on the now titled Scardust WIP yesterday, I was neck deep in edits. Edits will also take major preference in April as my deadline is May 1st so I’m not sure when I’ll actually finish this WIP.
Goal for next month: Finish edits on I Heart Robot. Shore up The Angel Codex for submission to my publisher (both of those have May 1st deadlines! 0.o ) and then, if I have a spare moment, work on Scardust. I highly doubt I’ll manage to finish the draft in April, but I’d like to get to 60k if I can.
Last 200 words: I can’t actually share the last 200 words because there will be major spoilers and the scene doesn’t really make sense without understanding its context, so here’s the working blurb instead. Please let me know what you think, if this is a story you’d want to read, or if it’s even an interesting concept to begin with ??
18yr old juvenile delinquent Raleigh Williams has only ever dreamed of going to Mars. Desperate to escape the life he hates in Dead Rock, Texas and struggling to come to terms with his brother’s suicide, Raleigh will do whatever it takes to join the Martian colony. But everything changes quicker than a cat can lick its ass when Raleigh finds a young man, scarred and with no memory of who he is, lying in the desert.
When Raleigh starts remembering fragments of the stranger’s life, he agrees to help Crow piece together his identity. But the memory share goes both ways and Raleigh becomes inexplicably entangled with a boy who is everything Raleigh’s not. When Crow’s interplanetary past catches up with him, Raleigh will be forced to face a dark and sinister truth, one that could shatter his dreams of Mars.
And that’s it for the month of March. How did you do?
