So I haven’t updated this blog, and the blog stats show a steadily declining readership. But don’t worry, even though I’m halfway across the world, I’m still writing…
I’ve decided to work on The Wormhole Paradigm, which I’m completely overhauling. That includes changing the title, but I don’t have a working title right now, so I’ll keep calling it that until I come up with a new one.
I sat down a week or so ago to start working on this story, and to my surprise I really got caught up in it. On the first leg of the study abroad, we toured Egypt for a week, and I didn’t hardly even think about my writing during that time. But after things started settling down a bit here in Jordan, I sat down to start a new draft of The Wormhole Paradigm and 2,000 words later I was pumped up and ready to stay up all night! Fortunately, I didn’t, but I was tempted.
My goal over the break is to write at least 1,000 words a week, which is what Brandon says is the bare minimum if you want to earn a part-time income as a writer. I’ve found that 1,000 words is not all that much for me–it’s what I do comfortably in a single sitting–so I think I’m going to be in good shape.
So far, The Wormhole Paradigm, so far I’ve got about 10,000 words in the new draft. Not all of that is new material, though–I’ve been doing some cutting and pasting of the old draft as well. I’m shooting for a novel-sized story with a length of 50,000, and I’ve got the story roughly planned out in my head.
Probably the next thing to do is to write down a solid outline–since The Lost Colony was mostly a freewrite, I want to try doing it the other way and outlining things more strictly.
Also, I want to try something that Dave Wolverton did with his first novel (On My Way to Paradise), which is set out with a number of goals for the rough draft. He set out goals like “show what a Japanese culture looks and feels like,” “examine such and such idea closely,” “write the story with such and such a feeling,” etc. On My Way to Paradise was a really, really good novel, and I wonder how much of that is due to his method of setting out with goals before you write. I don’t know how well that will work for me, but I’d like to give it a shot.
Inshallah, I’ll have the rough draft of this one finished before the start of Fall semester, but I may have to adjust that goal significantly towards the end of August. My main goal here is to focus on the Arabic and on finding out what I want to do after I graduate. But definitely, I want to have this draft finished before January 2009.
