Friday, February 26, 2016

Project: Secret Project (not a real title)
Deadline: Who the hell know at this point
New words written: 1080
Present total word count: 1080
Words for the year: 1080
Things accomplished in fiction: We have a beginning. I'm still figuring out the details, but I've set up all the files and started giving my Maisie a voice. 
Things accomplished in real life: Ummm. both a whole lot an very little. We had baby. Baby is adorable. Baby was born via C-section and 9 months later he still doesn't want to sleep. I've got the house running reasonably well. Writing wise, it's been pretty sparse. I have been trying to mark up my Novel of Doom manuscript so I can start doing some big edits... but right now I have about 2 hours a week to get anything done. What I need is a dedicated 2-4 hours a day to spend at my desktop processing edits, since the kindle updated itself out of functionality and the alphasmart is horrible for editing. But that time is not going to happen for a while. Meanwhile this story is taking up my brain. This fall child 2 will no longer be sharing out room, child 1 will be in all day school, and hopefully I can manage to work in nap times. 

Much as I adore my children, it's only 2 more years (and six months or so) until child 2 goes to preschool. That will start giving me 2 hours of time in the middle of the day. And 2 years after that he'll be in full time kindergarten. We're in the catch 22. I need time to write, and early morning won't work until I get more then 4 hours of consecutive sleep per night, day hours are fraught with interruptions every few minutes, and come evening I am usually brain dead. But these days won't last.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Project: Novel of DOOM (not a real title)
Deadline: Let's just call it 4/14/15
New words written: 3461
Present total word count: 86.915
Words for the year: 13,725 
Things accomplished in fiction: We're done. The heroes have met their fate and all the words are written, at least for now.
Things accomplished in real life: I was supposed to finish this last week while my kid was on spring break. Alas, the best laid plans fell apart and my week was spent entertaining the child during a week of rain, and cleaning EVERYTHING. We're at 90% ready for baby right now. 

The book is going to my crit groups, and I'm planning to ignore it for the rest of the month, maybe more if the baby shows up before the May 10th due date. Then I need to add some story, fix some voice and wording, cut clues, add clues and generally polish this up for beta readers. Hopefully the draft 2 version will go out before the end of summer and the querying will start by Christmas. 

This blog will go quiet again for a bit. My energy is so limited right now and family and craft come first. I have the next book percolating though. I'll be working on the outline intermittently and hopefully the first update for that will come before the new year. it's an excuse to buy new notebooks and index cards at least.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

At long last a progress report

I'm back... and this time about 20% bigger. Nope not an exaggeration, I've got a baby bump about half the size of a yoga ball and a new baby due soon... and yet not soon enough.

So writing basically stopped for early pregnancy. When you can't sit up or look at words on a computer screen... it's pretty hard to be productive. Morning sickness is evil. February was the first month I made it through without throwing up. But in November progress started again on the novel of doom, with the new deadline of... before the baby! I'm pretty close.


Project: Novel of DOOM (not a real title)
Deadline: Self appointed Oct 1, 2014 Before the spawning!
New words written: Umm since last time... 13,167
Present total word count: 83,454
Words for the year: 10,264 
Things accomplished in fiction: I just wrote my pay off scenes. 95% of the plot and mystery was revealed and I am desperately hoping my alpha readers think it works. Practically we finished chapter 25 and in the next 3 chapters our heroes will be attempting to foil the villain's plans. 
Things accomplished in real life: Procreation? Right now 90% of my time is either going to writing, or just trying to get basic things like cooking done and keeping only somewhat behind on the housework. Kid number two is taking a lot of energy and mobility out of me right now. 

Next week I have two more chapters due in my writing group. I'm not sure how much the word counter will change, I have about 7k of words already written in them... and I anticipate cutting and rewriting a lot. After that the last 3 chapters have a writing group deadline of April 28th, but the goal is to get them done, and possibly submitted, earlier since that starts to run up to potential spawning time. 

After this draft is done, it's going in a drawer for a bit. I can't imagine I'm going to have a ton of time to write during the first few frantic baby weeks. I'm hoping to pick it back up by July. I've already cataloged and outlined my editing passes. Once those are done, we're going off to beta readers, and I'll take their feedback into consideration. My goal is to have this out to agents by December. Alas, blogging is probably going to take a backseat again until life evens out... say when the kids turn twenty or so?

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Not a real update

Project: Novel of DOOM (not a real title)
Deadline: Self appointed Oct 1, 2014
New words written: About 3,000
Present total word count: 70,287
Words for the year: Approximately 22,915
Things accomplished in fiction: Edited chapter's ten and eleven. Mostly fixed chapter twelve. Broke up a giant block of text into sections up to chapter 18
Next up: Finish chapter 12 (only a few pages to go), start overhauling chapter 13 and 14. There is a huge plot hole I left here when I drafted this that as to be closed with the insertion of a huge new scene. Exciting but so much work.
Things accomplished in real life: I had my entire family over for the 4th with all the cleaning cooking and general insanity that entails. I went to Colorado for a week, and now we're trying to set up a new routine before school starts. Must squeeze in more time though.


