Progress Report

Not much has happened in my writing world this past week.

I do a lot of my writing either early in the morning or when Will is napping.  Well, he's had a  nasty cold and hasn't been sleeping well, thus I don't get either sleep or writing time.

So, since the last time I updated, I've gotten a total of 2711 words added.  Poo :(  But I was able to write just this morning and it felt really good.  And while I don't want to have to get up at 4:30 am to get more words like I did today, I'll keep trying to fit in more writing time.

I just need to learn to write well while child is up and TV is on.  Not sure if that's possible for me. :)

NaNoWriMo Fail

So as of right now I have 12,498 words on my NaNo.  There is no possible way for me to get 37,502 in the next two and a half days.

BUT, I am still determined to finish this project and for it to be at least 50,000 words.  I think I've mentioned this before, but I can do at least 1200 words in a day (that's my new daily minimum, I have to write 1200 words, No Matter What!)  So, when you do the math... *goes and does the math*  I can get this thing to at least 50k words in about 31 days.

Can I turn December into my own NaNoWriMo?  I guess so.  My inability to get 50k this month had nothing to do with the month it self, it had to do with being sick for a lot of it.  And while December can be a pretty busy month, what with church Christmas parties and visiting family for Christmas and such, it's no different than November.

Now, time to set my deadline!  *does some more math and calender looking*  I will have the first draft of Dragons in Space (worst working title ever) done by January 3, 2012.  Just a side note, it's totally possible I can get it done by the end of Dec., but having a few extra days is helpful.


So, overall, NaNoWriMo was okay this year.  I had a good story and I had done a fair amount of research and work before hand, so that made it easier.  It's just very hard to write when you're too busy puking.


Congrats to all of those who won!  And to those of you like me, be proud of the work and words you did get and if you still like your story, continue working on it.


Thanks to all of you who kept up with me on this blog. :)  I'll continue to update this one but I can't promise any kind of consistency.  So go meet me back at Kricket's Konfessions!

Week 3 of NaNoWriMo

So.... I haven't even broken 10k yet... :'(  *sigh*  But I'm not giving up.  I've got 9 days left, not sure I can pump out over 40k in 9 days but I'm going to try!

I got distracted this last week with Little Boy's birthday and getting my apartment clean and such, so there was like no writing done.  And even though this weeks got Thanksgiving, I'm not too worried about it.  I'm not hosting it or anything.  Just going to my sister's place.  All I'm doing is making a chocolate moose pie, and that won't be hard, no actual baking for that.

So I'm not giving up.  I'm going to keep trying and see how much I can do before the 30th.  It's all about not getting distracted and spending all of my time writing with breaks to play with Little Boy and stuff.

And, if you want to get more daily/recent updates on word counts and such, follow me on Twitter.  There's a link on the right.

Thanks for reading and keep it up fellow NaNoers!  We're in the home stretch!

Week 2 of NaNoWriMo

Yes, this update is a little late.  Week 2 was almost as crazy as week 1 the only difference, I actually wrote words and stuff!

And yet, I'm still desperately behind.  I've only got 8477 words right now, and according to the NaNoWriMo Website  I should be somewhere over 23,000 by the end of today.  The chances of me getting over 14,000 words today are like slim to none.  But that will not stop me!

This very helpful site also tells me that if I do about 2400 words a day for the next 17 days I can make my goal.  2400 words in a day?  Possible.  I've done 3000 in a day before, while at work.  So anything is possible.

This third week coming up is going to be fun, but hopefully not crazy.  My son turns two this week. :) *proud mommy smile*  We're not going to throw a huge party or anything, but I do need to make a cake.  It's been a long time since I've made a cake.  Look for pictures of that on my regular blog  in the next week or so.

Well, I've got a lot of work to do.  Writing this blog has been a good warm up for my fingers but now it's time to write some "real" words. :)  Keep it up all you other crazy NaNo's out there.  We're almost half way there!

Week 1 of NaNoWriMo

So Tuesday was the first day of November and the first day of NaNo.  Want to know what I was doing that day?  TMI WARNING! Pooping and puking like there was no tomorrow.  And for a while I did wonder of there would be a tomorrow.  Wednesday wasn't much better.

Thursday and Friday were slightly less terrible.  I wasn't sick, but I was very weak and tired from not eating for two days.  FYI: Not eating and being pregnant don't go well together.

So today I felt kind of normal.  At least enough to sit up in bed and do some writing.  Not well enough to go to a write-in, which made me sad, but well enough that I can take care of my self and Will with minimal help from Daniel (he's been an angel this week, btw).

