Last Minute Push

Well, I thought I could do it until the bleepin cold kicked in. But I must say I didn't do too badly.

Today I pushed as much as I could. It was my full day at work (I work a 6 day week, 5 short days and 1 long day), but I managed to get a chunk written. I don't know if I'll be able to do anymore writing tonight so I'll post my official JaNoWriMo word count.

Drum roll please........



Not quite there, but pretty close.

Onward and upward! I'll continue this wip into next month because I'm really liking it.

It's been fun! See ya'll tomorrow

It's a wrap!

Wasn't January fun?

I have to admit, I love writing like this! It's fabulous to hear about everyone's progress and have the inside track on their developing stories. I have enjoyed cheering others on and even though I haven't been here as often as I'd hoped it has been a wonderful experience.

Also, I have truly, from the bottom of my heart, appreciated all the friendly support I've received. I know that without this commitment to writing and the kindness and encouragement provided here, I never would have completed the first draft of Tango At Midnight this past month. Never. It would have been an idea that I pushed to the back of my mind, one of those "I'll write it someday" novels. I'm so glad it didn't end up in a dusty corner of my head. Thank you for that!

So while I'll be AWOL during the beginning of February yet again (I'm sorry!) I will be working on my February goal from the first day of the month. At least that's the plan. And as soon as I can I'll check in to see how everyone else is doing and to give an update on Madcapped. Fingers crossed this one goes well!

I hope everyone has a great time beginning anew tomorrow morning!

Thanks, Marianne, for bringing this amazing adventure to life. You are a fabulous organizer!

Oh! I almost forgot! Tango At Midnight, the first rough draft, closed at 51,357 words.

A JaNoWriMo Lesson Learned

Wow.. Here we are the unofficial end of the first version of JaNoWriMo. :) 

Although I didn't complete 50,000 words, I definitely learned how to pace myself for best writing potential. And one thousand words a day is my new goal. My new daily regimen. My new mantra. The pace that works best for me. And the most important lesson I learned from JaNoWriMo.  

Thanks, Marianne for leading the pack, everyone for your support, and continuing this great support system. 

Happy Saturday and back to work! :)  

Saturday check-in

Well, my writing pace certainly slowed down by the end of this month. I'm still really happy with what I got done, and I'm delighted to have this group in terms of accountability and support. It's been truly helpful.

I don't know if I'll write today or not, so here's my grand total for January:



Thanks to everyone for the continued support all month - it's been a blast!

New Month, New Goals, New Blog Header!

Several of you have forwarded your goals, and I'll get them posted shortly. (EDITED TO ADD: I've added the goals for the nine people who emailed me -- go look at the sidebar and if you're not there, I didn't receive your February goals!).

If you haven't looked up at the top of this blog, do so. I'll wait....

..... YES! That's right, we have a new header and a new title. I hope you all approve :-)

I'm excited to look forward to a new month. But, before this one ends, I'd sure love to see EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US post how many words we did in January. How exciting it will be to see what we accomplished!! I can't wait. Whether it was 5,000 words or 50,000 words ... we all moved ahead.

So, yay us!!

JaNoWhat?

I haven't had time to even think of my JaNoWriMo project due to the already sold projects needing attention. Hopefully I'll do better next time around, but right now I have contractual deadlines to meet!

At least I have over 10K on this new idea. I already know how I want to rewrite the beginning, too. All I need is...time!

Write where you are

One of the things I’ve discovered during JaNo is some of my best writing times are when I sit in the waiting area while:

• My son gets his guitar lesson
• My daughter takes her gymnastics class
• My daughter takes her dance class

I haven’t tried writing at my daughter’s swim lessons. Pen and paper? Or handheld computer? Either way, just add water = instant disaster.

I’m at 15,300 words at the moment, which isn’t even close to 50,000. But it’s a lot closer than zero. And I have JaNo to thank for that.

I’ve also discovered things I never knew that I knew, such as there really is such a thing as a vintage (circa 1983) Star Wars pencil case. A good thing, seeing as I gave one to the chess club president.

Go on. You know you want one.

Mired in a non-creative Week

Somehow, I seem to have lost my creative get up and go this last week. I can blame it on the cold but I think it had more to do with what was inside me than outside. This is my first attempt at this kind of writing.

At first I found it motivating to just write. Usually I belabor over a story paragraph by paragraph. This seemed like it let me free. I had no plan, a few characters in mind, and a fuzzy outline of a story I had thought about. But, my story didn't seem to go anywhere.

Then I began another one. Yet I think I slid away.

But I feel very motivated about continuing with the group and am more motivated about the commitment of say 250 words a day. It is more how I write, something that I feel I can achieve creatively, and a good motivator.

Count me in.

