Week 6 Module 5
Update 6: 13-19 July 2020
Another light week, but all my goals were met.
This would have been the week of Necon 40, which I was originally going to have to miss anyway, due to a co-worker also taking vacation this week. In other words, this week was always planned to be a light word week… either I would have been away at my favorite writers’ conference… or, as it actually was this week, I had to work full time and cover my missing co-worker.
Due to the damn pandemic, Necon 40 actually got pushed to next year, thus keeping my 11 years in a row streak alive. I could go on for pages about how amazing writing conferences can be and how getting together with other writers really helps to alleviate things like Imposter Syndrome. When you get the chance to meet a favorite author and find out that they also think everything they are writing is crap. It’s a real bonding moment.
Word Count
Anyway… I don’t want to spend pages trying to sell you on going to conferences and cons. Most writers are introverts and it is SUPER hard to get yourself to travel and meet a bunch of people. Maybe I’ll get a blog in the middle of the week talking psychology and getting deeper into this topic?
As usually my goal is 3000 words in a week. And as usual I knocked that out of the park. I hit 3061 words in only two sessions of writing. I also work shopped three shorts/ essays, wrote two essays, and this blog post. So, I’m not completely lazy. But I feel lazy.
IN context to my class, I have more than enough material to hand in the second final for my course. I should be happy that I have finished the work load. But I am trying to get to the end of the first draft. That end is very far away, and my mood swings that stop me from writing need to be addressed. As much as I’m ahead of the class… I need to be DONE with the manuscript. My latter classes have a LOT to do with revision. If I’m not getting ahead, I won’t be able to keep going back and doing revision while still going forward.
This is a problem:
I understand that part of it is the pandemic, and the depressing situations in the world as a whole. And I just want to lie in bed and read a good book or watch some old movies. There is a bunch of other work I have been putting off and its starting to make me feel like I’m getting nothing done at all.
Thankfully these posts and the charts I’ve been making of my word counts has really helped me have a visual guide to what I’m getting done. Still there is a lot not getting finished and I need to prioritize.
This week’s classes
So, in my teaching class I’m doing an interesting scenario discussion, where I’m torn with how I want to take it. I also have to create a cover letter talking about (and selling my skills) as an editor and writing coach. That shouldn’t be too tough, but I always worry about an assignment before I get to it.
IN my thesis class… besides pushing my word count even further, I had to create a pitch for my novel. Let me tell you this is always a problem. First off “Pitch” is defined in numerous ways and most of the reading for this week included Twitter, Elevator, Logline, and full back cover pitches; and then mashups of all of them.
It gets confusing of how short to make it and what to concentrate on. Specifically for my class, we had to write a pitch that was up to a full minute long, where basically we’re in a room and talking to a bunch of agents.
Pitch Difficulties
The main problem I had was that every lesson plan said to concentrate on the main character of the novel and tell their conflict, goal, and basic arc… but my novel has 5 [YES FIVE] protags and each of them as an arc, goal, etc… it would just be a mess trying to do a pitch naming each one in a single sentence.
While that would work in the 1-minute pitch of the assignment, that could never be rendered down into a tweet. I finally had a break through this morning, and realized that in order to do my pitch I had to reveal a huge secret of the novel. Instead of concentrating on the protagonists I went to the antagonist and talked about what HE wanted. What was the goal of the villain… the hidden villain?
Once I started with what was the REAL STORY, throwing it back to the clueless protags and how they are pawns in someone else’s story… that made everything click.
So this week is getting off to a good start.
Goals
I really want to go beyond the 3000 words in a week. I’m going to push for 5000, and if I don’t get my 5k then… I’ll figure out a punishment.
I just realized I forgot to give all the numbers for last week!
WIP Stats
I just finished chapter 12; it sits at 5280 words. The whole novel is currently sitting at 52,183 and I’m projecting another 100k to finish, maybe more if I slow things down a bit.
Thank you again for reading these posts.