Today I wrote 2006 words.  Technically I'm still behind (should be at like 8335 words by end of day 5) but if I write about 2000 words a day, I should get that 50,000 by the 30th.  I'm pretty sure I can do that.

If I haven't already linked it, here's my profile on the NaNo site.

And now, I shall take a much deserved nap.  Congrats to all of those who are working on NaNo and have met their goals so far this week.  Keep up the good work!  And to those of who are like me and got a late start, keep at it, we can do it!  Just think, all those wimps who started on time only have to do 1667 words/day, we can do more than that and that's what makes us awesome!

Thanks for reading, love to see comments!

3 DAYS!!!

No, I'm not obsessively counting down or anything, not at all. :D

So, yes, 3 more days until Nov. 1st and NaNoWriMo.  I'll be honest and say that I haven't made any progress on my story, but I feel like I just need to start writing it.  And I can't do that for another 3 days.  But I have been mentally preparing and trying to figure out when I'm going to get those 1667 words in everyday.

For those of you who are participating and if any of you live in the Denver area, I will be attending the write-ins being held every Saturday at Cafe 13 in Golden.  The first one is tomorrow and I'm pretty excited about it.  This will be my first write-in.  Actually this will be my first time writing in any kind of group setting (outside of school).  I'm just super excited to meet other writers.  I don't know many in real life.

Also, if you're doing NaNoWriMo and you haven't read these comics, you're missing out.

And that's all folks!  See you in November!

10 Days

So I was going to wait to update until Saturday, but I won't be around my computer most of the weekend, so I thought I'd update now. It's only 5:40am, it's not like I have anything better to do.

So most of my world building for my NaNo project is done. And I've learned a lot about space, space travel and living in space the past week. Wikipedia is my Bible.

And Daniel, of course, helped me put together some very important pieces of the story. He has the power to say just a few words, make one little suggestion, and my brain goes crazy and comes up with all these ideas. So not only am I putting dragons and space, but elves and orcs too. :)

(I'm wondering if this is going to become a marketing nightmare later on or if I'll just be considered highly original and awesome. Hopefully the later.)

Anyway, that's all that's going on right now. I've started to outline the story but it's hard to work on because my fingers and brain are just itching to actually start writing. But I've got 10 days left before I can.

It is Coming.... Duh duh duh!

NANOWRIMO!!!!!

Yep, it'll be here, in like 16 days. And this year I shall participate. I didn't last year because, well, I wasn't doing much writing this time last year. But this year I have a bright shinny new idea that I've been saving for NaNoWriMo.

As for the Crow novel, I haven't been doing so well in editing it. If you read my other blog you know that I've been sick the past month and it's only been the last couple weeks that I've felt well enough to think beyond whether or not I could keep my food down. So the editing will wait until December. (I can totally edit two books at the same time.... )

So expect some more activity in this blog as I will try to make weekly updates on my progress. For now I'm going to focus on doing more research and some basic outlining so I know what to write for the next month.

Anyone want to join me on this great adventure? If you click on the link at the top that will take you to the NaNoWriMo homepage where you can learn more about it and sign up.

Revisions Have Begun!

So I have officially started revising the White Crow novel. I am hoping/planning on finishing the revisions by the end of the month, but we shall see. I want it finished so that I can work on my new piece for NaNoWriMo.

Either way, I'm really lucky because I have a sister who is a grammar genius who helps me edit my stuff. I have issues with commas (they are evil). And so far the revision process is going well and I'm liking the results. Hopefully it will go quickly now.

And that is all, except for some pimpage. If you're a writer you should be following this blog, Writer Beware. They keep a watch on the publishing world and let you know about scams and other sketchy things that people do to us poor desperate writers.

Thanks for reading!

Little Update

It's been about a month since I worked on either of my novels. But now that we're all moved and settled in, I plan on getting back into the swing of things today.

Over at the AW Forums they're putting together a short story anthology. Entries were due Sept. 1, and I really wanted to enter, but moving got in the way of that. But, I did get an idea for a story that has to do with the WIP. So I think I'm going to work on that so I can use it as a foundation for the novel.

Looking back at my last post, I realized that I need to set those goals and due dates about a month back. Moving really messed up my writing life. :)

Revising & New Project

So, as promised, I finished my first rough draft of my manuscript A white Crow Novel (bad working title) last weekend. It was a glorious day and I spent it running around the internet and proclaiming my joy. Those of you who know me in real life, on Facebook, Twitter, AW and the like, were witnesses to that. :P So yeah, starting tonight I will begin revisions (gotta by ink for the printer before I can start).

