Thanks to the fabulous Kerryn Angell, I'm participating in a new challenge this month. The February 100 is similar to NaNoWriMo, in that it's all about getting yourself into the habit of writing every day - but the goal is much lower, and that's what makes it so brilliant.

Write 100 words a day.

That's all.

See what I mean?

I like getting big word counts. I love getting to the end of the day and seeing that I've written a thousand, two thousand, even three thousand words. But I can't do that every day. Life interferes.

A hundred words, on the other hand, is always achievable.

I usually write pretty quickly. On a good day, a hundred words might only take me a couple of minutes. On a bad day, on a day when I haven't got a clue what I need to be putting down on the page, it can take me a lot longer. But even then, it's doable.

And that's the point.

When you're aiming higher - let's say NaNoWriMo standards, 1667 words a day - it's easy to feel overwhelmed. If it's getting towards the end of the day and you haven't written anything yet and you know you're supposed to be getting that many words, it can feel like too much. You think you can't do it in the time you have left. So you don't write anything at all.

But imagine if you're at that point and can tell yourself you only need a hundred words, and then you can stop. That's tiny. That's less than a third of this blog post. You can do that. And then you can read a book, or watch some television, or just go to bed, knowing that you've got some writing done.

And every day you do that, you're closer to really getting that habit going.

And once you've written a hundred words, you'll often find yourself writing more instead of stopping, because you're starting to get into the story.

It's easy.

Come and join us.

I've been longing to get an Alphasmart for months. For the last few weeks, I've been watching Ebay like a hawk, and generally losing out at the last minute to sniper bidders. This week, however, I got lucky, and won myself a lovely Alphasmart Dana.

It's already proven invaluable, as my new part time job involves an hour on the bus each way, and I also have an hour once I arrive before I actually start work. So the day after it arrived, I managed 1800 words before I started work. It was a great start to the day!

It was particularly good since I've lost a bit of my lead over the last couple of weeks - I've managed to stay ahead of the minimum NaNoWriMo word count, but there were a few days where I got very few if any words. I'm at 48K now, so overall I'm still pleased with my progress, but life did get a little annoying for a while.

I finally managed to get to a NaNoWriMo meet this week as well, which was great - it's so rare that I get to spend any time physically in the company of other writers that it was a real treat. (All my online writer friends are truly fabulous and I honestly don't think I'd have got nearly this far with my writing without the wonderful community at Will Write For Wine, but there's a special kind of energy that comes from actually being in the same room.) Even better, the group is planning to continue meeting after NaNo finishes, so I may finally have found a writing group.

I also had a rejection this week on my short story, but it was a personal one and said that there was some nice writing in there, so it was actually quite uplifting.

The WIP itself seems to be going okay - I think it would have benefited from a little more planning, but since the idea came together about three days before the start of November there wasn't much time for that. It will need some pretty heavy editing I think, but the story seems pretty strong.

Tomorrow, I have a three hour car journey, and a date with Dana. So if I don't hit 50K tonight, I very much hope to do so tomorrow.

So, that's my fortnight covered. What about yours?

Current word count:

48105 / 50000 words. 96% done!

The writing continues to go well on my NaNo book, despite a couple of stumbling blocks this week. For the first time I'm finding it useful to leave little notes to myself about scenes and passages I need to add in later, which is allowing me to keep going even when I feel I can't quite write the next scene yet. For example, one of the scenes I need is where my MCs are brought up to date on the battle they're going to have to join, but since I haven't quite figured out the details yet I thought I'd leave it for now. So I wrote a few lines in square brackets about the things I need to cover, and just doing that helped me get a better feel for the scene. Usually, when I get to a scene I don't feel ready to write, I go off and do something different and hope the words come next time I sit down at the laptop.

I'm finding my notebook really useful for keeping track of things, especially names of some of the less important characters. There's one name though that I keep forgetting to put in, and since I can't be bothered to scroll up to check what I actually called her I've given her a new name, which will likely become permanent since by the time I get round to checking I'll have used the new one more than the old. Ah well, such is life.

