Writing habits

For the last 10 days or so, I have been writing. Each session has produced 500-750 words, which is pretty good. Last week I managed 2900 words in total and so far this week the total has increased to 4500 words.

I did start off with the goal of 100 words a day, or 700 words for the entire first week, so I blew that goal completely out of the water. As I completed almost 3000 words last week, my new goal for this week is 3500 words to give a total of 6500 over the two weeks. Only 2000 words to go...

In terms of progress on the novel, I would like to get to 5000 words a week. This is eminently doable, but as always it is me that is holding it back. So far this week, I'm not doing too badly. Last night I was ill so I didn't write, I slept instead. However I have no excuse for tonight.

I should add that I was seriously ill at the end of last week due to a viral infection. The doctor was worried it was even worse than it turned out to be, but I was still very sick. I'm still feeling the effects now and that is why I slept for so long yesterday.

I will admit that this is a new story I'm writing. I decided to take some time away from the other one as I was getting more and more confused where it was headed. I haven't completely abandoned it and I will go back to it when I've finished writing the first draft of this story. At that point I will then make a decision as to either continue with it or abandon it for good.

Of course I could be a serial first drafter, never getting any further with anything, but somehow I doubt it.

long time, no write

And not just here on the blog. I have re-written my outline, but it stopped there. I haven't written in weeks.

Well technically that's not true. I should say that I haven't written anything in the way of fiction. I have written several reports for work, including re-writing an existing report, totally changing another one so that it was ten times as long, and wrote a couple of totally new reports.

But as far as fiction goes, not a word. Nothing. And now I'm repeating myself.

OK so things have been busy in the rest of my life, but I shouldn't use that as an excuse. I have spent an hour or so watching TV some nights and I could have easily been writing instead.

The break is now over and I'm going to start writing again. Honest. Actually I've already tried, but deleted both efforts. They were bad, and I mean really bad.

However I am writing again, so hopefully I will start blogging again to. I hate writing a blog post about nothing. Mind you, this post isn't really about much....

back to the beginning

At the moment I am writing using pen and paper. I'm re-doing my outline and one thing I've learned is, I need an outline.

There's nothing wrong in what I've written, but at the moment none of it hangs together. It doesn't help that I wrote some of the scenes for one storyline, only to alter the plot and not edit those scenes straight away.

Maybe that was the problem...(and before you ask, it was the problem.)

I think that I should have just started from scratch with the new plot and not tried to bring in what I had already written. I got lost. Very lost.

Now I'm going to write a detailed outline, and then write a list of scenes. Then, and only then, I'm going to start to write on the computer again.

Writing the outline down on paper, helps me to see the story more clearly. So for the next week or so, the word count won't increase, but hopefully I will make progress.

If I change my mind about the story line again, I'm going to go back to this stage immediately rather than trying to continue and adapt what I have already written.

Starting again

Not completely from scratch, but I have deleted a large proportion of what I had written. I'm now down to about 8k words and more may vanish as I go.

The storyline in my head didn't match the one on the page. I thought that they did, but by going through what I had written scene by scene and summarizing them, I found out otherwise.

I deleted all the scenes that were not right. They still exist, just not in my main file and I probably won't look at most of them again. I will simply write the scenes from scratch.

I'm going to write out the story line again and make a list of scenes. I'll then write those scenes. The ones that stayed are from the beginning, which has received the most attention and they did follow the story in my head.

My word count has gone down, but I made progress.

Progress

Not much maybe, but I am getting back into things. I really did get stuck, so I took a break and read some blogs and books and things.

http://www.timothyhallinan.com/writers.php is a great piece on actually getting through the tougher times and finishing your book. It has helped me enormously and is the reason I'm back to writing again.

In fact, I'm not actually writing parts for the book at the moment, but I taking stock of what I have written and really getting into making sure that it works. I know I started this by myself, but reading that other people get like this too really helped.

So at the moment I'm writing about the book and making progress.

The weekend

I actually started to read my pages this weekend. I got about one-third of the way through, which seems to be normal for me. Let me explain.

The beginning of my novel is not too bad. It's the part I've spent the most time on. The rest of the book just sits there, unread. It's not that I'm trying to make the first part perfect. It's just better to read than the rest of it. So I don't read the rest and it never gets edited and it never gets better, so I never read it. Are you seeing a pattern here yet?

I need to re-write some scenes. I need to add in new ones. I need more complications and conflict. I just can't seem to write them. I'm not sure what I should do at the moment. I could try to push on and actually tackle the rest of the book or I could take a break and start something else.

I need to write and at the moment I'm not writing anything. I'm making lame excuses to avoid it at all costs. Ridiculous really, but right now that's how I feel.

Thursday evening

Last night I did what I had predicted I would, I slept and I needed that sleep. The consequence is that there is no change in the progress of my book and there probably won't be until the weekend.

It's unlikely that I will do much today, so tomorrow will be the first day that I will actually be able to sit down somewhere quiet and work on the scenes.

Flu

I have not posted recently because for the last week I have been in bed with the flu. Today is my first day back at work and the first day that I have felt human again.

The consequence of this is that my current word count stands at 45080 words, just over half of the end total. I have printed out all of the individual scenes and now I have to go through them all, editing and rearranging them.

I find this a daunting task. It doesn't scare me, but I am really not looking forward to it. I am hoping to start tonight, however I am a little worried that I will not have the energy left after a full day back at work. I still get tired quickly.

