ROW80 Progress and a Meme – Cause That’s Just The Way I Roll

I just finished the first full edit on Utopians and what better way to celebrate than with a writing meme. LS Engler posted this one over on her blog yesterday with an open invitation for others to also participate, so why the hell not 🙂 The meme invites participants to share the first sentence (okay let’s be honest from the outset- I’m probably going to include several sentences because I’m just a rule-breaking kinda gal) from each of the first three chapters of their current work. This genuinely appeals for Utopians as the story is written from 3 different perspectives and giving samples from the first 3 chapters gives a tid bit from each of them.

Chapter 1
Panic jolted the last remnants of sleep from Mila’s body.
She was suffocating.
She opened her mouth and tried to suck in a huge gasping breath.
It didn’t work. The air was stale, and there wasn’t enough oxygen, not near enough.

Chapter 2
Jett woke to the familiar sway of his yacht as it bobbed over the waves. He’d anchored for the night just outside Auckland harbour. He probably could have completed the journey yesterday, heading back to dock and allowing his feet to touch dry land for the first time in three weeks, but he’d been unable to pass up the idea of just one extra night out on the water.

Chapter 3
Beep… It can’t possibly be morning already.
Beep… Ignore it, it’ll go away.
Beep… Damn it!
Austin rolled over, lashing his arm out violently at the alarm clock on the side table.

Yes I am aware that all 3 chapters begin with the characters waking up and yes it was deliberate 🙂 And now on with my progress toward my ROW80 goals…

Goal 1: Complete my detailed edits on The Utopians
Allocated time: 2 weeks
Progress: Turns out there were 10 chapters left as of the beginning of this round and I am very pleased to say that despite an earth-shattering illness that has seen me virtually bed-ridden for the past few days I managed to get through all 10 of those chapters. The first full edit is complete (and on time too) 🙂 Yay! Now I can start on the Character edits.

Goal 2: Character edits on The Utopians
Allocated time: 2 weeks
Progress: Will be starting on these ASAP!

Goal 3: Final read through and compilation of The Utopians for Alpha readers
Allocated time: 1 week
Progress: I need to finish the above goals before I can think about this one.

Goal 4: Read (at least) 12 books to keep up with my goal of 50 for the year
Allocated time: whole round
Progress: Oops, no. I’ve started reading Beautiful Chaos by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. The fact that I didn’t read the whole book is evidence of how sick I was – I had the curl up under the doona bit down but I wasn’t well enough to pick up the book to go with it. I’m still 1/12.

All in all progress so far this round has been great. I think that Utopians is really starting to take shape and I can’t wait to finish up the next few weeks of character and line-edits so I can get it off to some readers.

What about you? Have you hit the ground running this round? Or are you struggling to find your feet? What did you think of the (very small) sample from Utopians? As always, I love hearing from you.

Jody Moller

And thus ends another round…

Well, the current round of ROW80 rounded out yesterday, so now, in a roundabout kind of way, I’m going to summarise my successes and failures for the round.

Goal 1: write at least 500 words a day until the first draft of my novel, 2 Brothers, is complete.

I completed the first draft of 2 Brothers in the first few weeks of the round (yay, go me!) and since that time have been letting it marinate a little on my computer. Honestly it will probably be next year before I have a chance to go back to this novel and really start to tear it apart, mostly because I have made a promise to myself to FINALLY self-publish at least one (although probably 2) novels next year, so understandably the focus is on those (much more information about this when I set out my goals for the next round starting on July 7th)

Goal 2: once goal #1 is achieved switch to editing mode on The Utopians, aiming to edit half a chapter a day

I made some significant progress on Utopians during this round. I have thoroughly edited about half the novel, plus added in 3 new chapters which (at least in my opinion) fix all of the continuity and timeline issues present in the story. The good news is that despite spending the past few months with these characters I still completely love them 🙂 Still a long way to go, but I am hoping to have this novel sent off to my beloved alpha-readers in the next few months.

Goal 3: keep up with my aim to read 50 books this year.

I’m up to 18/50 for the year, which puts me about 6 behind schedule. I have to pull my finger out on this one and try and get ahead before November because I know that I will not be reading at all while NaNoWriMo is on. This week I read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and absolutely loved it! By far the best story I’ve read this year despite the tears (and oh weren’t there some tears). Highly recommended. 

