Well, upon winning NaNo 2010, I was on a writing high. I was convinced I would have a finished first draft by the end of December. But then life took over. Here it is Christmas Eve, and I'm still sitting at 57,313 words. Now that does mean I've written about 6,000 words since NaNo's completion, but that's not really a lot for 24 days.
However, other things have fallen into place a little more, so it hasn't been an entirely unproductive month in terms of writing.
First of all, I have done a lot of research into the ePublishing industry, and this is something that I am strongly considering for my first series. Should I choose this path, my goal is to make an online presence for myself while I continue honing my writing skills. Then, when I gain some confidence in my writing, I'll submit something to a traditional publishing house. (Also, there are two traditional publishing houses that I have pegged as good fits for my first series, and neither of them are currently taking submissions.)
While I have been working toward the finalization of the first draft of the second book in my series, Ethan, I have simultaneously been working on finishing up what I hope is the final edit of my first book, Katie. I am two-thirds of the way through the edit, but as I'm editing a print copy, I still have to put my myriad changes into Scrivener. I have currently completed the first seven chapters of that tedious task, and have sent those chapters to a chosen few who I trust to give me their unbiased opinions. (And to my mother, who I'm pretty sure will just love it because she's my mother!)
Also, I have come up with a title and subtitle for the next book that I will attempt to write when my Finding Yourself series is complete. However, I'm not ready to put that up on my blog just yet. It's still a surprise!
12.24.2010
11.22.2010
Where has this month gone?
I cannot believe that it is already the week of Thanksgiving! The time is just flying by, almost faster than my fingers trying to keep up with the pace required to reach 50,000 words in a mere 30 days. So, with having reached last week's goal and surpassing it by only two words, it's time to start on this week's goal. The personal goal I have set this week is a bit lower due to the holiday. I would like to write 12,500 words this week. That will put me at 48,368 words. Wow! It's hard to believe that with a little hard work I could be over 48,000 words a week from now! No wonder some well-published authors put out several books a year! Well, I'm off to start on that goal!
11.21.2010
Sundays
Well, it has just become Sunday, and I have just under 24 hours to write another 4,024 words to be at my weekly goal. This scares me, because if you look at my progress calendar, I seem to be working in a pattern. Saturdays tend to be good days for me, which today was with over 3,000 words written, while Sundays I usually underproduce. So, for now I'm going to go to bed and get the rest I need to crank out 4,000+ words by this time tomorrow. Wish me luck!
11.15.2010
This Week's Goal
Well, I finished the week off at 21,285 words. Not too bad! I'm past where I told myself I should be. This week will be the challenging week, however, as I have set the goal of writing 14,581 words this week. If all goes as planned, that will put my project at 35,866 words by next Sunday!
11.13.2010
Weekly Goal
Well, at 20,643 words, I have just reached my goal for the week a day early!
And now I'm all out of words...
And now I'm all out of words...
11.12.2010
NaNoing
Well, this week has been fairly productive on the NaNo front. To reach my personal goals that I set for myself, I need to be at 20,524 words by the end of Sunday. With my current word count of 16,740, that leaves me with just 3,784 more words to go! And considering that my goal for just Saturday is 5,000 words, I think I will make it!
The hardest part about NaNo this week has been wanting to go back and look through what I've already typed. There are a few scenes that I feel are just not very good at all. But I refuse to work backwards! I will stand strong, and I will avoid my inner editor! (One of the NaNo pep talks warned about the inner editor who tries to take over in week 2!) I will keep plugging away in a forward direction!
I have been doing some 15-minute word wars over the last couple of days, too. How this works is you just type for the allotted time-in this case 15 minutes-and see how much you can get typed in that amount of time. Then you post your words for the other word war participants to see. So far, I have yet to get up to 500 words in 15 minutes, but that is my goal to work for this weekend.
Until next time...
The hardest part about NaNo this week has been wanting to go back and look through what I've already typed. There are a few scenes that I feel are just not very good at all. But I refuse to work backwards! I will stand strong, and I will avoid my inner editor! (One of the NaNo pep talks warned about the inner editor who tries to take over in week 2!) I will keep plugging away in a forward direction!
I have been doing some 15-minute word wars over the last couple of days, too. How this works is you just type for the allotted time-in this case 15 minutes-and see how much you can get typed in that amount of time. Then you post your words for the other word war participants to see. So far, I have yet to get up to 500 words in 15 minutes, but that is my goal to work for this weekend.
Until next time...
