So about 4 years ago I published my first book. I didn't really plan on "becoming an author," it just sort of happened. Four years before that, my husband left me, and someone suggested that I keep a diary. At the same time, I had a lot of relatives who lived far away and I was spending almost every day on the phone, telling my aunt in NM that he hadn't talked to the kids in months, or my sister in PA that I was taking him to court for overdue child support. Then I would call my aunt back to talk to her some more. I would say, "did I remember to tell you..." and I got the feeling that I was becoming a nuisance. Nobody came right out and said it, but I could tell. It became much easier to just make my diary a blog. Then, I still had the benefit of writing everything down. I still had the benefit of keeping friends and family informed. I changed the names of everyone involved, except for the other woman. She gets nothing from me.
So everyone told me that the writing was good. Really good. Like, "you should get this published" good. Well, I didn't see it. I self-published and made a whole $75 off that first book. *shrug* Better than zero.
But I didn't want to stop writing. So I began a science fiction novel. I have *ahem*, um... let's call it "bad luck with laptops." It could be shoddy decision making, but we're calling it bad luck, okay? So I didn't want to save my novel to a laptop that might not work in another week. I also didn't want to put it on a flash drive that I might lose. So, I opened a new blog, here, only instead of publishing blog posts I was publishing chapters. At first, I began writing, publishing a chapter at a time. But about three chapters in, I decided to pursue a different story and took all of those chapters down and just kept each chapter as a "draft". That way, I could access my book from any computer with a modem, and even work from my cell while I waited in the doctor's office.
Now, I've finished that novel. I'm trying to publish it traditionally, and one of the tidbits of advice that I got is, begin writing your second book as soon as you've finished the first. So if you're here, this is it. This single post is probably all you'll get to read, because everything in books 1 and 2 are "saved as draft."
P.S. If you really want to read about my divorce, you can buy the self-published paperback or e-book at this website
Friday, January 15, 2016
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
Weekly writing goal update
Jan 3: I set myself a goal of 4000 words a week for the month of January. The first week was short (Jan 1-3) but I managed 3,350 words.
Jan 5: Two days in to week two and I've written a 601 word blog post as "Cecelia Shay" and only 160 words in book 2. I didn't do any "writing chores" tonight, like hunt down agents, or submit a short story to a magazine, or work on my third edit of book 1. I shouldn't feel discouraged, because it was just one night, but I was going to work on my writing every day. Update: I forced myself to write tonight, Tuesday, and wrote 352 words. Hopefully the muse will strike in the morning.
Jan 8: Friday night, wrote 1096 words. Have been working on research more than writing lately. Also, the "n" key on my keyboard has been sticking lately so I either have to consciously tap it harder than I usually do, or go back and fix each word. I can't trust spell-check, since leaving the letter n out of words like month, hunt, and, been, or then results in legitimate words as well. And if I am skimming while editing I might miss one of those words. So I type a sentence, then read that sentence, to see if I missed an n. The ed.
Jan 10: wrote a little over 2,900 words this week, 601 word blog post on Tuesday, 2236 words of chapters 2 and 3 (haven't actually finished ch 3 but I kept yawning so I'm going to sleep) and 79 words of chapter 6. I jumped ahead and started writing that one when I got stuck on Thursday. It worked, and got me unstuck, as you can see from my Friday night update. Then Sunday night I wrote the other 1100 words toward my weekly goal.
Maybe in the coming week I'll write 6000 words, and bring me up to par. I thought 4K/wk was a realistic goal but I'm starting to question it. I'm discovering that part of the problem is that I'm measuring "net" words, not the entire scenes I play out in my head, or the scenes that I write and then delete. Golly, if I included stuff that I wrote and then cut I'd be WAY over my goal by now. Either way, my goal of 4K/week would have me write a complete novel in under 5 months. At this rate I'm averaging 3100 words/week, and it will take me almost exactly 6 months to finish. Which is still not bad.
1/11: 937 words tonight, all book 2 in order. It was very productive.
1/13: 656 words today.
1/15: 790 words today puts the weekly total so far at 2383. I still have 2 days to get caught up.
1/24: After editing, my first four chapters come to 8300 words exactly. I have written other things that I counted toward my weekly writing goals, but I probably shouldn't. So 3350 + 2236 + 2383 before editing = 7969. It's been 9 days since my last update and I've only added 331 words to my net word count. Still, this is good. If I write no more before the end of the month (and I'm sure that I will) 80,000 word novel/8300 words/mo = 9.6 months to finish. My first novel took me 3 years. My Jan. 1st goal of 4000/wk would have me done in 5 mos. My "realistic", adjusted goal of 3100/wk would take me 6 mos. I am now averaging 1660/week. *sigh* I retract my previous statement. This is not good. I suck.
