ROW80 Check-in 11th May 2014

Something happened this week that gave me a spring in my writing step. If you have been reading my ROW80 check-ins for the past few weeks, you'll know that I was entering a short story competition. I edited my story and I sent it off last Monday. As I pressed send I got that sense of dread, that feeling of fear that someone was going to read it and hate it. But Belinda Jones who is a great writer and the creator of the competition emailed me saying I had done a great job on the story. She used words such as 'warmly humorous' and 'relatable' and it is fair to say she has made my week, if not my month. Sorry if I sound like Mrs Boasty of Boastland but it really made me feel great to have someone I don't even know encourage me with my writing. It may not mean anything happens to the story I entered but it made me feel like I should keep on writing when I was starting to doubt if I should. It is amazing what some kind words from someone can do for your confidence.

Anyway, enough of the boasting.

My goals last week were:

1) Read through short story and email it off.

Achieved! It felt great to finish a project.

2) Create a plan for my next project.

I knew my next project would be finishing the re-write of my chick-lit story but I need to break it down into weekly do-able chunks. I re-wrote 26k of the story during NaNo last year and had a really great brainstorm back in Feb with my friend Lisa Dickenson who is a great writer and it helped me so much to speak through my plot out loud. I ran through my plot with her by using a series of stick man drawings with lots of arrows. Now I look at them, they make little sense but I know she made some great suggestions and I felt like I wanted to tweak the plot but I never got round to it.  I also had a clever gchat ages ago with ROW80 sprint leader  Lauren Garafalo and she helped get my head around the theme of my story. So I was getting my head around what I wanted to write. I just seemed to never sit down and write.

The natural step for me now seems to be tweaking my plot and adding in the bits and pieces I have thought of recently. I don't want to call it re-plotting as the majority will stay the same and re-plotting sounds scary! I have lots of notes and the stick man drawings to bring together and I feel like I need to immerse myself in my plot and my characters before I start writing. So, this week is all about ending up with a clear plot to work from. 

3) Read two books towards 100 books challenge.

I read two books and have now read 27 books towards this challenge. I am still about 10 books behind but hope to catch up.

4) Check-in on Sunday.

Done!

So, for the week ahead my goals are simple:

1) Create a clear plot for my chick-lit WIP.

2) Check-in on Sunday.

I hope everyone has had wonderful weeks and you are finding your stride with your goals. I am hoping I might make a #ROW80 sprint this week, fingers crossed! Have a fabulously productive seven days :)

E.x