Goal 4: complete beta-reading of LS Engler’s novel – Soulless.

This goal was added fairly late in the round, just to keep me honest and make sure I got it back to LS by the required date. Done, complete, finished and returned.

 

So, really, it was pretty much a round of successes, despite falling off the wagon a few times, I managed to get back on and really started to hit my targets. Can’t wait for next round with some big goals ahead. How about you? Do you feel like the round was an overall success despite some minor stumbling blocks? Are you looking forward to digging in for the next round? As always, I love hearing from you.

Jody Moller

 

Almost at the finish line

Another two weeks has flown by without a ROW80 update. But don’t fret, I’ve been plenty busy 🙂

 

Goal 2: once goal #1 is achieved switch to editing mode on The Utopians, aiming to edit half a chapter a day
Scrap that 🙂 Editing has been temporarily abandoned in favour of drafting my 3 extra chapters.

Done, d-done, done, done. I just finished the draft of those new chapters and I will now spend the last four days of this round of ROW80 switching back into editing mode.

 

Goal 3: keep up with my aim to read 50 books this year.
I read Beautiful Darkness, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl this week. I thought it was better than the first book, but still not really up at the level I was expecting. I’ve now read 17/50 for the year… lots of reading still to do 🙂

 

Goal 4: complete beta-reading of LS Engler’s novel – Soulless.

Yay! Another one to tick of my list. I finished going through LS’s novel and emailed back my ideas.

 

All in all it’s been a productive 2 weeks and I am looking forward to seeing how much I can get done over the last few days of ROW80, and of course, starting to think about the goals for the next round.

How was your week? Are you getting close to reaching the goals you set yourself for the round? As always, I love hearing from you.

Jody Moller

Timeline Troubles

So for the past two weeks I’ve kind of fallen of the ROW80 railway tracks and have been tramping through the forest instead. Almost two weeks ago now I decided to finally get off my backside and write up a thorough time-line for Utopians (which might have been a task I’d been putting off since I first wrote the outline for the novel about two years ago now…oops). Having an accurate timeline doesn’t always matter in the novel, but for Utopians, where I am rotating through 3 different POVs, I really needed to confirm that all the events lined up in the correct order.

I was less than 5 chapters in when the alarms started sounding in my brain. Something was wrong, possibly massively wrong, with the start of my novel. Having committed the classic beginners mistake of starting a story in the wrong place before, I now take great care to ensure the first chapter is provides the perfect opening to the story (and I still love the opening of Utopians that finds my MC Mila waking up in a body bag). The problem was that Chapters 2 & 3, rather than providing similar openings for my two other MCs Jett and Austin, not only failed to introduce them the way I would like but also didn’t fit in at all with the timeline I’d managed to construct.

I bit of serious brain storming (and maybe a few glasses of wine) later and I managed to come up with a fix – the novel needs 3 extra chapters! Which leads my to my new goals.

Goal 2: once goal #1 is achieved switch to editing mode on The Utopians, aiming to edit half a chapter a day
Scrap that 🙂 Editing has been temporarily abandoned in favour of drafting those 3 extra chapters. I completed one chapter this week, plus some reworking of the surrounding existing chapters. 2 to go!

Goal 3: keep up with my aim to read 50 books this year.
Not a good week on the reading front once again. But the next (new goal) goes someway to explaining that.

Goal 4: complete beta-reading of LS Engler’s novel – Soulless.
I wanted to put this in as an official goal so I stay on track. I’m just over half-way through the story and (good news here LS) well on track to get it back to writer on time 🙂

Do you write timelines for your novels? Do you sometimes have difficulty trying to decide on the perfect place to start your story?As always I love hearing from you.

Jody Moller

It’s Sunday Again – ROW80

Sunday has rolled around again (are these Sunday’s getting closer together or is it just me?) which means it’s time for a ROW80 update.

ROW80 goals:

Goal 2: once goal #1 is achieved switch to editing mode on the apocalyptic YA novel, The Utopians, aiming to edit ~5 pages half a chapter a day.

