#ROW80 - Closing In

Another busy week, another scant squeeze-by of my goals.  I've kept my nose to the grindstone (which really hurts, btw), working hard to finish up my WIP.  If it goes like I think it'll go, it should be done at this time next week.  I may tack on an epilogue (I like epilogues, no matter what "they" say.  We'll see what my alphas think, too), but the main story is just about wrapped up.  It's a good spot to be in, and I'm excited to get it in the publishing pipeline.

Anyway, let's look at the goals:

• Lesson Learned - See yesterday's post on endings.  They're sort of a Big Deal.
• WIP Pages - 7/6.  It gets a bit easier near the end when you're writing the scenes you've been imagining for, oh, nigh on a year now.  Still, free time hardly cooperated.
• Blogging - 3/3 on each.  I need to get up my serial fiction post here tomorrow, but I got the one on the other site done.  Work has been busy (and I usually try to squeeze in my posts there), so it was a bit of a struggle.

With the scenes I'm writing, it's not uncommon to sit down and have two to three pages flash by.  Really, that's been what's keeping me in the game, because otherwise I've had several days where I just couldn't sit down.  Heck, I'd probably be done right now if I hadn't been so busy, but such is life.  The good news is that, overall, my pace is consistent, even though I feel a bit spikier in my day to day habits.

The holidays are on the doorstep.  They're usually good for my WIPs, but bad for my blogging.  I can generally write on the road, using a laptop, but I don't always have Internet access.  Believe it or not, I rarely queue up posts.  Generally, what you see up is what I've written that day.  It's not really a rule or anything, it's just that I look at blogging as practice.  Practice that I enjoy, but practice nonetheless.  It forces me to sit down pretty much each day (I try to stagger this blog with my other one) and write for an audience.  

Audience may be too grandiose of a term, especially here.  There are only ~20 of you lurking at this point (the gaming blog boasts ~450 subs), so it's sort of like giving a presentation in a small office, compared to a large conference hall.  And I'm definitely not on the level of arena rock star, like some of the blogs I follow.  For me, the challenge is simply to be able to convey ideas and concepts effectively via written word.  That's what blogging helps you practice.  Small fanbase, big fanbase, it doesn't matter.  The point is to not trip over myself while sharing thoughts.

Also, it helps to have a community and be "out there."  Practice and support?  Yes, please.  This is why I love blogging.

I'll wrap this random reflection up with a look at my round 4 word counts (no goals here, just for the interested):

• Project Fiction: 2,765
• Since last check in: 6,588
• Grand Total for Round 4: 21,278