11.08.2010
First NaNo Update
Well, I did it! I had a modest goal of 8,334 words for the first week, and I ended up with 10,109! We had an out-of-state wedding to attend over the weekend, including lots of prep, so I set my goal a little lower than the suggested 1,667 words per day.
This week, my goal is actually 10,415 words for the week, so as long as I do as good as I did last week, I should be able to nail that! Beginning Tuesday afternoon my life will be returning to its normal schedule, and I can officially get into a NaNo groove!
This week, my goal is actually 10,415 words for the week, so as long as I do as good as I did last week, I should be able to nail that! Beginning Tuesday afternoon my life will be returning to its normal schedule, and I can officially get into a NaNo groove!
10.31.2010
Halloween - The Busiest Day of the Year
With just ten hours left before the kickoff of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), I have a billion things I wish to accomplish. I will already be losing a few precious days of writing due to a highly-anticipated, out-of-town wedding, so the more I can complete now, the more I can write on the remaining days.
Before I can begin hammering out chapter one at midnight, I need to finish a few household tasks, including loads of laundry, straightening up the schoolroom, and handing out Halloween candy. In between, I'm polishing up my outline and planning out dialog in my head. My plan is to be ready to go at the stroke of midnight as my pumpkins turn back into notebooks, dictionaries, and thesauri!
Happy NaNoEve... err, Halloween, everyone!
Before I can begin hammering out chapter one at midnight, I need to finish a few household tasks, including loads of laundry, straightening up the schoolroom, and handing out Halloween candy. In between, I'm polishing up my outline and planning out dialog in my head. My plan is to be ready to go at the stroke of midnight as my pumpkins turn back into notebooks, dictionaries, and thesauri!
Happy NaNoEve... err, Halloween, everyone!
4.14.2010
Bleeding For Your Craft
It was Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith who said of writing "All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." I thought the quote was charming, maybe slightly credible, when I first heard it. In reality, it is profoundly true.
When I first began this journey, I tried to remain inside myself. I was extremely selective about the people I informed about what I was doing. I didn't want people to know because I didn't want people to want to read what I was writing. Basically, I didn't want them in my head.
When you are writing a character-driven novel you need your characters to be real. And if your characters are going to be real, a lot of soul searching is inevitable. You have to step into your situations to try to learn what your new friends will say, how they will feel, how they react. Sometimes it comes naturally, like remembering what it was like to hold your child for the first time. But other times--well, other times require you to reach deep into yourself and pull out emotions and memories that you may have long since buried. Emotions and memories that cause pain once you rip them out.
Is it worth it, this cutting into yourself and opening old wounds? If I can take a slice of myself and effectively use it to breathe life into another being, then the answer is undeniably yes. And if that being is able to bring some sort of escape, enlightenment, or encouragement to someone else, I can even let people inside my head for a few hundred pages. After all, as E.L. Doctorow said, "writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia."
When I first began this journey, I tried to remain inside myself. I was extremely selective about the people I informed about what I was doing. I didn't want people to know because I didn't want people to want to read what I was writing. Basically, I didn't want them in my head.
When you are writing a character-driven novel you need your characters to be real. And if your characters are going to be real, a lot of soul searching is inevitable. You have to step into your situations to try to learn what your new friends will say, how they will feel, how they react. Sometimes it comes naturally, like remembering what it was like to hold your child for the first time. But other times--well, other times require you to reach deep into yourself and pull out emotions and memories that you may have long since buried. Emotions and memories that cause pain once you rip them out.
Is it worth it, this cutting into yourself and opening old wounds? If I can take a slice of myself and effectively use it to breathe life into another being, then the answer is undeniably yes. And if that being is able to bring some sort of escape, enlightenment, or encouragement to someone else, I can even let people inside my head for a few hundred pages. After all, as E.L. Doctorow said, "writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia."
3.17.2010
My Friend, The Delete Key
As I started my first rewrite two days ago, I quickly learned how important it is to delete when you're rewriting. When I finished my first draft a mere 10 days ago, I had 282 double-spaced pages. I am now down to 279 pages.
I started my rewrite with the idea that my original opening had to go. It was two pages of unnecessary drivel describing how an impending storm mirrored the emotions of uncertainty that plagued one of my main characters. It was good writing, don't get me wrong. However, it was what I've learned is called "purple prose," and it wasn't needed. My finger hovered over that delete key as I was about to use it for the first time. I mean, I was starting off my first rewrite by shaving off the first two pages! At this rate, was I even going to have a story left by the time I was done?
