Finished the detective scene, moved on to the scene where my archeologist gets a call from a colleague asking her to check out his find.
I know what I want to write tomorrow, but I’m way too tired to go any further with it.
I’m happy with what I got. I’ve done two nice cliffhangers in the first two scenes. Don’t think this short scene will offer an opportunity for one, but I do think I’ll get some nice conflict from the one-sided romance issue.
How are you coming with your project?
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I took my writing day off and worked on the mess we used to call my office. We moved and the room that will be my study is not ready yet, so I am mostly in boxes sans bookcases. It is still a big mess.
At the plant store I found a wall decoration that I might hang in my office instead of outside. It’s a sun with a very distinct round face. He is looking off the right with a half smile.
This weekend, with writing, I plan to do some work on the timeline and sequence of scenes.
Not much writing today, and to be frank I’m quite surprised I have had any writing done so far, thou that may be due to a lack of internet. Too tired to post much I’m afraid, and I have to wake up ridiculously early tomorrow, but here is my word count for this week so far.
1,348 words Sat.
939 words Sun. (end of chapter one!)
866 words Mon.
1, 263 words Tues.
745 words Wed.
All good counts. Hang in.
347 words tonight. I began Scene 2 of Chapter 1. In Scene 1 the MC and her BFF arrived at Port Canaveral for their senior cruise and had a showdown with the MC’s arch nemesis in the parking lot. MC was really upset that arch nemesis will be on the cruise too, especially since he usually gets her into lots of trouble and seeks her out to torment her. MC is determined not to let him ruin her cruise.
In my 347 words of Scene 2 MC and BFF have just arrived in their cabin and are checking it out. Muse is throwing me lots of dialog for MC that seems harmless now but will become the height of irony later in the story when everything goes majorly wrong. I’m so excited by all the Muse Bombs I know will be going off when I get further into the story! 😀
427 words and a dead stop. ugh
I really like my magic system but it doesn’t allow for magic gizmos and objects that do magical things. I sort of slipped one by yesterday when I was writing and I really liked it and how it worked. and I thought, well, I’ll make it fit (you know, like Cinderella’s ugly stepsister and that dang shoe). But now I have about 4 more magical ceremonies and they all kind of need gizmos or at least magical people present to do the cool stuff. ugh. i’m stuck. I need to rethink… everything… The easy solution is to just take out the magic and make it the DMV. ugh. [hides head in shame at boredom of next few scenes] I have to face it, I know. I just can’t do it today. Need to let my muse and characters have a pity party before I do that to them.
I shouldn’t get too excited because she’s a fickle beastie to please, but tonight as I was brainstorming for my NaNo novel, I got into one of the most interesting conversations with my muse that lasted about 500 words. I learned some really interesting backstory to my main character, and I can’t wait to hear more about these characters in my book.
This is especially good news because I’m about to move to college in a few weeks, and I’m a little stressed about it, so I’m never sure how much time I’ll get with her to just sit and talk, and it’s heartening to see that I may have quite a bit of good info by the time November rolls around! ^_^
Oh, and all of this is after almost a year of not really writing much at all, so it’s always good to hear from someone you’ve kind of lost touch with 🙂
VERY cool.
Good luck at college, too. You’ll find time for your muse.
Made 1340 today and began setting up for revisions. There will be blood.
835 words yesterday. I actually went back and did a scene I’d skipped earlier–an important early scene in which the protagonists see a street magician performing, and while Jack is very impressed, Cricket thinks he’s good but, because she’s had conjuror friends, knows where to look and can see exactly how he does the tricks. Her ability to look precisely where others don’t want her to is going to prove very useful.
Finished up chapter five with 200 words and started chapter 6 with 211 words today. I have now reached 16,700 words. Today was really exciting. I haven’t found a writing club in town yet so I started my own. One other person and I sat together drinking coffee and reading each others stuff. He read through chapter one. It was like sitting next to a loaded gun, my friend and I don’t hold back, I braced for the worst. Here is what he said.
