It seems crazy that we are already at the end of the first round of ROW80 for 2016! This year is flying by!
I started out with five goals
- read a book a fortnight
- blog about something other than WIPpet/ROW80
- practice Swedish/French/Spanish/Russian
- edit Queen of Hearts
- write something, anything
And added two more along the way
- prepare my character interview post ahead of time
- submit job applications
Throughout the challenge, I succeeded in reading a book a fortnight. This fortnight, it was ‘Many Coloured Land’ by Christopher Koch.
Most weeks I blogged about something other than WIPpet/ROW80 with updates on my 100 Days of Productivity Challenge and a series of character interviews. This last week, though, I really fell off the blogging bandwagon altogether.
Over the round, I missed about 7 days of language practice and, although I listed those four languages above, I mainly focused on Swedish with a little Irish and some occasional French. Russian and Spanish barely got a look it. I think having four languages to practice at once was probably a little ambitious though.
At the end of last year, I decided to try and split Queen of Hearts into two books and so my editing process has been focused on turning the first half from manuscript ripped down the middle to a plausible story in and of itself. Last week, I finished the basic edits of the last scene and now I’m going back over it all and tweaking things, checking character trajectories and adding in scenes now that I have the scope to do so. I’m really pleased with where it’s at at the moment.
Until last week, I was keeping up well with the character interviews but as I mentioned above, last week, blogging just did not happen. I’ve been really enjoying doing the character interviews and it has helped me find the voices of some of the more minor characters and highlighted issues with their voices being too similar etc.
I’ve been applying for jobs since forever, it feels. I do have a part time job at the moment which just covers necessary expenses but I really need something more as I’m saving to study overseas again.
Overall, I think this round has gone quite well. What I did fail to do at the outset though, was set weekly goals which equated to longer term goals. But this is something I can work on for round 2. 🙂
R.E. Navan 