Novel Away! (to the editor)

So much for that...

In my last blog post I said I might be writing from my new website when I posted my next blog. Clearly that's not the case, as here you are at this Blogger blog.

Sigh.

I can't really complain. The dude who is putting together my site is a friend and he's basically working for free. That's the case with my whole team, actually. Graphic designer. Editor. They're all unpaid workers, doing me a solid because they love me and vice versa. So I just have to be patient. I'm sure it will all be worth the wait.

This week's big news is that I passed the novel along to my editor (aka critique partner, who is also my friend and a fellow author, JR Pearse Nelson). She's estimating a two week turn around time. Add her to the list of people I'm not allowed to nag  :o)

In the meantime, I have plenty of things to do. I have editing for JR to work on -- her new novella (Descent, book 4 of 5 in her Children of the Sidhe series), and a short story (part of her new teen vamp serial). When that's done, I also have another editing project from another friend. (More about that later, maybe.)

Plus I have to work on web content for the web guy, and soon I'll be reviewing drafts from the graphic designer.

Oh, and of course I'm still editing my own novel in the background. Nevermind that it's with the editor and I'm supposed to leave it alone. (I don't think that's possible.)

Looking ahead: The fourth round of ROW-80, the writing challenge that knows you have a life, is coming up at the beginning of October (the 7th). If you're a writer or an author, you should check it out. Participating is a great motivational tool, and you'll have a wonderful community of writers to support your work. As an added bonus, I signed up to be one of the sponsors for the next round, so you'll definitely have me to cheer you on!

Happy Friday. Hope everyone has a fab weekend.

Draft? Done. DONE!!!!!!!!!

I meant to post an update on Saturday night, but trust me, it's good that I didn't. No one need witness my mental state at that time.... because...

I FINISHED THE DRAFT OF MY NOVEL.

Do I need to say that again? I sure as heck want to....

I. FINISHED. THE DRAFT. OF. MY. NOVEL!!!

It's a little bit crazy. When I posted on Sept 1, I said that I planned to complete the draft "sometime" in September. I was thinking it would take until mid-month, maybe longer. But immediately after I wrote the blog post, I added 2,000 words to the WIP. Then on Monday I added another 2,000 words. Ditto Tuesday and Wednesday. I wrote 3,000 on Thursday.

My sweet husband actually slept on the couch Thursday night because I was busily writing in bed. He came in, I gave him one of those looks -- the one that says: I am in the creative zone. Get the hell out or I will hurt you. He sneaked away, and shortly before midnight I typed the words END OF NOVEL.

I'm still in shock.

I told myself I would take a break, but the next morning, I was just too pumped. I started pulling the scenes together from multiple documents in to one full draft and doing a light edit. By Monday night, that was done.

The last couple of days I took some time to write a few scene expansions. Not much -- just another 2,000 words. Plus some cleanup work. I'll have to do another round or two of editing on my own before it goes to my editor, author-friend JR Pearse Nelson.

Also, let's laugh at this sentence from my 9/1 post: "My delusional self thinks I can get the website running and my graphics started this month, and done by October. I know that's crazy."

Right. Well.

I sensed last week that the end was coming, so I went ahead and contacted my graphic artist about getting things started. We worked on the concept for a few days. The more I talked, the more I could envision my banner design and the branding style I want to use for this novel. (It's really cool, by the way.)

I also touched base with my website guy. He assures me that the site will be a snap. Can we get it up fast enough for me to write my next post on the new site, NG? I'll make you cookies. :)

At this point, I'm tentatively going to say the book will be available in early November. If the excitement doesn't kill me first.

Woot, woot!

Totally rocking it (sorry for the radio silence)

Uhm... I haven't written in six weeks. Are we still in ROW Round 3?  :o)

In my defense, I had strep throat at the beginning of August and I've had a cold for more than a week. I've been hitting (usually surpassing) my Round 3 goal, but I haven't had time or energy for writing blog posts. When I sit down to write, I just want to work on my WIP. Why waste a precious half hour doing my ROW update if I could put in 600 words?

Sigh. I'm sure you know the feeling.

And now that I've ignored you all for the last month, I miss my writer friends and the ROW community.

So here's an abbreviated multi-week update: The past few days have been all about editing, having spent the previous week on a writing sprint. The explosion of words was just that -- a messy blowup of stuff. I over-wrote the scenes I was working on. Now I have to cut out huge chunks of text. I've removed about 700 words (yikes!), spent three days of what could have been writing time to do the edits, and it's still not perfect. The length is better, so when I come back around to do a scene-by-scene edit I can get tweak the wording to perfection (ha, ha).

Overall I've been devoting lots of free time to my novel. As of my last post (on 7/20) the word count total was 40k. Now I'm up to 85k. I think the final product will be in excess of 100k, but maybe not to the 115k level I previously thought I would reach. (And that's fine. My editor is still groaning at the "behemoth" coming her way. I'm not sorry, JR! :o)

I plan to complete the first draft in September, then start editing. The delusional part of me thinks I can actually get the novel written and all of my edits done this month. Over-reaching much?

