I completed 12 of the 21 exercises to complete the exercises from Sarah Domet’s book called 90 Days to Your Novel.
Completed a draft for a new Chapter 1 of An Assassin in New Marl.
Submitted the story 4 Humours to a short fiction magazine.
The stories 4 Humours and Space Station Sunyata are still in review at other magazines.
The story Grognard can be sent to another magazine.
Events from March 2017
Attended ConCoction from March 10 to March 12, 2017, at the Sheraton Cleveland Airport 5300 Riverside Drive, Cleveland, OH 44135. I volunteered for 12 hours at the event in the Con Suite.
Continue to work on An Assassin in New Marl City. I want to expand the novel from 20 chapters to 36 chapters (100000 words total). Write four more additional chapters of the novel.
Polish and submit the stories White Bracer, Mage Squad, Time Traveller One, Prisoner of Tarnal, and Kay-Eye for submission to short fiction magazines.
Submit Grognard to another short fiction magazine.
Planned Events for April 2017
Planning on purchasing an e-book cover for An Assassin in New Marl City from Fiveer.
Put the first nine chapters of An Assassin in New Marl City into the writing program Scrivener.
Work on completing a Query letter to use to find an agent for An Assassin in New Marl.
I completed 9 of the 21 exercises from Sarah Domet’s book called 90 Days to Your Novel.
Submitted the story 4 Humours to a short fiction magazine.
The stories 4 Humours and Space Station Sunyata are still in review at other magazines.
The story Grognard was not accepted.
Events from February 2017
I attended the Winter Fiction Fest on February 18th that was held at Loganberry Books at 13015 Larchmere Blvd. Shaker Heights, Ohio 44120 and was sponsored by Literary Cleveland. There were four panels presented which featured Mary Doria Russell, Casey Daniels and Shelly Costa, DM Pulley, Geoffrey Landis, and Mary Turzillo.
Attended the volunteer meeting for Concoction on February 21, 2017, at Critical Hit Games 13433 Cedar Road Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118. Learned about the convention and signed up to help.
Writing Goals for March 2017
A Gathering in New Marl (New name is An Assassin in New Marl City) is a 55000-word short novel I wrote many years ago. I want to expand the novel from 20 chapters to 36 chapters (100000 words total). I intend to follow the method described in Sarah Domet’s book called 90 Days to Your Novel.
The book starts with 21 exercises that I plan to complete. After that I will write the 16 new chapters of the novel in an additional 20 weeks. My March plan is to finish the exercises and write three of the additional 16 chapters.
Polish and submit the stories White Bracer, Mage Squad, Time Traveller One, Prisoner of Tarnal, and Kay-Eye for submission to short fiction magazines.
Submit Grognard to another short fiction magazine.
Planned Events for March 2017
Planning on purchasing a map and an e-book cover for An Assassin in New Marl City from Fiveer.
Download the trial of the writing program Scrivener and use it on my novel to see if I like it.
Work on completing a Query letter to use to find an agent for An Assassin in New Marl.
Attend ConCoction from March 10 to March 12, 2017, at the Sheraton Cleveland Airport 5300 Riverside Drive, Cleveland, OH 44135. I will volunteer for 12 hours at the event. Role unknown at this time.
Polished and submitted the stories 4 Humours and Space Station Sunyata to two different short fiction magazines. Grognard is still in review at another magazine.
Worked on polishing and readying the stories Time Traveller One and Prisoner of Tarnal for submission to short fiction magazines. Not ready yet.
I had also planned on polishing and readying the stories White Bracer, Mage Squad, and Kay-Eye for submission to short fiction magazines, but did not do so.
I wrote a scene from my proposed Torso novel as a proof of concept. Interesting but way down on my list of projects.
Changed my wordpress theme to Twenty Sixteen. It’s better than Twenty Fifteen, but I need to find something better.
Started a Fiveer account. Looking for a map and an e-book cover for A Gathering in New Marl. I’m thinking of re-titling the novel because I know what a gathering means in the context of the novel, but a potential reader would not know what it means. An Assassin in New Marl would fit the plot of the novel better.
The story Grognard is still in review at another magazine.
Writing Goals for February 2017
A Gathering in New Marl (An Assassin in New Marl) is a 55000 word short novel I wrote many years ago. I want to expand the novel from 20 chapters to 36 chapters (100000 words total). I intend to follow the method described in Sarah Domet’s book called 90 Days to Your Novel.
The book starts with 21 exercises that I plan to complete in the month of February. After that I will write the 16 new chapters of the novel in an additional 20 weeks.
Polish and submit the stories White Bracer, Mage Squad, Time Traveller One, Prisoner of Tarnal, and Kay-Eye for submission to short fiction magazines.
