Diary of a new writing project. Day 6: Writing Goals

Writing goals really helps me to stay motivated, it pushes me forward.

Writing goals are super important, in my humble opinion.

Especially for me, since I’m an aspiring author with a day job, a kid, a need-to-read habit. Plus, more often then I care to say, I play video games as soon as I wake up.

Keeping a word count and stick to word count goals: those writing tips changed my writing game.
Before embracing the writing goals, it would take me 3, 4, even 5 years to finish a book.
Granted, I considered writing as a hobby (and one I would never tell my family about, simply because they all thought writing is a useless waste of time that doesn’t even pay well; they still do), but even then… come on girl!

Writing goals really helps me to stay motivated, it pushes me forward.

2019 YA-WIP goals

I started the new writing project early in September.

By now, I did some research, wrote backstories for the main characters, wrote an outlined. So I feel semi-confident I will be able to finish 2019 YA-WIP in 3 months.

Before I set my writing goals, I look at the family calendar. For us, autumn is birthday season, plus Holidays. How on earth will she find time to write, some may ask?
I work from home. The time I spent in the commute, I now can sometimes spend on writing.

I couldn’t even dream of finishing a book in 3 months when I was working in retail stores. Even less when I got to work in official offices, alongside official adults (often younger than me) doing adults stuff, like talking about their pools and their next vacations in a resort near the ocean.

I am in total WOW, like bowing deeply, at all those aspiring authors out there who make it happened while having to get out of the house 5 or 6 times a week and work for 8 to 10 hours, often surrounded by people. W.O.W.

On with the writing goals, ambitious (for me) but do-able:

  • 85 000 words
  • 7000 words a week
  • 1400 words a day

Deadline : December 31st

I will not, however, drive myself crazy with this deadline, nor with the writing goals. I will do everything I can to reach them, but I also don’t want to get mad if I don’t make it to 1 400 words one day, or feel like a darn looser if the first draft is not finished by December 31st.

Writing is my happy place, and I want it to remain that way.

Until next time !

Writing a novel: Romance vs Chick-Lit

I was toying with the idea of writing a love story, but I wasn’t sure what genre to write in: romance? chick-lit? romance subgenres?
If you are facing the same writing problem I faced, this might help.

Disclaimer: No affiliate links down there!

I was toying with the idea of writing a love story, but I wasn’t sure what genre to write in: romance? chick-lit? romance subgenres?

The project was promptly shelved (I can’t write for full-on grown-ups yet), but I thought I could share the little bit of research I did on both genre.

If you are facing the same writing problem I faced, this might help.

Romance of the past

Back when I was working in a bookstore, the romance novels and the chick-lit novels never shared a bookshelf.

In fact, those two genres never even shared the same bookshelves space.
Chick-lit novels (patriarchal much, I hate the term) were mingling with literary fiction while Romance novels were all by themselves, hiding between the Historical fiction section and the Fantasy section.

As time went by, Chick-Lit remained pretty stagnant while Romance novels got their own sub-categories such as paranormal romance, dark fantasy romance, historical, so on and so forth.

Although they seem to share some similarities, they are two very distinctive literary genres.

Chick-Lit novels

The term has been used since the mid ’90s, according to my research (links below).

To earn the Chick-Lit label, a novel has to be written by a woman for women focus readership. Also, the story needs to be light-hearted, fun, heavy on the self-mockery. A love story of some kind is also present, although not always necessarily the main thing happening.
A Chick-Lit novel is centered around a witty, funny, often a fashion aficionado woman having to deal with social expectations.

A Chick-Lit novel is funny, light and leads the main character to a happy end… until the sequel.

Romance novels

At its chore, a Romance novel is a love story with a happy, optimistic end. Masterclass does have a more precise definition for it, but you get the general idea.

Romance novels were once considered as poorly written novels, then as poorly written soft-erotic novels. They were mainly destined to be consumed by bored house-wives and curious unmarried women.

Now, and even more since the event of ebooks, Romance novels are taking on the world in a wide variety of subgenres.

Still aiming towards female readers, Romance novels are expending constantly to a variety of readers. Hooray!

Thanks for reading this post. Feel free to show your support by buying a ko-fi to this crazy full-time Writer on a Quest, it is always very much appreciated.

Until next time!

Sources:

According to Wikipédia (in French)

Very good overview of Romance novels

Diary of a new writing project. Day 4-5: where we struggle big time to outline a YA novel

I never outlined any of the novels (YA, Middle-Grade or else) I wrote over the course of the past 20 years. I do not like outlining a story. For many reasons. The main one being, for me, it takes away the fun of writing.

With this new project, let’s call it YA-WIP, I thought I would give this good old outline a novel thing a try. A real one. Dreading, dreading, dreading.

But, since I am determined to query this book in by the end of March 2020, I need to step up my game and use all the tricks and tips out there. Because it usually takes me, what 6 months minimum, only to get through the very first, rough draft.

I loosely based my outline for YA-WIP on 3 outlining methods I really find inspiring (I did attempt outlining before, but…) and built my « own » from there.

Will outlining help me write faster this precious first draft?

Let’s outline and see…

Oh dear, common tropes city…

The first outline took me less than an hour to write. I did tough a lot the past months about the story, so I had a very good idea of where the story was going.

And I realized how much my story was sitting on common tropes. It a good story, I still like it. Although, it certainly needs way more work.

So, here’s my method for outlining a novel: write several outlines over the course of several hours, days.

I worked two days (let’s be clear, on and off; I still have a day job and basic needs to take care of, like showering and eating and stuff) on my outline.

End results

First outlines were a frustrating mess, mainly because I felt like I had to suff in some scenes just to meet the outlines requirements. It made the story feel like very old, rolling on common tropes and common characters. In one word, the first outline’s were hitting all the right points and I thought it was boring as s***.
Then, I simplified my outline more and more, to the point were I had the main points every story structure needs without being overly… commercial beat sheet.
So, yeah, I have a good-enough-for-now outline. Yay!

I really struggled with outlining this project though. Oh là là! Part of the discovery writer in me still thinks the outline will end up in the trash anyway.
But, it’s done and now, it’s time to start writing.

Oh yeah! Very excited about that part.

Until next time!