Progress? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Progress

Oh, we do?

It's been a busy week full of plenty of writing -- just not much fiction. My report would be so much more impressive if I could count the whiny 2000 words I sent to my writing partner -- the ones where I outlined all the various and sundry ridiculous subplots I've managed to pack into this ... thing ... so far. I practically begged her to say: You're right. It's a mess. Please feel free to give up and go back to your slackery ways. She didn't though. Instead she said something like: I think it's going to be okay. Keep up the good work. Just beware of gypsies ; ) Thanks, C.

I'm still only at 18,801 words. And that is only 7300 words more than what I started the month with. Still, I'm getting at least a paragraph or two down every day and some days the words really flow. I guess I'll keep up the (good) work while keeping an eye out for wandering gypsies.

Saturday check-in on Monday

Although I know I probably won't make it to 50,000 by the end of the month, I'm really happy to have made it this far! 

I tried to get ahead of schedule and bank some words for when I took my son to Berlin for four days this past weekend. The idea was that I'd only have to write 1,000 words a day in Berlin. Well . . . that didn't happen. I took my Alpha and wrote about 4,000 words related to Berlin-with-a-kid but found I couldn't switch voices from travel journalling to fiction - is that a walk and chew gum thing? Or is it just me? Oh well, I was glad to get the travel stuff written because I haven't been doing a great job of that lately on trips so to get back into the discipline of it is huge for me. 

The other thing I did on the trip was read the first two books of the "Twilight" series. I'd already read "The Host" and flew through that (okay, it was somewhat flawed, but still, I couldn't put it down!). Then I listened to an interview Stephanie Meyer did and found her suburban-mom-to-author-story hugely inspiring. It turns out we have soooooo much in common. She's  a mom, I'm a mom. She loves to read, I love to read. Okay, the commonality ends after that but it's more than I'll ever have in common with James Patterson!  What are you reading right now?

Saturday check-in on a Sunday

Well, this is the week I petered out a bit.

I was getting very stressed keeping up the word count, and I also felt I was spinning my wheels creatively. I've also been dealing with a serious bout of arthritis and stress appears to be one of my main triggers.

So... I let go a bit.

For next week, I'm pushing for 5000 - 7000 words.

And I'm delighted to have done as much as I have this month. This has been a wonderful motivator! My current word count is:

The Home Stretch

Sometimes life has a way of giving a person exactly what she needs, when she needs it. That's what's been happening here. I've been given some early morning hours to call my own and that's when I'm writing. I generally begin each day writing but with all that's going on I never thought I'd be able to stick to my schedule.

But, as I said, life has a funny way of evening things out. I've been so busy caring for Hubby and home that I've gotten into the habit of falling asleep (passing out, actually!) around midnight, sleeping for a couple of hours, then waking...and writing. I feel like life is getting back to normal here, piece by piece and word by word. It's all good, and I am grateful.

Oh? My word count? Well, as of this morning, Tango At Midnight is 41,938 words long. I know a lot of that will change when I rewrite, but for now it is very satisfying to watch the story grow.

Now, to find some coffee...

Have a great Sunday!

Saturday Check In

Okay, here's where I am thus far




Not bad but I really had hoped to be further along. Too many skipped days, not enough motivation. I was inspired today, however, to write a scene from my fantasy just so I could introduce a particular character. I have about 1200 words from that so far, so I can't complain there.

One more week left! I'm still hoping it can be done.

And thanks to everyone who's been wishing me well. Slowly but surely I seem to be improving though a coworker is convinced I have bronchitis. Is that contagious??

just posting word count

I'm far short of where I need to be at 50K by month end, but as of today I'm at 22,568 since I started JaNo. Not quite 1000 words a day average, but given that I've found somedays taking out as many as I've written (despite the firm talks I've delivered to my writing self), I'm feeling pretty good. Had planned to do more writing each day on this wip, but too many gotta-do-it-now opportunities that wouldn't be available after the end of the month cropped up--and I'm weak.

May not make the 50K, but I'm still plugging along!

One Week To Go

Plugging along and almost done my revisions and additions for my YA non-sporty novel, PINKED. :) 

I'll admit, I have been neglecting my JaNoWriMo WIP and this week, I only added a total chaotic mess of about 2000 words. But it's okay. PINKED exhausts me. And when I'm done writing and revising, all I want to do is veg, like Mr. Potato in the pic. 

Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever written an emotionally draining novel or story?

 

Happy Writing! :) 

challenged but still game

I was going to wait and make my confessions tomorrow, but I just received the most wonderful email from my accountability partner and felt ready to hit the blog tonight. Anne, you're my hero.