Another large section of fluffy dialog was the next to go. This was probably a little less than a page. I still hesitated, but it was a little easier with my first deletion behind me.
Now that I'm 30 pages into my rewrite, I'm able to highlight those pages and paragraphs and hit that delete key with reckless abandon! I can hardly wait to see the trimmed down version that I'm left with when I'm done. In the meantime, I would like to introduce you to my new friend, The Delete Key.
I started my rewrite with the idea that my original opening had to go. It was two pages of unnecessary drivel describing how an impending storm mirrored the emotions of uncertainty that plagued one of my main characters. It was good writing, don't get me wrong. However, it was what I've learned is called "purple prose," and it wasn't needed. My finger hovered over that delete key as I was about to use it for the first time. I mean, I was starting off my first rewrite by shaving off the first two pages! At this rate, was I even going to have a story left by the time I was done?
Another large section of fluffy dialog was the next to go. This was probably a little less than a page. I still hesitated, but it was a little easier with my first deletion behind me.
Now that I'm 30 pages into my rewrite, I'm able to highlight those pages and paragraphs and hit that delete key with reckless abandon! I can hardly wait to see the trimmed down version that I'm left with when I'm done. In the meantime, I would like to introduce you to my new friend, The Delete Key.
3.13.2010
Motivation Gets Squashed by Goals
Each day seems to present itself with new motivations--or lack thereof.
I have read the first 145 pages of my 282-page, double-spaced manuscript, and have been trucking along quite nicely, taking pages of notes about scenes to add, sentences to remove, and dialog to clean up (or dirty up, depending on the speaker). And now, on this quiet Saturday morning, while my children are still sound asleep and while I drink my coffee and listen to my husband playing World of Warcraft in the other room, I have no desire to look at any of it. This is the absolute ideal time for me to be making some ground on getting to the highly-anticipated next step--my first rewrite. And all my mind wants to do is research publishers and agents and whether or not to submit my manuscript to a site where it be could be seen by many acquisitions editors.
Yes, I know that the darn thing needs to be nearly, if not completely, done before I jump to that step! But for some reason, knowing it and doing something about it are entirely different entities.
So, now I have to wonder about my personality. Back in November, I was really close to reaching my word goal of at least 70,000 words for my novel. I had it figured out that I only needed to write 800 words a day to have my first draft by Thanksgiving. That was a piece of cake, I told myself. I had been writing more than that each day on average, at least on the days I was finding time to write. So all I had to do was make myself find an hour each day to devote to writing. And since most of my story was already in my head, I just had to get it out, right? Wrong! I didn't touch the thing for almost a week.
Now here I am, back to the present. I have been breathing this novel. My characters have been revealing minor details about themselves to me, as well as letting me deeper into their psyche. It has all been in the forefront of my mind for the last week, and all I've wanted is some nice, quiet, uninterrupted time to work on it. Then I foolishly told myself, if I take two weeks to read it (easy, right?) and then concentrate on rewriting just 10 pages a day (also easy), I could have my second draft done in six weeks' time. Good news: It didn't slow me down. I was still working at a nice little clip. But then I did something even worse. I set long-term goals. I actually made a goal to finish this, write the sequel, and be ready to write the third by the time NaNoWriMo arrives in November. Dumb move!
I remember being taught how to set long-term and short-term goals back in junior high, but now I have to ask myself, does goal-setting hold me back? And if goal-setting does hold me back, what is supposed to motivate me?
I have read the first 145 pages of my 282-page, double-spaced manuscript, and have been trucking along quite nicely, taking pages of notes about scenes to add, sentences to remove, and dialog to clean up (or dirty up, depending on the speaker). And now, on this quiet Saturday morning, while my children are still sound asleep and while I drink my coffee and listen to my husband playing World of Warcraft in the other room, I have no desire to look at any of it. This is the absolute ideal time for me to be making some ground on getting to the highly-anticipated next step--my first rewrite. And all my mind wants to do is research publishers and agents and whether or not to submit my manuscript to a site where it be could be seen by many acquisitions editors.
Yes, I know that the darn thing needs to be nearly, if not completely, done before I jump to that step! But for some reason, knowing it and doing something about it are entirely different entities.
So, now I have to wonder about my personality. Back in November, I was really close to reaching my word goal of at least 70,000 words for my novel. I had it figured out that I only needed to write 800 words a day to have my first draft by Thanksgiving. That was a piece of cake, I told myself. I had been writing more than that each day on average, at least on the days I was finding time to write. So all I had to do was make myself find an hour each day to devote to writing. And since most of my story was already in my head, I just had to get it out, right? Wrong! I didn't touch the thing for almost a week.
