DTD — 484, and the start of Contagion

I wrapped the scene with Mike and Aleksa at the dig…it took off in an interesting direction. Apparently Mike has other things going wrong in his life besides the forged artifact buried in his site, something Aleksa noticed that I hadn’t.

Interesting the way characters play off of each other.

And I started Contagion, the next scene with Sam (my male lead), and found out something about the way he sleeps that surprised me. He’s being called in to the scene of an ugly murder involving two witnesses he needed.

It was a good writing night. I’m tired—long, happy weekend, a lot of brain down-time, in which I figured out the lesson structure for How To Revise A Novel (a very good thing), but in which I did no actual work.

Hope your weekend was wonderful. How are your words?

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41 responses to “DTD — 484, and the start of Contagion”

  1. Sarah Avatar
    Sarah

    A little over 1500 today, a dark alley, a new nemesis, and a little girl without a home.

  2. Clare K. R. Miller Avatar

    Took the weekend off–I was at a birthday party three states away. I thought I’d be able to write on Sunday, but I was too exhausted from staying up all night and having lots of fun!

    533 words today. Cricket kept looking for the elves… and now they’ve shown up. I thought it was going to be a child but it’s a really hot man instead.

  3. ceecee Avatar
    ceecee

    No new words but a LONNGGG day of revising and tightening all plot cards. Tomorrow–I get to make changes in manuscript–Yay! Just started Catherine Asaro’s sphere-magic trilogy and am both thrilled and humbled. Mightily.

  4. Erin Kendall Avatar

    1,072 words today and I’ve got one more scene to finish this book. It’s been in progress for 5 years, so this is really exciting (and a bit surreal). It was a sad scene — a memorial for a dead sister — but there’s hope there, which is good.

    Cheers,
    Erin K.

  5. SCBrazil Avatar
    SCBrazil

    A ten day ‘rest’. The worst of the flu left my body about two days ago but it took me 48 hours to face the keyboard once more and meet up with my characters.
    I did a laboured 200 today, just to wet my feet again more than anything. I couldn’t put it off any longer.
    Good to be back.

  6. Don Avatar
    Don

    A good day 794 words may do some re working the MC not in enough pages. I may have her be with her dad when the White House is attacked and overran, or I may leave her where she is and expand on that we’ll see.

  7. Treelight Avatar
    Treelight

    507 new words for me … and Grevorg has finally got a chance to use his “magic” properly and is now spying on my MC’s, who are totally oblivious that he is after them.

  8. Dena C. Avatar
    Dena C.

    Well I took a three day weekend off from the writing. While I wasn’t actually writing, the story was simmering in my brain and I came up with a scene that I hadn’t planned to write, but needs to be in it. I wrote this morning before work, got 1014 words and discovered somethings about my female lead that I didn’t know before. So it was a good writing day. Hope everyone else’s writing day went as well.

  9. Julie Avatar

    My WiP is up to 12,165 after my weekend’s writing efforts.

    I’ve set my target word count to 1,000 per day, but it’s not set in stone as I’d rather get 200 good words than 1,000 rushed ones.

    Congratulations on everyone’s progress! I love reading all the posts – it’s great inspiration to keep pushing ahead. 🙂

  10. Cameron Avatar
    Cameron

    Well I hit 1000 words (total) as I wrap my first week up – I’m taking a very slow approach to this as I frenzy-write for nanowrimo in November and I am trying to get a hang of writing something daily that is not a two hour slog of words. The 250 word limit suits me well and I take a day a week off to edit (an older complete novel) and another day to do research, edit, generate ideas, or write some more. At 750 words a week it will take me 2 years to write a novel, but I have a feeling it will pick up in parts – it always does.

    1. Treelight Avatar
      Treelight

      I joined here with a rather slow pace, too. That worried me a bit for a time, because I want to write for NaNoWriMo this year again.
      But the practice really helps to stretch the “writing-muscles”. My regular pace has increased now, and I hope it will stay that way or even improve.

  11. Rabia Avatar

    No words last night. Instead I went crazy with index cards and listened a bit to TWC: Motivation series.

