Progress Update

Two days ahead of schedule, last night I broke the 30k mark ending at 30,449. I had previously mentioned in the comments of my last post that I had picked a leisurely pace of 550 words per day to finish the rough draft of my novel. What I didn’t mention is that Friday and Saturday nights are 1,000 word days since I have a bit more time on the weekend than I do during my crazy busy week.

So far my schedule and slow perseverance is paying off. I’ve worked up a little bit of an extra word count so that if I need to take a day off due to unforeseen circumstances then I can without getting behind, which makes me feel very good about it all. Right now I should finish the 50k rough by the end of April.

I’ll probably update again when I break some other landmark number.

Blogging Hiatus

Turns out I’m not really all that passionate about keeping up a blog about my fantasy fiction.  Oh, I still write, and I’m actually making some progress on my NaNo novel, I just don’t really have a passion for writing on the subject of writing fantasy fiction…if that makes any sense.  I showed my incomplete NaNo novel to a good friend who is (in my opinion) a relative expert on the genre and he had nothing but positive praise for it.  He did of course mention some plot holes and a few overlooked character flaws that needed to be worked out, but that was all because I wrote the 23k piece with no prepared plot in a frenzy from November 3rd to November 22nd, letting the plot go wherever it wanted to.  He apparently found the most irritating part of it to be the incomplete plot.  The characters in the story are racing to get aboard a boat that will take them out of the country which will conclude the first third of the book and where I left off the characters are so very close that his comments were “At least get them on the stupid boat!”  heh.  Anyway, I’m not bragging (yet) because it’s still far from done.  However, the detailed analysis of what I’ve got so far helped me get passed the mega case of writer’s block I’d had with the piece for the last 2 1/2 months, and gave me some great ideas for carrying it forward.  So now I’m back on that.

In other news, my epic fantasy might-as-well-be-a-novel messageboard-style RPG set in my world which has been going for 4 years now is still going strong.  Right now there’s material enough for 4 books and we’re not done.  So that’s good.

Finally, I mentioned that it’s not really my passion to write about writing, but I do have a passion and I am using a blog for it.  I’m a very religious person (if you didn’t know already), and I’ve opened a blog over here to write down my religious ramblings: Think Hebrew.  Go there if you care.  If not, no worries.

I will update this blog periodically to let anyone who still by chance follows this blog know of any progress I’ve made towards finishing my the novel I started at NaNo.  Until then, peace out.

-James

Refelctions on NaNoWriMo

After leaving it alone for a month I’ve come back to my NaNo-creation. Surprisingly, I’m actually pretty happy with what came out. Most people try to tell you that NaNo is about quantity over quality and to just write and write and let the crap come out until you have 50k works. For the 22 days that I actually wrote I struggled with my word output. On most days all I could manage to get out was about 1000 words, sometimes less, and rarely more. I wondered why. Turns out my obsession with quality writing kept me in check and now looking back on what I wrote…it’s not bad. In fact, the only thing it needs is a bit more fleshing out and of course editing.

I guess I really expected it to be a terrible piece of work since it was written in haste. Towards the end of the month I lost my way and got into a trap of my own setting which will need to be slightly reworked to be more meaningful, but that plot error can be easily corrected. Other than that, the book is on track and I love where it’s headed. I don’t know if I could have done it without NaNo simply because I’m so busy all the time that I might not have stopped and set aside my other writing projects to work on something totally new like this. Seriously, this came out of nowhere. This book, this plot, this entire setting…I have no idea where it came from, but doing NaNo caused it. Now I just need to run with it.

Oh, and my laptop (finally) came in today. w00t.

I might have spoken too soon…

My laptop is dead. I’ll post when it’s fixed and I can actually write. Should only be a few days. Bah.

Return of the Writer

Grad school is over for the semester. Studying has ceased. Finals have been taken. The pen has been put down. The books have been closed. Life has resumed now – if only for a month until I do it again. Until then, I’m going to work on finishing my rough draft. I had thought about trying to set up an aggressive schedule to finish it before grad school starts. But I think I’m gonna go with some advice from Ken and just pick a small, easy to reach number. I’m going with 750. I’ll start today and I’ll post a daily word count update. There are 31 days from now until when next semester classes start. If I meet my goals, that will be 23,250 words written and will put me very near to 50,000 words, which was my original goal for my rough draft. Yes, I know a good number for a fantasy novel is 90,000 – 110,000 words long. But this is just my rough draft from which I will flesh the rest of it out.