I had a great week this week, finally getting into the editing rhythm and completing a chapter almost every day. I’m now up to the start of Chapter 13 which means if I can manage to complete 5-6 chapters a week I will be done in less than 3 weeks.

Goal 3: keep up with my aim to read 50 books this year.

This week I read Matthew Reilly’s new 3 part novella Troll Mountain. Now I’m a huge Matthew Reilly fan (I own every one of his books and even managed to meet him last year at a conference) but I have to say I was disappointed with this story. It was advertised as a family-friendly story, but perhaps should have been more explicitly sold as a Middle Grade novel. It was a quick read, full of action as always, but it just felt a little derivative. 

Have you had a good week? Hitting those goals? I hope so 🙂

 As always I love hearing from you.

Jody Moller

ROWlling along

It’s Mother’s Day which means I have spent most of today hanging out with my little monkeys but I thought I would quickly squeeze in a post before bed.

ROW80 goals:

Goal 2: once goal #1 is achieved switch to editing mode on the apocalyptic YA novel, The Utopians, aiming to edit ~5 pages half a chapter a day.

I certainly didn’t complete half a chapter EVERY day this week, but some days I did more, so I think it worked out fairly evenly. I am partway through Chapter 6 and still slogging away as often as I can. In addition this week I have been making character notes for my next edit through (I always save my character edits for an edit run of their own where I divide up the chapters by POV character and make sure each characters voice is clear and distinct) and I have also been working out how to make my Kindle read stories aloud so I can do a final run through using my Kindle to try and pick out the last of the typos (turns out the read aloud function on the Kindle is ridiculously easy and I think it will be really useful even if it does sound like Stephen Hawking is reading me my novel!)

Goal 3: keep up with my aim to read 50 books this year.

I finally finished Beautiful Creatures. I think I suffered a little with this one as I had wanted to read it for so long (Kami Garcia was one of the first people I followed when I joined twitter years ago, and I’ve had it on my to-read list since then) I think I hyped it up too much in my head. It was good, just not as good as I thought it would be.

To all the mothers out there I hope you had a wonderful day and I hope you enjoyed it because, as my kids informed me, tomorrow it’s back to Children’s day again. As always I love hearing from you.

Jody Moller

PS Love you Mum xoxo

Climbing back onto the ROW80 wagon

Half a chapter. That’s how long it took me to fall off the editing wagon. Half a chapter. A week and a half ago, I finished the first read-through of my novel and prepared myself for an intense edit that would probably take upwards of 30 days (and that was provided I could manage a chapter a day) and I lasted, yes that’s right, half a chapter before the wheels fell off and I was brutally reminded that I hate (and I mean Hate with a capital H), I hate, hate, hate editing.

Deep breath. Okay. Now that my little rant is over, I can happily tell you that despite the fact my little wagon has no wheels and can now only plod along at a rather slow pace, in the past few days I have climbed back on and started working my way through the novel. I am currently sitting partway through Chapter 3 and am aiming to finish a chapter every other day till I reach the end.

As for my ROW80 goals:

Goal 2: once goal #1 is achieved switch to editing mode on the apocalyptic YA novel, aiming to edit ~5 pages a day.

So the revised goal is to try and complete a chapter every 2 days (we’ll see how we go). Also I now no longer have to call it my ‘apocalyptic YA novel’ as I have come up with an (at least temporary) title ‘The Utopians’.

Goal 3: keep up with my aim to read 50 books this year.

Big fat fail on this one. I am currently reading Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia, but it’s taking me forever and in the mean time I have fallen at least 2 books behind schedule.

Do any of you have any advice for a failing editor? Do any of you prefer the editing process to writing? As always I love hearing from you.

Jody Moller

A ROW80 Celebration

A week and a half of ROW80 has passed by and this is the first chance I’ve had to write an update so I thought I should make it a good one.

Goal 1: write at least 500 words a day until the first draft of my novel, 2 Brothers, is complete.

Over the past 10 days I have managed to hit my goal of at least 500 words everyday, giving me a total of just over 6000, but far more importantly this afternoon I finally typed those two magic little words at the end of my novel – THE END!

The first draft is complete, I know there is still a long way to go on 2 Brothers but for the moment I am going to put it aside and let it marinate a little while I get on with goal number 2.