Now here I am, back to the present. I have been breathing this novel. My characters have been revealing minor details about themselves to me, as well as letting me deeper into their psyche. It has all been in the forefront of my mind for the last week, and all I've wanted is some nice, quiet, uninterrupted time to work on it. Then I foolishly told myself, if I take two weeks to read it (easy, right?) and then concentrate on rewriting just 10 pages a day (also easy), I could have my second draft done in six weeks' time. Good news: It didn't slow me down. I was still working at a nice little clip. But then I did something even worse. I set long-term goals. I actually made a goal to finish this, write the sequel, and be ready to write the third by the time NaNoWriMo arrives in November. Dumb move!
I remember being taught how to set long-term and short-term goals back in junior high, but now I have to ask myself, does goal-setting hold me back? And if goal-setting does hold me back, what is supposed to motivate me?
3.10.2010
Following the Advice of Others
I have read through the first 80 pages of my rough draft so far, and I'm glad that I am not doing the rewrite yet. Yes, I've made a few minor changes here and there, but those were just because I didn't want to miss them the next time through. Whoever all of these established novelists are before me, they really know what they are talking about!
By reading through the first part of my novel again, I have discovered how my early characters are so vastly different from the characters they turned out to be. Much of the early dialog does not quite fit the personality of my characters, and so a lot of tweaking will have to made to it when I do start my rewrite. By not starting my rewrite yet, I have time to sit back and come up with dialog that my characters actually would have with each other. I know my characters so much better now than I did when I first started this journey with them. It would not be fair for me to not represent them properly.
I also made a huge, story-changing decision last night. When I started writing, the story in my head was about three friends, with one being the central character, and the other two being major supporters. As the story came together on paper, more was revealed about my major supporters than I even knew existed. Last night I realized that I have enough backstory to bring out the struggles of the supporting characters more and give them more of the limelight. And since I envision at least one, maybe two following books on these characters, that will give me more to play with in the subsequent novel/s.
So, here's to all of the published writers who are willing to share what they have learned with the world on their blogs. I am very thankful for all of the tips I have learned from them. I hope that as I refine my own way of writing I don't forget to also share what I'm learning along the way.
By reading through the first part of my novel again, I have discovered how my early characters are so vastly different from the characters they turned out to be. Much of the early dialog does not quite fit the personality of my characters, and so a lot of tweaking will have to made to it when I do start my rewrite. By not starting my rewrite yet, I have time to sit back and come up with dialog that my characters actually would have with each other. I know my characters so much better now than I did when I first started this journey with them. It would not be fair for me to not represent them properly.
I also made a huge, story-changing decision last night. When I started writing, the story in my head was about three friends, with one being the central character, and the other two being major supporters. As the story came together on paper, more was revealed about my major supporters than I even knew existed. Last night I realized that I have enough backstory to bring out the struggles of the supporting characters more and give them more of the limelight. And since I envision at least one, maybe two following books on these characters, that will give me more to play with in the subsequent novel/s.
So, here's to all of the published writers who are willing to share what they have learned with the world on their blogs. I am very thankful for all of the tips I have learned from them. I hope that as I refine my own way of writing I don't forget to also share what I'm learning along the way.
3.08.2010
The First Gigantic Step
I just completed the first draft of my first novel yesterday. What an accomplishment! I can hardly believe that I completed it, yet at the same time I want to keep moving forward with it, although it has reached the end.
From everything I have read online, I guess my next step is not to start my rewrite, as I have such a strong desire to do, but to just read through it once without making any changes. This will be the hardest part of entire process, I'm sure, as I'm such a perfectionist about my writing that I'll want to make at least minor changes on each and every page. (I've already reread this blog post half a dozen times, and I'm still writing it!) But who am I to question those who have tread these waters before me? I will take the advice that I've read written in so many different ways, by so many different writers, and I will fight the temptation to start rewriting, read through the novel, and take lots of notes along the way.
From everything I have read online, I guess my next step is not to start my rewrite, as I have such a strong desire to do, but to just read through it once without making any changes. This will be the hardest part of entire process, I'm sure, as I'm such a perfectionist about my writing that I'll want to make at least minor changes on each and every page. (I've already reread this blog post half a dozen times, and I'm still writing it!) But who am I to question those who have tread these waters before me? I will take the advice that I've read written in so many different ways, by so many different writers, and I will fight the temptation to start rewriting, read through the novel, and take lots of notes along the way.
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