WRoE March Summary

My process slowed down in March.  There was about a week where I didn’t keep track of my time at all!  What I did record adds up to 18 hours and change.  One weekend I didn’t work on the story - I read two books instead. 

The opening (about 17 pages in my working format) was critiqued by my SPAMmers writing group.  I got great feedback and folks want to see more.  I consolidated all their comments (6 people) onto one copy, then edited accordingly.

The word count was 42092 when I stopped on March 31, a 2750 word net gain for the month.  I’ve been editing as I go.  I print out about 4 or 5 pages worth:  the newest scenes plus the notes for upcoming scenes.   Those pages come to work with me for break time.  I edit the completed scenes and eek out the new one(s) several sentences at a time.  At some point the pages get messy enough for me to type it all up.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  The most recent packet was pages 86 through 89.  The next packet will start with page 88, unless I work on the computer for a bit before printing again.  That’s maybe TMI about my process.  Sorry. 

My goals from the last Library writers group included getting this draft finished by April 11.  Don’t think I’m going to make it!

This next stretch is going to be really hard for me to write.  The antagonist will be messing with my point of view character’s mind; she may be pretty much out of it, but she’s the one telling the readers about what’s happening!  How to balance her mental state with the reader’s needs - well, I haven’t figured that one out yet.  And there will of course be the options to mislead the reader about events because my POV character is so confused!  SHE may not even be sure about what was real and what was flashback/ induced.  There will be breaks when he’s not in the room, which will be opportunities for her to try and figure things out, where she may get close to normal before he comes back and messes with her again.  Won’t be too many of those sessions, though, because someone else is gonna show up and stop them.

I’m considering writing the first draft of that whole bit in third person omniscient just to find out what’s going on.  Then do the second version in first person.