Tag: word count

Milestones

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On June 8, 2013

In By the Numbers, Excitement, Just Keep Writing

I crossed the 100,000-word mark on the first draft of The Unseeing the other day. Woooo!

It was a nice feeling to check my word count and see six digits for the first time. I’m past my uninspired funk and I think I’m about 5,000 words away from the ending. Between here and there I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen though – my outline has been stubbornly vague and my head isn’t filling in the blanks either.

However I’m heading on an extended road trip tomorrow – 9 days of exploring the Pacific Northwest and northern California – and I’m sure all that time in the car will lend to some daydreaming and idea sifting. It’s our tenth wedding anniversary this month! Also the first time we’ve gone away without the kids – our last trip alone together was to Paris almost seven years ago, when I was pregnant with Kid 1. I ended up setting the books I’m currently writing in that city after I fell in love with it – I wonder if Portland or Seattle will become the inspiration for a new story?

And if you’re into that sort of thing, stay tuned for some exciting typewriter posts. I have four to pick up at a shipping drop point once we cross the border, and have been busy restoring another one at home for the past week. I don’t know if I want to introduce them one at a time, or all together, but the blog is going to get a little typewriter-heavy in the next while.

Lastly, I decided that rather than knocking down walls in my house to make space for a small office for myself, I’m going to build myself a little outbuilding in our backyard, insulate it and make it my writing headquarters. If all goes according to plan, construction will begin next month.

Big achievements accomplished, and big things on the horizon! These days it feels like everything’s coming up Nicole.

Panicking. Probably Prematurely.

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On February 23, 2013

In By the Numbers, My Failings As A Proper Novelist, Things That Make You Weep For Your Sanity, Writer's Low

It seems I’ve decided to take Secret Option C in reference to my last post on whether to keep writing my current work in progress or go back to my completed novel and spend some time editing – that is, to write and schedule a bunch of blog posts instead, thereby avoiding the dilemma altogether.

Anyway. I’m starting to look at my work in progress and what I’ve crossed off on the outline so far, and I’m feeling the  first prickings of concern in the back of my brain. I’m at roughly 23,000 words right now, and I’ve made it through a third of the points on my outline. If things remain consistent, I’m looking at a first draft total of around 75,000 words, which is too short, as far as I’m concerned. And I have absolutely no idea what to do about it, other than wait until I’m finished and see how it all turns out.

This, this here, is the downside of outlining for me. If I didn’t have one, I wouldn’t be obsessing about this right now. It’s utterly pointless, it is. But I can no more stop myself from doing it than I can stop myself from biting my nails or worrying about solar flares.

Some time will definitely be spent this week poring over the outline and seeing if there’s anything I can add to it. I like to have lots of extra words at the end of the first draft so there’s plenty of room for cuts. If I start out with only 75,000, I’m going to end up with a novella.

Frustrating. Ridiculous, but frustrating.

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Full Steam Ahead

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On February 15, 2013

In By the Numbers, Just Keep Writing

After taking a week and a half off writing to fight the worst cold I’ve had in ages, I jumped back in the game last night with a vengeance. I spent a couple hours at the window table of my favourite cafe and banged out over 3,000 words. Nearly an entire chapter!

(It JUST occurred to me that I spent Valentine’s Day alone in a coffee shop, writing, instead of doing something with my husband. The thought never even crossed my mind last night, but then, we don’t normally recognize V-Day. I wonder what the other people there thought about the poor girl sitting alone on Valentine’s Day, typing away and eating all the salted toffee squares!)

As I’ve mentioned before I’m using an outline for this novel, unlike the last one, but I’m enjoying how much freedom I still have and how many little scenes just pop up out of nowhere on a whim. The reason I’d resisted outlining for so long was because I thought it would be too rigid and there would be no room for spontaneity, but that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. Part of this often stems from dialogue, but from time to time it’s an entire scene that seems to just flow naturally from something in the outline.

I stayed at the cafe almost to the last minute before closing so I could hit this milestone:

I started writing just under a month ago and I’m a fifth of the way there. For me, that’s excellent progress.

The kids and I leave for a spring break vacation tomorrow, and I’m not sure how much writing or blogging I’m going to be able to do. Hopefully a decent amount of the former, because there are a couple scenes coming up that I’ve been really looking forward to writing!