Submit 4 Humours to another short fiction magazine.
Planned Events for February 2017
Order a map from Fiveer.
Work on completing a Query letter to use to find an agent for An Assassin in New Marl.
I will attend the Winter Fiction Fest on February 18th that is being held at Loganberry Books at 13015 Larchmere Blvd. Shaker Heights, Ohio 44120 and is sponsored by Literary Cleveland. There will be four panels presented which will feature Mary Doria Russell, Casey Daniels and Shelly Costa, DM Pulley, Geoffrey Landis and Mary Turzillo.
Polished and submitted the stories 4 Humours and Grognard to two different short fiction magazines.
Polished and readied the stories Space Station Sunyata, White Bracer, and Mage Squad for submission to short fiction magazines.
I planned on polishing and readying the stories Time Traveller One, Prisoner of Tarnal, and Kay-Eye for submission to short fiction magazines, but did not do so.
Events from December 2016
I chose and uploaded a single photo to use for my website, goodreads page, and meet-up profile. I will also use this photo for future Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Postponed setting up Facebook and Twitter accounts until January 2017, due to completing other tasks.
The story 4 Humours was not accepted.
Writing Goals for January 2017
Polish and submit the stories Space Station Sunyata, White Bracer, Mage Squad to three different short fiction magazines.
Polish and ready the stories Time Traveller One, Prisoner of Tarnal, and Kay-Eye for submission to short fiction magazines.
Submit 4 Humours to another short fiction magazine.
Planned Events for January 2017
Create Facebook and Twitter pages.
Update Website to the Himmelan WordPress Theme.
Research professional photographers to take an author’s photograph for all of my social media accounts.
I will attend the Winter Fiction Fest on February 18, 2017. They are holding the conference at Loganberry Books at 13015 Larchmere Blvd in Shaker Heights, Ohio 44120 The conference is sponsored by Literary Cleveland. They will present four panels that feature Mary Doria Russell, Casey Daniels and Shelly Costa, DM Pulley, Geoffrey Landis, and Mary Turzillo.
My original plan was to write a story called Dogman, but I decided to postpone that story because revising Kay-Eye took more time than I expected.
Complete a rewrite of Kay-Eye, it took much longer than anticipated, two weeks. I wrote the first half of the story in 2012. It was set on Catalina Island in California. I wrote the second half of the story in 2015. It was set on Kelly’s Island in Ohio. I combined the story parts from 2012 and from 2015 and add four pages interweaved into the story. I chose to increase the story sections from six to eight by splitting two of the original story sections into four-story sections. Much easier said than done. After that, I revised and typed it to submit to my writing workshop.
Revised and typed White Bracer.
Revised and typed Mage Squad.
Polish and submit Kay-Eye to my writer’s workshop.
Events from November 2016
I attended the Indy Author Conference at the Parma-Snow Branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library on 11-12. I wrote a separate post on the conference.
Updated website banner on garydavidgillen.com, I used the program GIMP to add the website title on top of a picture.
Wrote posts on five book reviews to get the book review posts up to current reading.
Postponed setting up Facebook and Twitter accounts until December 2016, due to completing other tasks.
Writing Goals for December 2016
Polish and submit the stories 4 Humours, Grognard, and Space Station Sunyata to three different short fiction magazines.
Polish and ready the stories White Bracer, Mage Squad, Time Traveller One, Prisoner of Tarnal, and Kay-Eye for submission to short fiction magazines.
Planned Events for December 2016
Create Facebook and Twitter pages.
Update Website to the Himmelan WordPress Theme.
I will attend the Winter Fiction Fest on February 18, 2017. They will hold the conference at Loganberry Books at 13015 Larchmere Blvd, Shaker Heights, Ohio 44120. The conference is sponsored by Literary Cleveland. They will present four panels featuring Mary Doria Russell, Casey Daniels and Shelly Costa, DM Pulley, Geoffrey Landis, and Mary Turzillo.
This is my October 2016 writing progress report. Normally I would state my work completed from September, events from September, my planned work for October, and planned events for October. Since this is my first report, I will also include information prior to September 2016.
June, July, and August 2012
On June 10 2012, I purchased Blake Snyder’s book Save the Cat. I had written a screenplay in 2007 and had studied screenwriting over the years. I was inspired by Snyder’s book to take the lessons of screenwriting and apply them to writing short prose fiction. Screenplays are typically about 24000 words long and I figured that I could tighten my narrative to 6000 word short stories. In a manic brainstorming session, I came up with the basic framework for six short stories.
The first story I planned to write was The Prisoner of Tarnal. It was an easy choice since it was a prequel story to the three Gahrn series stories that I had written in 1993, 1994, and 1995. I had the background and an ending which set up some things I paid off in the other stories. I worked on that story and finished the first draft on August 5, 2012. Since I felt good about completing the story I started the second story. Its working title was Dystopia. I progressed on it but life intervened in October and I stopped writing halfway through.