And I've come up with my next project. White Crow is Urban Fantasy (UF) but my new project is Science Fiction (Sci-Fi). And not just Sci-Fi, but epic Sci-Fi. As in, has no bases in Earth, more like Star Wars ("A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...") That's a pretty big shift in genres.

While I'm excited about this new project (from here on it shall be known as the WIP) this shift in topics is a little crazy and is requiring me to do a lot of ground work before I can begin writing. World/galaxy building takes a lot of time and research and Sci-Fi is always research heavy. Got to have a lot of basic science/space facts right before you just start making stuff up.

Anyway, so my new writing schedule will look like this. In the mornings when Will is napping I'll work on the WIP. And then in the evening, once Daniel is home, I will work on editing/revising White Crow. I'm planning on finishing a scene a day, so... *checks calendar* if I do that I should have a 2nd draft done by Oct. 6 (this is not counting weekends, I hardly get any writing done on the weekend)

As for the new WIP, I'm not going to set any solid dates on that yet since it's still in the planning stages. But I'll shoot for being ready to write by the end of August.

So, to summarize, I will have the 2nd draft of White Crow finished by October 6th. And I will be ready to write the 1st draft of the Sci-Fi WIP by the end of August.

Alrighty then, that should do it. Writing down goals is super helpful, trust me on that.

Thanks for reading!

Deadline overdue.

Yeah... I didn't meet that July 9th deadline. Life and stuff got in the way. Plus I ended up adding a couple new scenes so it would have taken longer anyway. BUT, I do have just 3 scenes left of this first draft. So I will finish it this weekend! I swear!

Then I get to start the fun revising part, which I really don't know how to do. :) I've never finished the first draft of a manuscript before so now I'll be swimming through all new waters and that's a little bit scary. I've got an idea of how I'll go about it, so we'll try that and see how it goes.

So writer type people, what's your process for revising/editing?

Thanks for reading! Love you all!

Deadline Approaching

So I set the deadline to have the complete first draft done by July 9th and I'm happy to report that I will meet it. :)

Also I wanted to share a picture of my cork board filled with neon colored index cards of awesomeness.

Yep, there's my master piece. I've heard about this idea of mapping out your story on index cards before but I really like how Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell explained it. So I tried it out and that's what I got. The different colors are different characters. It makes me happy to look at it while I'm working.

So I only have 6 more scenes to write out of 49, that's 87% complete. :D Plus, yesterday, I got a pretty good idea on a second book. I didn't think this would turn into a series, but this idea is too good to pass up.

So that's all folks! Thanks for reading, love you all!

Do You Remember?

So I wrote a poem, shocked I know. It's been soooo long. And really, I wrote two, but the first one was sad and sucked, so I'm only going to post this one. Enjoy!

Do You Remember?

Do you remember

Those short drives

From school to home?

Do you remember

The music

And the laughter?

I remember

The heat

And the smell.

I remember

The feel

Of the seat

Do you remember

The discussions

And their depth?

Do you remember

Our wishes

And dreams?

I remember

That feeling

Of the inevitable.

I remember

Knowing

This would end.

Do you remember?

I hope so,

Because I do.

Back to School and Research

You know, sort of. :) For those of you that have the privilege of knowing me in person, you know that me and school really don't get along. The structure that makes up high school and college did not work for me. It was mostly because of the homework. I hated doing homework, it wasn't fun. There was a whole pile of books I could read instead of doing my homework.

Anyway, I've gotten really lucky and I found an independent study course based on the Writing Great Fiction series. I got a great deal for it. (Should have cost me $560 but I got it for $119) So all the material came in today and I'm super excited. I've been wanting to take some kind of creative writing class for a long time but was unwilling to go back to school and online courses were really expensive. So I'll be working on this for a while.

In other news, I'm currently in a researching stage on my WIP. As I wrote this first (sort of) draft I had an on going list of things and facts I needed to do more research on and now I'm working on that. Research is a fun and not so fun process. You spend a lot of time shifting through a lot of information that you really don't need. It's time consuming, but it's worth it. But I have to say that it feels weird to not actually write right now.

Finished the First Draft?

Yeah.... technically, not really. So I had set my self a deadline of completing my first draft of my current WIP, A White Crow Novel (working lame title), on May 26th. Did I make it? Kind of. Let me explain.

