Sporatic

That's exactly what my writing's been. I wrote 2 days last week. My goal is to increase my writing this week which I've already finished 1,184 words today and I still have time left. I have been spending time looking at other author's blogs and agent blogs. So I haven't been doing nothing related to writing, I just haven't been writing. Saturday and Sunday were too busy and last week with Phil out of town was just too tiring. But I'm going to get back into the swing of things. Total novel length so far.... 31,335 words over 153 pages. Not horrible.

Progress

Well, I haven't made great progress since I was sick this week. I hadn't quite gotten back into the grove of things since we got back from camping. The prior week I wrote 3885 words on the story and this past week I wrote 3229. Total word count on the book is 22,728. I've been working on the plot and the word count doesn't include the time spent on characters or plot which I do in a notebook. So this week I'll go for 1000 words per day and hopefully reach 30,000 words in the next two weeks.

Temporarily Derailed

I was going very strong the first part of this week. We went out of town Thursday through Saturday and no writing was created today either. However, not counting the last two days, I had an average of 1596 words per day. My lowest day was 1017 and my highest was 3056. I have a total of 15614 words written on the story. Realizing that my plot was reaching the half way point, I began to panic. I'm hoping that my first draft at least gets to 50,000 words. I'd rather it be more, but I know I have to work more description and character into the first draft. I did think about what I need to develop my villain more. She's needs a little more flesh on her bones.

So the goal for this week is the same to maintain an average of 1500 words a day and to get above 20,000 words. I have a big scene worked out that will be the next thing I write. I also need to work on my villain.

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. :)