Writing also starts again tomorrow.  It’s amazing how motivational a good writing symposium can be.

See you tomorrow.

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?

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.

Written: 5465

Total NaNoWriMo words:  32720

Unbelievable day.  I hit my highest word count to date writing 5465 words.  I got into the groove this evening and just did not stop.  The material flowed well.  A couple big events happened, and some unanticipated scenes popped up.  I’ve been looking forward for a long time to get my party into the forest.  They have to travel through this very old, dangerous forest.  I’ve been looking forward to this part from the beginning of my story.

For the last three days I’ve been trying to get them into it, but things keep cropping up.  In fact, so determined was I when I finished last night that I left a cliffhanger line for today about them stopping just shy of the wall of trees.

Then, unbeknownst to me, something came up that had to be dealt with right then.  A small but semi important reveal occurred, an unexpected creature, and an unanticipated visit from a magical assassin.  Needless to say, 5465 words later and they’re still camped just outside the wall of trees.

I mean, c’mon.  What do I have to do to get them into the forest?  Tomorrow FOR SURE.

That’s the best part about being a discovery writer.  I would still very much like to learn how to outline a novel.  But, having never seen a full novel outlined, it’s hard for me to imagine the scope of it in any practical sense.  So, I’ll just keep doing what I do, and it seems to be working.

The best part is that I think I’ve finally figured out how this book is going to end.  I’ve been wondering that since day one.  And, honest for true, I haven’t known.  I’ve mulled over several possibilities, none of which fit.  But, I think I finally see where the story is going.  From here, I could pretty much map out the rest of the book.  I’m at 77224 total words.  I was shooting for 125,000 words.  I’m afraid, and my alpha readers are telling me, there’s no way I’m finishing shy of 150,000.  We’ll just have to see.  I hope that’s not the case, but what are you gonna do?

Well, I better jet.  I still have writing group stuff to look at, and a little tv to watch to wind down for the night.

More to come soon.

Also, thank you to my newest followers.  I appreciate your support.  Tell your friends.  Come back often.

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!!!

Written:  3144

Total: 22106 in 8 days

Just a quick update tonight.  I’m slowly but surely increasing my daily average.  I’ve been trying for 2500 a day so that I could punch out 75,000 words this month.  My average is up to 2763.25 words per day, which is really good considering day one was only 738 words.

I’m trying to build in a cushion just in case something happens and I have to miss a day or two later on.

Today’s writing was difficult.  it didn’t flow nearly as well as the last couple days.  i fear this scene will need to be heavily rewritten when I come back around to it.  It’s a necessary transition, but I still think it can be written better than what I did tonight.

Plus, I’m FREAKING tired.  I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open.  So, I’m off to bed.  I just wanted to throw out a quick update.  My total novel word count is now 66610.  I can’t believe it.  If I’m shooting for a 125k novel, that’s essentially the halfway point.  If I keep up my pace, I’ll be all but finished by the end of the month.  That’s a terrifyingly fun thought!

Also, Brandon Sanderson’s Alloy of Law came out today.  I’m so busy with writing that I haven’t even had the time to buy it, and I definitely don’t have time to read it.  DANG IT!

Until next time…

Words Written:  3434

What a day.  Today was a repeat of yesterday.  I got home from work tired, had dinner and then went shopping with the family.  By the time we got back, it was late, and we had to get kids into bed.  I was tired and at 10:00 laid down in my bed with serious thoughts of giving up for the day.  One missed day isn’t going to kill me right?  I mean, c’mon, I am over 5,000 words ahead of schedule.

WRONG

I committed to write every single day.  And, by golly, unless i’m sick or dying or bleeding out my eyes or fingers (well, I could probably put band aids on if it was just my fingers), I’m going to follow through with that committment.  So, I watched a quick show to get my mind relaxed and at 11:00 sat down to start writing.

I’ve been excited to write today’s scene because I knew it would involve a fight scene (an assassination attempt) as well as the first real use of magic in the book).  So, I was looking forward to writing it and finding out what happened.  But, at the same time, I attacked it with some trepidation because I wasn’t quite sure HOW to write a fight scene, having never really done a detailed one before.  But, once I started writing, the words flowed.  I didn’t even know this was coming but was sad to find out that two characters died in the scene.  I wasn’t planning on it when the scene started.  But, I didn’t have any choice.  The story goes where the story goes.

Anyway, I exceeded my already increased goal by almost a thousand words.  I’m very happy with that.  I’m trying to build up a nice cushion in case I do actually end up bleeding out my eyes or being sick or dying later on in the month and have to take a day off.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed that that doesn’t actually happen though.

I also went to the store today and bought several big white poster boards which I am going to tack to the walls in my office.  I’m going to make several charts for the story (characters, plot lines, etc.) so I have some visual reminders as I write.  There are too many characters now for me to remember all their names.  I was planning on doing that tonight but that this point, I’m just glad I even wrote at all.  So, hopefully tomorrow I can spend some time on that.  And, let’s not forget that I still need to read my dang book to get caught back up.  I need more hours in a day!!!

More soon!

Written: 4383

Just a quick update today.  I wasn’t feeling very good this evening and had a major headache about 6:00 or so.  I took some Tylenol and tried to take a nap to sleep it off.  Didn’t work.

