progress slowed

In talking with J somewhat over the past few days, I have figured out that I have gotten some details of the novel mixed up. That may not seem like much, but to me it is more like having the compass off by a few degrees when you start your journey. It will not make a big difference at first, but as you go along, it will throw you off more and more. So I am not writing any new stuff today; I am just going back through and double-checking and/or correcting the inaccuracies and errors I have in there. Today, and possibly the next few days, is for editing.
On a more positive note, I did find the outline I have been going by. I have been looking for it the past few days. I thought I had lost it, thinking I had put it in the black notebook where I keep printouts and notes about my work. It turns out that it was hiding underneath the two thesauruses I have sitting here next to my keyboard. Now I feel foolish. If I had kept that in plain sight all along, I would not have gotten off course nearly so much as I was writing along. Oh, well - lesson learned. If you make a plan, be sure to refer to it now and again!

technical stuff

I haven't gotten quite as much done today because I have been mired in technical details. I am getting to the point in the story where the scientific aspects of the events are important to how things roll, and I have had to go back and delete and fix some stuff just to make sure it all makes sense. Better to do it now than to have to go back and fix even more stuff later. I did break eighty thousand words of rough draft today, even with all the deleting and fixing of stuff! That counts for something, maybe even a smiley face. =)

back in the swing of things . . . at least a little bit

I did not get to write on Friday because I was subbing, and I had appointments on Monday, so today was the first day I have written in a few days. When I miss a few days, it is hard to start up again, I feel like I have lost my groove a little bit. I also did a lot of cooking today. I guess that counts as part of my creativity for the day. I made some french bread, some banana bread, and a turkey pot pie (this will be the last of the turkey from Christmas - out of my freezer!). I did write some today, but I did not get up to the usual goal of 2,500 words. i am 1,350 short. Still, getting some done as I try to get back into the swing of things is better than postponing it another day and getting even more out of my groove. I will work on it more tomorrow, and try to work more in the morning when my brain is more coherent. I am getting close to eighty thousand words total. I will easily pass that if I do the 2,500 tomorrow. Little by little, I will finish this story line.

part bum, part substitute teacher

On Wednesday, I did not get to write because I was substitute teaching. I pretended to be an art teacher, so I got paid to sit at a desk knitting and watching kids draw pictures. Not too terrible a thing to get paid to do! On Thursday, I was a bum. I felt down and did not choose to do much about it. I had to make some phone calls to try to keep our finances straight, and worrying about that (among other things) kept me from doing my writing. So today I am going to work on getting back into the groove of things. Wednesday evening, I also learned that a friend I grew up with died in a car crash - he was a little less than a year older than I am. That sort of thing is staggering to hear. It makes you step back and wonder if you are using the precious time you have in your life as well as you could. I know I did not do as well with that on Wednesday. Maybe I was busy trying to process things. I don't know. I do know that I want to get a full day's writing done today. I want to reach my goal of 2,500 words today. meeting that goal will put me over 77,000 words total on the rough draft. I am plugging away at this piece even with all the interruptions and distractions life is throwing at me.
Okay, I have finished writing for the day, or at least accomplished my goal for the day. I am up to 77,664 words on the rough draft. It is interesting when you get closer to the end of the novel; it is a major change in your line of thought. Instead of coming up with plot twists to throw in there, you have to start to think about how you will weave all of those twists together into a satisfying ending. I am getting closer to the end now, but I still have a while to go. I am also starting to think about the sequels J and I have envisioned. I need to make sure I have an idea of what I need to be setting up for the next novel. This will be a major project when all is said and done. I am having fun with it, though, and feeling like I am accomplishing more with it than I have with anything in a long time.

plugging away

I did get my 2,500 words written today, a little more than that. My word count for the rough draft is now at 75,146. I am starting to feel like some of the characters are feeling a little bit too mirror-image-ish, but I will figure out as I go along - if that will work with the story line and symbolism I end up using or not. The goal for right now is to get it all down on the page. I can worry about fine-tuning it after it is all written. I feel better today than I did yesterday. Writing does wonders for my depression this time of year! I keep wondering how long the novel will be when I finish it. I also wonder about the sequels and how they will play out. J and I have talked some about the subsequent novels - this story idea is the beginning of a series! Until I get it written, nothing is etched in stone. Even then, I will probably do a decent amount of revising. I find that I love the process of discovery that is involved in writing a novel. I have some things mapped out in my mind, but I couldn't possibly map everything out before I write it. For one thing, I would not be able to keep it all straight in my head - not with my memory! So I keep track of the skeleton of the writing and see what happens when I flesh it out. (how's that for a pun?!?) I am thinking that this afternoon, I might go visit our neighbor if she isn't busy, and maybe bring my knitting bag with me to let my wrists do something different - help them stretch out after all the typing they've done today!