I am resolved to do some editing this weekend. Even if it's only to go through one or two scenes. I need to get started. I know it will get easier once I start. And I know this because of a short story that I once wrote. I had real trouble getting up the courage to re-read it and to begin editing, however once I started, it went really well and the second draft was so much better than the first.

Also, I need to add in more scenes. Currently missing are the subplot(s). These just don't exist. Well one has been started, but all I have done is introduce a character. The actual plot is still missing.

More detail still needs to be added as well. Most of the conversations are just talking heads with no action attached. Hopefully at the end of this, I'll be much closer to the 80-90k words that the novel should reach and the scenes will finally all be in the right order.

I'm hoping to get this all done before the end of January, but as I just lost a week that could be pushing it slightly. I haven't given up on getting it done by then as there are still just over two weeks to go, but I wouldn't put money on it.

I am content with what I have done so far. I wish I had done more and some of that is due to me, the rest though is due to ill health and I can't control that.

Wednesday.....

I have yet to print out the individual scenes and go through them. I intended to do that yesterday, but yesterday was Wednesday, which is never a good day for me. I did nothing in terms of writing or editing.

What I did instead was to try to resurrect my dying desktop computer. It's been randomly rebooting itself for a couple of weeks now and yesterday, it began producing warning messages whenever I did anything. The warning message was rather dire at that.

A hardware check showed nothing wrong. So I did a software check and there were errors. Lots of errors. I had to run a full CHKDSK and it appears to have been successful. However I haven't used the computer enough to be sure of this.

This weekend will be the real test. In the mean time, I'll print out the scenes tonight and tomorrow, I'll start to edit, reorder and combine the scenes. I'll also look for places to put new scenes and mark those in with a scene summary.

Today, I will do very little. I might start reading through, but I much prefer a paper version for reading. I find it much easier with a hardcopy.

Today

I wrote about 1000 words today. Not much and nowhere near my goal, but more than I have written in a while. I have also split my file up into scenes. So that each scene has its own file.

Tonight or tomorrow, I will print out those files and then mix and match the scenes. I know that the story doesn't flow at the moment and due to the changes in the storyline, the timeline is dodgy at best. And I'm still either contradicting myself or still leaving in references to now removed encounters.

It's all a bit confused. I need to sit down and reorder the scenes. Mark out which parts need to be removed or altered that still remain and work out where there still needs new scenes/information added. None of the remaining scenes need to be completely deleted, but the may need a complete re-write.

Some of the conversations still need annotating. Currently that's all there is, talk. No action, no interruptions, just talking heads. Time to add more substance.

So on the writing side, didn't make my goal of 2500 words in a day, but I'm more organized now. Whether that is a good thing (which I think it is) or a bad thing, is still to be seen.

Update

The total so far is 44069 words. I started this morning with 14068 words. The majority of this increase came from adding the good scenes from the first draft. I've added about another 1000 words as I have gone through, editing the new additions.

This means I dropped about 9000 words from the first draft, which was written during NaNoWriMo '09. Not a bad keep rate, especially for me. I am going through and editing the scenes, which for the most part is producing an increase in word count. Of course I am deleting parts, but I am also adding new bits.

I've already reached my daily goal, but I'm going to continue as it is currently going well. My main goal for this month, is to have a second draft finished before the end of January. In this second draft, I hope to have most of the book written. There maybe details missing, and a few parts that still need more research, but for the most part it will be complete.

In February, I hope to fill in those details and check the facts. After that, I'll start with checking the English - grammar and spelling separately - and then leave it for a few weeks, before reading through again. But that's all far in the future. I still need to get this second draft finished. And I might need a third before all the scenes are complete.

Happy New Year!

The snow got worse and the schools closed and I stayed home until today. Actually I did go out between then and now, but I didn't go back to work. I also didn't go on the Internet much nor did I write much. In fact I didn't write at all. I did have a great time with my family and got a netbook at Christmas.

This should mean that I can write more when at home, but one thing I learned over my two and a bit weeks at home, is that my family are exactly helping me to write. Every time I tried to sit down and write there was something someone wanted, or it was time to cook again. Still the house was cleaned top to bottom and everything that needed polishing was polished. Now all I have to do is find time to write when at home.

Today I hope to fit a little in this afternoon. I'll blog later on with the result...

Cookies and numbers

I've added a cookie to the template of this blog. It should tell me how many times and when people do look at this blog.

It shouldn't affect you, the reader. However if it does, let me know by leaving a comment. If it causes too many problems, I'll delete it.

I only added it because I love statistics. Sad I know, but true. I keep a spreadsheet throughout NaNoWriMo so I can analyse my performance...

And on statistics, I have actually completed the 50000 words in ten days in all the years I have completed NaNoWriMo. Not necessarily consecutive days, but always in 10 days and never starting before the 10th November for various reasons.

After last year (the first time I failed) I have decided that this year I will be starting on the 1st November, but it still remains to be seen if I actually spend more days writing. Of course it helps that the 1st falls on a Sunday.

My goal is different this year. The previous years I just wanted the 50000 words and that was it. Included in this, was a fantastic 5000 word chapter on making a sandwich. It was absolutely brilliant. I really should dig it out again, give it a good edit and see if The New Yorker (or similar) will publish it.

This time I want to actually write a real novel that has a chance to be published (with editing of course). I'm also hoping for 75000 words, as this is the length of the final book (approxiamately speaking).

And yes, I know the book will be length it needs to be, but I think 75000 sounds reasonable for a murder mystery. Of course if it's longer or shorter, I still be happy as long as it ends up as a book.

And now I've posted twice in one week. I think I'm getting addicted.