1/26: Wrote 1862 words, finishing out chapter 5, in the last two days, more than making up for my sick days last week. New total is 10,162 words in slightly less than 1 month, leaving me with a projected 7.9 months to meet my goal, instead of 9.6. Still not as good as writing a novel in 5 or 6 months, but 8 is better than 10. If I want to meet my original January goal I basically need to write twice as much as I've been writing for every day left in January. Barring some serious struck-by-muse luck, it's probably not going to happen. Oh, well.
2/5: wrote 1169 words, finishing chapter 6. Side note: blogger thinks asymptote is a spelling error. Total for book is 11,331.
2/11: wrote 1434 words, finishing chapter 7. Total for book is now 12,766.
2/21: wrote 1327 words, finishing chapter 8. Total for book is now 14,093.
Jan 5: Two days in to week two and I've written a 601 word blog post as "Cecelia Shay" and only 160 words in book 2. I didn't do any "writing chores" tonight, like hunt down agents, or submit a short story to a magazine, or work on my third edit of book 1. I shouldn't feel discouraged, because it was just one night, but I was going to work on my writing every day. Update: I forced myself to write tonight, Tuesday, and wrote 352 words. Hopefully the muse will strike in the morning.
Jan 8: Friday night, wrote 1096 words. Have been working on research more than writing lately. Also, the "n" key on my keyboard has been sticking lately so I either have to consciously tap it harder than I usually do, or go back and fix each word. I can't trust spell-check, since leaving the letter n out of words like month, hunt, and, been, or then results in legitimate words as well. And if I am skimming while editing I might miss one of those words. So I type a sentence, then read that sentence, to see if I missed an n. The ed.
Jan 10: wrote a little over 2,900 words this week, 601 word blog post on Tuesday, 2236 words of chapters 2 and 3 (haven't actually finished ch 3 but I kept yawning so I'm going to sleep) and 79 words of chapter 6. I jumped ahead and started writing that one when I got stuck on Thursday. It worked, and got me unstuck, as you can see from my Friday night update. Then Sunday night I wrote the other 1100 words toward my weekly goal.
Maybe in the coming week I'll write 6000 words, and bring me up to par. I thought 4K/wk was a realistic goal but I'm starting to question it. I'm discovering that part of the problem is that I'm measuring "net" words, not the entire scenes I play out in my head, or the scenes that I write and then delete. Golly, if I included stuff that I wrote and then cut I'd be WAY over my goal by now. Either way, my goal of 4K/week would have me write a complete novel in under 5 months. At this rate I'm averaging 3100 words/week, and it will take me almost exactly 6 months to finish. Which is still not bad.
1/11: 937 words tonight, all book 2 in order. It was very productive.
1/13: 656 words today.
1/15: 790 words today puts the weekly total so far at 2383. I still have 2 days to get caught up.
1/24: After editing, my first four chapters come to 8300 words exactly. I have written other things that I counted toward my weekly writing goals, but I probably shouldn't. So 3350 + 2236 + 2383 before editing = 7969. It's been 9 days since my last update and I've only added 331 words to my net word count. Still, this is good. If I write no more before the end of the month (and I'm sure that I will) 80,000 word novel/8300 words/mo = 9.6 months to finish. My first novel took me 3 years. My Jan. 1st goal of 4000/wk would have me done in 5 mos. My "realistic", adjusted goal of 3100/wk would take me 6 mos. I am now averaging 1660/week. *sigh* I retract my previous statement. This is not good. I suck.
1/26: Wrote 1862 words, finishing out chapter 5, in the last two days, more than making up for my sick days last week. New total is 10,162 words in slightly less than 1 month, leaving me with a projected 7.9 months to meet my goal, instead of 9.6. Still not as good as writing a novel in 5 or 6 months, but 8 is better than 10. If I want to meet my original January goal I basically need to write twice as much as I've been writing for every day left in January. Barring some serious struck-by-muse luck, it's probably not going to happen. Oh, well.
2/5: wrote 1169 words, finishing chapter 6. Side note: blogger thinks asymptote is a spelling error. Total for book is 11,331.
2/11: wrote 1434 words, finishing chapter 7. Total for book is now 12,766.
2/21: wrote 1327 words, finishing chapter 8. Total for book is now 14,093.
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