I was aiming to hit 30K by Friday, and I just managed it, scraping in at around 22:30 that night. It feels pretty good to be ahead of the game - minimum word count for yesterday would have been 22K.

My goal for this week is 43K. It would have been 45K, but since I've just got an additional job over the Christmas period I've decided not to push it quite that much. However, if all goes to plan, I'll be getting an Alphasmart this week, which will make the one hour commute perfect writing time.

Current word count:

33367 / 50000 words. 67% done!

My goal for this week was to hit 10K. I did it - and this morning I hit 15K, which means I'm three days ahead of the minimum word count and averaging 2.5K a day. This is great, especially as I'm unlikely to be writing much this weekend so needed that extra buffer really.

For next week, my goal is 30K. That means I really need to keep this momentum going after the weekend. Minimum word count by next Friday (according to official NaNoWriMo recommendations, that is) is 21,671, so if I meet my goal I'll be well ahead.

The last two years I've found hitting 1667 words a day a bit of a struggle, but this year I'm finding it much easier. I think the key is that I've been writing so much more this year. I'm lucky in that I do tend to write quite quickly - inevitably this means there will be that much more editing to do, but that's okay. I'm just hoping this streak continues, because I'm loving every minute.

Last week I mentioned my collage and soundtrack. I've been listening to the soundtrack regularly, although only when I'm about to write - usually in the morning while I'm having breakfast. I've also put a version of my collage into my project notebook, which is fantastic - each place and person has a page in the book with pictures, where I can jot down anything I need to remember. This is already proving invaluable as I try to keep track of everything going on. Anyway, the fabulous Pamela Cayne asked to see my collage. The structure surprised me, as the last collage I did was more just a collection of images. This one has a timeline running through it of all the places involved in the story - starting top left, running to bottom right - pictures for all the key characters, and images for some of the themes as well. It's different, but I like it. Here it is - click on the image to see a larger version.



Current word count:

15394 / 50000 words. 31% done!

Last week I set myself these goals:
Fit in five writing sessions Submit short story to another magazine Start on the next lesson in How to Think Sideways Blog post I've had mixed results. My writing has been going great, and I definitely exceeded the five writing sessions goal, but I'll come back to that. As far as submitting the short story goes, I deliberately haven't, as I'm not really sure where I should send it. It's a 750 word one-shot, probably classified as urban fantasy (or at least something along those lines), but I'm not sure there's that much to it. So I think I need to reassess that one. I haven't started on the next lesson in Think Sideways because I've been spending most of my spare time actually writing, since I'm so deep in the story. And as for the blog post - voíla.

But it's the writing that's the interesting part. After last week's post, where I said that "I need to remember that evenings are available too", I decided that I was going to see what I could do with that. But rather than just doing so when I skipped my morning writing session, I thought I'd try for both. The results were pretty surprising.

I've found this before, and in so many ways it seems entirely obvious, but the more I write, the easier the words flow. I get completely into the story, so that when I come back to the page a few hours later it's still fresh in my head. This is why the rule "write every day" is so important for me - if I don't, I lose track of where I am, and it can take me a whole scene to get back into the story properly. I know there are some writers who work differently, but I'm learning that this is the most important rule for me. And writing twice every day places me even more solidly into the story, and lets me remember how much I love it.

I actually lost track of my number of writing sessions, but my total for the week is about 16K - by far the most I've written in one week since last year's NaNoWriMo. It might actually be my most productive writing week ever, which is a fairly staggering thought, because it's just seemed so easy. There's got to be a stumbling block just around the corner, but for now, I want to keep up this momentum and keep writing. At this rate, the first draft of this story could be done before this year's NaNo starts - and although I haven't got a clue what I'd write if I were to take part, I'm pretty sure I'd have to give it a go. Provided of course I don't run into total burnout, which is probably very likely.

