I will call this week’s writing effort more or less successful. I set a goal for TD that I didn’t quite finish, but, considering my mom had hip surgery this week and I had daughterly duties to attend to, this is not a sign the goal I originally set was too ambitious for a week.
My goal for the original fic project was to write at least 700 words of fictional prose in 7 installments of 100 words each, and I ended up writing 744 words in 4 installments of 137, 176, 138, and 293 words each (yes the last one was me scrabbling to get past 700 today).
One thing I had to do to accomplish what I did this week was whittle down my list of “outline notes”. My new plan was to write fictional prose blurbs choosing a single one-line scene idea (outline note) from a list and a single one-word prompt from a different list. I had about 206 outline-note sentences. But my new plan wasn’t working well because there were a lot of scenes “I just wasn’t ready to write yet.” It felt all over again like I was having writer’s block or just wasn’t interested enough to write the story.
Then I realized that the scenes I was having trouble writing were scenes I imagined coming much later in the story. Which means, yeah, I already have a vague plot for this story in my head, and I can’t write certain scenes until other ones are written first, ’cause they depend on the earlier stuff for essential details. So I cut down my working list of outline notes to just a subset I imagine will take place near the beginning of the story.
Once I had the list of earlier scene ideas to choose from, the writing was much easier, and I think my policy of “it’s all experimental, none of this will end up in the story if I don’t want it to” is working for me as well, for the time being.
I will work from the same goals this coming week.
Author Nancy E. Shaffer 
i’m beginning to think i need to set weekly goals myself
It gets me writing, because I know all I have to do is meet that goal, and I can stop and do something else if I want. Usually I end up doing more.
that’s the way Nano works for me there’s a site doing other prompt/goal things.
too bad ficfrenzy seems to have fallen off to the wayside. it was something that let us write like mad for a month with no goals but the ones we set ourselves
This is why I have a writing coach. Just to have someone to answer to so I’ll write already and not make excuses.
nods
I suppose that would be a good use for , encouraging each other’s goals. My difficulty using that comm is the requirement you post fic, which I’m not ready to do.
well right now, we’re almost NOT doing that. I could easily resurrect the prompt/goal bit that it started out as (which died out since no one was doing it)
That still requires “checking in” with a fiction blurb, right? I’m strictly in no-feedback mode right now. But a place where we could “whinge” about writing without posting fic and having to comment on other’s fic would be useful. It’s what I’m using these weekly check-ins in my own LJ for.
not really, the prompt thing wouldn’t necessarily mean that
it’s still okay to whine and cry about your writing or putting up challenges or professional sites
That’s cool. And prompts are always useful.
i was going to post about it in my lj even before we got into this convo. We’ll see what kind of response I get. I’d be open to people rotating the prompts, in other words you offer up one from your books (or a picture etc) and next time someone else does
Works for me. I’m collecting prompts.
cool and if there’s no interest other than me and you we can just wing prompts back and forth with no need to show our work so to speak.
That’ll get someone else in soon enough.
nods