{"id":871,"date":"2009-07-02T23:27:03","date_gmt":"2009-07-03T06:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=871"},"modified":"2009-07-02T23:27:03","modified_gmt":"2009-07-03T06:27:03","slug":"goal-shift-for-ashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/goal-shift-for-ashes\/","title":{"rendered":"Goal shift for Ashes"},"content":{"rendered":"

These past few weeks, I’ve been killing myself trying to write Ashes of the Starry Sea.<\/em> I’ve made some good progress, as you can see on the sidebar. \u00a0Today I broke 200 pages. \u00a0Not too bad.<\/p>\n

However, the pace has just been killing me. \u00a04k words per day is something I can do…but 4k words per day on the same project? \u00a0It’s burning me out.<\/p>\n

What’s more, to keep up the pace, I’ll have to put all my other projects completely on hold for the month of July. \u00a0That, or write MORE than 4k per day, which would be excruciatingly painful.<\/p>\n

So I looked at my calendar tonight and figured that if I pushed back my self-imposed deadline for Ashes<\/em> to the weekend before school starts, I can cut my daily wordcount in that book in half. \u00a02k per day in Ashes<\/em>–not bad. \u00a0That I can do.<\/p>\n

What’s more, with the other 2k, I’ll have enough room to work on my other projects, Genesis Earth 3.0<\/em> and Bringing Stella Home 2.0<\/em>. \u00a0I’m starting to get really<\/em> excited for those, very motivated. \u00a0For Bringing Stella Home,<\/em> I’m practically chomping at the bit. \u00a0I want to make that story shine!<\/p>\n

Inshallah, juggling two projects at a time will be helpful, not harmful. \u00a0During the school year, when I was juggling work, school, and<\/em> writing, it didn’t work. \u00a0Now, however, with writing the only major obligation, I’m hoping that two projects will help keep my creative mind fresh, if that makes sense. \u00a0When I get burned out on Ashes<\/em> at 2pm, I can switch to Genesis Earth<\/em> and work on something that excites me. \u00a0When I get burned out on that at 9pm, I’ll be excited about Ashes<\/em> again. \u00a0Etc etc.<\/p>\n

Besides, if I want to be a professional writer, project juggling is an important skill I’ll need to learn. \u00a0Inshallah, I’ll get it to work this time.<\/p>\n

Wow! \u00a0If all goes according to plan, I’ll have all three novels finished and polished before school starts at the end of August! \u00a0July to write Genesis Earth 3.0,<\/em> August to write Bringing Stella Home 2.0,<\/em> and both months to finish Ashes of the Stary Sea 2.1<\/em>. \u00a0Yeah!<\/p>\n

In other news, Charlie finished Warbreaker<\/em> by Brandon Sanderson and reviewed it on her blog<\/a>. \u00a0I was also reading Warbreaker,<\/em> but about 200 pages in found that it just wasn’t working \u00a0for me. \u00a0I’ll probably finish \u00a0it someday, but for now, it’s on hold.<\/p>\n

I hate to say anything bad about it, since Brandon has been something of a mentor to me (and his Mistborn<\/em> books are some of the best fantasy that I’ve read!), but I shared many of Charlie’s complaints with the book.<\/p>\n

The biggest thing, however, was the way he fell into long, frequent info dumps about the world. \u00a0Every time, I felt that it stopped the action and jolted me out of the story, like reading a college textbook. \u00a0The world was okay, but the way he presented it just didn’t work for me.<\/p>\n

That, and the way the characters acted. \u00a0When Siri got carted off near the beginning to be the wife of the God king, the fact that she hardly showed any fear or anxiety about have sex with the guy just threw me out. \u00a0She was just like “oh, well,” and was nervous about everything else EXCEPT for the sex part. \u00a0From then on, I had believability issues with her character.<\/p>\n

Finally, let me just say that when I write my steampunk flower novel, I want to make one of the characters a Circassian janissary. \u00a0I just think it would be really cool to put a Circassian in the book, as either a good guy or a bad guy (or, more likely, a grey-area guy). \u00a0If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, check out the video below:<\/p>\n

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These past few weeks, I’ve been killing myself trying to write Ashes of the Starry Sea. I’ve made some good progress, as you can see on the sidebar. \u00a0Today I broke 200 pages. \u00a0Not too bad. However, the pace has just been killing me. \u00a04k words per day is something I can do…but 4k words… Continue reading Goal shift for Ashes<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[68,32],"tags":[78,89,112,216,256,122,42,46,248,156,257,110,52,119,142,4,149,599,201],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bsh","category-ge","tag-brandon-sanderson","tag-career-decisions","tag-character","tag-charlie","tag-circassian","tag-friends","tag-frustrations","tag-goals-and-plans","tag-motivation","tag-revising","tag-sex","tag-steampunk","tag-story-ideas","tag-summer-2009","tag-summer-plans","tag-the-lost-colony","tag-the-middle-east","tag-thoughts-reflections","tag-writers-block","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-e3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":874,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions\/874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}