Weekly Word Count

Another crazy week for me. By Friday I'd only written 6,436 words. I don't usually write at all on the weekends, but with last weeks total of only 841 words I thought I'd better give it a shot.
Of course, the kids were home and I didn't want to abandon my husband with both of them so I brought my daughter with me to the library. She's kind of a bookworm, and we were heading to "the big library" so I thought we'd check her out a few books and she'd settle in for a long read. How could I have been so wrong?
After we got her books and sat down she wanted to get a drink. Then another drink. She'd tap me on the shoulder telling me to, "Look at that cute baby." or say, "Mom, feel this. I think it's gum.".
Then she wanted to ride the elevator upstairs. "Come on Mom, just ONE time!"
Okay, I thought, we'll ride the elevator up to the top floor and I'll rent one of those study rooms. We could go in there together.
It would be like a tiny jail cell for her. No water fountain, nobody walking by, no elevator, no distractions. I could finally get some work done!
I was wrong. There was a key! The fact that she could lock and unlock the door proved to be too much for her to resist. She suddenly needed to go to the bathroom, "I'll be right back." she'd say as she walked out the door with the key and a new air of sophistication. Or, "I have to get another drink of water." or "There's this book I want to check out." In and out. In and out, until finally I'd had enough.
Needless to say I didn't get much done. I left after writing only 1,557 words, giving me a total of 7,993 for the week.
When we got home she told my husband how much fun we'd had and how she couldn't wait to go again.
Oh well, lesson learned.
 How many words did you write last week?

P.S  It's two o'clock on Monday, February 17th. So far my word count for the day is zero, and I've almost finished an entire box of Girl Scout cookies! I'm not off to a great start!

Weekly Word Count

My total word count for the month of January, in case you're interested, is 40,325. Not quite up to NaNo standards, but still not bad.
On Monday the muse was with me and I wrote 5, 572 words. I had to count twice to make sure I was right.  The rest of the week I did add some word count, but I was meandering through the plot a little. I need to spend the weekend to figure out exactly where I'm going.
I did end the week with a total of 10,992 words, my best week yet.
If you read my post about my new writing gimmick you'll be happy to know I've already taken down 20 of those little note cards. Not only am I writing faster, so that I can pull all those cards down, but I'm also just writing more. More scenes, more nonsense, more everything.
 I tend to be a very lean writer, thinking about the story structure in each scene. This is a good thing for the most part, but it can also be very limiting. By pushing myself on word count instead of just finishing the book I think I'm getting a little more depth to my characters and my story.
All in all, I'm feeling pretty good about January's totals.
Here's hoping next month will be even better.
Cheers!

Weekly Word Count

My weekly word count total for the week of January 19th to the 25th is 10,052. That's the highest one so far, and it came about totally by mistake. Well, sort of...
On Tuesday I actually wrote 2,081 words, but because I was trying to multitask while writing down the total (something my brain is really not equipped for) I accidentally wrote the number 3,801.
Now, I know you can't tell it by my handwriting, but I have a need for things to stay tidy. The thought of crossing out that number and replacing it with the correct number was too much for me to bear. I couldn't mess up my entire calendar to put the right number in. Instead, I did the only thing I could do. I wrote the extra thousand or so words to get to 3,801.
I tried it again the next day. I wrote 3,211 down on the calendar before I had even written one word on my novel. True to form I couldn't cross it out when I wanted to quit at about 2,000 words. I also couldn't bring myself to lie to you guys and say I'd written that much when I hadn't.  So...off to the laptop I went and I wrote until I got to my goal of 3,211 words.
As you can probably tell by the low word count on Thursday and Friday, I did NOT write down a total word count first.  The fact is, to get those higher word counts on Tuesday and Wednesday my days were pretty hectic. I didn't watch any TV because of all that writing. I LOVE my TV time so I was unwilling to give it up on Thursday and Friday:)
I will say that just knowing I have to publish my word count each week has been very motivating for me. I bet it would be for you too. So go on, jot down your word count online. Put it on Facebook, or Twitter or on your blog. Or put it in the comment line below. It just might be the motivation you need to finish that novel!

