Roadblocks

Hey everyone!  I've discovered something about myself in the past couple of months.  It doesn't seem to matter how much time I have to write, I end up with about the same amount of output.  If I have an hour to write, I can really get down and get into it and pump out a few hundred words.  If I have all day with nothing to do but devote it to writing I find a myriad of other things to squander my time and not write and still manage to trickle out a few hundred words.  I've had some really good days where I managed several thousand words, so I know it’s possible, but I seem to do better when the pressure is on.

Stop Twittering and Work on Your Novel!

      I've really gotten into twitter in the past couple of months after having an account for several years and doing nothing with it. Once I started adding people to follow it started to get a lot more interesting and then I found that other writers hang out on there and people blog about writing, how to do it better, how to publish a book, how to find an agent etc. Even some agents blog and twitter and you can learn from them too.

      

      There is also the self-publishing crowd, and there is lots of advice on how to do it and why you should or shouldn't do it. There still seems to be a bit of stigma attached to self-publishing because so much drek is making it on Amazon and other sites for easy download. Some of these are obvious by the crappy book covers or poorly written descriptions, but some of it sneaks under the RADAR and clogs up the path for really good books. I'm still torn about self-publishing. You have a lot more control over timing and price-points and book covers etc. You lose out in marketing and the "Cheese-touch" of self-publishing. All of these things are side issues to actually finishing the novel though.

Week in Review

I am going to try to do this every week, it will give me a good idea on my progress.


It was a pretty good week for writing, despite having to go back to work after the New Year.  I got through the initial meeting of my two main characters and the climax is fast approaching.  I think I am just a few weeks away from finish the first draft.  Currently at 86,915 words, so got through several thousand words this week.

NaNoWriMo 2010 is in the can

     It's over at midnight tonight, but I hit the 50k mark last night around 11:30 pm.  Big win for me!  My first attempt and it was not horribly hard, although there were times I wasn't sure I would make it.  The entire trick is to be consistant.  I have no idea how people write 15 to 20 thousand words in one day.  My best day was about 3500.  I had several days over 3k and several under 1k. But I only skipped 4 days I think in the entire month.


     I want to congratulate everyone that gave it a shot!  At least you wrote something.  Starting is more than half the battle with writing, IMHO.

Halfway through NaNoWriMo

     Well today marks the halfway point and I am slightly behind, at 22, 000 words, but I getting confident now that I will make it, especially with the four days off around Thanksgiving.  It's the slowest moving novel I've written so far, but the rewrite will make it all better.


     Week two lived up to the hype, I fell behind and thought about quitting, but perservered. 


     Week three is supposed to be magical, I can't wait for the magic to happen.


     I'm thinking about putting some of it up here, but I need to actually have some good stuff, so far not much good stuff I think.

NaNoWriMo

     I made it past week one without any trouble and week two is living up to its reputation as being the toughest week of the month.  I've fallen behind a bit due to work, but I have a long weekend and hope to catch up and get a little bit ahead.  It's been fun and I've been happy to see that I can put out some content fairly quickly if I push myself.  I have a little over 14,000 words so far on day 11.


     It is frustrating to see some people "win" on day 3.  I'm not sure what the msot I can do in one day is, but I think the most I've done so far is about 2500 words in one day.  I'm hoping to pass that sometime this month.