I did it!

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On September 18, 2012

In By the Numbers, Excitement, Just Keep Writing, Writer's High

So I’m outing myself as a total noob here, but I’m going to do a little happy dance for a minute because I just achieved a very important goal to me, one that a year ago I would have thought was entirely impossible. For all those longtime authors with a few books under their belts this is totally going to be nbd. But for me it’s like, squeeee!

Crazy, hey? I was hoping I’d get it done tonight, and I did, adding about 1,400 words. I can smell the end now, it’s so close (and by close I mean within 20,000 words). I kind of hate to stop where I did tonight, but it’s late and tomorrow’s a school day for the grom. I’ll go to bed happy though, knowing I hit a milestone that I’ve been working toward for over six months.

Exciting! Yay! Exclamation points everywhere!!

My, What A Busy Week

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On July 31, 2012

In By the Numbers, Excitement, Planning for the Future, Revision

I took my kids to camp for five days, and what with their being in activities for a good half the day, I had a lot of spare time on my hands. Time that could be used to write, only I used most of it to read the book I posted about previously, make notes and analyze what I’ve already written based on what it suggests. It was pretty great – I identified a few issues and developed some more insight into the structure of my story. At some point I’d like to work on some detailed character outlines too.

The hardest part by far was summarizing my story into one short paragraph, but I’ve found that since I’ve done that, I’m a lot more comfortable with the “so what’s your book about?” question, which I’ve always dreaded and fumbled around.

Then once we got home, it was off to a quick 24-hour writer’s retreat by holing up in a hotel with two fellow writers. I love doing this. I want to find away to make it happen every month. I got so much done, had other people to bounce a few ideas off of and came out of it with almost a full chapter done, along with a metric assload of research.

The need to be accurate even in books that touch on fantastical subjects was something we talked about a lot. Even though my book has a strong fantasy element to it, I like the details to be logical and realistic whenever possible, so I don’t like to just make something up if there’s proven science out there instead. It sure makes for slow going at some parts – I think I know more about tsunamis and evacuation plans and the webcams of a particular city than anyone else I know, but I feel so much more confident in my writing than if I’d just fabricated something and pounded out the scene in fifteen minutes.

And then we watched The Day After Tomorrow. So satisfying to be writing an apocalyptic book while watching an apocalyptic movie.

And once again my iPod never fails to guide me when I need it – I triggered on a couple of major character/relationship dynamics while I was driving to a friend’s house today. Which I’m going to add to my “things to remember” doc immediately after this so I don’t forget. Something about the sunroof being open, it being a hot, sweaty evening and the right song at the right time brought it all together for me. Thanks, brain, for being so tuned in.

Since my experience with this last book went so well, I’m considering looking for one on how to revise or edit a novel from the first draft. Having never done such a thing before, I’m at a complete loss as to how to go about it. When I re-read a chapter every so often, I make little changes here and there, but that doesn’t feel like a proper revision.

Oh, and before I forget,

***drumroll***

Isn’t that something to see? And there’s still so much cool stuff coming up.

Umm, Whoops

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On July 18, 2012

In My Failings As A Proper Novelist, Organizing

I realized randomly today that I forgot to include a fairly important detail somewhere around chapter 8 or 9. It’s not going to change what I’ve written since significantly, but now I’m stuck with the task of finding the right spot to include it after the fact, in a way that seems natural and without disrupting the narrative flow I’ve already established. And no, I can’t add it into what I’m about to write – it’s time-sensitive and should’ve have happened a couple story-days ago.

Again, this is where outlining might have aided me. That’s two strikes against me – one more and I might have to actually write one out.

Anyway, I have a couple ideas. Might as well get that done now, instead of waiting until I’m revising. It’ll only be a couple paragraphs I think. But it definitely falls under the category of Really Important Later so I can’t leave it out.

In other news, at around the 63,000 word-count mark, I’m starting to wonder if maybe this isn’t the halfway point, not 50,000. There’s still so, so much to happen. So much. Holy crap.

