Sunday Total

I have just time for a quick post before I head off to the drive-in with my family.   Today’s total is: 6,651/75,000 = 8.8 per cent.

Tomorrow I vow to break the 10% mark – check in with me and keep me honest!

D3 — Day 5

I didn’t get started writing today until well into the afternoon, but I was able to get a pretty good chunk of pretty good stuff done today.

Current stats:  4,691/75,000 = 6.25 %.

I’d keep working now since I’m on a roll, but the natives here at Chez Susannah are clamoring for barbecued chicken and corn on the cob for dinner.   (Yes, the natives are assisting with said dinner!)

I’ll post again tonight with my final Day 5 total.   Stay tuned!  Different Bat Time, Same Bat Channel!

*Edited to add:  I’m closing out the evening with 5,003/75,000 = 6.63%.  See you all tomorrow.

D3 Update . . . Update

After a blitzkrieg writing session with Sister Scribe J Monkeys, where we actually did more slightly more writing than talking, and an inspiring pop-in by Scribe Casey Wyatt, I’m ending the day at:  2816 words out of 75,000 = 3.75%.   Things are looking up!  Check in with me tomorrow and see if I can break the 6% mark.

D3 Update

It’s now Day 4 of the Double Dog Dare challenge, and I’m already behind the pace of my challengees, Vivienne Ylang, J Monkeys, Jamie Pope and Casey Wyatt.  However, I’ll be working for several hours tonight, and I should be able to make up some of that deficit.  We’re not racing against each other — we’re just all trying to reach our individual goals by August 12.  Still, there is a small undercurrent of competition swirling around, which is excellent for motivation.

I’m in the setup, or Act I phase of the story.  I just dropped a really, really big bomb on my heroine, Georgie.   And another one is about to hit.   (Man, writing is fun!)    By later this evening, I’ll be moving into Act II, the meat of the story. 

D3 Update:  1,548/75,000 = 2%

Check back later for updated figures!

Countdown to August 12

Hello, all.  I’m back again after a hiatus, and I’m asking you all for your help.  (Help Me!  Help Me!)

 

See, I Double Dog Dared fellow writers (and Sister Scribes) J Monkeys, Vivienne Ylang, and Jamie Pope to set a writing goal and achieve it by August 12.   Realizing that they would be unimpressed with my selfless encouragement of their careers, I knew I had to put up or shut up.  So I set myself a goal too:  write the first draft of the second installment of my Bonaparte Bay story, tentatively titled Die Me a River, by that date.

I decided not to wait for Camp NaNoWriMo to start (sometime around July 1 – has anybody heard anything about the new website?).   Though I am a pantser, I did some preliminary basic plot work for this novel since I have a larger, multi-book story arc that needs to be attended to in addition to the mystery at hand.   I already know most of my characters pretty well, but they will doubtless surprise me along the way.  That’s the fun of being a pantser.  Of course, this is a cozy mystery, so somebody’s gotta die.  Guess I won’t get too attached to anybody.   

75,000 words in 48 days . . . starting now!  That’s actually not an unrealistic goal, when you think about it.  1,563 words a day.   For somebody who wants to make the transition from “writer” to “professional writer,” seems like a pretty good habit to get into. 

So what’s the help I need from you?  I’ll be posting my progress here regularly.  Feel free to check up on me whenever you want.  If I haven’t made my goal, I will even let you nag me mercilessly, so knock yourself out!   There’s nothing like the threat of public humiliation to keep a writer working.

And by the way, how about setting your own goal, something ambitious but attainable?  Let me know what it is and we’ll achieve it together.

I’m off to set up my Word document and type possibly the most terrifying words in the English language:  Chapter One.

Another Blog

Let me tell you about my new group blog with six other writers: Secrets of 7 Scribes:

http://secretsof7scribes.wordpress.com/

Our launch was this past weekend, and I’m so excited to be part of it!   We are seven writers working in seven different genres: young adult romance, young adult adventure and children’s picture books, romantic suspense with an inspirational bent, traditional romance, paranormal romance and urban fantasy, erotica and, courtesy of yours truly, humorous mystery with a healthy dose of romance.    Some of us are indie-published, or are planning to indie-publish, and some of us are pursuing the traditional route, at least for now.

What binds us together?  We’re all women, we’re all members of  the Connecticut Chapter of the Romance Writers of America,  and we’re all chasing the same dream: becoming better, more industry-savvy writers, and getting our stories out to readers.  And hopefully getting paid to do it.

We’ll each be blogging one day of the week, and you can look for my posts on Thursdays.

We’ll also be doing something really fun once a month — a new, never-before-seen, exclusive, FREE short story will be posted by one of the Scribes, based on the old poem Monday’s Child.   I’m Thursday’s Scribe, so my story will be up in a few months.  Now I just have to decide which of my characters has “far to go,” and write the darn thing!   I can’t wait to see what my Sister Scribes come up with.  Based on what I’ve seen of their work, we are all in for a treat.  No guilt, no calories, and did I mention FREE?

Hope to see you over at the 7 Scribes!

http://secretsof7scribes.wordpress.com/

Trust Your Subconscious

Recently a friend exclaimed to me about a human interest story she’d just read on an internet news site.   I thought it was cool, and I took the time to find the article, read it, and file it.   At the time, I had no idea what I was going to do with this information.

For a few days before this, I’d been working on the larger story arc for the next books in my Bonaparte Bay series so I could plant the appropriate seeds in the first manuscript.    Now, I’m a pantser, so this kind of planning ahead doesn’t come naturally to me.  I had a character that I knew instinctively would be important in later stories, but I didn’t know why, and I didn’t know what her motivation was.   Not a good situation for a fiction writer!   If you’re going to plant seeds, it’s helpful to know what’s in the package before you put them in the ground.  Otherwise you might end up with spinach when you really wanted nasturtiums.   I decided to let it go and work on something else for a while.

Imagine my surprise when, while I was not thinking about writing or my story at all, an idea, fully and perfectly formed, popped into my head.  The news article I’d filed away, and the motivation my character required, were connected.   My subconscious recognized what I needed.    I only had to give it some space to do its creative work, and it let me know when it was good and ready.

This was a powerful lesson for me: a reminder to trust myself, to pay attention to the signals the universe puts out, and most of all to capture those signals so they don’t get lost.   Whether like me you carry a file folder and a little low-tech notebook (and I mean the spiral-bound paper kind, not the computer kind!), or unlike me you actually know how to use the voice recorder on your cell phone,  keep a record of those seemingly random things that strike your fancy.  It might be important, it might not.   As I’ve been more attuned to this process, ideas have been coming at me faster and faster and that little notebook is filling up.

Respect and trust your creative subconscious.  You can’t write without it.   Even you plotters.