This update should be short and sweet. Partly because I like short and sweet blog posts, but mostly because I actually got shit done since the last update.

Also, I sat down this morning and came up with my writing goals for the rest of the year. Read on for the update and my new goals…

Regent of Aldun

Bad news first: Regent of Aldun is suffering from a severe case of sagging middle. It’s rambling on and on and I have no choice but to brute force myself out of it. A LOT of the word count up to this point is going to be lost to editing.

But the good news is that there are some things happening that I never expected.

Mostly there are storylines happening that I never saw coming. Just over the weekend I introduced a new character that I can really feel, for the first time since I started. Generally I’m too shallow to empathize much with characters, so I’ve found dialogue and writing believable people to be a real challenge.

Not this character. In fact, I’m thinking when the dust settles on Regent she may warrant her own story. I’ll have to see where it goes.

But I’m noticing that about a lot of the stuff I’m writing in the sagging middle. It’s not all as exciting as that particular character, but there is quite a bit that I can see spinning off into their own little pieces of this world.

I’m excited again. Still.

Over the past week I managed to almost triple my normal word count, but that’s to be expected given that I devoted a good chunk of a four day weekend to writing.

I managed to write almost 5,000 words bringing the total word count of Regent of Aldun up to 41,000. Right now I’m thinking the final, published book will clock in around 50,000, but that’s after I hack away at the editing table.

This Year’s Plans

I sat down this morning and hashed out a plan for the rest of this year.

When I started writing I got it stuck in my head that I wanted to try National Novel Writing Month (NANWRIMO), a writing “contest” held every November. The goal is to spit out a 50,000 word rough draft. Do that and you win. With 30 days in November that comes out to 1,666 (repeating, heh) words per day.

Even hand writing I average 1,100-1,200 words per hour. And that’s with me pantsing the shit out of my novel. I’m going to beat out (heh, heh) my NANOWRIMO work and see if that works out better than pantsing.

I still think that deep, deep down I’m a plotter…

So here’s the goals for 2014, centering around NANOWRIMO:

Regent of Aldun first draft finished	2014-05-01
Regent of Aldun transcription complete (second draft)	2014-08-01
Regent of Aldun first round edits complete (third draft)	2014-08-22
Regent of Aldun second round edits complete (fourth draft)	2014-09-22
Regent of Aldun to beta readers	2014-10-05
Outline NANOWRIMO work	2014-10-31
Regent of Aldun beta reader feedback	2014-11-01
NANOWRIMO	2014-11-01 to 2014-11-30
Regent of Aldun beta reader edit (fifth draft)	2014-12-15
Regent of Aldun polish (sixth draft, final)	2014-12-31
Publish Regent of Aldun	2015-01-01

I’ve also added a couple of the items on this to my bucket list. Check it out here.

In Conclusion

Progress is moving forward on Regent of Aldun. I have been pushing myself to commit ass in chair time every day. In the end, that’s really all it takes to get shit done: do it.

The schedule for the rest of the year will be pretty tight, especially since I’m not a full time writer. But I don’t see any reason why I can’t kick my game up a notch and get Regent out in the world by the end of the year, while producing a new 50,000 word rough draft along the way.

photo credit: creepyed via photopin cc