To not be a hobby writer

The frequently reader of my blog might notice the shiny new word count meter over on the sidebar. Goals don't work for me. I just don't think about them really unless someone reminds me. *coughSarahcough* However, at least during Nanowrimo I was thrilled to see my progress bar go up and up until I hit my goal. So the progress bar is back and the idea is that it will continue to go up.

The goal of 130k total words isn't definite, it might take more or less to actually finish but I think that's a fairly good guess for at least the first draft. The second bar you see is for weekly progress. I'm starting with a weekly goal of 5000 words per week, which is less than 1000 per day. I figure doing a weekly word count is going to be easier to maintain than a daily one. If I do somehow manage to maintain a 5000 words/week pace then I will finish the first draft in 12 weeks.

This should help me keep on track and stop me from going any further down the "hobby writer" path. Hobby writers never actually finish books, or if they do it takes many years. I don't want that. All forward progress! :)

Also, completely off topic to this post those of you who are fans of Robert Jordan really need to check out Brandon Sanderson's latest blog post about him. It's really moving and well done.

vacations, pneumonia, iphone and books

So it's been quite some time since my last blog post. Many factors have contributed to this, well not many really just two main ones.

1) I was on vacation for nearly a week
2) I've had walking pneumonia for the past 2 weeks.

I've been feeling very grumpy, probably due to the whole pneumonia thing. It certainly makes you appreciate a good pair of lungs when things like going up the stairs make you winded and doubled over in a coughing fit. Walking Pneumonia is basically Pneumonia lite, which means I don't have to be hospitalized and I can "walk" around....but not hike (i found that out the hard way). I've had the worst cough ever for two weeks, and I'm not exaggerating even a little bit. I coughed so hard one morning that I made myself vomit. Supposedly the cough will linger for quite some time although the breathing problems should go away soon, that part is getting better. I haven't used my Albuterol inhaler all day!

Being sick has stifled the creative process greatly. In fact, pretty much all I've been able to focus on is keeping my coughing under control and you know...breathing. However, while I was in Washington I did have an opportunity to set my laptop up facing a beautiful mountain lake and do some very peaceful writing. I'm happy to say that during that afternoon in between coughing fits I filled out the rest of my book. I now have a chapter summery for every chapter from here until the end. Isn't that lovely news? Also I did a lot of actual writing but that's not nearly as exciting to me as having everything down plot-wise for the rest of the book. I have something like 50-70k MORE words to write. It's a higher number than I originally thought but probably more accurate given that it's all planned out now.

Of course it's a bit sad that the reason I spent the afternoon writing was because I couldn't go on the hike with my friends. I went on a short hike the previous day and thought I was going to die so the longer hike was out of the question. My lungs still haven't forgiven me.

In other news, I finally got my iphone. Huzzah! BTW, Todd I couldn't respond to your comment because you don't have a blog on which I could comment! Yes I got my iphone, yes it's the same phone number (unlike yours, what is it again?) so you have no excuse not to call me! Seriously, it is THE coolest piece of technology that I've ever owned and I don't care what anyone says it's the coolest PHONE ever. All you blackberry fans out there may think the blackberry is "better" but it is certainly not cooler! Or sexier. So Fie on you Blackberry!

I'm going on vacation the first week of august, this time to a much warmer climate. It's kind of cool that I will have visited the Pacific and the Atlantic ocean in less than a month. I'm going to Myrtle Beach and I sincerely plan to spend the entire vacation on the beach, unless it's raining. I'll do lots of writing I hope, but I'm going to also focus on soaking up the sun.

I've read a couple books during the past week or so. It was kind of nice to actually read something, I didn't have the brain power to do anything creative myself but I haven't sat down to read a book in ages. The first book I read was Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman . I'm not interested in doing a book review but I enjoyed it. I did struggle, at first, with the main character. He just seemed exactly like Arther Dent from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. But I got past that fairly quickly and really enjoyed the book. It's very clever and well done. The second book, which I read this weekend actually, was Sunshine by Robin McKinley. I liked the book but it was written in 1st person which sometimes throws me off (not always though, she did a good job) but there were a lot of internal that felt very long and wordy. However, it was probably one of the funnier vampire stories I've read and the "romance" is pretty atypical. Also her depiction of an "Earth gone bad" is very cool. They're both good and I'd recommend them both. Especially if you like the supernatural as they both deal with that.