Friend’s thoughts
“Starts out with a bang!”
“Scene two jumps in too fast and needs developement, not sure where these characters are now”
“Easy read”
“Keeps me wanting to read more”
“Man this is motivating me to write more”
OMG! I almost wet myself! His critic of Chapter one was spot on with what I felt I have. Yea my scene transition was weak, but I had no clue as to what I was doing. After Chapter 3 you can see the huge improvement of scene building. I will continue to forge ahead and not fix this until I am done.
Does anyone have suggestions on what we should discuss when we meet? It was our first meeting and we just read and talked guy crap.
Just read and talk guy crap some more. Seriously. Our writers’ meetings, we ate, we took turns listening to each other read chapters while we took notes and critted, (but there were a lot more of us present), and we threw M&Ms at each other and laughed and just hung out.
If you’re reading and critting, you’re getting everything out of it that you need to get.
Thanks Holly
487 from me today. I’m hoping my word counts will be higher from now on as I’ve decided that I’ll do no more fiddling and tweaking until I have the entire first draft down.
Well, see how long that lasts.
Julia GD, I hope your migraines soon ease up. My hubby used to suffer terribly with them but they suddenly stopped and he hasn’t had one in the last 6 years.
I had my teenager-niece with me for a sleep-over, but she was quite happy to be glued to my laptop. So I managed some 293 words on my mini-computer.
I’m beginning to get a bit annoyed that I write only so little each day, even if I’m rather proud that I indeed regularly again. After all, when I started this story for the NaNoWriMo-project last fall, I wrote about 1500 words most of the days.
Ok, that was very stressful and I had to take a break from writing after that, but still I don’t like this slow progress.
Try increasing it a bit. If it stops being fun, or if you find yourself making excuses to not write, then go back to smaller word counts. Find out what your happy speed is.
If I’m writing fiction in the morning, mine runs around 1500 to 2000 words. At night, 500 seems about perfect, and some nights when I’m sleep, 250 or 300 is great.
Just remember, though, that writing regularly, even if slowly, will finish books. Writing quickly, burning out, and quitting out of frustration won’t.
Thank you for the encouragement and the advice.
I definitely won’t quit this story. I’m determined to shape it into a book, no matter how long it takes. After all, I’ve never gotten so far with one of my attempts.
While I was away over the weekend, I had some good writing moments in the train. I had forgotten that this can work quite well.
Way to go, Holly! Cliffhangers are the best part.
Nothing for me to report for this Wednesday. My migraines again got the better of me. Somehow I’ve been having them so often this month.:(
Hugs. I’m so sorry.
Spent most of yesterday clearing out my office, aka the “let’s toss this in there and shut the door and we’ll sort it out later” room. Now I don’t feel as if there’s an avalanche building up behind my back while I write. (Big sigh of relief).
Upshot–got only 272 words in yesterday, but it’s still more than I had the day before and was a good segue into next scene.
Will spend today and tomorrow getting in a larger # of words, and prepping for the revisions on another WIP, starting Monday.
609 words. I worked more with my new character. I feel really disjointed right now with the direction of my novel. My muse is pushing in one direction and I had ideas for a different direction. I really feel her and I need to spend a weekend together to get on the same sheet of the novel.
Wednesday night I got…0 words. I waited too late in the evening to write and got too tired to get in my 250 words (I’m on Week 10 of my first pregnancy and turn into a pumpkin around 10 pm or 11 pm most nights). Tonight I will get in my words much earlier in the evening–8 pm or 9 pm would work best I think. Good news is that I did get in a nice walk with my little dog and got to think about Scene 2 during the walk. Now I got most of the logistics of the scene figured out for tonight’s writing! 🙂
Congradulate yourself on getting anything done during your first pregnancy! When I got pregnant with my first, I started work at 6am, so I was passing out at 7 every night. (It was kinda scary before I realized I was pregnant…) I didn’t get anything done I really wanted to do for the first 3 months.