Weekly Word Count

I'm late. I know. I went out of town this weekend and I was partying too hard to think about writing or blogging:)
Here are my word count totals for last week.
I wrote a total of 7, 535 words.
I'm not too disappointed in the word count for the week, but the really frustrating thing is that it's not all on one novel.
On Tuesday I wrote my characters into a corner. On Wednesday, I thought about how to get them out of it. Obviously, since my word count was zero on Wednesday I didn't find a way out.
Instead of just skipping on Friday I started ANOTHER story, but at least I got a few words on paper.
I'm still not back on track, but I'm (literally) plotting my way out. Hopefully, by tomorrow I'll be able to get back to my main story.
Wish me luck.
What were your word count totals for the week?

Weekly Word Count

As I mentioned in Ten Thousand Words A Day I am going to start publishing my weekly word count on my blog. This is nothing fancy or detailed, I will simply update you on my word count.
I will resist the urge to make excuses about how busy my week was or this and that and just get down to the numbers.
The holidays were crazy (wait, I thought I said no excuses....maybe just one) and I missed the first week in January so you'll get two updates for this one.
From January 1st to the 3rd I wrote a total of 3,131 words.
From January 4th to the 10th I wrote a total of 8,615.

What are your word count totals this week? Any word count above zero is pretty fantastic in my opinion!

Trick Thyself

I've been having a little trouble getting motivated to write these days. In fact, just the other day I was staring at my computer for almost a full ten minutes with nothing but white space looking back at me.

I work on Scrivener (If you haven't tried it, you should!) and I usually section out my work into individual scenes. I'll title them so that I can make sense of it all in the editing process. I'll use things like, "meet antagonist" or "Bobby finds the knife". Not overly creative, but it gets the job done.
But the other day I couldn't even come up with a scene idea, let alone a title.
I finally just typed in the first thing that came into my head. Nelson Mandela. It happened to be the day he died, and to be honest I didn't even realize it was on my mind. I hit return and started typing out a scene.

Now I don't know very much about Nelson Mandela. I hope you don't think I'm hopelessly ignorant, but the words I think of when I hear that name are; committed, prisoner, rebel, speaker, apartheid.
Now the section of my book I was working on had absolutely nothing to do with apartheid or Nelson Mandela, but the feelings that name evoked in me showed up in my writing.

I found my main character seemed a little more in control. Her motivations seemed just a little bit clearer and only because I had Nelson Mandela in mind when I was writing.
I've started to use this trick with every scene. I use titles like Charles Manson. Harrison Ford. Bill Clinton. Jennifer Lopez.  Actually, I haven't used J Lo yet, but I am curious what feelings that would bring out in my writing.

I do this indiscriminately. I don't think about what I'm writing and pick a character with similar values. No, just the opposite, I pick a random person, for example Paul Newman, and see what characteristics of his I can add to the character I'm writing about. How can I make my protagonist (or any other character) deeper by adding attributes of Paul Newman? It's a way of surprising yourself in your own writing. Also, whatever feelings you have about Paul Newman will show up in your work.

Let's face it, books are about feelings. We read because a book makes us feel a certain way; happy, sad, scared, frustrated, ect. So if you're having trouble getting enough feeling into your books, maybe try my little trick. It certainly can't hurt!