Friday, June 20, 2014

More words

Yet another word update,,,

Project: Novel of DOOM (not a real title)

Deadline: Self appointed Oct 1, 2014
New words written: About 1311
Present total word count: 68,434
Words for the year: Approximately 21,062


Things accomplished in fiction: Edited chapter 8 into something better
Next up: Fixing chapter 9... it's a mess
Things accomplished in real life: Child has been entertained. Railed at the idiocy of the world for a while. Cried. Felt better.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Yet another word update,,,

Project: Novel of DOOM (not a real title)

Deadline: Self appointed Oct 1, 2014
New words written: I'm not sure, my counter claims 900 but it's editing so it's more with deletions.
Present total word count: 67,123
Words for the year: Approximately 19,751


Things accomplished in fiction: Taking Rhys home with... complications.
Next up: Meeting the family!
Things accomplished in real life: Practically nothing. We've had a stressful few weeks over here but today and tomorrow are mine to write and clean the house before the next wave of visitors and chaos hits. Hopefully tomorrow will finish chapter 8 and 9 edits and get most of the way through 10 so I am ahead of my deadlines.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

More word updates

Project: Novel of DOOM (not a real title)
Deadline: Self appointed Oct 1, 2014
New words written: 971
Present total word count: 62,831
Words for the year: Approximately 15,459


Things accomplished in fiction: Two more chapters are edited and just waiting on feedback. The new chapter has been tinkered with. There is angst, there is drama, there is a hunky shirtless guy sitting on our heroine's bed.
Next up: Someone gets shot, everything gets worse.
Things accomplished in real life: The house is cleaner than the last time we met. No one died. My standards are rather low right now until a few other life things sort themselves out.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

This is not really a blog post...

It only looks like one. I'm "borrowing" this accountability format from Cherie Priest.

I've been working a lot on the novel beast. This weekend I broke 60K. After writing 50k into it last year I dumped 11k of opening scenes in January and started act 1 over. It's a million times better. Right now I have mostly clean drafts of chapters 1-4 done. Chapters 5-7 are being edited right now, and chapter 8 is started, pending these revisions.

After that I have 2-4 chapters (I think) to write from scratch, then I can meet up with my 40k of act two material and polish that up. My goal is to be drafting act 3 by July and hopefully ready for beta readers to tackle the whole book by October? It will depend on how certain other life things work out.

Project: Novel of DOOM (not a real title)
Deadline: Self appointed Oct 1, 2014
New words written: 2,595
Present total word count: 61,860
Words for the year: Approximately 14,488


Things accomplished in fiction: Revised chapter 5 to be all the errands peppered in with gossipy clues. Started on chapter 6 where all the drama hits the fan and secrets start to come out.
Next up: Finish up the drama and reveals and move on to revising the gunshot scene.
Things accomplished in real life: Grocery shopping, dishes, cooking dinner, and became the Easter bunny.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Working backwards....

I'm still plugging away. The toddler monster seems to finally be learning what bed time (and eve nap time) is once more and the last of my outside of family commitments is over this weekend. Since the last post I've been squeezing in more writing time. I was able to do a skype talk with a pro author and he gave me some advice about my goals and some general plotting techniques. It went pretty well and we're going to meet face to face at a con in January (I hope).

Meanwhile I've put aside my short stories for now and I'm writing on the novel. There is a lot I need to readjust. As has been the case at least 3 times now I've come up with a better beginning, but I'm holding off on writing it. Instead I wrote my last scene and started writing in tandem the climax and denouement and the planning scene leading up to it. And it was falling flat. I've spent the last few days trying to figure out how to make things suck more for my leads, and tonight I hit on a better solution. I've been rewriting and shuffling words around and hopefully I'll have a good scene written by tomorrow. Then I can write a new ending and starting working my way backwards until I ca slot in the scenes I've already written.

I'm over 30K into this novel but the progress has been jumpy enough I'm not sure how much will make it into the final novel. But we are nearly to the halfway point for finished word count. I expect the draft zero word count will end up a little higher then my goal. But draft 1 should end up fairly tight. I'm hoping I can power through the next months and end up with a draft by new years. We'll see how life goes.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Holy Hectic Batman..... Writing as a mom

Life has been.... a little stressful. Actually that doesn't sum it up.... life has been a great big flaming pile of stress and chaos for the last few weeks. Why? Well we are in week four of the new school schedule and on top of my very busy, very upset his schedule changed, toddler I'm now part time watching 3 other children at varying intervals/days. It's made things rough and I hadn't written for about 3 weeks. So here's what I've been up to.