In reality, if I can have the novel to my editor by the end of October, that would be glorious. Then she can spend a few weeks with it and I can start working with my web designer and my graphic editor to build my site and my brand. (By the way, my delusional self thinks I can get the website running and my graphics started this month, and done by October. Again, I know that's crazy. I'm just excited.)

So onward and upward, brave writers! I go now to read some of your blogs.... and figure out when this ROW ends. (Seriously, it's still Round 3, right?!)

Sprint out the gate... and stop.

Monday word count: 1,400
Tuesday word count: 1,700
Wed-Sat word count: 0

Since my goal for each week is to write an easy 2,000 words, I definitely did a great job this week. But as the breakdown shows, I succeeded only because I did a whole lot at the start of the week. Hopefully next week I will be a bit more consistent.

(Sorry... that's all I have to say for now. It has been another difficult week, with my brother still in the hospital, and I am worn out. I think next week will be much brighter.)



P.S. Late Saturday Night Amendment: I just sneaked another 800 new words into my WIP, which means I'm about halfway through scene 12. That puts my total word count for the WIP at 40k, and I am about a third of the way done drafting it. Neat. Super neat.

(3,500 words this week!)

Weird Week

What a weird week.

Monday was a normal day. Good, even. I got three things checked off my home-remodeling to-do list, and managed to squeeze out about 750 new words. It was going to be such a great week.

Tuesday morning I got up feeling strong and inspired; a real take-on-the-world attitude. Then I looked at my cell phone and read a text message that sent my whole world spinning sideways. There had been a medical emergency in the family on late Monday night.

The next three days were a blur of tears and prayers, and talking and driving. It was hard to sleep. Even though I was physically with my family the whole week, I feel like I wasn't really here. Mentally I was consumed by the news and events unfolding with my extended family.

By late Thursday afternoon, I needed a break. A real break. An escape. So when I put my daughter to bed for the night, I turned to my novel. I sat down and wrote and wrote and wrote for about three hours, ignoring the need to pee and any other thoughts. By the time I was done (aka too exhausted to continue), I had written some 3,700 words. It was unreal.

Friday morning I wanted to write, but had to wait until the afternoon. Saturday afternoon I got a bit of time, too.

By the end of the day yesterday, my word count total for the week was more than 6,500. My WIP is nearly 37,000 words long. The first 9 scenes are written; I'm halfway through scene 10. (There are 36 in all.)

It was a difficult week, but I'm grateful that I was able to hide away in the comfort of my very own make-believe world for a little while.

I Rock(eted) This Week!

I finally started writing my novel this last week, after six months of outlining. (That sounds really dramatic until I confess that I only sat down to outline maybe six times during the first four months; I didn't get serious about it until early May.)

Having hit the fabulous milestone of being done with the outline, I rocketed into writing this week. My goal is to write 2,000 words a week; this week I write more than 4,900! And that was all done on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday!

The downside of this unexpected plethora of words? I was sick of writing by the time Thursday rolled around. I didn't want to touch my WIP or even think about it anymore. So I've ignored it for three days, and I will continue to ignore it tomorrow. I'm pumped to start writing again on Monday, when I will launch into scene 4. It has a very detailed outline so I expect the writing to be smooth.

My other writing-related accomplishment this week was a bit of numerical analysis. My outline is long, but when I was initially outlining I also did a bit of scene writing. So I wasn't sure how my word count breaks out if you look at outline vs. actual writing...

It turns out that the outline is 12,700 words. The finished scenes (1-3) and partial scenes (10 in all) add up to 28,400 words. (Yowza!) I estimate that I have written maybe a quarter of the novel. If that's accurate... 120,000 words when it is done?*

I'd be okay with that.

Happy writing to you all this week. I owe Anna Stewart a post about outlining; one of my goals for the coming week is to write it. (Anna, I have a feeling we are going to be good friends! :o)


*As a frame of reference: Pride and Prejudice is about 122,000 words. Lord of the Files is 60,000 words. War and Peace is 600k.

ROW80 Round 3: My Goals

Last week I was chatting with author-friend JR Pearse Nelson about our ROW80 Round 3 goals. She was feeling a little bit stressed about balancing writing goals and life this summer, and I spouted some classic Brookeish "all things in moderation" wisdom. In retrospect, JR might have been looking for a cheerleader. Unfortunately I'm feeling the "hey man, it's summer" vibe, so I wasn't going to recommend mountain climbing.

That said, as I was pondering my goals this weekend, I ironically decided to take on a slightly more intense goal this summer:

2,000 words a week

I know that's not a whole lot, especially compared to those of you who can pop out 2,000 words a day. But it's almost double my goal from last round, which was 1,200 words a week. I usually achieved that goal; sometimes I even blew it out of the water.

