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 3 Result
Nothing to brag about this week. There is a persistent “romantic” myth that the best art is made by suffering artists. In my own experience and in discussion with others I’ve found this to be utterly untrue. For myself, when confidence flags, so does my work, both in quality and quantity. This was not a week filled with confidence, and my productivity reflects that. So it goes.

Goal 1:
The bright point this week was that after quite a bit of struggle, a scene took an unexpected turn giving me fresh insight on what-is-going-on. In other words, a minor breakthrough. Even so, my feeling as I sat down to write this progress post was that I had added very little to the manuscript. As it turns out, my progress was better than I thought. I have now added 13,640 words to the manuscript out of my 20,000 word goal. That’s 68%, and time-wise I’m at the halfway point, so there is still hope.

Goal 2:
Nothing accomplished here! I was determined to make progress on the novel before tackling a new short story…and I got stuck on the novel. I’ll try to do better in Week 4.

Posted on: Sunday, July 14th, 2013 at 8:54 am
Categories: Clarion West Write-a-thon.