Word Count Update: 7/24

I missed my target today, but that’s alright since I’m considering this a day off, even though I wrote over 700 words. Some days I just don’t feel like working my story out in my head, the details and particulars, and this is one of those nights. I’m going to take it easy and head back into it with a full head of steam tomorrow.

UPDATE:

I realized how stupid it was to say I didn’t feel like writing. Days like this are the days where I need to man up and just power through the thing. So that’s what I did, and ended up at about 1,500 for the day, and it only took me about a half an hour to put down those extra 800 words.

Word Count Update: 7/23

Yes! I got to my 2,000 word quota today, and then some! The book is getting fun to write again, and I know I just need to commit to it a little bit more and I’ll have no problem meeting my goals. It probably helped that today’s writing involved guilt, a murder investigation and a main character in the bathtub, which if you ask me is always good for a book.

It’s a short update today on the word count, due to the exciting news I’m posting about previewing my novel in its raw, first draft state. Take a look above this post for the details.

Word Count Update: 7/22

I didn’t even make 1,000 words today, and this marks the third day in a row where I’ve missed my word count target. I only have myself to blame, really. But at least I’ve been writing something every day since I started this project. Giving myself a deadline, even if that deadline does happen to slip past original projections, is a good thing for a writer to have. If you just say “I’m going to write a novel” and you don’t give yourself any sort of goal or timetable, it’s pretty likely that you won’t finish it. Now there are some people that might be OK with writing a novel over the course of a few years in bits and pieces, but I just see that as such a waste of time, and no way to actually get the thing published. I have a goal to have this book finished, possibly even published by my birthday on November 1st. Looking at how few days away that actually is, I know it’s very unlikely it will happen, but it’s something to shoot for.

I’m going to try to overwrite a little bit in the next few days, an extra 500 words or so, to make up for these shortcomings. All things considered, seeing that I’m about to start a new job, about to move, and dealing with some familial issues, I’d say the pace I’ve been chugging along at has been sort of admirable. Still, this thing doesn’t mean anything to anyone until I write “The End” at the bottom of the last page. So, the quest continues.

Word Count Update: 7/21

I missed my target by about 800 today, the second day in a row I’ve done so. Things are still on track, and I think the book’s first draft will be finished within my 30-day timespan, but I’m going to have to log some major 3,000 word days to make it happen. Oh well, I have to do it.

And, in completely unrelated news, I got a job today! I’m excited, though it’s not what I would call an ideal position (or even a career for that matter) but it’s something that will pay the bills. It’s going to be tough as hell to save money to get to New York in a year, but I’ll manage. I guess some money is better than none at all.

Word Count Update: 7/20

I didn’t quite make my goal today, but I only missed it by under 900 words. I figure they 400ish I wrote past my goal a few days ago and the extra hundred or so I routinely pile on top of my 2,000 word goal when I do hit it makes up for the slip. I still need to try to get to 2,000 words every day, but sometimes a day can really take it out of you.

Not a ton to say today, really, but I am happy to say that my book’s getting its own voice and the characters are forming up and becoming human. The book is changing every day from what my outline says it should be focusing on, but I think I like the way it’s going. I was able to add in a main character that I previously thought I was going to have to lose from the book, the character I could see spinning off into a series of short stories or subsequent novels if I get ambitious about it…though I know I need to focus on finishing this novel and not caring about the further adventures of my characters.

OK, I said there wasn’t a ton, so, that’s it!

Word Count Update: 7/18

To contrast with yesterday’s utter failure, I actually exceeded my word quota for the day, breezing through 2,400 words in a little over an hour and a half. I could have written a lot more, probably cracking the 3,000 or even 4,000 word mark, but I wanted to stop at a place where I could pick it up tomorrow with some momentum. Stopping in a place where you know you can keep going is really difficult, but I think it helps build the habit of writing every day no matter what. If you can’t help but to get back to your computer next day to polish off the end of your cliffhanger, you’re more likely to linger around and bang out some of the more slow-paced (boring, maybe?) portions of the exposition or rising action. I think if you end at the end of something, you’re left the next day with pretty much nothing, staring at the blank page without a thought in your head, which is one of the most terrifying things a writer can experience. But, if you leave your writing while you’re in the heat of the moment, you can plow through a ton more and get a lot more work done. It’s sort of the writing equivalent of tantric sex…without, you know, the sex part…just the whole thing about reserving your energy to make the whole experience enjoyable and energetic, that’s what I’m getting at. Oh, whatever, it’s late and I reserve my good material for the books anyway…

My plot problems with the novel were also solved today, as I added an entirely new main character to the story. He’s the character I had to initially cut out of the book because I thought I needed to focus more on the two protagonists, but I feel that adding him back in fills the book out very nicely and allows me to move things forward at a better clip (if all of this sounds like I’m being tight-lipped about things, I assure you it’s not because I’m fearing that somebody will steal my ideas…there hasn’t been an original idea in literature in a little over 3,000 years, it’s just that I don’t want to sit here and blather about a book that’s still in progress and ruin it for anyone who’d like to read the finished product)

I finished Jason Starr’s Cold Caller today, also. It’s certainly not his best work, that honor for me still goes to Twisted City, the first book of his I read, but it was still a grim trip to absolute hell with a protagonist that I alternately loved and hated. I’ll post a full review tomorrow to get into some more detail about what I liked and didn’t like.