7:00 am Wake up and get ready. (7 am is actually sleeping in as the toddler has been known to wake up at 4,5, and 6 am depending on the day.)
7:20 am Two of my kids get dropped off. If Darian isn't awake and moving this is when I get him up and get breakfast.
7:45ish Kid one is off to school. Keep toddler and other child from murdering each other or dumping every toy on the floor while attempting to get toddler to eat breakfast and check my email.
8:30ish Child 2 is off to school, now I can sit back with a cup of tea.... except there are dishes to be done, a toddler wanting to play and I still haven't gone through my email. Put on PBS and let the toddler watch Cat in the Hat while I get stuff accomplished. Say good bye as husband goes to work. Split and apple with Toddler.
9:00ish TV is off. Now we are on to errands. Grocery shopping beckons.
10ish back home to put the groceries away and toddler is asking to play outside. Once the perishables are stowed we play outside for about an hour. He marvels at my ability to draw kermit the frog, rainbows and stars... I admire his ability to be covered in dirt, chalk, and water so quickly.
11ish Back inside and Mommy needs a minute to make lunch and do chores. Yay for PBS and another half hour show.
11:30 Lunch time! As a treat and reward for eating his whole lunch I split a caramel apple with the toddler. I've now eaten a whole apple! This is better than I manage most days.
12 pm And lunch is over. Now we get into the serious playing.... only a fraction of which is cooperative. My block towers are starting to reach spectacular heights.... his bulldozer brings them down to new lows.
1 pm snack time. More play. As he gets focused I can sometimes slip away and read 2-5 pages of a book, or check something online.... it's about a 5 minute window before he notices I'm gone.
2:30ish Kid number 4 is here. 4 isn't mobile yet so there is a small advantage there. Toddler decides to "help" push 4 in the infant swing. I intervene before toddler instills permanent motion sickness.
3ish Food time for 4... I put a show on for the toddler since my hands will be full. If I angle 4 just right I can use 2 fingers on one hand and 1 on the other to read some of the articles people have linked me too.
3:30ish Toddler wants company for his show. 4 is playing by himself. I spend a few minutes with Toddler until he's engrossed again, check on 4 and move him from the play area to the swing. This time I swing him gently. 4 wants more food and needs a diaper change. All of that accomplished I sit back down.
4pm The show is over. I turn the TV off. 4 has fallen asleep in the swing. I pack his things so he's ready to go. Then I get Toddler out of the swing vicinity. We pick up the trash cans from outside (he sits on the wet seat of his tractor so now his jeans are soggy.
4:30ish 4 get's picked up. Toddler and I play more blocks with a side t trains and pirate.
4:45 I need to start a side dish cooking for my husband. Fight with toddler to keep him out of the kitchen while I cook. Time outs are deployed. Rice is cooking.
5:30ish husband is home. He's cooking tonight. Yay! I wrangle kid back to the living room since hot stove/hot pans/ hot oil is a bad place for toddlers. More blocs and some legos.
6 pm diner is done. Toddler wont eat. He sits in a time out while we eat and his food ends up tossed. By now I need a break.
6:30 bath time. Daddy handles this. I spend 20 glorious minutes seated in a chair and catching up on facebook/twitter
6:50 book time. We pick out 3 books (he grabs 6, I tell him Mommy is only reading 3). We read 3 books. Toddler gets tucked into bed. Mommy and Daddy sing "The Wheels on the Bus." Mommy is thinking about adding harmonies and taking the show on the road. Daddy is not amused. One more short song and we shut to door.
7:20 Mommy pours her self a drink (alas not the alcoholic kind). Toddler leaves bedroom.
7:25 Mommy does the nice tuck back in. She takes the "leave my room" token and places it up high.
7:26 Toddler leaves room
7:27 Mommy does the stern tuck in
7:28 Toddler leaves room
And this is a good time for an intermission... all you'll miss is my head exploding which has a high ick factor and potential for a large drycleaning bill....
8:30 Toddler has fallen asleep (with his blanket and pillow) on the changing pad on his floor. "Good enough!" I say and turn out the lights. Time to finish big projects..... namely cleaning the basement.
9:00 For the first time in a week I'm not half dead.... time to walk to McDonalds (yeah some writers get classy coffee shops and fancy coffee... me I get late nights at Micky Dee's and fries). The staff kinda know me. I sit in the back and tune out everything but the fryer beeps (for some reason that cuts through my head phones). In about an hour I churn out about a thousand words. I caffeinate. This is not a great thing but it allows me to come home and write out rambling long posts like this. And a thousand words. I try coke zero. Not a fan.
10pm I come home and spend a few minutes with the husband. Then we both do our own things. He's catching up on the laundry.
12 am Toddler wakes up on the changing pad and comes out to visit. I tuck him into bed this time and finish writing this thing.
12:45 FAR FAR past my bed time and I'm crashing. But this schedule.... this is why I don't write a zillion words a day right now.