Tag Archives: Kait Nolan

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A Round of Words in 80 Days – Check-in #2

So I’ve just finished my first week of ROW80 challenge (I joined in a few days late) and so far it’s going well (although I’ve been told this is often the case for the first week).

For the record, my goals are:

1-      I shall write the first draft of my new dystopian novel with at least 750 words per day.

2-      I shall also self-edit/revise The Last Queen so that I finally have a final draft for it.

And this is what happened this week:

1-      I did write 750 words per day of my new dystopian novel.

2-      I didn’t revise The Last Queen per say but I’ve been reading a book on self-editing (Self-editing for fiction writers by Browne and King) so I still think I’ve worked toward this goal.

As a result: yeah! This challenge is doing me some good.

Here is the Linky for the other check-in posts.

Also, please have a look at my post for today: an exclusive interview with YA Dystopian author Teri Hall on her books and the craft of writing.

How are you other ROW80 writers doing?

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A Round of Words in 80 Days – Check-in #1

 

On Friday I posted an interview with best-selling YA author Cinda Williams Chima and one of her comment sounded very true to me:

“The most important thing to do if you want to have a career in writing is to write. Sounds obvious, but it’s amazing how many would-be writers do everything but write. Don’t be building that online platform or looking for that agent or learning to write a query letter until you get yourself some skills.”

Just like many would-be-published writers, I am often guilty of that: I’ll come home from my day job, update my blog, look up some agents on the Internet, read a book, watch a movie, eat, make telephone calls, vacuum my living-room and… you get the idea. And then I go to bed without having written a single line of that novel I’m currently trying to finish.

But to every problem there is a solution.

Thus I have decided to join an awesome challenge called A Round of Words in 80 Days (aka ROW80). Created by Kait Nolan, it is “the writing challenge that knows you have a life”, or “the challenge that champions the marriage of writing and real life.” Unlike NaNoWriMo which runs for only a month, each ROW80 round runs for 80 days and the participating writers have to set themselves writing goals for that time. Each Wednesday and Sunday, we check in and let the others know how we are doing. The idea is to form writing habits that writers will hopefully continue once the challenge is over.

So here are my goals:

1-    I shall try to write the first draft of my new dystopian novel with at least 750 words per day.

2-    I shall also attempt to self-edit/revise The Last Queen so that I finally have a final draft for it.

We’ll see how that goes…!

Round Two started on Monday, April 2nd (so I jump in a little late) and will end on Thursday, June 21st.

If you would like to join in this writing challenge and become a part of the ROW80 community, here are the rules:

  1. Post a goals post in which you lay out your goals for this round.
  2. Post a check-in post every Wednesday and Sunday, in which you share your progress with the other ROW80 participants.
  3. Comment on other participants’ check-in posts.

Here is the Linky for the other check-in posts. How are you other ROW80 writers doing?

11/04/2012 Post Edit: so I’ve slightly changed the wording of my goals as a few people mentioned that I shouldn’t be using the words “try” and “attempt”. So far I’m doing well with those goals. More update on Sunday!