When I first came up with this story I thought I could do the whole thing in third person limited with just one voice. I got about half way through and realized that wouldn't work. So I did a few experimental chapters in another character's voice. Then I thought, "Okay, 2 voices, I can do that." So then I decided to skip some random character building stuff that would happen in the middle of the story and jumped straight to the end.

I finished that ending by May 26th. Then I went and talked to a trusted person who I've mentioned way too many times in my blogs from Absolute Write Forums and he helped me to realize that I have a third and maybe even a fourth voice I should consider using.

So in the end, did I finish the first draft? If by first draft you mean I have a full skeleton of a story with some juicy bits of flesh clinging to it, then yes. But if you mean, do I have a fully fleshed out body that just needs some hair, make up and nice clothes, then no. (by the way, I'm planning on some post in the future that talk more about that fun imagery I just gave you).

Anyway, because of some vacation plans that involved parents visiting and an early celebration of Daniel and mine's third wedding anniversary, I have not looked at my WIP in close to two weeks. I plan on picking it back up again on Monday and starting to revise what I have and add some more juicy flesh to this body of work.

So now's it's time for a new deadline! I will give my self a full month to revise and add what is needed so that I can call this a first real draft. So, I will have a completed first draft done by Saturday, July 9, 2011! Wish me luck!

Critiques

So, I'm not even half way through my WIP, but I decided to have my first chapter critiqued by my sister and my friends at Absolute Write. My sister got the entire chapter, all 3500+ words of it, but I only posted the first 977 words on the forum. You can find that post and all the lovely comments here.

Now this whole critiquing process was both good and bad for me. First we'll talk about the good.

Good Things:

A) It was a great lesson in having a thick skin and thanking people nicely for reading my work and taking the time to comment on it.

B) It showed me some of the very stupid mistakes I had made.

C) It gave me some great ideas/tips on what I could do to make it better.

Bad Thing: (notice I said "Thing" not "Things")

Now I want to go back and re-write the chapter and go a head and edit and re-write all that I have so far. This is not good. I can not afford to think that way. Because if I go back now and start re-working what I have now, I'll never finish the story.

There are people that I know that have been working on the same story for many many years but have never finished it because they've spent so much time editing the little bit that they have. I don't want to be like that. I need to finish telling the story. I need to see a completed first draft, all 70,000+ words that I'm hoping it will be. I need to know I can finish something before I go back and try to fix it.

But that is really hard. The Editor in me is dying to go back and work on that first chapter and make it perfect so that when people read it again they will have nothing to complain about. But i know that if I do, I'll get caught in that vicious little editing cycle and I'll never get back out.

So I must press on. Knowing that 90% of the words I type are total shit. I must keep putting my butt in my chair every morning and trying to finish this story. Because if I don't, my MC will jump out of my head, torture and then kill me in the slowest most painful way possible. And she can do it too, that's kind of her profession.

Oh, and as an ending note, I am not sure I'll make my self appointed deadline of May 26th. That gives me only 23 days to write more than 50,000 words. I'll try though, I'll try really hard.

WIP Going Strong

So I thought I'd pop in here and say that my White Crow WIP is going good. I've got 10k+ words so far and the entire story line pretty much figured out. Now the challenge is finding the time to write. I can usually get a solid hour in while my son is taking his mid morning nap, but that's about it.

And I can do about 1200 words/hour. My word count goal for this project is 70,000 words. So, if you do the math, I have 60,000+ words to go, and if I can do at least 1200 words/day then that means I should have this finished in about 50 days or so. And 50 days from now is *goes off to count little boxes on her calender* May 26. ...Wow, I have never put an actual date on when I will finish a book like this. It's kind of intimidating and exciting all at the same time.

Well, I guess I'll say it, I will have the first draft of this book finished by May 26! It's in writing now, I guess I have to do it.

My Muse Rocks!

So now that I'm a stay-at-home-mom I have lots more time to write. Yay! But, my first week home, I didn't do any writing. Mostly because I was being super lazy, but also because I had no idea what to write about. It's been seriously long.

So yesterday I asked my husband, Daniel, what I should write about. And he quickly responded, "I want a short story about White Crow". Now, White Crow is a character that I've had since I was 13 and I've been struggling with her since then. There was a major plot hole in her back story. It was like a black hole in my mind, so that when ever my mind went in that direction it got sucked away into oblivion. But Daniel managed to come up with an ingenious idea that made all those problems go away.

Thus, Daniel is my new muse, sorry Pip. :(