An update...

I'm not doing so good in updating this blog, but here's one.
I've finally found a copy of a short story I wrote about two years ago. I found it on the back-up, stand alone, hard disk we have. Thank the lord for back ups. I'm going to submit this story to magazines etc. and see if anyone wants to publish it. I'm going to start with paying markets first and go down from there. :)

My new, desk-top computer is up and running and it is on this computer that I have put the story. I will put it onto a USB stick just as soon as I have one with some space. I have also re-installed yWriter5 on to this computer.

I have a nasty habit of using my desk top computer for games and I tend to pick playing games over writing. I also own a netbook, which I only use for writing. The idea is that I move the story to the netbook, re-read it, edit as necessary and then submit it for publication.

My work computer is dying, so at the moment the entire contents of its hard drive are on a variety of USB sticks and portable hard drives. Hence I have no space available for the story. (Though having said that and while editing this post, I found a small USB stick, which does have space. So tonight the story gets moved.) I will be getting a new, work laptop in a week or two.

I've started to make a new schedule for writing and I'm actually doing some. Not a lot, but it's a start. I need to get into the habit of writing and that habit needs to be substainable.

I need to move the files around. For NaNoWriMo, I kept the files on a USB stick, but now I want to concentrate on using my netbook and not to write at work if at all possible. Therefore I will copy all the files on to the netbook.

One publication I'm going to check out is 'The New Yorker', because if I'm going to be rejected, I want to be rejected by the best.

And I keep getting sick, which means I'm tired all the time. At the moment a normal day is wake-up, eat, go to work, get home, eat and sleep. Repeat for all working days. I'm starting to feel a bit better - touch wood.

My typing is much worse. I don't seem to be able to 1) put my hands in the right rest positions on the keyboard and 2) hit the right keys when typing. I always seem to be a letter or two off or I press too many of the right key.

Practice make perfect. Now all I need to do is practice.

It's been a while

But I am feeling much better and I have started to write again. At least sometimes.

I'm going to try to start writing a blog. Nothing to do with writing or related subject, so I won't mention it here. It is still in the planning stages. I don't have a title or anything at the moment. Just an idea.

I'm still planning on submitting the short story I wrote a couple of years ago. I need to find it again. I know it's on my home computer, I just have to dig it out.

After I've caught up with that, I'm going to start on my book again. I know it has potential, all I have to do is make it work.

Sounds so simple...

Not so good

So I've not been feeling brilliant lately and have done practically nothing on my writing. I've had great plans and have done very little, including not submitting a short story to a competition. Stupid, but actually not that surprising.

This is because I am apparently suffering from moderate severe anxiety and moderate severe depression. Now there's something to get anxious and depressed about. To be truthful, it's not as bad as it seems. I'm not taking any medication and I won't be taking any.

I will be doing some 'courses' to help me change my way of thinking and reacting to situations. This is CBT - cognitive behavioural therapy and I should see results pretty quickly. It's not a quick fix, but most people see results fairly quickly if they do the work.

So I'm deliberately taking a break from writing and a few other things, while I get this sorted out or at least under control. I'm already feeling better, which may sound odd, but last weekend for the first time in a long time I took a brisk, 9-km walk, which I enjoyed immensely. Exercise does help as long as it's a type of exercise you enjoy.

I used to walk a lot. I lived on the edge of a village and used to walk in the hills frequently. I used to bike in the hills too. Now I live in a village in the middle of farmland. Very flat farm land too. It's now where near as pretty and I feel a bit uncomfortable walking around here. Most of the people who live here don't do that sort of thing. I need to get over this and get out more.

I'll try and keep writing here at least once a week. No promises though.

No more written

I've been busy, just not with writing. I've been catching up on other parts of my life.

Hopefully over Christmas, I will get a chance to work on my writing. I want to go through what I wrote for NaNoWriMo and rearrange the scenes and chapters. To do this I need to write an outline. Well to be fair, I have to do the 2 at the same time so that they match.

If I do get time, I will be able to start the second draft in January. If I don't get round to it, I won't start the second draft until March or later.

Time to get my act together.

Friday and the weekend

Over the last three days I wrote nothing. Not a single word. I didn't even open up the file. I have to admit I enjoyed the break, but it's not exactly what I should be doing.

So I have until midnight on Wednesday to write as much as I can. To be honest I will probably verify sometime on Wednesday afternoon, just to make sure that I do get round to it. It would be a nightmare if I did all this and then I forgot to verify.