This has been a very challenged week--not challenging, as that implies a lot of highs--but challenged, as in I had to push a lot to get through each day and its barriers. I've allowed myself to get into one of those pragmatic moods, where I don't allow myself to expect things to get worse, but I keep saying "isn't something going to go easy?".

So why did all that change with the email from Anne? Simple--she put the week into perspective. She can see my life more clearly than I can right now simply because she's 1500 miles away and looking in via my daily messages. She reminded me of how I didn't kill a doctor I was sent to interview who was a complete waste of time, and still figured out how to get an article despite his attempt to torpedo my efforts. She reminded that I will be able to send out at least 6 contest entries Feb 1st for a big yearly contest one of my writers groups holds for members, and may even squeak through with a 7th--and best of all, several of the entries will mean probable sales in publications, and will definitely lighten my load in future months as at least one of the entries will mean I will likely already have three monthly columns completed way ahead of time. She reminded me that I had an epiphany in my JaNo fiction project this week, and though I may have to push to get my goal by the end of the week, the fact that I hit this "mountain top experience" means "it's tough then to come down from the mountain."

So what if I didn't get my fiction writing goal yesterday. I still have a few hours to double today's output to make it up and congratulate myself.

Part of my way of starting the new year was to get a calendar just to document my writing each day. Mine has beautiful pictures of gloriously green Ireland, and at the end of each day I hurriedly sketch out how many words I've written on each project I've worked. You would think that while I was feeling challenged I would have the simple brain power to go to my calendar, look at the progress I'd made this week, and just shrug everything off. But I didn't. It never even came to mind.

Instead, it took someone half a continent away to bring it all into focus for me. And having to account here makes me push harder each day to not look like a slacker to any of you either. I know that none of you are going to judge me--but if this group weren't here, who knows if I would push through at all. Those stone walls are awfully hard to break down, but luckily I have so many helpful people handing me the figurative sledge hammer.

Feeling Good

No need to comment, just wanted to post... got another 1000+ words today.



Still way behind in the overall scheme of things, but I have 22,000 words done in Queen and Assassin. I'm shooting for 65,000 total, and have a long way to go.

Wanna do this again in Feb? LOL...

Switcharooney

Yeah, I've done it again. Switched wips. I ran out of steam on my fireman story so I'm reverting to the story I was writing for NaNo 2008 which I actually like and was on a roll with. I only stopped because I reached my goal and had to get back to work on the sequel to Sweet Forever.

Thus far I'm up to 33241 words, so I'm nearing the end, but I have to get back to work. I'm still sick and dealing with sick kids. This cold really kicked us all in the backsides.

So, instead of gabbing I'm going to go and write.

Writing feels GOOD!

I finally managed to squeak in some writing time this morning -- and it felt GREAT!! I worked on "Queen and Assassin", still frustrating myself with the overabundance of dialogue and lack of narrative, but oddly incapable of changing it as I wrote despite my awareness of the lack.

Still... I wrote. Only 1007 words -- I wanted more, but ran out of time. I'll try for more later today.

In the meantime, my current total word count for JaNo is:

Was I Supposed to Write a Novel This Month?

The hall monitor caught me goofing off in the teacher's lounge. Actually, it was at the vet's office where I had to take my diabetic cat because, to use the medical terminology, he is "out of whack." Blood sugar too high. If only my word count were as high as my cat's blood sugar.

Was I supposed to write a novel this month? Uh oh. I seem to have fallen off the wagon and landed in a puddle.

Lots of personal stuff this month, but isn't that true of everyone? Writing should have been an escape from that, but somehow that didn't happen. Instead, the farther I fell behind in my goals, the more desperate I became. The more I pressured myself, the less I could do. I've got five chapters written and I've stalled.

The good news is that while writing my chapters, I laughed. (And I also burned a couple thousand calories on the treadmill.)

I earned some gold stars but there are too many voids. The interesting thing is that pattern of gold stars. It tells me how I work -- and how I don't work. When I get gold stars, I get them every day. When I don't get them, a whole week can pass by. That means I either work every day -- or I don't work at all. That kind of self-truth is pretty ugly but what it says is don't lose momentum. Keep going!

I need to forgive myself for failing to meet my own expectations, let it go, and get back to writing. This little check-in is a good thing (thanks, Marianne), because it allows me to adjust my goals.

What's done (or undone) is undone. But there is tomorrow to do more and to bring fresh hope to my book. So, my goal for the rest of the month (actually, I'll have to stop January 30) is to write 18,000 words.

Did I just write that? Can I erase it? Too many zeroes in that number.

Here I go again -- starting to back down. But, oh yes I can do it. I grant myself a fresh start. And a fresh big fat number. All I have to do is Write Every Day.

Anne AKA smellshorsey, who appears to have give up but has not.