Word Count Update: 7/17

Noooooo!!!!!!

I totally mishandled today and therefore blew my word count goal by about 1,700 words. It was a combination of just general procrastination, taking some time with my wife to watch a movie (A Simple Plan, which was really amazing by the way), and then nausea from dinner to cap things off. All in all, it really sucks and I have nobody to blame but myself.

I think another reason that I missed my wordcount today is I feel that my novel is sort of running off ahead of me in a direction I’m not sure I want it to. My original outline is staring me down and saying “You’re headed down the wrong road…you’re lost and of course you’re not going to ask me for directions.” Call it a crisis of conscience, call it what you will, but my book is starting to show signs of health problems.

My characters are saying things they don’t need to say, I’m finding myself writing out situations that I have no honest explanation for as to why they’re in the novel, and I’m just all together breaking down with this thing.

Tomorrow will be occupied with trying to wrest this thing back onto the right course, because I’m terrified that the book will degenerate itself into a lifeless blob that I can’t do anything with. I need to whip characters back into shape, get my plot points straight, and just beat the shit out of the novel until it’s where I want it to be. I’ll try my best to make up for the 1,700 lost words tomorrow, as well.

Wish me some luck, because I need it!

Word Count Update: 7/15

I got through another 2,000ish words today. I’m getting into the rythym of doing this as a habit, and I think it’s really going to pay off. I have a lot of things I want to mess with in this novel, and I think my biggest challenge will be to focus in on what I really need to say and what can be cut without much harm. I have a character that I really, really like and want to write 500 novels about, but I might have to just rip him from the book alltogether, because he might just not fit. Such is the life of a writer, I guess. Kill your darlings and all that.

Alright, well, short post tonight…I’m tired and I have a novel waiting to be read sitting next to me (Jason Starr’s Cold Caller, if anyone is interested).

Word Count update: 7/14

It was a tough task, especially since I didn’t get started with writing until about 11:30 (damn All-Star game), but I met my 2,000 word quota for the day. I think I’m liking what I’m writing right now, and at this point I don’t really know if I’ll miss those words I lost in the beginning. I see it more as a false start, but even in a false start you just have to pick yourself up, put your feet back on the starting blocks, and go for it again.

I had a hard time with motivation for writing tonight as well. Some nights I just really don’t want to sit down at the computer and pound out the words. But I am pretty firm in my belief that one of the major things that separates real writers from the forever aspiring ones is that a real writer will sit down every day, regardless of mood, ignoring what time it is, and they’ll just write something, anything. It’s all about showing up for the job. You can’t wait until the muse reaches down from on high and kisses your forehead, you need to sit down in your chair and write your fucking stories, because that muse, if it even exists, only comes down every once in a while, so if you only write when the moment strikes you…well, have fun with that half-finished manuscript you stuff in the bottom of your desk and never finish. I’ll be the one at my computer, mad as hell that I’m forcing myself to write, but at the end of the day I’ll have something to show for it.

The best laid plans, destroyed

So, more than a few things sort of crashed into each other today to mean that my Novel in 30 Days has hit a major setback. Some of the stuff I can’t really talk about, but the main thing that set me back was that for some reason the words I put into the book yesterday, about 2,500, weren’t saved while using Focuswriter (you can find it here but I wouldn’t suggest it). The entire prologue of the novel was lost completely, and so I’m back to staring at the blank page, armed with nothing but my outline to guide me.

I can’t use Microsoft Word to write anything long-form, because I’m way too easily distracted by seeing things other than my story on the screen. I’ve toyed around with more than a few full-screen word processors, but today I think I may have found my favorite: Q10. Q10 is a nice, stripped down fullscreen word processor with cool little features like alarms for timed writing as well as multiple word counters. What can I say, I’m a total word count fiend, and I love to look at my daily word count progress, sometimes to a fault, but I still like seeing the numbers rise and rise as I keep the pages coming. Maybe I need to be more focused on writing and less on stupid statistics, but there’s just something about me that likes to rifle through every stat I can gather about my writing.

Anyway, the Novel in 30 Days begins tomorrow (actually today as I write this), so my target date for finishing the first draft will be August 12th, 30 days from July 14th. I’ll be posting my progress once again, and as you can see here I’ll probably do a good amount of complaining about things that go wrong. But, I think I’ll have more things go right for me than wrong, and I will finish the first draft of the book within my 30 days.