I actually considered not writing at all tonight because I just wasn’t feeling well.  But, finally about 9:00 or so, I started feeling better and by 10 it was gone.  So, I sat down at my computer and forced myself to write even though i wanted to go to bed.  I’ve never been under such a tight goal or deadline before with my writing.  This has actually been a really good experience for me.

Anyway, I was already having a hard time from the night before because I was coming into a scene that I wasn’t sure how to write, and I was dreading it.  But, when I sat down, it just started flowing.  Before I knew it I had written through the part I thought would be hard and had gone much, much further.  A new piece of information revealed itself that I wasn’t expecting in the story which was fun.  By the time I was done I had written 4383 words.  I would have kept going but I have to be up early tomorrow.  So, I found a breaking point and stopped.  Tomorrow brings a really cool action/magic scene that I’ve been looking forward to for several days now.  Should make for some fun, but challenging writing.

Even with a meager 738 days on day one, I’ve now raised my 6 day average to 2588 words.  As long as I stay above 2500, I’ll make my 75,000 word goal.  AMAZING!!!

Words Written:  2786

% of Goal:        167%

Wow, what a roller coaster of a day.  Because it’s Saturday, I had grand plans of getting a lot of my book read and then writing a ton.  As usual, life kept me busy throughout the day.  I did sit down to start writing earlier, though, and forced out 800 words or so.  I took a break and then got back after it a couple of hours later and finally got to 1250 words.

Now, so you know, even though the NaNoWriMo goal is 1667 words for a grand total of 50,000, I’ve decided to do 2500 a day and get 75000 on the month.  I was just under 50,000 words on my book when I started, and so I figure that 75k will put me at the 125k mark which is right about where I need to be (sorry for the repeat, but in case you missed it before. . . . )  But, I digress.

That first 1250 words today was like pulling teeth.  There was nothing particularly difficult about the scene I was writing other than I just had a hard time getting it out.  It’s amazing how difficult it can be to portray naturally scenes which play out so easily in our minds.  So, at the 1250 mark I went out and rested on the couch for a few minutes talking with my wife.  I had serious thoughts of giving up for the night.  I mean, c’mon, I have a cushion built up at this point.  I’m way ahead of where I should be a couple days from now, so a short day isn’t going to kill me.  But, I made myself a promise that I’d do at least 2500 a day.  So, I forced myself to get up and head back into my office.  It was literally an effort of sheer will.

I sat down and looked at my keyboard wondering how I was going to trudge out another 1250 words.  So, I started writing, and then it happened.

I’m what you call a discovery writer.  I don’t outline.  I don’t plan.  I just write and the story unfolds itself.  So, I get as excited as the next guy when something cool happens I wasn’t planning on.  That’s what happened here.  All of a sudden this really cool thing happened which led to another and another.  Before I knew it my 1250 words had more than doubled to 2786.  I finally had to stop to do some other things and decided that was a good stopping point for the night.  What’s really great is that one of the big ideas that unfolded itself is just screaming to be written down as soon as I open my laptop tomorrow.  I imagine that little scene will take up half of my entire allotment tomorrow.  And, from there, my story goes down a path I’ve been wanting to write for a very long time.  The next couple days of writing are going to be challenging but extremely fun.  I can’t wait.

I think I said this yesterday, but I’ll say it again.  Committing to do NaNoWriMo has been one of the best things for my writing that I’ve ever done.  it has forced me to get Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard (BICHOK - as the Writing Excuses guys like to say.  You can listen to that episode HERE).  By the time this month is over, I should have my first draft extremely close to completion.  That will be, as my son and I like to say, PURE RADNESS!

Well, there’s my update!

The story is flowing along nicely.  I’ve had such a lag in time since I was last writing heavily that I’ve forgotten too many of the details.  I’m now over the 50,000 word mark for the story, and so I can’t remember a lot of things.  I’m putting it onto my iPad as we speak so that I can spend some time tonight and tomorrow rereading so I can get back up to speed on the nitty-gritty.

As I mentioned yesterday, the goal for NaNoWriMo is 50,000 words in the month, or 1,667 words a day.  Other than the very first day, I have written 2500 or more words every day.  I’ve made this my new goal instead of the 1667.  If I keep that pace up, I’ll have written 75000 words before the month is up.  Nothing to shake a stick at.  That will put me at almost 125k on the whole, and I think that from there I should be able to easily push towards the finish around the 150k word mark.  Very excited at the thought of actually getting the first draft wrapped up.  This project has been a dream of mine for a VERY long time.

For today, I wrote 2,550 words for a grand total in 4 days of 8,359 words.  It’s amazing to think about.

I’ve found myself in a few writing situations where I just wasn’t sure the best way to actually put a description down or handle a dialogue, so I’ve had to do a little research reading (poor me, right?).  WRONG.  Not when the research reading is The Way of Kings, Book One of The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson.  If you haven’t read it, you’re missing out.  You can read sample chapters here.  It’s amazing what a truly gifted storyteller like him can do.

I realize I’m going to have a ridiculous rewrite/edit ahead of me.  But, I’m taking everyone’s advice and NOT going back right now in the middle to do that.  I’m going to power through and finish my first draft and THEN work on a rewrite.  The thought of actually finishing this and getting it submitted for publication is exciting beyond measure!