Well it's after 10 and I have a very uncomfortable pressure on my chest which means it's time to take my steroid inhaler and get some sleep. I'm sure I'll write again before the week is up.

Conversations with characters part 1

*ahem* if my characters lived in modern times...and spoke to me


Rafe: Dramatic sigh
Gabriel: So Rafe wants to know why you hate him
Rafe: Another Dramatic sigh
Me: What are you talking about? I love Rafe!
Rafe: Eye Roll
Gabriel: Yeah but you haven't written anything for him in a really long time. He's getting really moody about it.
Me: Rafe's always moody
Gabriel: I know right? I don't even know why he's so upset. I mean I only get like two chapters in the whole book!
Rafe: Taps his foot impatiently
Gabriel: Oh right, he still wants to know why you hate him.
Me: Rafe, it's just that you're so moody! You're hard to write!
Rafe: But I'm so very sexy!
Me: Yes you are
Gramma Rosie: Why if I had some chocolate....
Me: Rosie! That's enough!
Gabriel: looks at Gramma Rosie I don't actually ever have to meet her do I?
Rafe: Yes, and she'll pinch your arse too
Gabriel: gulps
Katze: Oh please, she's not that bad you big baby!
Rafe: Hey there hottie, can we make out now?
Katze: dramatic sigh I don't know, ask the author!
Gabriel: Hey...you look familiar...do I know you from somewhere?
Me: You're all so needy! You wonder why I don't want to write you lot!
Katze: shrugs and inspects her fingernails
Me: Fine, Rafe i don't hate you, I'll finish your chapter as soon as I finish your lover girl's chapter. Gabriel I think you will have more than two chapters so rejoice!
Gabriel, Rafe, Katze: Huzzah!
Katze: sooooo when DO I get to make out with Rafe?
Me: Dramatic Sigh

Nothing to do with writing

I'm getting an iphone today...well assuming they haven't sold out by the time I get to the AT&T store.

I can't even tell you how excited I am. I've been pretending I'm not excited for months but now that the iPhone 2.0 is out i just can't hold back. I'm such a gadgety geek girl.

There is a lot of "controversy" in the geekdom concerning the iPhone vs other mediums, namely the blackberry. Apparently a Blackberry is "better" for business needs and I'll concede to that. However, it's also true that the iphone does everything and more for like 90% of the population. Since i don't need this new phone for work and iPhones are sooooooo slick and pretty then that's what I'm getting.

It does however, mean i'm going to have to bite the bullet a little bit more and start using the google functions a lot. But that's okay, it'll be nice having a calender at my fingertips. I'm really bad at remembering dates and plans and whatnot. Plus have you SEEN how cool this phone is? Seriously, the coolest thing ever!

I really hope they aren't sold out.

The Epilogue

So I just wrote the epilogue for The Blood of Renatus. I know I said I was going to focus on finishing the beginning and here I am writing the very end. I couldn't help it though, it was nagging at me and I just had to write it. I wasn't even planning on writing an epilogue, in general I don't really like prologue's or epilogues but I guess my book just wanted to have one.

It's very short, only about 1300 words and very creepy. I however like it very much. I'm sure I'll expand it and make it better at some other date but it just needed to get on paper or my brain was going to explode.

So the interesting thing about the epilogue is that I write it from the perspective of flowers and a tree. It starts with:

The flowers in the High Blood Priest’s antechamber deep within the Circle of Blood had no concept of time. They did, however, realize that they had not fed in far longer than needed.

And ends with:

They praised the tree for bringing him back and would have smiled had they had mouths. But they didn’t smile. They were, after all, only flowers.

Anyway, I quite like it and I feel better for writing it. It was just gnawing on my brain even though I'm not even close to finishing the book. It's exciting though, I like knowing that I have the rest of the book planned out i detail. Other scenes are screaming at me to write them and my fingers are itching to do as they bid.