Hang in there, you’ll be getting more energy soon =)
Congratulations on your pregnancy from a mom of 5! =c)
Thanks, Khena and Sarah! 🙂 It’s been very hard to get things done but now that I’m nearing the end of the 1st trimester I am finally able to get some stuff done, though it is still a ton less than I can usually manage. Tonight I started writing at 10:30pm and got in my words before I got too tired to write. It really helps to have all this encouragement on here and to have such a low word count (since I’m doing the beginner’s version). Good luck with your writing tonight!
I think I slept every minute that I wasn’t working with two of my three pregnancies. I had a deadline on a book with the third one (was writing Diplomacy of Wolves at the time), and what I most remember about the pregnancy was WANTING to sleep.
Congrats, hang in, and be nice to yourself. Being pregnant is a BIG deal.
Thanks, Holly! I’ve had the realization that I need to listen to my body’s demands for extra rest and a slower pace and am holding to it. It’s become my first priority to take care of myself and the baby…guess that’ll be a permanent priority change once baby is born!
836 words today, and I realized I need more plot cards for the next part of the book.
Have fun. Doing plot cards is such a blast. 😀
I got 700 words. And the Draft is over 5000 words. Yay. I am off to Gothenburg tomorrow, and will take tomorrow, and the weekend off.
Felt like death and didn’t write yesterday. (Feeling better today BTW). The day BEFORE yesterday, though, I wrote 641 and finished plotting out the novella I thought up this weekend. I’m pretty pleased about that.
Glad you’re feeling better.
1325 words yesterday. I am still writing the scene where the maid is talking about the MC. It is almost done.
Reading all your posts, I was getting worried about how/if I could right the tough characters, the villian, the bad guy, etc. because in planning, I barely have them sketched out. Well, I was pleased to find out that the interviewer is a bit of a perv, with socially acceptable predator-like tendencies.
This yukky aspect of this character came out while I was writing. That was kinda cool, like the “magic” side of writing.
😀 Congrats. I love the magic side of writing, the way that things suddenly fall into place as if you’d planned them, but the conscious part of you never saw them coming.
I love watching this working for you. Cheers.
Just over 200 words last night on my male protag, and a great big giant jumble of clutter on my female protag. Once I tame it – I can see she the changes are going to strengthen her pretty significantly.
720 more telling than I’d like but it’s a precursor of things to come and it subtly hints at some crucial info regarding the negative effects of the dual/polar magic system.
There are no MCs in the scene, it’s a minor character POV. I was having trouble coming up with questions until I realized that I needed to make things harder for the leader of the rebellion – the mastermind behind this scene.
Part of my problem, if I can share my thought process, is that I was asking too general a question: What is wrong with this scene? That got me no where fast.
Then I thought: what can I change or tweak to make this more page-turning? Again, too general for my muse to care answering.
Finally this morning it occured to me – I need to be way more specific in my question to get a specific answer. DUH! So what is the scene really about? Because it’s not REALLY about the POV guy – he’s just following orders…. this is about the guy who gave the orders. Bingo!
So how do you make it harder for someone with a lot of power and the army on his side who wants to turn the people against the government? Kill some very important allies and stir doubt into the soldiers.
Feels like I just got my writing mojo back! 😀
Thanks for sharing your thought process! Looks like your specific questions worked like a charm. I will use this tactic when I get hung up on a scene or need to add more conflict.
Awesome. And beautiful work figuring out your process!
2157 for yesterday. I finished up the scene I wrote the ending for first, and I think it turned out rather well. I also wrote a small, but very important scene after that where my little group finds their first Dragon Stone. I was ready to quit for the day, but it turned out I was about 30 words short. Of course. So I went back to Chapter 7, since I never finished it. So for the next few days I’m going go concentrate of the piecemeal scenes I left behind in Chapters 7,8,9. Since I’m not having quite the trouble I was then, it’s time to go back and finsih them.