So I'm currently at 53529 words. So 60k is not out of the question. Let's hope there's not too much other stuff I have to do in the next few days.

update

Yesterday I added another 500 words after writing the blog entry. I ended the day with 50502 words.

Today I'm struggling to write anything. I think it's because I've reached the 50k and I know that as far as NaNoWriMo is concerned I've won. When the validator goes live on the 25th, theoretically I can enter my text and seal the deal.

However I haven't finished the draft and I don't want to validate unless it's finished. I now know how it ends and who the murderer is. I've avoided the obvious suspect and made the actions of the killer work with the people involved. I could just write a summary and leave it at that.

But I don't want to. I want to write the scenes. OK maybe not all of them, but enough to make it part of the novel rather than an outline. I'm hoping to add about 10k before the end of November. It would be really cool if I could make it to 70000 words, but that really is pushing it.

In December I'll probably keep writing the first draft scenes as there are some I haven't completed yet. Then in January next year, I'll start cutting and pasting the scenes until a book emerges. I've written quite a bit in a linear time line, but that makes no sense for the storyline. Some will become flashbacks, other scenes will simply not make it into the book, but it was still worth writing them.

Once everything is in the right order, I'll go through each scene and chapter again. This time I'll rewrite them. For some this will only be a tweaking, but for others it will mean a complete rewrite.

After that, and if I get that far, I'll need to send it out to beta readers. Then it's to the last edit run. Of course this is all very far in the future, but this story is the best I've ever written and that may not be saying much, but it means a lot to me.

This one I will finish.

Day 23

So far I've written 2502 words, giving a total of 50045 words. I broke the 50k. I will still be writing and it would be nice to reach at least 60k before the end of November.

What I would like to manage is to write at least 5000 words per day on four of the remaining November days. This is including today. But I don't think I will. I'm leaving in half an hour and I will be busy for the rest of the day. Tomorrow is a possibility as are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week. However nothing can go wrong on those days and somehow I don't see that happening.

Work has been extremely busy and frustrating. Home has just been busy. I will continue writing after the 30th until I have all the scenes written. Then I'll cut and paste them until I have a coherent story. Then it's time for the first rewrite. Hopefully this will be at the beginning of next year. I might take a break in between, but I'm worried I won't be able to get started again.

Please ignore any typing errors if you see them, for some reason things always get worse towards the end of NaNoWriMo. I can't seem to type the simplest word without making a mistake.

Day 21

So far today I have written 0 words. And there is nothing missing from that previous sentence. Work has been completely crazy and I have not had time to do anything else.

Since last Wednesday I have written 0, 2207, 774, 793, 1210, 0 words up to and including today. Not the best of records, but except for the day I traveled to my business meeting and today, I have written everyday. I'm hoping to write tonight as well.

In my original plan, I should have written 63000 words, or at least to have been above the 50k. I'm at 42505 words, which is not bad. I'll definitely make it to 50k, but I'll have to summarize more scenes than I originally intended, so that I can finish on time.

Not a disaster, just annoying. I didn't always get a chance to update NaNoWriMo, but yWriter's log keeps track of my daily totals. A wonderful tool it is too.

Yesterday

I ended up writing 5271 words, giving me a total of 32027 words. It was the first time I'd written over 5000 words in one day. I'm not particularly keen to continue with such a large amount, however I still need to catch up if I want to reach the 80 000 word goal.

Let's hope today goes as well.

Day 10

Well the day isn't not over yet, but before I forget to write an update, here it is. Today I have written 3150 words, bringing my total to 25509 words.

I had originally hoped to reach 30000 words today, but due to illness I didn't. I don't consider this a failure for two reasons. The first is that I have written more consistently this year than ever before. I have written every day even if it was just a few words.

The second is that I'm enjoying writing. This year is a joy. I'm enjoying the characters, the plot, the setting, the everything. This is in complete contrast to last year when I hated the whole thing.

I know I can write to a deadline, but I know I'm lousy at writing without one. Without a deadline, everything else seems suddenly so much more appealing. This year's NaNoWriMo is changing that, because I'm changing the way I write.

I write in smaller chunks - just 500 words at a time. These can quickly add up and I don't need to set aside a large chunk of time to write thousands of words in one sitting.

I write every day. In previous years, I wrote 5k a day for ten days, normally the last ten days. This year I want to write almost every day.