Don't tell my boss I wrote this while at work though...shhhh! :)

Peach juice and other things

So I just dripped peach juice down the front of my shirt. I think I'd be more upset about it if that peach hadn't been so delectable. I've been on a bit of a peach kick lately, i think because it's summer. I even bought some peach scented lotion and body spray last week. It smells exactly like the peach ice cream I used to make with my family at the beach.

What does this have to do with my writing you ask? Absolutely nothing.

Sadly I have little news to report in the writing department. I haven't written so much as a sentence since Wednesday night and even then I only added about 600 words. I have, however, become even more of a Brandon Sanderson fangirl this past week. Which is funny because I still have yet to fully finish any of his novels. I skimmed the last third of Elantris and I'm still slowly reading Mistborn: The Final Empire.

He's been posting a free e-book on his website and I hadn't really looked at it until this weekend. He does something *super* cool here, not only is he posting a free book of his but he has been posting each draft version. Which means you can compare (using the MS word compare function) version 4 with version 5 and see exactly what line edits his editor asked him to make. I took a brief glance at version 1 and compared it with version 5 for fun. It's like night and day difference, red lines everywhere. It gives us aspiring authors a realistic view of what fiction looks like in the humble beginnings, even for published authors. He also has some really great columns on his website that made me seriously want to be his best friend. Especially the one on The DaVinci Code.

Okay so now that I've embarrassed myself with my fangirl tendencies I'll move onto a different topic. So I'm planning on finishing the "new" chapter 3 this weekend. I really want to have moved on from this beginning by the time I go out of town Tuesday. Since my reorganization of the beginning the rest of the book has fallen neatly into place and I feel tons better about where the book was going. It's interesting how sometimes you have to go back to the beginning to fix problems that happen much much later. I'm not at all remotely interested in editing the original first several chapters anytime soon. Frankly that will be a huge task, one that I'm not looking forward to at all. I think i might just end up rewriting chapter 4 which was the original chapters 1-3 that i have since smooshed into one. It's not (too) terrible but it no longer fits with how I've changed things. Anyway I'm not going to bother doing that for awhile, just thinking about editing my extra moody Rafe chapter(s) makes me cringe.

Once chapter 3 is finished I will move back to where I left off at chapter 16. It's kind of nice to have 16 chapters fully completed (if in need of heavy, heavy editing). After that it should be smooth sailing as far as plotting goes. Assuming the writing goes smoothly I hope, I just might see the end of this book before the end of the decade. After that? Who knows. I'll think about it when I get there.

Chapter 2

So I finished chapter 2 tonight. Well it's the "new" chapter 2 post my re-organization of the beginning of the novel. I have to admit, I really struggled with this chapter. It wasn't the same struggle that I've had with other chapters. Take chapter 11...that chapter sucked so much to write. It's a total filler chapter, it's boring and blah. But that wasn't the problem at all that I faced with chapter 2.

Chapter 2 is a Shay chapter, Shay is normally very easy for me to write. I write her chapters more quickly than I do any of the rest of my characters and I wrote the first half of this chapter very fast and very easily. Then I stalled I stopped at a scene in which a villain is introduced and Shay gets into trouble. I felt uncomfortable writing the scene because I had to write probably the most evil villain I think I've ever created. Seriously, I'm pretty sure that he's the creepiest, most evil, most insane dude ever. And frankly he makes my previous worries about Savitr (Shay's brother) being too mean seem like nothing.

You know, I probably didn't even make the scene that bad. I know I held back somewhat because I was so uncomfortable. I'm pretty sure I was projecting all the evilness that I know about this scary, creepy dude onto the scene. Anyway it was hard for me to write it and I feel like my skin is still crawling after writing that villain. Sheesh!

So some updated stats, Chapter 2 turned out to be about 4500 words bringing my total word count to about 66,100 words. I still have a very long way to go but I'm making progress. Chapter 3 has been started but I haven't gotten very far in it. It's a Katze chapter, kind of a fun one too, she gets to be her crazy self without Rafe balancing her.

I wrote about 2100 words tonight, probably the biggest chunk in one sitting in awhile. It's good, I like feeling like I'm moving forward. I like making progress even if my book was poorly planned and my chapters uncomfortable to write. it's still good. Plus I know that Shay will be just fine and I have the death of this villain planned very nicely. :)