JanWriMo and Critiques

Yes, that is an obvious play on the famous NaNoWriMo. But I’m participating in a mini-novel writing challenge amongst a few of my writing buds over at FaithWriters. There’s no specific goal per se–we each have our own. Mine is to get this first draft of mine finally completed. So hopefully this will help me 😛

I also have to get back into my critique group. Our group has been on a sort of hiatus since late October, mainly because of NaNo and then the holidays. We’re doing things differently this year. We have to submit our chapters two weeks ahead of time instead of one and write a synopsis up to that current point in our novel. The latter of the two won’t be too difficult–I already have a pretty extensive chapter outline and it’s easy to modify to fit the constant changes I keep making. The first part won’t be too bad–except I’m already up two weeks from this coming Thursday so I need to work on fixing my chapter for this time. I get to be a bit of a perfectionist, so it tends to take me a few days…and even then, it’s not “perfect.” But what is really? No matter how many modifications I may make, I can’t please everyone–I can only get as close as I can to tightening my writing. S

My last critique I had went very well–probably the best I’ve had. I only had a few minor comments and most were on grammatical things (grammar is NOT my friend, even though I was an English major). But it also took me a good week to edit it 😛 So I know I have it in me, I just have to devote the time to it. That’s normally what it comes down to–breaking that procrastinator within me and ignoring the excuses that pop up in my brain.

So today, I have to at least start editing the chapter for Thursday’s submission deadline. I  remember the last chapter that was critiqued but I can’t seem to remember what happens in the next chapter…guess I’ll find out soon!