In an attempt at motivation, I have decided to do a
monthly blog post on my writing efforts for the previous month. Novel Writing.
I am currently writing a young adult novel, Branded. I
wrote the first chapter of it as part of a writing for young adults subject in
a Master of Creative Writing I finished in 2007. I then filed the chapter away
as I concentrated on other writing. I pulled it back out for last November’s National
Novel Writing Month, adding just over 50,000 words in that month. In January I
added a further 4816 words. An average of 155 words a day.
The novel is now just under 60,000 words. It has five
parts and I have just started part four. It looks like it will be somewhere between
90,000 and 100,000 words.
I am still very much enjoying writing it, especially
after I just managed to get most of the dysfunctional group of characters back
to working with each other.
Non-Fiction Writing.
I had two articles up on Divine last month, twice as many
as usual. One was on robots helping people with disabilities and the other gave
some reasons for the low participation rate of the people with disabilities inthe workforce.
I successfully pitched four ideas to the editor. Two of
the articles will be film reviews. I am currently writing one of them. They
will be slightly different from the typical film review because of their disability
angle.
Blog Writing.
I wrote four blog posts last month, the last one took a
lot of time to research and write as I analysed the novels on the Goodreads
Choice Awards science fiction list.
Reading.
I am halfway through the very enjoyable science fiction
novel Zoo by Lauren Beukes. It is a
mystery novel set in a marvellously inventive near future South Africa.
Critiquing.
I did not make time to critique anyone else’s writing in
January. Not good.
But I did write on every day of the month.
Health permitting, I hope to greatly improve on my
writing and reading efforts in February so these monthly posts don’t start
resembling a guilt sheet.
3 comments:
Youre very committed mate.
I mourn the loss of my writing time.
Blogs alone require effort.
Anyway, best of luck with the YA novel. Just for yr info if you go down that path, from experience, most publishers want YA under 90K ...
Under 90,000. I will see how I go. My problem is more that when I am relatively healthy I don't use more of my time to write.
Yr doing great in any regard.
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