Donald A. Robinson - Aspiring Author Detailing my journey of fiction writing and the road to publication. Snippets of my current novel and other works will find their way onto these pages.

So, it has been awhile. I have been quite busy and thus have not had a chance to sit down to write. With the holidays coming, I feel that I probably will not get much writing accomplished, but I am getting lots of ideas brainstormed. I have two of the major battles now officially planned.

As far as BIG news for the book, I finally have a rough map of the world finished. ***This might be a semi-spoiler here, so I'd recommend that no one try to think too much on what I say next and just wait for the right timing.*** The basic sketch of the map is based off of Pangea Ultima. For those that do not know what that is, good. For those that do or choose to look it up, well, I can assure you that this is not another one of those stories that takes place after our civilization has fallen (such as Terry Brook's world he designed for the Shannara series).

I will most likely not post for about another week. When I do, I hope to have some updates on actually word count. With any luck, I will have chapter 2 finished and be a bit into chapter 3, where the plot and action should start to take off.

-Donald R.

(Progress: 2764/80000 words + Map outline)

Good afternoon!

Finished my daily samples at work today and currently on lunch. I felt it wise to give a quick update on how the writing has been going since yesterday.

I finished the first chapter (giving a couple additions). I am planning on adding to the chapter as soon as I know what I can do to it. I ended with about 1780 words. I also started the second chapter. So far, I only have the first scene. I am hoping to add at least another scene or two today.

I was also doing some reading over story points and story arcs. I realized that the "Stasis" portion is almost omitted because of how I chose to begin the story. Perhaps I may add the "mundane lifestyle" portion at the very beginning of chapter one, but I am afraid that will take away from the action of the first scene. I may choose to ignore the stasis point, and hope that whoever reads my manuscript does not rip me a new one for it.

Well, back to writing. My lunch hour is about halfway over now.

-Donald R.

(Current Progress: 2445/80000 words)

Because my first idea for a book went south, I had started a new book a couple of weeks ago. The process was slow at first, as I had trouble finding the motivation to start. Now, I feel as if the momentum is starting to pick up.

I have successfully completed my first chapter on the new book. It is somewhat smaller than I had planned (coming in at ~1750 words). I know there are a few changes and additions that I would like to make, but the majority of what is written has a good feel to it.

So far, the book is un-titled. I am toying with a few names, but most likely will not have one until I am nearing the end (or finished with the book). I think that I will be settling on Young Adult (YA)/Fantasy for the genre. The current plan is for about 80-100K words and about 25 chapters. In order to help me stay on track, I'm doing my planning in stages shortly before writing. I believe my previous method of making a lot of plans ahead of time got me in trouble because I wound up over-planning and then scraping the project.

I am also hoping that by blogging my experiences, I might better stay on track and keep up with my writing. I really hope to write at least 4000 words a week (5 month goal for completion). Well, better get back to writing (and working).

-Donald Robinson

(Week 1, Day 1: 1751/80000 words)