Southern Cross Novel Challenge

Hey SoCNoC-ers.

How did you celebrate the end of SoCNoC? What are you doing in July, writing-wise?

I've had three days not writing, have a long overdue haircut on Saturday night and once my next payday comes up I'll be booking that massage!

I won't bore you with my writing goals for July. They're on my blog if you're interested. :)

No Excuses. Just Write.

I've had a break from writing too, finally got round to making some progress (re)joining the gym, so I'm not sitting at my computer all this month. My real reward comes with my laptop at the end of the month - I'm so excited.

As far as writing this month goes I've set myself a goal of completing and submitting two of my in progress short stories and writing and submitting two book reviews and two pieces of flash fiction.

Over the next couple of months I also want to learn to use yWriter, do some work on my website and begin doing some reading around the setting for Nano.

http://www.pterodaustrodreams.org/

I took July 1st off, then started in again with plans! :-) I joined the 20,000 word challenge, since my goal for July is to complete the first draft of my novel.

Tomorrow I'm heading out for a three-day trip to southern California to visit the location where my novel is set! Will be awesome to walk in my characters' footsteps, so to speak. :-)

The rest of July, I've got my website to get into shape; plus other business responsibilities. But I look forward to finishing my draft! :-)

http://mousewords.wordpress.com

I have a nice writing free period from July 1 - July 6 and then it's back to 411mania.com to resume my writing duties there and to report the good news that the first draft is in the can... and not the trash can...

How did I celebrate? I celebrated the fact that, unlike everything I've started--and abandoned-- since Nano (my first novel), *this* one (my SoCNoc) is a keeper! This story has potential. I am happy, and relieved, to know that I have more than one novel inside me waiting to come out!
So,my overall plan for July is to keep working on the first draft of my SoCNoc novel. The last couple of days I have been doing a little light revision and replotting; nothing major, just making sure I'm still on track. Then I'll plunge back in, but slower. :)

Thought I'd be able to kick it in gear today but real life is kicking me instead. Between seasonal allergies (it's summer here) and a major, major, overnight thunderstorm (we're talking 5 hours of flashing and crashing!) I'm pretty brain dead! Aagh! (The thunderstorm was pretty awesome, however.)

Maybe I can write that in to my book somehow... hmmm...

Ladypamela

I'm not really sure I did celebrate lol but thats ok. Have been taking a bit of a break and catching up with life stuff, and am going to get back into the writing shortly - I seem to be saying that every day, and things keep coming up. But I AM going to. I need to do a lot of rewrites on the novel that I am working on at the moment so need to write an outline and actually get onto it.

End is Nigh progress: 86,679/90,000 (estimated total)

J.C Hart

I didn't celebrate.

As I only got the last 4 days of the month to work on it, I suppose I could have celebrated the fact that I actually started, but it felt more productive to tile the kitchen. (I'm sure the wife will agree!)

I hope you can work in writing as a reward from all the renovations!

No Excuses. Just Write.

Renovating too, the only connection to writing is reading others' books. Curling up with a good book and keeping warm, aaaahhh bliss!!!

http://gay_belle.livejournal.com

The Zing Thing: "The Makeover."

'Southern Scriber.'

I've been spending my time doing light revises: removing redundancies, tightening up dialog, and adding side discussions that would naturally develop if characters were fully rounded people.

I also put the entire ms. into Courier and one inch margins, and spellchecked the whole thing. I've been researching the spelling of various words that spellcheck doesn't recognize, like Rumpelstiltskin.

More important, I've been looking at my scenes and trying to determine if I have written them with a one-note style. And if so, if I should change the rhythm. At the same time I have been asking myself if I have fully shown the love affair developing in all its conflict and complexity, or if I have used unfair shorthand and thus skimped on what the reader expects. The jury's still out on that.

I've had a house guest to entertain and a family barbecue to orchestrate. Of course, my kind of entertainment is that we pulled electrical wire in the basement to create new receptacle spots. I haven't progressed on my bathroom project at all, but that's more of a one person deal.

Eventually, as part of my revisions, I plan to read a lot of women's fiction novels to see what's happening in the market and assure myself that I have caught the tone and the rhythm the audience expects. The orgy of reading will come later in July and/or August.

Originally, I had thought it would take me two full months to write 100,000 words, which is the very shortest a women's fiction novel should be. Now, I have the luxury of taking all of July to add and revise and improve. And then all of August if need be.

I'm working on the 20k challenge atm, in between hunting down more people with my odd surname hehe.

Silke

Here's my full breakdown of how I got through this year's SoCNoC, with a little help from everyone here...

http://www.411mania.com/movies/columns/79812/The-UBS-Evening-Movie-News--07.10.08.htm