Got back last night from the Life the Universe and Everything sci-fi/fantasy symposium in Utah. What a great conference. So many amazing authors and other industry professionals in attendance. Full blog post/review to come tomorrow.
Writing also starts again tomorrow. It’s amazing how motivational a good writing symposium can be.
See you tomorrow.
Hello again. After finishing NaNoWriMo at the end of last month, I sort of went on writing hiatus. I had big plans to continue in grand fashion and punch out a ton more words on my novel throughout this month. That didn’t happen. I have lots of great excuses, none of which really excuse the failure. I think I wrote 900 or so words one day this month.
So I sat down the other night to start writing again and realized that we’re once again coming up on the deadline to submit for the Writers of the Future contest. I’ve been wanting to submit to this for a while now. You’ll remember from a few months ago that my writing group was working on an anthology of short stories which we were going to epub. That project fell through toward the end, but not before I had finished the draft of my story. I told myself then that I was going to refine the story and submit it to WotF. The contest accepts submissions each quarter. Well, that quarter came and went, and we’re now less than 2 weeks from the end of the next. So, once I realized this, I sat down and decided that I would get back on the stick and finish my story to submit it before the end of December. I hadn’t read it since the project fell part months ago. I actually quite like it. I started reading and editing and pretty soon I had actually increased the word count. I know. I know. That’s going the wrong way. But, I couldn’t help it. I had always planned on making the story a little longer. Our anthology goal was to have stories around 15,000 words. Mine came in a little short at about 10,800. Once I started going back through it I found lots of places to beef up the dialogue, intensify the detail, etc. So, I’m well over 11,000 words now, and I’m sure it’s not done growing.
The story had already gone through a round of critiques with the writing group, and so I have some good direction on where it should go as well as some ideas I have to chance things. So, that gives me only 12 days to get it rewritten, revised, polished and submitted. I can do it.
The good news is that this will be the first time I’ve ever actually submitted my work for a professional contest. Even though I was an english major in college and wrote what seems like infinite amounts of words, I’ve always shied away from putting my work out there for others to see and critique. If I plan on becoming a published author, this is obviously something I’m going to have to get over. The bad news is that this is going to take the bulk of my writing time which means no new material for the Moonstones project for the next couple weeks. We’ll have to see how things go because I would really like to get in some good time over the week between Christmas and New Year.
Wish me luck.
In the meantime, I’m always on the hunt for good writing blogs. I recently discovered limebird writers (through NaNoWriMo) which has grown tremendously in a very short time. There are several authors which post on the site. Check it out. It’s worth your time.
Anybody else follow good writing blogs you’d like to share?
I did it, people. Believe it or not, we made it through, and with 34 minutes to spare.
For those of you tracking my NaNoWriMo progress, you’ll know this has been an interesting month. I started out great, never missing a day. By day 18 I had written just shy of 48,000 words, maintaining an average of almost 3,000 words a day, almost double the 1,667 required to complete the 50,000 words in 30 days. I was on track to hit closer to 90,000 words during the month of November. And thank goodness I was so far ahead. Enter Thanksgiving week.
My family and I travelled to Washington to spend the week with my parents and sisters. My eyes were bigger than my stomach, apparently, considering I had a goal to continue to write every single night during the trip. In fact, I didn’t write a single night, or even a single word during that vacation. Then, when I got back, I was sick and had a hard time getting back on the stick. I knew I was close, and I wasn’t sweating it, but every day that went by without writing, my enormous lead shrank and dwindled until I reached today.
It’s kind of funny because when I didn’t write last night and committed to finish tonight, on the last possible night, I actually had the thought, what if you’re sick tomorrow. LOL. How right I was. I got done with work today and had the worst headache I’ve had in long time. It was so bad that I couldn’t even eat my dinner and had to go lay down. As I lay there in my bed staring at the ceiling at the red projection clock, I watched the time growing closer and closer to my deadline. 7:30. 7:45. 8:00. 8:15. Finally I had enough. Even though my head was still pounding as it had been for the previous several hours, I forced myself into my office to start writing. There was no way in the world I was going to NOT win NaNoWriMo. So I started writing. An hour and a half and 2228 words later, I passed the 50,000 word goal, ending with 50,122 words. I stopped, validated my word count through www.nanowrimo.org and got my winner’s certificate (see below).
I can’t tell you the sense of accomplishment this gives me. I’ve never, ever written so much in such a short amount of time. Not only did I write 50,000 words during november, but I did it in 19 days. I had 11 straight days with zero word count. I’ve gotten into my story in a way I never thought possible. I am well on the way to finishing it, and even though I’m not as close as I wanted to be, the end is in sight. I will definitely finish this book!!!
I think I probably have another 35-50000 words left in the story to finish the first draft. My goal is to finish that by the end of December. If I can finish the first draft by the end of the year, I can spend January and February doing a series of edits and rewrites, getting the manuscript into a form ready for submission to publishers. The thought is intoxicating….
CONGRATULATIONS to everyone who tried (whether you won or not) NaNoWriMo. What a cool experience.
Goal: 1667
Written: 4034
Total NaNoWriMo Words: 27255
Total Novel Words: 71759
Sorry for the missed day yesterday. I think I’m coming down with a bit of a cold. I was so tired last night that I almost didn’t even give it an attempt. But, I committed, and so I forced myself to put my butt in the chair and hands on the keyboard.
I stared at the screen for a long time before I got a few words written. I ended up writing 1115 words last night before I finally gave up. Those took me over an hour. At one point (this is the honest truth), I actually dozed off with my hands still on my keyboard. That’s when I knew enough was enough. So, I went to bed, too tired to even update my blog.
Today I was feeling pretty tired too. My throat’s been a little sore all afternoon after a few long phone calls I was on at work. I was nervous I was going to have a repeat of last night, and so I jumped on the computer much earlier than normal. If my body was going to crash out early on me, then i was going to get as much written as possible.
It was actually a bit of a slow start, and then things took off. I created a new character element to one of my villains that I wasn’t expecting and is going to be really fun to write. I also went back and made a slight tweak to something I wrote a few days ago that’s been buggin me. I know. I know. This is not the time for rewrites. But once I realized in my head how it needed to be, I had to go back and fix it or else it wouldn’t have meshed with the way that particular issue is going to be handled from here on out. So, sue me.
Other than that, things went great. i banged out 4034 words in a short amount of time. When you combine that with my measly 1115 from yesterday, I still end up with 2550 words per day averaged over the two days. In other words, in one sitting I got all my words for today PLUS made up all the lost time from yesterday and then some. VERY happy about that.
My overall average for 10 days is 2725 words per day. I couldn’t be happier. I included a screenshot of my NaNoWriMo states graph for your viewing enjoyment. The brown lines represent my word count each day The gray horizontal lines are the word benchmarks. The grey dotted diagonal line represents where my brown lines (words written) need to be each day in order to reach 50000 words by day 30. So, as you can see, I’m WAY ahead of the game. I’m not supposed to reach 30000 words until day 18, and I’ll hit it on day 11 (tomorrow).
K, gotta run.
More tomorrow!
PS, Thanks to my new followers. I appreciate your following my journey. Tell your friends!!!
