#LeapAheadWritingMarathon Day 12: Self-Evaluation, Word Count, Awesome Accomplishments, and Terrific Tidbits. It’s SWAT Day!
It’s Friday! That means it’s time to check in with your progress in the marathon.
On Fridays, I want to know about your full writing week. What were your greatest successes during the week? What was your favorite line/bit that you wrote? What did you learn about yourself, your characters, and/or your story during the week’s work? What are you most proud of yourself for doing this week when it came to your writing? What are you proud of yourself for accomplishing?
That means it’s SWAT Day!
Check in with your progress on your story and share, if you feel like it, the following:
- Self-Evaluation (how do you think you did? what can/do you want to do differently next week? what did you learn about yourself as a person or as a writer? what didn’t you do or finish that you wanted to? etc.)
- Word count (total for the week, Saturday through today)
- Awesome Accomplishments (breakthroughs, discoveries, highest daily word-count ever, etc.)
- Tidbits too good not to share
If you don’t want to share this stuff publicly, that’s okay. You can add a section to your Story Bible or start a journal (or add this to your existing journal) to keep track of this. But don’t skip doing this—I think that in the future, when you look back either on what you accomplished during this marathon or (heaven forbid) why you gave up on it, the insights you’ll gather later with hindsight on your thoughts during the challenge will be invaluable.
Happy writing!
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KayeDacus.com 
Self-Evaluation: Writing continues to be hard, but now that I’ve reached a point in the story at which historical events can help to drive the plot, it’s been slightly easier to figure out what happens next (sort of). I’ve renamed my heroine twice since last week’s update—and I’m still not happy with her name. I need to do more background/development work with her to figure out who she really is. I’m still not doing a good job of setting a writing schedule and sticking to it to make sure that I’m writing every day, but I am participating in as many writing sprint challenges through my grad-school group as my schedule will allow, and that’s when I’ve had my most success in banging out some word-count numbers.
Word Count total for 02/05/16–02/11/16: 6,281
Awesome Accomplishments: I’d have to say that being able to write 2,600 words in 90 minutes (three 30-minute writing sprints last Friday night) in one evening felt pretty awesome!
Tidbit to Share:
He paused and inclined his head to her. “A useful skill for a—” He coughed as if he’d just inhaled something noxious that caught in his throat.
“For a?” She prompted.
“For a woman to have so she need not rely on others for her living.”
She was so tired of always second-guessing what people meant or what they were going to say. But as soon as she was rid of the fear he might know more about her background than he’d previously let on, she realized exactly what he’d really said.
“For a spinster, you mean?”
He sputtered again. “No—of course not. I simply mean—you seem to be quite independent, and it’s good that you have a skill which can earn you a living.”
“Because I am unmarried at the great age of twenty-seven and, thus, will likely never marry?” She stopped, planting her fists on her hips.
“Miss Stanhope, please. I meant no offense. I simply meant to pay a compliment to your great accomplishment.”
She slowly let her amusement spread over her face, and a soft laugh bubbled up. “Never fear, Captain. I took no offense. I am sorry for teasing you. For a moment . . .” Her amusement faded.
“For a moment?” He stepped closer to her, removing his hat and running his fingers through his chestnut hair.
“For a moment, you reminded me of my brother, Nicholas. He, too, was—is quite easy to tease, for he takes everything so seriously.” She looked up at Captain Ryles and her heart skittered, like a horse shying at a gun blast. He stood close enough to make his face easy to touch, should she just reach up her hand—but, no. This man could have been responsible for Nick’s disappearance.
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