I keep back ups on all my available computers, but my main file is on my USB stick. This means that I can use any computer to write on. I also have a netbook, which allows me to write almost anywhere. I used to keep my main file on my work laptop and a back up on the USB. This made it difficult to write at weekends as I didn't always take the laptop home with me.

What I've done, in essence, is to make it easier to write and it's having an effect.

NaNoWriMo update

So for the first time ever, I believe, I actually wrote on the weekend. Not a huge amount, but more than ever before. Beating zero words isn't exactly hard, but still it's an improvement.

On Saturday I added 1635 words and on Sunday 2051 words. Bring the grand total to 17209 words. This is slightly under my target of 18000 words by Sunday, an average of 3000 words per day. But I'm happy with it and that's all that matters.

Now for today's writing...

Day 3

I didn't blog yesterday simply because I didn't have time. I added about 2500 words to my total, which ended up at 10007 words. Not bad for three days or writing. I wrote less because it was a busy day and I had less time to write. The writing is still going well and is not slowing down at all.

Let's see how long that continues for. Today I'm hoping for at least 3000 words. It would be nice to do more, but I have a busy afternoon/evening so I don't think that's going to happen. And for the first time ever, I'm going to write at the weekend too.

In previous years I have only ever written on weekdays, during quiet periods at work. This year I'm trying to be a bit more structured and write less per day, but for more days in the month. I normally write the 50000 words in ten days randomly spread out through the month.

This year I'd like to reach 80000 words or there about. I'm using a new editor, yWriter, which allows me to write in scenes. These I'll rearrange later on into the correct order. I find I write better if I write the first draft using a linear time line, however the story works better with flashbacks. I find I can lose consistency if write a later flashback before and earlier one.

If I don't use some of the scenes, that easy and I can still add in new ones. But seeing them laid out in the correct time line means I don't have the reaction happening before the action.

update

I added approximately 1500 words last week. Not a huge amount, but not bad either. Currently, I write for just one hour a week. I know I need to write more. I just have trouble getting motivated. I'm so tired in the evenings that all I want to do is sit down and vegetate.

I worked out that if I continue at this rate, I will finish after one year. Better than never, but could be improved.

No progress

I'm still at just over 33000 words, which means I need to write just under 17000 words before midnight tomorrow. Definitely doable. OK, I might not finish until late tomorrow, but I will finish. I'll aim for 40000 words today and leave the last 10000 until tomorrow.

33000 words

Not too bad, not the 35000 words I was hoping for, but a lot better than I feared. And tomorrow is another day.

writing

I ended yesterday with just over 30000words. Today I've added about a thousand more and I can't think of a single thing more to write. I'm not feeling very well, but that's just an excuse. I really don't feel like writing. I was hoping to end the week with 40000 words, I'll be lucky to hit 35000 words.

Of course, this doesn't mean I won't reach the magic 50000 words. It just means I have more to do in the last remaining days. That is what I'm good at. I just wish I could be more consistent.

My spelling is improving, but I get the feeling my grammar is getting worse.

Today

Yesterday I ended up with a touch over 26000 words. I'm hoping to get to just over 30000 words today. It should be possible. In theory. Trouble is I was never very good at theory.

I have added 500 words so far today, which is progress. Let's hope it continues.

25000 words!

So I am now over the halfway mark. Less than 25000 words to write to win NaNoWriMo. I will write enough to win, but I won't be anywhere near my original target.

However I will have a good first draft, that needs expanding, re-writing and editing. In the end I will end up with a good manuscript. I have no idea if it will attract an agent, but I should get to that stage this time.

After NaNoWriMo, I will work on one chapter a week. I will, however, not start until next year, before that I'll work on the outline to another book. I need a break from this one. But this is, by far, the most advanced story I have to date. It is consistent.

The weekend

I reached 23000 words over the weekend. Not exactly brilliant, only an extra 500 words. But we are now into the home straight, so I know I'll start writing more.

Only 8 days to go and 27000 words, that should be no problem. It should take 6 days, so time to spare. Now it is time to write.

yesterday, Tuesday 16th

I wrote 1400 words, bring my total to 21700 words. So I'm still behind the NaNoWriMo average total for the given date. I'm not feeling well today, but I'll see how I do.

Some how I see myself writing the last 25000 words in the last weekend, and making it just in time. Sigh.