This year I’m participating for the first time in the Clarion West Write-a-thon, which runs from June 23 through August 2. The goal of the Write-a-thon is to raise awareness of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, along with money that will go toward funding next year’s workshop. Participating writers set their own writing goals and strive to meet them; supporters provide moral support and a donation if they can. If you’d like to donate, please visit my participant page.

Writing Goal 1: add 20,000 words to the “The Red: Trials,” my novel-in-progress.

Writing Goal 2: Have two (one remaining) short stories in solid draft. Short is a keyword. Novelettes don’t count.

Week 2 Result
Way back in May I wrote a novelette, which I then ignored for all of June and into July, but on July 4th — perhaps because I had just sent a story off to market and felt inspired — I started working on the revision. My goal was to cut it from 9900 words to 8000 words, and after working on it for all of July 4th and most of July 5th, I managed to do that, ending up with a much stronger story. But none of this effort counts toward my Clarion goals!

So…

Goal 1: This was an odd but ultimately successful week for the novel. From Sunday through Wednesday I did several brainstorming sessions, blocking out much of the action and dialog in an extremely rough and nonlinear form. Then on Friday evening and for most of Saturday I worked on making those scattered pieces coherent. The end result? I have now added 9,135 words to the manuscript out of my 20,000 word goal. 46% in two weeks, which is an excellent pace for me.

Goal 2: I spent time brainstorming a short story which may be the second short story I do for the write-a-thon. But I also blocked out the basics of a project that will likely be a novella, and which I’m very excited about — but that project will have to wait until after the write-a-thon.

Posted on: Sunday, July 7th, 2013 at 12:05 am
Categories: Clarion West Write-a-thon.