seeing the shape more

I wrote on Friday as far as the novel went, but I did not succeed in writing on here about it. I got 72,500 words completed on the rough draft. I am seeing the shape of what I am writing more and more. I am actually starting to see how I could wrap things together. It is kind of like seeing all the loops at the end of a knitting project and casting off. I am not there yet - I still have a lot of loose ends to fiddle with, but I am getting closer and closer. I could see the rough draft of the novel being more than 100,000 words long. I don't really know how long it will be - just until the story line is completed. It is kind of funny to me. I remember a couple of years ago when I first tried nanowrimo, the idea of trying to write 1,667 words per day seemed like craziness, and the prospect of finishing a 50,000 word novel in a month was sheer madness. now i am doing a minimum goal of 2,500 words per day as a regular routine. I guess that means trying something like nanowrimo has helped me grow significantly as a writer. I do have to admit that I was a silly head on Thursday, though. I went to writer's club after substitute teaching, but I did not succeed in bringing a couple of pages of the manuscript with me to edit and revise like I usually do. Silly me! Oh, well. I had my little story dice (I think their official title is story cubes or something like that) with me, so that was my contribution to writer's club this week. I am thinking more and more about what will happen when I finish the rough draft of the novel. I don't know as much about revision and tightness of story line as I do about just dumping all of the ideas out on the page. This will be a learning experience. I have revised pieces before - papers for school and stage plays. I have not finished and edited a novel before. I will be playing that by ear. You do have to start somewhere, though. That is all there is to it. I just have to do it a little bit at a time - have a minimum goal just like I have been doing with the rough draft. I just have to figure out how to measure the goal.

being a bum because of fear

I was a bum yesterday, and the best way I can think of to describe why is fear. Every so often I just get afraid of writing for various reasons - afraid that it is a mirage and it really isn't going as well as I think it is, afraid that I won't be able to keep it up, afraid that something will go wrong and mess things up - pick one. The fear tends to immobilize me. Yesterday I did not write anything beyond my morning scribbles in my journal and notes to myself in my planner and to-do notebook to make sure I did not forget anything. I did forget the writing, though, and yesterday evening, I was depressed. This time of year, writing feels like sunshine to me. I have started writing on the novel already today, and typing a blurb on the blog is me taking a break, and also making a promise to myself that I will finish the full 2,500 words I have set out to do today. I know I probably won't be able to do the 2,500 words tomorrow because of the simple fact that I will be substitute teaching. Long as my arms are, I probably shouldn't try to type from the high school, and I should probably focus more on keeping the students from doing anything foolish while they are in my class. Knowing the teacher I am subbing for, I will probably be making them watch a video and take notes or do some worksheets, or something along those lines, so I will bring my knitting bag along with me. I can knit well enough to be able to watch the kids and knit at the same time, so that will be my creativity for tomorrow, at least until I get to the writer's club meeting at the library tomorrow evening. But for now, I am going to stop procrastinating by typing away at the blog, and get some rough draft written . . .
Okay, I have written for a while now, and I managed to break the seventy thousand word mark on my rough draft today. That involved writing 2,983 words today - more than the 2,500 goal, but since I was so close to breaking seventy thousand anyway, I thought I would plug along and conquer that today, especially since I will be subbing tomorrow and not able to write as much. In the story line, two characters died today, so the writing was rather dramatic. I am going to leave it as is for a while and review it later; I think I am too close to it right now to look at it and decide if it is too cheesy or overdone or anything like that. This is the part where I keep rough draft writing and editing separate. i might have to do a little victory dance for having broken seventy thousand today! This is a lot better than the immobilized fear I let myself focus on yesterday.

foggy

I just finished my 2,500 words on the novel for the day. I am trying to keep that routine in place. I am later in finishing it today than usual, but I think that is in large part because I slept horribly last night and went back to sleep for a while after J went to work. I am getting to the part in the novel where some of the characters are going to start dying, and I am having a hard time figuring out how to portray that. I am kind of attached to these characters now, but it is necessary for the plot line. My word count for the rough draft is now 67,033. It is getting up there! I still have a lot of story line to cover, but I also tend to overwrite in the rough draft and then cut and make it tighter when I revise. Who knows how long this book will end up being. I guess it is kind of fitting that it is rather foggy and cloudy down here in my area as I write that - it feels like my view of how things will go with this novel is kind of foggy right now too - I am just going ahead with what I can see so far, and I will figure more out when it gets easier to see as I go along.

back to the routines, mostly

I am trying to get back into the routines I have set for myself. I am mostly over the cold or flu or whatever that was - just a little bit of a cough now. (I think I was terrible and shared it with J - oops!)
I did start to get myself back into the writing groove yesterday. I did not add significantly to my word count - I am up to 61,875 words as of yesterday. I did get myself out of a writing funk by going back through and fixing a gaping plot hole in the story line. I realized that it doesn't work well to want to have the main character alive at the end of the novel if he is in grave and inescapable danger early on! silly me! So I went through and changed that up - put a different character in his place and had him further away and supervising from another location. Now I do not feel like I am beating my head against a wall so much as I write, and the 2,500 words should not be so hard to achieve.
I have tackled a different sort of creativity first today before going to the writing, mostly because it takes a while to work with yeast. I have been working on making bagels! I found a good recipe online - learned that it works better to broil them for a couple of minutes on each side before you boil them, and then you can bake them without fear of shriveling bagels. I made a test batch with this recipe yesterday - cut the recipe in half just in case, but it worked well. My only complaint was that the bagels were very small. I made three varieties today - regular, brown sugar cinnamon raisin, and cheese with crushed red pepper - six of each. We will definitely have some bagels to munch on in the next little while!
Okay, I have written my 2,500 words on the novel today. It took me a while; I think I am still getting back into the groove of writing this much in day after the holidays. I also had the bagels - I made eighteen of them, and they all turned out yummy!