Chapter Breaks

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On July 9, 2012

In Learning, Musical Interlude, My Failings As A Proper Novelist, Organizing

Something that I’m not so great at is where to end one chapter and start a new one. I like to cut them off at a point where there’s a little bit of suspense, to create a bit of incentive to turn the page – the best books for me are the ones that I can’t just stop reading and put down when I reach the end of the chapter, as I so often promise to do when it’s very late at night, because that chapter ending totally leaves me hanging and wondering what the hell is going to happen. So then I just read one more page… and the next thing I know it’s 4 a.m. and I’ve just read an entire book in a day.

But I’m off track now.

A lot of times I have a preconceived notion of where a chapter should end before I’ve actually written it. I don’t know if that’s a good idea when it comes to plotting or not, but that’s the direction my thoughts usually go when I’m thinking about structure (which is seldom). But then I’ll check my word count and realize my one chapter is actually about 12,000 words, which is just way too long any way you look at it. A 40 page chapter is just not reasonable in my mind. So then I have to split it into two smaller ones. My orginal ‘chapter 3’ was actually close to 24,000 words. True story. It ended up splitting into four. But then it’s kind of cool, because it’s way better to be able to say “I’ve finished six chapters so far” instead of a fairly measly three, and you feel like you’ve accomplished so much more. Anyway, I’ve been looking forward to getting to be able to write “Chapter 10” because, hey, double-digits, that’s kind of a neat milestone, right? And then when I checked my word count for chapter 9 I saw it was around 11,000 words, because once again I had this idea stuck in my head of where it had to end. Oops. I bisected it rather successfully, I think, and got to write both “Chapter 10” and “Chapter 11” tonight. See? I didn’t even know I was that far along.

I wonder if it would be better to just write the whole thing without worrying about where the chapters end, and add that all in afterwards, when it’s done?

And now for a musical interlude. The overly large section of the book formerly known as Chapter 9 was brought to you by the following songs, which have given me some inspiration and/or insight into a few of my characters’ motivations and emotions. One’s newer, and one’s an oldie but a goodie:

Thanks, iPod. Once again you have served me well.

Chapter 11 is going to be SO MUCH FUN to write.

Longest. Thing. Ever.

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On June 28, 2012

In By the Numbers, Excitement, Things That Are Awesome, Writer's High

That’s what she said. Am I right?

No really, check this out:

When I did NaNo last year, my story topped out at 53,789 words, and at the time it was the longest thing I’d ever written. Today, I surpassed that mark, with loads more to go. How great is that? Granted, that was over 50,000 words in 30 days, vs. the four months it’s taken me to get to this stage now, but that’s beside the point.

Now that I’ve passed the theoretical halfway marker – the story’s going to end when it’s going to end, I guess, but I’m aiming roughly for 100,000 words – I’m a little nervous because a lot of the second half is pretty murky in my mind. I’ve got the ending all figured out, and a couple key scenes before that building themselves up in my brain, but there are still a lot of holes. Then again, when I started writing the first half, months ago, there were a lot of holes there too, and they just seemed to fill themselves as I went along. So here’s hoping that trend will continue.

Halfway!

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On June 17, 2012

In By the Numbers, Excitement, Writer's High

That came about because I wrote more than 3,700 words today, which is absolutely insane for me. Looking back at last year’s NaNoWriMo stats, my best day was 100 words less than that, and I remember that as being an all-day effort. It’s not a pace I can keep up with, for sure, but if I could do it every Saturday, and the same amount again through the rest of the week, I could write a chapter a week and hopefully have my first draft done in a little under two months. And that’s a great feeling. I never actually completed my NaNo novel – I did the 50,000 words (53,000 as a matter of fact) but the conclusion remains to be written. By 50,000 words I was heartily sick of it, and still don’t feel that it’s worth the time to complete, but 50,000 words into this story and I’m falling more and more in love with it every time I sit down in front of my laptop. So that’s gotta be a good sign, right?

Count ‘Em Up

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On May 31, 2012

In By the Numbers, Excitement, Writer's High

I’m 13,000 and change words away from this being the longest thing I’ve ever written. And I feel like I’m just starting to scratch the surface. When I did NaNo I hit this mark and wondered if the story would be over before I made my 50,000 word goal. Now I’m feeling like it’s entirely possible I’ll run over 100,000. It’s a wonderful feeling. 🙂

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