December 2012
I typed up what I had for Dystopia. By then, I had renamed it C. A. T. because of an idea I had in a dream and put into the story. C. A. T. was 3767 words but only half finished. I stopped writing. C. A. T. and the other four stories remained unfinished.
November and December 2015
I returned to the unfinished C. A. T. story and finished it on December 12, 2015. It was three years later, but I had finally finished the first draft.
January 2016
My 2016 new year’s resolution was to write the four unfinished stories from 2012. The next story I planned to write was the story I had called Time Bomb. I made the story sheets this month and came up with eight scenes for the story. The story had a new name, it was now called 4 Humours. On a plane ride to Orlando for the Harry Potter Celebration at Universal Orlando, which was held on January 29 to 31, 2016, I started writing the first scene.
February and March 2016
I felt like I was ready to knock it out, but by the end of February, I had only completed the first scene. On March 25th, Good Friday, I wrote the second scene.
April 2016
I started the third scene on April 1st, April Fool’s Day. At that point I was frustrated. I had not put writing at the top of my list of things to accomplish, so I didn’t write much. My plan was to write one story every three months to get the four done by the end of the year. I had to come up with a way to get that done. It must have been my upcoming birthday that motivated me. I had to find a way to get a reliable number of words written each week.
What was a reasonable amount to write each week? I had to find a minimum amount that I could achieve. It takes about four hours for me to write the first draft of a scene. The scenes are about 800 words long. It came down to deciding that it was worth taking four hours a week to write. So I planned to write scenes three to eight in the next six weeks. I thought that I could do that if I made it my highest priority. I finished scene three and part of scene four in April. That was much better progress.
May and June 2016
I finished 4 Humors on June 5, 2016. One scene was harder to write so it took seven weeks to write six scenes. I felt very successful compared to taking sixteen weeks for two scenes. I could do this. The fourth of the six stories was originally called L5. I would retitle it Space Station Sunyata. Wrote the story sheets, scene one and half of scene two in June. I also typed up two of eight scenes for 4 Humours. In nine of ten weeks, I wrote what was planned.
July 2016
On Space Station Sunyata I wrote the rest of scene two, scene three, and part of scene four.
I also typed rest of 4 Humours
In 11 of 15 weeks I wrote what I planned.
I attended Ohio Readers and Writers Expo held by OhioExpos.com on July 23, 2016. Wrote a separate post on it on 09-28-16.
Attended Confluence in Pittsburgh on 07-29-16 through 07-31-16. I will write a separate post covering the convention.
August 2016
I wrote scenes five, six, seven, and eight of Space Station Sunyata. It was completed.
I also prepared the story sheets for A Simple Request.
In 15 of 19 weeks I wrote what I planned.
Writing Progress from September 2016
I wrote six blog posts for garydavidgillen.com including my Welcome to my Website post linked below.
For A Simple Request I decided to change my format. I had planned 12 scenes at 500 words each. The plan was to write two scenes per week, which would increase my output from 800 up to 1000 words per week. My future plan is to up my output in 2017 to 2000 words per week.
I took a week off from work and finished the first eight scenes of A Simple Request. I finished scenes nine, ten, eleven, and twelve in the next two weeks. A Simple Request was complete. From start to finish, it took 23 days.
I typed all eight scenes of Space Station Sunyata.
In 19 of 23 weeks I wrote what I planned.
Events from September 2016
I attended the Western Reserve Writers Conference on 9-24. The Cuyahoga County Public Library. sponsored the conference. I wrote a separate post on it on 10-16-16.
Wrote the amount that I intended 22 out of 26 weeks between 04-18-16 and 10-16-16. I think the plan I created in April was a success.
Created a website called garydavidgillen.com by using Bluehost for my web hosting and writing it in WordPress.
Goals for October 2016
I came up with another plan for a format change. I wanted to write shorter stories that could be used in different markets than the five stories that I had completed. The stories are The Prisoner of Tarnal, Kay-Eye (The new name for C. A. T.), 4 Humours, Space Station Sunyata, and A Simple Request. The plan was to write two stories with four 500 word scenes, which makes the story lengths 2000 words.
Complete the story sheets for Dogman and Time Bomb (this story follows the original idea I had for Time Bomb, not the rewrite I used for 4 Humours).
Go live with my website. The content on my website involves my writing journey, book reviews, convention recaps, and monthly progress reports. Make one post per week, rotating on the four topics. Read two novels per month and write a post on each. Post the monthly progress report once a month. So, the fourth post will be about conventions or my writing journey.
