RoW80 Update: January 29th!

“‘I should have remembered the first rule of hunting,’ he said, so low he may as well have been whispering in Auferrix’s ear. The tone was content and amused, which made her stomach twist with revulsion. ‘If one wishes to be successful in capturing his prey, one cannot do better than to catch her oneself.’”

Maybe I need to go back to working six days a week again more often; despite the fact that I was pretty sure all my busy-ness would keep me too flustered to do much work, I’ve actually had quite a few productive days since last Wednesday’s check-in. I was sure I was going to spend the bulk of Friday being lazy and recovering, but I was wrong. I love when that happens! And I’m definitely charged to start the week out well and have another day like it on Monday. Three days off this week are basically unprecedented, but I really look forward to using that time to my advantage and getting these goals pumped up and fabulous, especially in finishing some reading!

So, without further ado, let’s embark on my RoW80 progress for today’s check-in:

Serpent in a Cage: I finished brushing up the prologue last night and got a small start on the first chapter. This puts me at page 10, 4 pages more than last check in, which keeps consistent with doing at least a page a day. From here on in, it should be interesting, because now I’m officially diverting heavily from the original draft. I’m starting with setting the scene, something I don’t usually do, so I’m a little nervous about it being a little boring or contrived, but I like how I’m planning to meld it into the action and getting into our characters, too, so I’m excited. It’s also going to allow for better character description when we first meet them, something I always feel I’m a little lacking. I’m always reluctant to do too much on character description because I know how many times I’m reading something and feel that the author is just piling information or describing their characters in a way that makes me roll my eyes…

While we’re on the topic of character description, let me open the floor. What are your thoughts on Character Description? Do you follow any helpful rules of thumb when describing your character? What do you really hate to see in a character description and what do you love? Do you prefer a lot of character description to get a whole picture, or do you like minimal description? I’m thinking of approaching the first chapter as sort of a narrative ushering the reader in. “Here we have the city of Redsaea, blah blah blah, and here we have a young man, named Locke Mandrake Battarack, who blah blah blah.” I blame the fact that I started a new Terry Pratchett book and he tends to start like that, too, but I think it could be a good approach to getting the character into the world.

Bowlful of Bunnies: I’m coming across more pieces that will probably wind up being deleted for the final product, but I’m typing them up anyway, just in case I want to brush them up, be it now for this collection, or later for something else entirely. I’m also trying to pump out a few more other new stories to add to the collection, but that’s slow going as almost all my focus has been going into SiaC right now. Still, some progress, and I think at this rate, I’ll be golden for my goal of getting the rough draft pieced together for beta readers at the end of February.

100 Books Project: I promise, there is a book review coming up soon! Other things to post about have been popping up, but I’m sitting on at least one finished book right now and I’m very, very close to finishing two others. Two of them I’m half-way through, and I just started a…oh God…fifth. and sixth I LIKE LOTS OF BOOKS, OKAY? Either way, the reviews’ll start pouring in, which is a good thing, since I’m pretty far behind on this one at the moment. Books read: 1/100.

Black Dome Society: I’m shelving this project for the time being. I just don’t have the inspiration and there’s a lot of other stuff floating around about this one that’s way too personal and icky and we just won’t go into that, will we? Instead, I’m thinking of just really focusing on SiaC and BoB or returning to my ghost horror story because someone’s book **coughcoughLauralynnElliottcoughcough** is totally getting me into a spooky ghost story mood! Maybe we’ll see how things go tomorrow and I’ll figure that out.

Blogging: You guys. I’m going to break 1000 views this month (barring, of course, sudden internet apocalypse in the next few days). I’m ecstatic, especially since that totally blows my goal of 15 hits per day out of the water! Of course, that also makes me nervous, because how am I going to beat that in February? I’ll just have to keep on trucking, maybe boost how much I’m commenting on other blogs, and just get myself out there even more!

So how is everyone else doing? I woke up this morning thinking it was already Monday, so you can tell how excited I am to just spend another productive day getting stuff done! If you can, make sure to check out my other awesome RoWers here (something I need to do more myself!), and I hope everyone has a great Sunday! Wish me luck so that my time at work goes swiftly and painlessly.

Happy writing!