  12. Ceallai Avatar
    Ceallai

    +877 words.
    Stopped working on “Sky” until Friday, worked on “Eliane” today. “Eliane” is this fantasy thing I started a few months ago, in which there are 5 sorts of elves, one for each element, and dwarves and a planet with two moons which I’m going to have to find a good name for. I’m writing it in French (have been living in France for seven years but only now managing to write stories in French), it’s a sort of comedy thing. Lots of references to RP and video gaming and other geeky stuff. Just a bit of fun to begin with, but now I’ve been re-writing the outline and it seems to be turning into a trilogy, which is a bit daunting… I guess I’ll just keep writing with what I’ve got now and see what happens. Maybe it’s shorter than it looks.

    1. Karen Avatar
      Karen

      Hee, sounds fun!

  13. Brent B. Avatar
    Brent B.

    yesterday 986

    Nasty little creature from World 800-a.01 has arrived. It’s got needles, a whole bunch of them, and its searching the parking lot with its death clock eyes, looking for billboard girl, who’s hiding courageously behind MC. The creature isn’t interested in anyone else. And they think they’ll be okay if they can just make it to the car . . .

    Of course, I would never let them get away that easy –

  14. Lisa R Avatar
    Lisa R

    864 words. I like where my MC is, but I do feel I am being a bit wordy in the discription. I need to start showing action to discribe instead of just the words.

  15. Khena Avatar
    Khena

    2211 words for me, and I even took the evening off. Worked on the scene I thought I had finished for a while, adding about 600 words to the scene just as my MCs thoughts during the dialogue. It flows much better now and shows how freaked out she is at the moment. Then I wrote and finished a small scene in chapter 14, which has 3 other incomplete scenes. I’m not really even sure if chapter 14 is necessary to the story, unfortunately, so I’ve been putting it off. I really want to write it, and had a great time the 3k words there so far. But, as I wrapped up chapter 15, I realized I had given myself a reason to include it in the chapter. The whole reason she is allowed a private audience with the King in chapter 16 is because of what she did in chatper 14. It still amazes me how the answers to my writing problems come to me by writing ahead and skipping it. It just doesn’t seem logical. =)

  16. Jessica Avatar
    Jessica

    No words this weekend. Saturday I had a great time with the twins – never seen toddlers that well behaved before! But I think I must have lifted one wrong because woke up Sunday with a pulled muscle in my back. It still hurts today too.

  17. Lila S. Avatar
    Lila S.

    Just finished up 372 words. So far so good. Yesterday I sent a query to a magazine for an article I want to write. Even if it’s rejected, it felt good to take that step. Started working on writing for that, since whether the article is accepted or not it’s something I’m inspired to write about.

  18. Larkk Avatar
    Larkk

    Worldbuilding is much harder than anything I’ve done so far, but useful. I do need to do this. It shows me where the holes are and hopefully will give me a way to fix them. So I did a lot of that and added 620 words to the novel.

    1. Treelight Avatar
      Treelight

      I’ve experienced this myself about a week ago.
      I used to expand the world and add new characters as I wrote along. But eventually I felt that everything was going a bit out of hand and I was creating more wholes and questionmarks in the background than was good for the story.
      Taking a good look at what I had, needed and wanted helped a lot and a lot of extra info about the world and what might happen in the far future or happened in the past was the result.

      1. Larkk Avatar
        Larkk

        It’s been like going to a strange place and not knowing what to pack until I got there. My initial 6 page outline proved too flimsy, and now I’m finding that I need to go back to the beginning of my world to explain how things got to be the way they are, kind of like you said. I’m making progress, a little every day.
        By the way, I’m planning on NaNoWriMo this year too 🙂

  19. HannaBelle (aka Belle) Avatar
    HannaBelle (aka Belle)

    744 words. Scene not done, I just needed to stop. Not sure how to get Marcello gracefully out of the room.

  20. Cat (from HtTS) Avatar

    1050 words in my WIP and 1929 words translation. This was a really successful day.

  21. Laura Avatar
    Laura

    560 words and more confidence. I think I’ve figured out the villain’s motives… let’s see how it turns out tonight.

  22. Minze Avatar
    Minze

    540 words in ten minutes.

    1. Treelight Avatar
      Treelight

      How did you do that???