NaNo Wrap Up

 Guess what..I quit on my latest novel. I'm sure you're not surprised by this. To make a quick count, since I started this blog in July I have started and quit about four different novels. If you count just plotting books and not the actual writing, I think it's more like six.
This isn't really a surprise to me. As a stay at home mom wanting to make some money I have had any number of schemes that I've started and never finished.
I was going to be a jewelry maker. Then I worried about my necklaces breaking and children choking on the beads. Of course I had to quit. It would be irresponsible not to.
Then there was the card making business, but man printer ink is expensive. The photography business, I was really never any good. And then, there was the writing business. To be fair I was always writing, but only recently did I commit to really trying to get a book published.
I'm not ready to quit writing entirely, but I do (somehow) keep quitting on my novels.
If you read my last post, or maybe it was the one before, I was SO excited about my new novel. But then I had to take a break and get ready for a Disney vacation for Thanksgiving and by the time I got home I was over the story. All of the sudden, it just didn't seem like it was any good at all (sound familiar?).
So, the lesson from NaNo this time is: word count, nerd count, it's all about writing every day. Keep your head in the story even if you can only write 200 words a day.
But that leaves me with a question.
Will I only get published if I finish an entire story and then another entire story and another? OR will all of this writing and practicing naturally lead to a finished (and published) novel?
Am I just being a quitter by leaving so many books unfinished? Or is it like finding a husband? All those other failed books are just the natural course to finding "the one". The one novel that I was meant to write, and everything before it just wasn't meant to be?
Or is that just quitter talk?
Let me know what you think! 

What Are We Doing Wrong?

I'm NaNo crazy right now, but I'd like to take a break from my dismal word count to give you a sort of pep talk. At the end of the month of October I met up with some fellow NaNo-ers for a plotting session. It was a fantastic group of writers from all sorts of different backgrounds. (The writing exercise was great and I think I'll do it from now on. You can find it here, at WWW.YorkWriters.com.)
As we went around the table introducing ourselves everyone got to say how many times they've done NaNoWriMo in the past, and how many times they've won.
For myself, I had a go of it in about 2009 (maybe) and then did Camp NaNoWriMo in July, and of course I'm doing it again now.
What struck me about this group of people was that we were all writing. We were all NaNo-ing, we were all winning, but out of the group of us only one had actually published a book. (Btw the one person was my sister!)
What did that tell me? It told me that we were all doing something very wrong! I went home and was just sick with the feeling that we must just all be making some grave mistake. How could so many NaNo people still be floundering in the unpublished category?
Let's look at the statistics. According to Wikipedia, in 1999, for the first Nano, there were 21 participants, yes, 21.  In 2010 there were over 200,000 participants with a combined total of 2.8 billion words. These numbers don't even take into account those writers that aren't signed up for NaNo, but are still trying for the word count.
There are, of course, some success stories:) Erin Morgenstern and her beautiful book, "The Night Circus", Sara Gruen's "Water for Elephants", and there are over 100 traditionally published books that started out as NaNo books.
But if the vast majority of us are just pissing into the wind, so to speak, what are we doing wrong?
And the answer, which I realized late into the night (after three beers and no less than 100 gummy bears) is nothing at all. We're not doing anything wrong.
We're writing! And that's what a writer is supposed to do. Sure we may be guilty of not spending the right amount of time on it, we may still need to read that book on plotting, or join a critique group, but if we are signing up for NaNo and trying like Hell to hit that 50,000 word mark then we're doing exactly what we should be doing.
What's that saying?  Something about it taking one million words before you really find your voice as a writer. So that would be twenty completed NaNoWriMo's. I'd say with three under my belt I'm off to an okay start!
As long as we're writing, and learning, and trying, we are not doing anything wrong. We're doing just what we're supposed to do. We're writing.
Some will gain success faster than others, but unless we quit, we'll all get there eventually.
So keep on writing, keep on Nano-ing, and even if you're on your fourth, fifth or sixth NaNo, and still not published, don't give up.
And if you need even more proof that writer's write...A LOT. Check out Amanda Hocking's post, specifically the info on how many books she's written vs how many she's published.
Amanda Hocking.

