July Writing Contest Results

Here're the results of the writing contest involving Lauren, Nick, and me. I wrote a total of 13,598 words, beating out Nick (13,000) but losing to Lauren (14,614). Fortunately Lauren picked a restaurant we both absolutely love for me to take her to. :)

Here's how it breaks down:

*Early in the month, I spent a lot of time editing Battle for the Wastelands, getting it down to 100,000 words in preparation for submission to #PitchMas (no luck this time) and a new batch of agents. That took up a great deal of writing time but resulted in relatively few words. I also wrote some material for a later Wastelands novel, but not a whole lot.

*I also started a new project, which I will not go into a lot of detail on at the moment. Sufficient to say it plays to my great strength (worldbuilding, technology, etc.) and avoids one of my major weaknesses (characterization). Maybe around 1,000 or so words on that. Given the threat graduate school (more on that later) will pose to my fiction-writing productivity, this could be worth shifting my focus onto.

*I broke 30,000 words on The Thing In The Woods, writing around 9,000 words this month. Three days alone in which I wrote an excess of 1,000, 2,000, and 3,000 words respectively provided the bulk of that. Finishing chapters to submit them to a writing group one must commit to in advance is a powerful incentive. Still concerned it might be too short, but my plan is to finish it before

For August, I plan to write a good bit more material for Thing and do some more edits on Battle, since my friend Jeff from my Lawrenceville writing group posted a blog on some particularly-unnecessary words. However, graduate school approaches, and that will cut into my writing time considerably.