vengeance

Chronicling The Craft: 75,000 & 80,000 Words

/ saraletourneau / 10 Comments

A Peek Into the Novel’s Villains and Antagonists

Chapters Completed: 20

Chapters In Progress: 4

Chapters Not Started: 10

“Chronicling The Craft” is an article series where I share my experience with writing my current work-in-progress (WIP), which is a fantasy novel. Every 5,000 words, I let readers know what I’ve accomplished since the previous article and share advice, discoveries, techniques, etc. Besides the word count in each article title, a “chapter ticker” at the top also tracks my progress as I use the skip-around / “writercopter” method to write the novel. Today’s installment celebrates the book reaching 75,000 and 80,000 words in length.

Yup, it’s a double installment of Chronicling The Craft! Although it doesn’t exactly mean double the fun, topics, length, etc. I went on another planned writing vacation during the first week of September. Going into that vacation, I was closing in on 75,000 words, but I didn’t want to halt the novel’s progress partway through the week to squeeze in a blog article. So, I decided to barrel past the 75K mark and see how far I could take the novel from there. Today, it stands at a hair over 80,200 words. *does a happy dance*

Here’s what I’ve worked on since the previous Chronicle: Continue reading →

Chronicling The Craft: 60,000 Words

/ saraletourneau / 9 Comments

Themes in Novels: What The Story Is Really About

Chapters Completed: 14

Chapters In Progress: 7

Chapters Left to Start: 13

“Chronicling The Craft” is an article series where I share my experience with writing my current work-in-progress (WIP), which is a fantasy novel. Every 5,000 words, I let readers know what I’ve accomplished since the previous article and share advice, discoveries, techniques, etc. Besides the word count in each article title, a “chapter ticker” at the top also tracks my progress as I use the skip-around / “writercopter” method to write the novel. Today’s installment celebrates the book reaching 60,000 words in length.

What a stealthy little milestone this turned out to be. I was recently on vacation with my immediate family, so I was literally sneaking in time to work on the WIP when I could, even tuning out of social media for one week to focus on family / relatives, writing, and relaxation. Altogether those shorter sessions ended up as productive as some of the longest I’ve ever done. No anxiety over the lack of time or getting very little done because of said lack of time. Instead, I stayed focused and inspired, typing as many words as I could. And now, here we are again!

My goals for the past several writing sessions have been to finish any in-progress chapters and to NOT start any new chapters. (I’m still using the “writercopter” method, and it’s working brilliantly for this WIP so far!) Let’s see what’s happened since the Chronicle for 55,000 words posted in May: Continue reading →