 

Write It Now or Regret It Later

For years my sister and I have had a common goal. We wanted to be writers. We both believed that if we really put our minds to it, if we really worked hard, we would succeed.
We would meet at the library or a coffee shop with our laptops and get to work, but then something strange would happen. The coffee shops were too loud. The library was too cold. We realized we needed to go shoe shopping or we were suddenly starving and had to go to lunch. With all of these "issues", we didn't get much work done.
While at lunch we would talk about how difficult it was to be a writer. Oh, it was so much work and there was really no guarantee that we would ever succeed. We had the kids to take care of, volunteering to do at the school, and blah, blah, blah.
It went on like this for a while. We'd write a little, complain A LOT, and then go have lunch together and complain some more. It was really a lot of fun!
Then, slowly, things began to change. My sister quit meeting me to "write" and started writing on her own! How RUDE!
I'll admit it. I was trash talking a bit, "It's not right for her to abandon me!" "Who does she think she is?", but while I was trash talking, she was writing.  And a few months later she finished her novel.
Now of course, I wish her all the success in the world, you can find her book, The Corpse Goddess, on Amazon here.
But I was J-E-A-L-O-U-S! Jealous! Why was I so jealous? Even I didn't really get it. She deserved it, she did the work. Plus, there were hundreds of people who had published novels before her. I wasn't jealous of them!
 Now you may think you don't care about my sister and her book. You don't care that the doctor next door to you is a doctor, or that the girl you knew from high school is a movie star, but the reason you don't care is because you don't want to be a writer, or a doctor, or a movie star.
But I'd be willing to bet there is something that you really want to be. Whether it's an artist, or an entrepreneur, or a size six in your skinny jeans.
Whatever it is it won't bother you so much if some stranger succeeds. But when a friend or a family member succeeds, someone you know is so similar to you. They don't have the time either, they don't have the guarantee of success either, and somehow they did it anyway.
When they make it work, and someday they will, you're going to be happy for them, but more than anything you'll be asking yourself, "Why didn't I do the work?"
That's what I was thinking when my sister got published! "Why haven't I been writing?"
I promise you, all your excuses, the entire "poor me" act is going to seem pretty pathetic!
You will feel guilty for not doing what you really, truly wanted to be doing. You will deeply regret wasting time. You will regret letting yourself give in to the excuses. I know I did.
So, lace up those running shoes, start that business, write that book because the very worst thing you can say at the end of the day, or the month. The worst thing you can say at the end of the year or at the end of your life is, "I regret not doing..."

Sticktoitiveness: Finish That Novel

My two kiddos at the beach.

For our summer vacation this year we drove down to Florida to hang out at the beach. During the ten hour drive my son played video games or texted friends, my daughter read her books, and my husband read his kindle.
I drove the car and just let myself get lost in my imagination. (Not so lost that I wasn't paying attention to the road of course!)
Well, what do you know? After all that time to day dream I came up with a great book idea.
I walked the white beaches picking up sea shells and thinking about my plot. I worked out some of the details, had an idea for a great beginning, and couldn't wait to get home and start putting it all down onto paper.
It wasn't until I got home and sat down at my Mac, ready to write this new book, that I realized the problem.

Me. On the hunt for shells.

I am forever starting new projects. Better projects. And although I am still convinced that this new book idea will sell better than the book I've already started, the truth is, I have no idea what will sell and what won't. None of us do.
Did anybody really think that the Snuggie would become so popular? It's a blanket that you trap yourself into. And the Chia Pet? My kids love those things.

Jack

 As far as books go I would not have endorsed a zombie remake of any of the classic novels, but they seem to be selling pretty well.  Could you have guessed that the Fifty Shades of Grey series would sell like 70 million copies? Although I confess I haven't even read the first one...yet.
None of us can predict what will be a hit, but I know that my half finished YA novel will definitely NOT sell unless I finish it.

Maya

So, I will continue working on editing the rough draft of the novel I started in July. I'll labor through the steps I outlined in Editing Your First Draft and then (and only then) will I start on my new book idea.

Who knows, by then I might have an entirely different fantastic idea.
All we can do, as writers, is keep our heads down and keep working until the work is done.
This leads me to the word of the day: Sticktoitiveness. 

The definition of Sticktoitiveness on Dictionary.com is "dogged perseverance; resolute tenacity".
The example sentence is (swear to God) "The only way she has published so many books is through stick-to-it-ive-ness."

Yes, this post was a shameless excuse to post vacation pictures.