Goal 2: once goal #1 is achieved switch to editing mode on the apocalyptic YA novel, aiming to edit ~5 pages a day.

After giving myself tomorrow off (a girl needs a little celebration for finishing a first draft, plus it’s my birthday so I think I’m allowed to take it easy for a day) I am going to dig into the edits on my as yet untitled apocalyptic YA novel. Wish me luck.

Goal 3: keep up with my aim to read 50 books this year.

This week I read the final book in David Estes’ Dwellers Series – The Earth Dwellers. This book was actually the 4th novel in 2 different series (Dwellers + Country), and I loved the way the two series clashed in the final book. If you haven’t read any of David’s books before I can certainly recommend these, particularly if you are a fan of Dystopian YA. Just make sure you read the three sister series novels before reading book 4.

In other news I also managed to get to the cinema to see a grown-up movie this week (unheard of!). Saw Divergent – Loved it!

How are your goals going? Are you killing it? I hope so. Have you seen Divergent? Did anyone else think it was a great interpretation of the novel?

As always I love hearing from you.

Jody Moller

I’m Baaaaccckk!

Yes, that’s right boys and girls. I’m back! Long time no speak… well… errr… post.

So, where have I been? What have I been doing? Well, I’ve been enjoying life, last year I spent 2 months living in Dubai, I have taken the gigantic step back into the paid workforce and I have stood by and watched my baby start school.

Oh and, of course, I’ve been writing. And writing. And writing. In the past six months I have completed the first draft of my third, as yet unnamed, apocalyptic YA novel and I have about 3 chapters to go on my fourth novel, 2 Brothers (working title). And that’s where ROW80 comes in.

For those of you that have been following my blog for a while you will know that this is not the first time I have committed to ROW80 (A round of words in 80 days) to help me keep my focus and fight my way to the finish line on a novel.

The current round of ROW80 starts today which means it’s time to set some goals.

Goal 1: write at least 500 words a day until the first draft of my novel, 2 Brothers, is complete.

Goal 2: once goal #1 is achieved switch to editing mode on the apocalyptic YA novel, aiming to edit ~5 pages a day.

Goal 3: keep up with my aim to read 50 books this year.

 

It’s day 1 today and I have already completed my 500 words. So at my first check-in I get a big tick and maybe even a smiley face. A big g’day to all the ROW80ers I have yet to meet, I look forward to visiting all your blogs over the next few weeks and following your progress.

As always, I love hearing from you.

Jody Moller

 

ROW80 – Obviously it’s not my fault!

Lack of motivation? The start of the Olympics? Where can we lay the blame when things don’t go as planned? Because, obviously, it’s not my fault.

 

GOALS FOR ROW80 ROUND 3

1. Read 10 books and watch 10 movies to keep me on track to hit 50 for the year. Watched – The Blind Side (One of those movies I’ve been meaning to watch for ages but didn’t get around to it until it was on telly last week – totally worth the wait, loved it) Total thus far =  3/10. Read – Yellow Cake by Margo Lanagan (A compilation of short stories. Loved some, hated some, but overall I like my shorts with a nifty twist at the end and these left me wanting) Total thus far = 4/10.

2. Keep exercising as often as possible (preferably 2-3 times a week). Ummm [hangs head in shame]… well… no. None. Zero. Zip. Not a one. There’s nothing else to say.

3. Write 5000 words a week on either of my two current projects. 1 word on Project 1 + 1817 words on Project 2 = 1818 words total. No that’s not a typo somehow I managed to add 1 word to my novel over the course of a whole week. I don’t know how that happened, so don’t ask. Obviously I was not even close to my goals. I did also write 696 words towards a short story, but still a complete and utter fail.

4. Complete one additional ‘Spring Cleaning’ project per week. Cleaned out both the kids wardrobes and sorted Son’s bookshelf. Thank god there is some light at the end of the tunnel!

5. Try and find some time in among all that to do some edits on Soul Hunter and send it out for another round of beta reading in prep for serious editing. I’m up to 17% so I completed another 7% this week, not a complete fail, but not the 10% I was hoping for either.

 

Not a great week by any stretch, but we all have those weeks don’t we? Don’t we? Please tell me we do.

As always I love hearing from you.

Jody Moller