Nice plan.
1041 words. And meh. This is supposed to be a major turning point, candy bar scene, but it’s not going at all quite like I thought it would. While I’m tempted to dump what I have so far and start from scratch, there is a shotgun in there I hadn’t planned on. That shotgun might salvage this thing.
Remember to stop and ask yourself questions.
Sometimes just sitting down for ten minutes and writing on “What is it about this scene that isn’t working for me, and how might I change it?” can throw you a handful of good solutions.
Good luck.
531
An earlier scene I wasn’t sure about has hooked itself firmly into this one. The MMC has done a bad thing, endangering the one he loves. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Especially because the dark twisted part of me likes it. After all, power corrupts even the good guys.
Oh well, I’m going to make it all better in the next few scenes, what he had done will end up saving her life…
310 words, and changing the middle of the book (nasty smile)…
Oh, my… That sounds ominously promising.
Omining?
506 for me, and the feeling that I’m waffling on a bit. Mental note to be more succinct tomorrow!
1000 words this am. Half of it will probably be scrapped as I have two different endings for the scene. I’m in a quandary one version feels safe and the other risky (and slightly wrong). Have left them both in for now and will edit one out at the end. Will have to see what happens next to see which one works best. So in reality probably 500 words today.
Kick ass. You get to count all the words you wrote. Not just the ones you keep. ;D
Hi Holly, Hi people. O for me for a few days, although I have rarely had a minute when I haven’t thought about WIPy, but I ahve to face the ugly realisation that to do anywriting at the mo I will have to haulk out of bed earlier, yucky, I am so tired all the time that hardly seems an option, hoping the idea that i get to write will be the candy bar to lure me from beneath the covers.
Cheers to all you who are doing it!
141 words added (many more changed) and the first ten pages (of ninety) of revision done. I need to eliminate every reference that my MC is a foundling until she find out close to the end of part one. I decided mid-way through the first draft that she would rather find it out by herself than having known all along. It’s a lot of work but it’s coming nicely.
[g] That sort of tiny detail can add so much power to a character. Good luck with finding all the instances. And congrats on your progress.
675 words today. I’m really looking forward to writing the next scene where things seriously heat up.
400 words straight. I am surprised at myself about that since yesterday half of my brain was sucked out by real life and the other half was busy wondering where the first half went.
But I just had to pass the 40 K mark and that I did 🙂
Oooh, congrats on the 40k milestone. That’s a big one!
How lovely if awaiting moderation is related to naughty. I wonder if my post even shows up now. It makes me think I will go into hiding and lurking, because moderation relates to moderate which seems very unrelated to novel writing with wonderful known and unknown friends and characters. Naughty is like the night when a new constellation whispers a twist for the plot that points to a blissful interlude.
Thank you Ieva
Well done Ieva
Perhaps I’ll post my post from fourteen hours ago here and get past the awaiting beheading bit.
I’m trying to create the rules for, or laws of, the story within the story world. Are rules and laws different in terms of giving form to a world?
Planning to write for a few hours after I dance for fifteen minutes.
I had a short vacation, and in the last five days managed to wite 442 words. I am a little dismayed. I don’t know what my problem is, but I suppose I’ll figure it out (I hope sooner rather than later!)
*waves*
For me, the problem usually is
a) I don’t know what I want to write (haven’t figured the next scene out),
b) I think I know what I want but it’s not what I really want (the next scene is sorta plotted but there is an opportunity for a better one),
c) I’ve gone wrong in the previous scenes so writing more would be useless as the previous scenes have led me to a wrong direction.
The good news? If this is so, it means that there is something better than you imagined ahead 🙂
Hi Ieva
Your words of wisdom are always helpful. I left a post here, but my last two posts are awaiting moderation, (sounds like awaiting a beheading), so they are in hiding, for now. I think this is a metaphor for creating the language too. Also thank you for your other post. Write well…
I have gotten caught in the “awaiting moderation” limbo a few times also. All but one of my posts finally got posted, but I never could figure out why it even hung up. I think the interface has a glitch. I contacted WordPress admin, but no response yet.
