So I am now officially 1/5th of the way to my target of 100,000 words. For only writing one hour a day, I am making fantastic progress! This waking up early thing has been the most rewarding and probably challenging thing I have ever done. I mean yesterday was my day off and I did four loads of laundry, three loads of dishes, cleaned the house, BBQ’d some lunch, still got in some writing and critiquing and then still cooked dinner as well! Perhaps there is some truth to all those crazy people who say wake up with a purpose and you will achieve higher levels of productivity and success! I still hate mornings (I don’t drink coffee or tea… so mornings are hard…)

That being said, I haven’t broken my story into chapters or gone back over any of my writing thus far. I am doing what some may call SOMP Writing (Seat-Of-My-Pants) with little or no planning at all. I have found this style of writing extremely rewarding. I know the direction I want to go in, so I am now ensuring that people feel the way I want them to while dropping subtle hints about who the antagonist is. For the moment, it seems magic is the evident antagonist as young Jefferson is trying to figure out how far he can push himself and good magic has its limits.

The world I have built is roughly based around travelling circuses and a time where Magicians stole the show with their tricks. However, these magicians are part of an order which secretly protects the rest of the world from the dark magics. The way magic works in my world is good magic only can draw upon the life force of the user exhausting their energy levels or depending on the power of the spell, causing harm to the user. This restricts the use of overly powerful spells, as they come at great risk. However the forbidden arts or dark magic are based off of using the life force of others and those around you. As this does not fatigue the user or harm them, extremely powerful spells can be used with little regard for the lives around them. Because of the power at no risk and the harm to others, use of magic in that way is forbidden.

This has made some battles interesting and good characters will fall victim to the evils of the world. More so than the bad guys. In this sense I am writing a story in which of course the good guys win, but at what cost? I have been enjoying the characters I have brought into the story thus far and I feel it is moving along at a decent pace. Will this turn into a trilogy? No. I sincerely doubt it. The plot kind of goes as such: Jefferson gets recruited. Jefferson becomes integral to recruiting new members. Antagonist appears. Jefferson builds order to fight Antagonist. Good triumphs, but who survives?

So at the moment I have just begun my second plot point where for the next 20000 words will be recruiting and adding a few more members to the order, while staging the appearance of the antagonist. I already know that those 20000 words will be roughly the hardest points for our protagonist which strengthen his resolve to build the order stronger in the next 20000. The final 20000 will start off with the end, and then the aftermath. Maybe if I still love writing about this world, I can toss in the possibility for a second story.

In the meantime, as a sidebar to this story I have been involved in critiquing the works of others on a website called Review Fuse. In order to get three reviews, I must give three reviews. This type of reading and editing all for my own benefit has been both fun and challenging. Sometimes people will have fantastic writing skills, but have written the most boring story ever. Character developments fall flat, moments which could be epic run dry and I actually read a story that had none of the following: A plot, Characters, A setting, Dialog. It was eight paragraphs of this writer telling me things, about names with no people attached and I don’t think I could have cared less. He introduced drugs, killed one of them off and apparently no one in his story noticed or cared that the guy had died. I guess I felt as empathetic as they did. Not at all.

Still, everything counted, I am writing at least 2000 words a day between my story, my blog and my reviews. It has felt great to get back into it and with the resolve to finish this story. The earlier I finish, the more time I have to edit. Also I have another million ideas to write about after this, so I guess I will continue to get up at five in the morning to write until I am a millionaire telling stories to the world. If I can get paid to write, there is no greater honor and that is the dream!

For everyone out there, I’d like to thank you for supporting me. Whether you are family, friend or total stranger. If you’re a writer yourself or know one, pass this blog along as I would love feedback on the existing stories I have out there and the past work I have done. I’m hoping to get my final three reviews on Circle of Vengeance so I can slap it up on the iBooks store (it’ll be free!) and perhaps even the kindle store! That’s the near future, hopefully if everything goes well and smoothly it will be up by the end of the month. Maybe it’ll be up in time for my birthday! That would definitely be the best birthday present ever! Until the next sporadic update, adios amigos!