    2. Sarah Collins Avatar

      Wow. I type at a respectable 90+wpm but I sure can’t THINK that fast! *Swoons* ;c)

  23. Leah Avatar
    Leah

    630. Now must dash to teach Pilates!!! Running late for the gym!

  24. Sarah Collins Avatar

    I added 409 words while working on the Edit-IP. I’m up through chapter four (of 25) and things are rolling along pretty well. As it turns out, I’m up at 2 o’clock in the morning because an idea for a romantic suspense hit me like a ton of bricks and I’m going to assume my inability to get to sleep is a fear of forgetting any of the details. That said, I had to create a new folder and take notes! I’m excited about it now, but we’ll see how I feel in the morning. Make that later in the morning, LOL.

    No new words on the WIP#2. I’ve been throwing my time to the edit for now.

  25. Patricia Avatar
    Patricia

    2,827 words today, and we get a closer look on the creature’s dwellings when they migrate to better pastures. I also got the sudden urge to see a particular scene through the eyes of my heroine, and she decided to tell Ryan her part of the story and what happened while he was fighting death. Very fun, and the muse was chatting away! We even get to see how their houses are made. 😀

  26. Ieva Avatar

    Phew. I’m back on da horse. Still half-sick (sore throat and running nose) but I did 4300+ words in weekend (Sat and Sun), moved a plot to where it belongs and all in all had a good time. My writing goal for the week is covered abundantly too.

    Thank you all for prodding me along! This WaBWM project helped me a lot.

    1. laurel Avatar

      Feel better Ieva an well done. Opening bridges and all.

      Sending healing energy your way.

      L

      1. Ieva Avatar

        Thanks 🙂 My soul appreciates it even if my stubborn sore throat pretends not to notice.

  27. The Pencil Neck Avatar
    The Pencil Neck

    2267 words. (Revision)

    Work spilled over from yesterday into today but it wasn’t enough to interfere with writing. And we got the problem at least patched up enough so that people can use the system. Still have to track down who wrote some bad code.

    Two scenes written:

    In the first, my thief and his vampire mentor went to question a crime lord about who had requested that certain items be stolen (like the vampire mentor’s ebony and silver necklace) and after torturing the crime lord a bit, get the name of a mage. However, they also find out that the mage is going to use the stolen things to create a spell that’s going to kill all vampires. Wanting the crimelord to suffer, the mentor collapses his windpipe before grabbing the thief and hurrying out. (This was a mistake as the Sheriff is going to find the man shortly after they leave and he gets the warning about them and where they’re headed.)

    In the second scene, my thief and his mentor go to one of the other vampires who had something stolen hoping to enlist her as an ally. But they find out that she was behaving strangely and has disappeared. This leaves one more vampire to go to for help and he’s not a vampire the mentor likes.

    1. The Pencil Neck Avatar
      The Pencil Neck

      BTW, I might make it so that the Sheriff doesn’t get to the crime lord in time. However, if I do that, I lose a bunch of tense scenes later on. I need her to give hm what she thinks will be a killing blow that will make him die slowly and in pain but give him time enough for someone to find him and maybe save him.

      1. Gabriele Avatar

        Poke something sharp and pointy into his belly. 🙂

        It can take several hours to die from a gut wound and it won’t be fun.

        1. The Pencil Neck Avatar
          The Pencil Neck

          I like it.

          That will give them plenty of time to get him to a healer and will be very messy which will be fun to describe. And it will make him decide to go after them in revenge.

          Thanks!

  28. KQ Avatar
    KQ

    I didn’t actually count, something like 500-ish for the whole weekend. My word count may be going down for the next few weeks. My boss has put me in charge of a new project at work. I thought to myself, ‘Don’t you know I’m writing a crappy novel?’ Geez, what are these guys paying me for? 😉

    1. Larkk Avatar
      Larkk

      LOL, I know the feeling! It’s sometimes a struggle to find a new way to get that word count into my schedule. But it’s almost always worth it when I do. 🙂

  29. Elise Avatar
    Elise

    No words today, but I spent time organizing my notes and research. I have some legwork to do before writing the next scene. Or rewriting one or two of the ones I wrote last week.

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