I think that the comments “await moderation” when the program suspects they’re being naughty 😉 I’d add some examples of naughty words but that would be counterproductive
Hi Belle
Then I don’t feel so alone in the “awaiting moderation” melange, which feels, to me, in my very exaggerated feelings mode, like I am in the Tower, waiting to see if I will be beheaded or not. Hyperbole and the Hanged Man Card in Tarot seem to be the executioner today and “awaiting moderation,” the words have a ghastly, very non related to novel writing sharp snap to them.
One of my posts got on, but the next day the same awaiting moderation appeared – very not novel like…..
Thank you for your post
On the whole moderation issue…
I use Akismet to hunt and kill spam. Akisment works by gathering data on all spam tagged as such by all users of Akismet, as well as gathering data on all posts marked as good.
So if you run afoul of anyone who is using Akismet and they mark one or several of your posts as spam before deleting them, you’re likely to end up in the moderation folder of other Akismet users.
In general, Akismet is a really good thing, because all of those miserable “blue pill” peddlers and garbage posters are quickly weeded out of everyone’s blogs.
And Akismet does hunt for too many links in a post, for flagged words, for patterns that only it knows…
It is, however, entirely possible for a non-spammer to be dumped into the spam on one blog because of pissing off a blog owner (or going off-topic, or any of a hundred other reason) and to suddenly end up in other bloggers’ moderation folders without ever having done anything even remotely objectionable on those sites.
Which is the only reason I can think of that any of you are ending up waiting for your posts to show.
I’m trying to create the rules for, or laws of, the story within the story world. Are rules and laws different in terms of giving form to a world?
Planning to write for a few hours after I dance for fifteen minutes.
1181 words today, and I’m thrilled with it. In fact, I’m so darn pleased with my work that I’m walking around with this goofy grin on my face, which is REALLY confusing the heck of the kids and the H. (“Hey, why isn’t she yelling at us? What’s so funny, mom? TELL US!”) I’m so, so close to the end. All of the secrets are coming out now and I can NOT believe I’m about to finish the first draft of my first novel!
Fabulous work, wow….well done..
Yay! Keep the goofy grin right across the finish line.
Thank you both! I’m trying to pump myself up for the ol’ day job (writing nonfiction) so I can get it done and get back to “Jack” but it’s so hard to do. (You’ll note that I’m here instead of working, LOL). My characters are so real to me that it’s hard to believe I only “met” them this spring! =c)
I love the way our characters are real in our lives. I am newly single, so I had dinner with an ersatz date, and he did not realize there were four of us. Two of my characters also sat at our table and revealed a myriad of merriments and wickedness, that made me smile more than I would have otherwise.
Enjoy…
Congratulations, Sarah! That is so exciting! I can’t wait to see you post about writing that final scene and finishing your novel!
You and me both, LOL! Thank you so much for the support!
You Go! Cheers!
Go Sarah!
Fantastic, Sarah. I’m so excited for you. Wrapping the first draft on a first novel is a once-in-a-lifetime event. When you hit it, take time to celebrate. It’s a big deal.
Thank you again, guys! Now I’m even more excited than I was, LOL. This group is AWESOME! Thanks so much for opening the door, Holly. You may never know the true extent of your impact here, but I’m guessing it’s a big one! =c)
Congratulations! I’m so happy for you. I hope you will share the magic moment when you get to put “The End” on it. lol
Oh, I will! I’m thinking two weeks. Depends on how much time I can find with the kids underfoot and the clients finding me left and right. (I must be the only person in the world who gets paid to write AND to work online and STILL does not own a laptop!) If I had a couple of days to myself, I’d be finished NOW! Or, um, in a couple of days. LOL.
Thanks for the support!
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