Here goes…

Tis the Season

Just a quick update today. Most everyone loves this season of the year, regardless of religious belief. For me, grad school for the semester is nearly over. Now it’s finals season. Ah…tis the season.

I’m Sick

Well, my body does this when I get too stressed out, work myself too much, and spread myself too thin. It happened just about every semester at college and it’s happening now. I get sick. Sore throat, drainage, a cough, no energy, the works.

So I’m dropping NaNoWriMo.

It was fun. I learned alot and got a great start on a great novel. Sadly, though, I just don’t have the time to do that and stay mentally and physically healthy. Let’s go down the list of stuff I already do. I work 40 – 45 hours a week, we’ll take the average and say 43. I go to grad school for 6 hours a week in class, and spend about another 6-10 hours a week doing prep work and studying. I teach a Bible class on Sunday mornings at my church, and that usually takes about 5 hours of prep work. I like to do a thorough job on that…there’s quite a few warnings about leading people astray in that book. Morning church is about 3 hours long with Bible class and worship. Then evening church is about 2 hours long from leaving the house to getting back. I also lead the Wednesday night small group that I attend, we’re going through Jeremiah right now and that usually takes about 4 hours of prep time since we cover 3 chapters a week, and then the actual Bible study lasts about 3 hours because we eat together and stay after and talk. I also do Friendspeak, which is a way for foreigners to learn conversational English while studying the Bible, and that takes about an hour on Sundays. I work out every weekday for an hour, so that’s 5 hours a week there. I also attend a men’s prayer group on Thursdays usually lasting about 2 hours. Then because my weekdays are so absolutely full, the weekends get filled up rather quickly, so on average I probably have about 5 hours of my Saturday taken up by something or other, sometimes the entire weekend is taken up, like two weekends in November were.

I’m going insane. Trying to fit NaNoWriMo into this chaos has been ridiculous. There has to be a balance in my life, or I’ll lose it. The original plan was to begin editing in December. Instead, once grad school is done for the semester, I’ll pick the book back up and start anew on it, with the goal of finishing the 50k by the end of december.

So Far Behind

I am really far behind now. I’m at just shy of 20k words and today I expect to break that mark when I write during my lunch break. It is November 20th and I have 20k words. At this speed I’ll make 50k in about 30 more days…that’s won’t do at all. So it looks like it’s up to the weekends and Thanksgiving break to help me win NaNoWriMo. I’ve set word count goals for myself for every remaining day of the month and this Saturday and Sunday are both 5k days. My goal is to by Sunday evening when I close my laptop to be sitting at about 34,000 words which should put me on track to finishing. Monday and Tuesday I can write at lunch like I usually do. I have Wednesday through Friday off from work as well as that last weekend and my goals each of those days is 3k which should put me over the top. Let’s see how it goes.

After NaNoWriMo

So I find myself pondering what to do after NaNo is over. Yes, I realize I shouldn’t sit and daydream about this too much, because I am still markedly behind on my word count. Yes, I realize I should just focus on getting to that point. However, I wanted to at least come up with a decent plan of action so that WHEN I get there (not “if”) I will know what to do.

Starting about December 10th grad school will be over for the semester and until it picks up again about Jan 10th, I am going to use that time to come up with my second draft. I plan on setting chapter-based goals, rather than wordcount-based goals. Right now I’m planning on saving the rough draft into a new file and then going through the rough and refining it and expanding the good parts chapter by chapter. The goal is to have it refined by the end of my Christmas break. I will have alot of time on my hands, so don’t worry about me rushing through it. After the second draft is complete I will hand it to some of my “beta” readers. After their thoughts and ideas have been weighed I’ll go through it one more time and meticulously polish it all up to come up with my third and final draft. The third time through will be all about the flow of prose and attention to detail both with plot and characters.

How do you handle writing the subsequent drafts?

NaNoWriMoing Along

Well, my NaNo novel is going splendidly. I am admittedly behind schedule (I’m at 8.6k, should be at 17k today), but that’s okay. The point is, it’s going, and I’m making good progress. I will do an extra few thousand on the weekends and catch up in no time. I do admire Nils who is already beyong 25k and is just steaming full speed ahead. You’re crazy!

So what did I decide to go with? I had decided to go with the familiar and just keep going with what I’d been working on. Then, on November 1 I had an idea that was just too cool to pass up. So in a brash move, I decided to just go with it and see where it took me. So far I’m really, really, pleased with what’s come of it. It’s going to make a great rough draft.