As I mentioned earlier, I’m following  First Draft in 30 Days by Karen Wiesner and it has been the first week.  During this week I am working on  character sketches, setting sketches, and reviewing my outline for Unraveling A Gentleman.

Now I have been brainstorming on this novel for two years.  I had thought I had written down everything I could think of about these two very interesting people, but doing the character sketch really opened my eyes to how little I knew these people.

I have a hard time describing what I want my hero and heroine to be like.  I know them.  I know what they are like, how they speak, how they are going to react in certain situations, but until I wrote out the character sketches, I didn’t know everything.

The character sketch forced me to spell out every detail of each character.  Mannerisms, characteristics.  Does he bite his nails when he’s nervous; pace when he’s thinking.  She twirls her hair when she’s flirting.  These are the things that makes characters human.

It was amazing what those little traits did.  It made them more real to me.  I had thought they were already real, but this drove it home.

The setting sketches allowed me to build my regency world.  I  gathered photos of the English countryside. Pictures of cottages and country houses and rambling paths through the woods.  The places became more real, more alive and part of the story, as it is supposed to be.

So how do you learn about the people in your stories?  What tricks have you learned? What books have been useful?

Who are your favorite characters? The ones who became the most alive while you read?  What made them memoriable to you?

I’m excited!  A group of us in Carolina Romance Writers are using Karen S. Wiesner’s book First Draft in 30 days to do just that.  We are signing on to follow the program.

I’ve been writing my butt off for the last week or so getting ready.  I’m chosing to finish Unraveling a Gentleman. I’m hoping to send my story out there to find a home with some publisher.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I have discovered that I’m not a panster and am as anal in my writing as I am in my day job!  During the day I’m a database administrator which requires me to juggle many things at once at a very high level of detail.

Well I’m sorry to say it has bled over into my creative life.  I tried being a panster and ended up staring at the computer “page” forever waiting for my hero and heroine to “speak to me.”  Just didn’t happen.

I decided that I would revamp the plot and update the outline.  Once I started, I couldn’t quit.  Scenes popped into my head and I was able to put something together that I am working from.  So far its working well.

And I think I’m becoming better.  I don’t read what I write any more and cringe like I did before.  That first draft… God it was awful.  I actually feel sorry for the judges at the Royal Ascot for having to read the first few pages of it last year.   I wanted to fall asleep reading it.   I’m glad someone explained deep POV!

But there is still so very much to learn.  So if you have any hints, any writing books that might be helpful, let me know.  I’m always up for learning something new.

In the RWA chapter I belong to, we have all signed up for a goals type contest.  We write down  our yearly goals for our writing career and pay a few dollars.  At the end of the year, a drawing is held, and if that person achieved his/her goals, they win the jackpot.

Given that we are almost half way through the year, I’ve been looking at what I’ve accomplished towards meeting those goals.  It’s not much, I’m sorry to say.

In order to accomplish the goals I’ve set for myself, I’ve decided to look at it from a project management perspective; something I do in my day job.

My goals are as follows:

• Submit “Unraveling a Gentleman” to publishers/agents.
• Submit a couple of shorter stories to some EPubs

For the first one, I have to finish the final draft.  I’ve set a deadline of July 1st.  I’m panicking because it’s almost June and I’ve not really worked on it very much.  Because I’ve entered this into a contest of sorts, the July 1st deadline is pretty firm.

So with a deadline in mind, I have to decide how to meet it.  Do I write so many words per day?  Or so many pages a day?

Then there are the distractions, such as the web page I’m building, work, holiday’s, other outside activities, my family and time with them, that eat into this time.  And given the fact that I am still working to develop some discipline, I’m worried.

How do you keep your focus on writing? Do you schedule time to write?  Is it given a priority? How do you deal with deadlines, either self imposed or real when life is going crazy around you?  I could really use some advice.