Resisting the Urge

I'm plugging away at my first draft and am resisting the urge to go back to the beginning and adding more. I know that I need to flesh out the start of the book more, but I also know that revisions are best left for after the first draft is finished. It is one of the hardest things for me. I'm doing nicely and staying on goal for this week. We are well into the muddle of the book. Muddle is correct. It's the way to get from point A to point B through Points X,Y and Z. I'm working on character development and the next section will add a bit more of an action element. If the characters will oblige.

10,000 Words

This morning I well passed the 10,000 word mark. As I was telling Phil last night, it seems that the more I write on this novel the easier it is. The characters are taking shape and somewhat have a mind of their own. I need to do a bit of plotting for the next few scenes. I know what the scenes will be about, but I need to do a bit of laying out how each conflict will flow. What she has to do to get her goal? That kind of thing. I'm very excited about this book. I've been making over 1000 words a day, which if I continue like this I should have a first draft finished in about 9 weeks. I'm hoping to increase my word count as I progress though, so here's hoping to a bit less time than that. Yeah! 10,000!

Weekly Progress Report

My goals were average 1500 words per day and 10000 words total on story.

Three days I reached the 1500 words per day goal. On average I wrote 1000 words a day. I skipped one day. I wrote 6443 words on my story this week. On Wednesday I wrote 2000 words. The total amount of words I have on the story is 7632. Over the course of the week I spent about 7.4 hours typing on my story.

I'm still working on getting through the Description and Setting book. It's not as fast to go through as Character and Plots. There were also times when I sat with pen and paper to figure out a problem. I do need to go through and work out some plot issues with the "muddle" coming up. She's just about to go through the door of no return.

My goals for this next week... I'm going to aim again for 1500 words a day. That's about an hour and a half a day of working on writing. I'd like to get to 20,000 words on the story by Friday. The total word count will be around 100,000.

My Cardboard Cutout Men

So I realized last night that though my heroine is fleshed out and has a life outside of the scenes she's playing, my hero (who has yet to have a scene) was this cardboard cutout that I stick in scenes when I'm plotting. Even when I was going through my idea phase and typing out questions and answers I had very few answers where he was concerned. Why would he help her? What's in it for him? What the heck is he doing working at that kind of store? Why should the heroine care about this guy? What makes him special? What is his internal conflict? These questions were milling around my mind before falling asleep. Why indeed.

Right before I fell asleep I realized what it had to be. Of course I didn't have a notepad handy. So I sat and repeated it over and over in my brain. I still had a slight problem with the solution, but after writing it out this morning, it does make sense.

My problem now is that though I wanted to keep this as the heroine's story, I can see how his viewpoint might be useful. I guess I'll keep thinking about him. I do need to find a picture or develop a mental picture of him. The sacrifices I make for my craft. :)

Weekly Progress Report

I think Friday will be my weekly progress report. Through the Plots & Structure book from the Write Great Fiction series, I learned that a novel has three acts. Act 1 the setup, the Lead goes through the first door of no return, Act 2 the action leading up to the final conflict, the Lead goes through the second door of no return, Act 3 the final conflict and resolution. My current plot falls in line with the Hero's Journey. My character is still in Act 1. I've introduced the lead's world and have another scene before the disruption to the lead's world.

I've written 1512 words total on the story so far mostly this week. On plotting and idea generation and character development, I've written 4244 words this week. That's an average of about 1000 words a day which is not bad given I've only had about an hour to write a day. I'm hoping to kick up the total numbers of hours I spend next week.

Goal setting for next week - average 1500 words per day, 10,000 words total on the story by Friday of next week.

Write Great Fiction

I've finished Characters and am almost done with Plot & Structure. I currently have a work in progress that I find exciting and have been making notes on every day. I think the lack of Internet has done me some good in that respect. I will have to keep my usage down so I can still accomplish everything I want to. I've been analyzing my writing time to determine a good word count goal for each day. I'm on top of it.