ROW80 "Summer Round" Goals

The “Summer Round” of ROW80 is finally here!  Over these past few weeks, I’ve been looking forward to the resumption of this 80-day writing challenge.  July always gets me fired-up and motivated.  For me, it’s a time for reflection of the past six months and for a commitment to the six months yet to come.  The year is half over, and there is so much that needs doing before the next.  There are stories in my head that need telling.  So many stories and time’s a wasting, right?  Well, not so fast.  These stories need to be told well.  They need to be told properly so they can have the most impact and reach their fullest potential as a story.  Thus is the writer’s dilemma; to write fast and to write well.  As with any new skill, mastery will come with time, effort and patience.  I remind myself that the process is a journey, not a destination.  I just need to be in the present, to realize where I am on that journey, and to learn and grow as I move forward through the wilderness towards my potential horizons. 

Many of you know me from the previous round, but for those new to this round, I think a reintroduction of myself is in order.  I'm a (somewhat-talented) visual artist that has been sketching and drawing ever since I was able to hold a pencil in my hand.  As a boy, I'd draw epic stories in comic-book style, for hours on end, often making gruesome battlefield noises as I drew.  Writing came later in my youth, during my teenage years.  As my drawing skills improved, I wanted better stories for my comics, something other than just cool battle scenes.  So I learned to write my stories first, then draw what I wrote.  The stories were sophomoric by today’s standards, but they gave context to my drawings and added a whole new level of immersion to my art.  I'm grown now, but that boy still remains inside me, and still hopes to create that epic comic someday (or ‘graphic novel’ as they're called today), maybe after I'm financially self-sufficient.  So why have I returned to writing?  Stories, that's why.  I love reading stories, but I also love creating my own stories; stories that I can't find anywhere else; stories that only I can write.  Most profoundly, I'm drawn back to writing (as an art form) because of it's scalability.  The time and effort put into crafting a novel can repeatedly pay-off financially with every sale of that novel, over and over again, throughout one’s lifetime and beyond.  Books are intellectual property assets that can be a steady source of income.  Conversely, the time spend on one art project, let’s say a painting, only results in one financial transaction, the selling of that painting to one buyer.  With scalable income, the time and effort is spent once, but the income generated by that time and effort can continue for many years thereafter.  Hopefully, through writing novels, I can someday have the financial freedom to support my “art habit.”

So, how did I get here?  I rediscovered writing last year.  Ever since my participation in last November’s writing challenge, I have been obsessed with the prospect of becoming a “heroic fantasy” author.  During that time, I successfully wrote fifty-thousand words of story-ideas and world-building content, laying the foundation of my “Sword & Sorcery” fantasy-world.  I had intended to continue writing after the challenge, but struggled to keep the momentum going.  By chance, I discovered the “A Round of Words in 80-Days” writing challenge.  The premise of the challenge intrigued me; four “rounds” a year, each lasting eighty days, with self-set word-counts and goals, posted to a blog twice a week.  Perfect!  It was exactly what I needed; discipline and accountability.  I joined the “Spring Round” of ROW80 in March and successfully participated in it.  I set some achievable, albeit ambitious, goals for myself, hoping to write to these arbitrary word-count numbers that I had designated for myself, but that wasn’t my standard for success or failure this time around.  For the “Spring Round”, I just wanted to serendipitously experience it, to see for myself what I was capable of achieving, and to establish a baseline for future rounds.  By going this route, I assured my success so long as I wrote consistently each day and publicly reported my progress each week.  Which brings me to the present.

Goals for ROW80 (Round 3)
For the "Summer Round" of ROW80, I plan to write 60,000 words towards my “Sword & Sorcery” story-world.  This will include world-building, character development, and story-crafting.  I have several story-candidates that I want to develop further and plan on taking at least one of those story ideas to completion during that time.  I currently have fifteen story-ideas that I’m working on, each with their own characters and villains, and I’m setting-up and organizing each one so that I can work on them during this round.  Decisions will be made once I narrow my choices and work out some story issues first.  I’ll elaborate more on that in my mid-week post.  I plan on reading at least one "heroic fantasy" novel (or several short-stories) per month while I’m writing, just to keep my writing fresh and to learn from the works of other authors in my genre.  Of course, I have a lot to learn about writing, and plan to read at least one book a month on the craft of story-telling.  This is an easy goal for me as I am constantly reading about writing more than I am actually writing (which I hope to change here).  Finally, I plan to write two blog posts per week here, publicly sharing the discoveries and adventures of my writing journey. 

Excerpts
As many of you know by now, I love the “Sword and Sorcery” fantasy genre.  Every post, I try to bring to you an excerpt from the master story-tellers of that genre.  Not surprisingly, Robert E. Howard, being the originator and father of that genre, is my favorite author.  One day I hope to emulate and duplicate his story-telling prowess, but in my own style and voice, of course.  As many of you know, I usually start my post with an excerpt on the top of the post, but I’ve decided to move it to the bottom of the post instead.  Two reasons.  First, my blog posts from here show up on Google Plus with only the first few lines visible to entice the reader.  Since I promote myself and ROW80 there, I want the first words that viewers see of my posts to be my own.  Secondly, as much as I want to introduce examples of this genre to the world, I realize that it's importance is secondary to my own writing journey, which is what this blog is all about.  So, yeah, if you like the excerpts, they’ll be at the bottom of each post (see below).

“The going grew rougher, the scenery more rugged, steep grassy slopes pitching up to densely timbered mountainsides.  Here, he knew, he might elude his hunters, but for that hellish bird that squalled incessantly above him.  He could no longer see them in this broken country, but he was certain that they still followed him, guided unerringly by their feathered allies.  That black shape became like a demonic incubus, hounding him through measureless hells.  The stones he hurled with a curse went wide or fell harmless, though in his youth he had felled hawks on the wing.”
— (Excerpt from The Hour of the Dragon, by Robert E. Howard)

This post is long, so I'll end it here.  Keep the Fire Burning!
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