Last week, for instance, I actually wrote 6,5000+ words. Wowza!

I finished up most of the outline for my WIP during last week's writing sprint. There are a couple of scenes at the end of the story which are still just skeleton outlines, but they are the we're-in-love-smoochy-smoochy scenes, so I'm not worried about how those will flow; I can outline them whenever the mood strikes. Or just write it pantser style.

I was so motivated by finishing my outline last week -- it totals about 22,000 words -- that I worked on the opening scene of the novel. I added about 4,000 words to it. Hopefully today I will finish that scene and move on.

So there you have it! A moderate goal for this round. I'll be checking in once a week and making my way to other blogs when I can. May you all ROW well (and live)!

We're nearly there, I'm nearly there!

Hey, it's Wednesday! How did that happen?

I missed my check-in on Sunday because I was recovering from a large and magnificent family birthday party on Saturday. I spent half of last week baking, cleaning, and otherwise preparing for the shindig. So I knew early on that I would have to get my words written if I wanted to meet my goal, since I was going to be indisposed during the latter half of the week.

And I'm pleased -- quite pleased -- to report that I wrote more than double my goal last week, all in the course of just two days! I put in 2,500 words on my outline, bringing the total WIP word count to 27,000. Wowza yowza.

This week I intend to finish outlining scene 31. That just leaves four more scenes to outline and a few plot points to place, and I will be ready to dig in on the writing. I believe that I will be ready to kick off the third quarter ROW with a complete outline and motivation to write!

I hope this round wraps up on a positive note for all of my Indy friends. Happy writing!

Bit of progress

I was able to meet and exceed my writing goal this last week, with 1,400 total words. That's thanks heavily to a half hour of free time yesterday (Saturday) when I was able to cram in 600 words. I managed to make time for writing Monday through Thursday this week, but since I was mostly filling in and fixing scenes, I only wrote 200-300 words each day.

On the bright side, 26 of the 35 scenes for my WIP are now outlined. There's still a bit more cleanup to do there -- I need to figure out exactly where a few of the key plot points are explained. But for now I'll forge ahead and work on the final 10 scenes. I made a "soft" goal for myself to finish outlining those 10 scenes this month (June). Then I think I want to really dig into the writing in July.

In other good news, if this novel really does get off the ground, I've lined up a web designer and graphic artist to help build my online profile, and a pair of editors to give the book a thorough read. It's comforting to know that I have an end-game in play, assuming I get things done on my end.

Happy writing! We're almost to the end of this ROW!

A Successful Week!

My goal for my WIP is 1,200 words a week. I know that's not a lot but it's what I would consider reasonable given the current chaos that is my life.

This week I wrote 1,800 words. Of that, about half was adding details to my outline and half was actual scene and dialog writing. Not bad.

Overall I've finished writing detailed outlines for 19 of 35 scenes. Scene 17 got most of the attention this week; it's a fairly significant part of the story. But what I wrote (outline and "real" stuff) needs cleanup. I'll do a little more on it during the coming week, then push ahead.

Total word count for the WIP is 22,000. Again, that's mostly outline. I'm not traditionally a plotter so this massive outline thing is new territory for me. I like it. It makes me feel like my final product is going to be a much stronger piece.

I hope all you ROWers are on track to meet your Round 2 goals! We're almost there!

Jumping Back In

Blogs can't accumulate dust, but nevertheless I feel like I have to brush a thick layer of dust off this old thing before I can get started. So here it is, a figurative dusting off of the old writing blog. Swish, swish.

Hello world.

A story idea popped into my head a few months ago and I haven't been able to shake it. And I haven't wanted to. It was the first time in I-don't-know-how-long that I had a new story idea. For many months prior to this new idea, I had been whining to author-friend J.R. Pearse Nelson that my idea "well" was dry. I was beginning to fear that nothing would ever inspire me again. That sounds dramatic but that's really how I felt -- like there were no more ideas inside me.

Then it came. A story about angels and demons. That topic is not in my wheelhouse; I don't write supernatural tales, and rarely read them. But the story seed sprouted in my mind and began to bloom into a full-length tale of love and heroics. I'm totally in love with it, my new little baby. This growing idea.

For several months I've been outlining the story. Sometimes I write a little, but mostly I've just been putting together detailed outlines of each scene in the novel. I started out by writing a full skeleton outline -- a process that took me three weeks of thinking and probably five hours of writing. I've never tried to outline my stories before and I think that's why I struggle so much with my writing.

Since I'm in the writing groove, I told myself I would join ROW-80 at the start of the 3Q round, in July. But then I realized, why wait? I have a writing goal and there's a flexible community of writers just waiting to encourage and advise and inspire me! So here I am. After a year and a half of watching the ROW from a distance, I'm jumping back in as a participant.

My goal is small and simple: 1,200 words a week. 

From now until I feel like I can reasonably expect more from myself.

Wish me luck! And good luck to all of you!