All in all, though, an excellent week, making it a bit more difficult to set next week's goals. I don't want to lose momentum, but I'm not keen on setting daily word count goals, and it isn't practical to aim for two sessions daily, even if it is the best case scenario. Still, I need something to write on my whiteboard, so this week's goals are as follows:
Fit in seven writing sessions Reassess short story and see what can be done with it Start on new ficlet Blog post Current word count:

62587 / 80000 words. 78% done!

I'm finally at home with no plans to go anywhere in the immediate future, which means there is the smallest chance that I might actually be able to manage a blog post now and again. I'm not making any promises though - life is unpredictable.

Despite being in one place, this week hasn't been the greatest writing-wise. I keep sleeping badly, which means I end up staying in bed longer than I should, which means that by the time I get up I feel like I really need to get on with the day job rather than fitting some writing time in. (This is a serious hazard of working a) from home and b) with my husband. Because I hate working late into the evening, but if I don't get the hours in then I'm letting him down - which means working when I get up is the best option.)

When I get up early enough, I love writing in the mornings - but tonight I realised that actually I quite like writing in the evenings too. This is the first time I've done this in months, so it was something of a revelation. The biggest problem with it is that I'm far more likely to be disturbed, but for those days when early morning writing sessions aren't an option, I need to remember that evenings are available too. If I plan my time well, I can actually have quite a bit to play with, and I'm incredibly lucky in that - but somehow it's easy to forget.

Despite not updating my blog, I have been working with weekly goals. I write them on my whiteboard, but I think it would make sense if I were to start posting them here too. I didn't do too well on this week's goals. (My week is from Saturday to Friday, incidentally, because that's how we do at Will Write for Wine.) In fact the only goal I met was to make a blog post - and you can see how last minute that one is. This means that a couple of my goals are carried through to this week - and the other two should be happening every week anyway. Fit in five writing sessions Submit short story to another magazine Start on the next lesson in How to Think Sideways Blog post Last week I only got four writing sessions in and completely skipped the second and third goals. Hopefully next week I'll remember to check in - and maybe I'll even have met my goals!

Current word count:

46041 / 80000 words. 58% done!

I finished the first draft on the 8th March, coming in at 106K. Since then, I haven't written a word. Nor have I started editing.

When I wrote the last line, I was surprised to find that I actually knew it was the last line. For about half of the novel, I'd worried that I wouldn't know when I hit the end, and that I'd go on and on about nothing interesting until the whole point was lost. I was very pleased to find that wasn't the case. The last line couldn't have been anything else.

Since this was the first time I'd completed anything of this sort of length, I didn't know what to expect, and when I reached the end, I didn't know how to react. I was slightly stunned, slightly jubilant, and also slightly lost. I've been writing this since November 1st. Since the 26th January, I've even known what was going to happen. Suddenly this thing I'd been creating for over four months had a beginning and an end, and the initial writing was - well, over. It was exciting, but also bewildering.

I'd told myself I wanted to take a couple of weeks away from the MS (manuscript!) once I finished the first draft, partly just because I've heard so many people recommend that. But there's more to it than that. The fact is, I just don't know how to start on the edits.

I can do proof-reading. Thanks to Critters, I think I'm okay on short story critiques. And I can just about do reviews - at least, I try, at Pondering Around. But while editing seems to me like it must be a combination of those, actually sitting down with MY manuscript to start on it is an incredibly daunting task. Should I read it through once first, from beginning to end, without making any notes? Or should I plunge straight in with a red pen? And was the two weeks off really a mistake? It seems very distant now, but I guess that's a good thing.

Holly Lisle's How To Think Sideways course is going quite well for me. At least, it was. Lesson Two was all about getting to know your muse and what you really want to write, and I quite enjoyed that. Lesson Three is causing me more problems, since my muse is being rather contrary and not coming up with the ideas I need, but I think that was partly my own fault as I was rather caught up in Karen Miller's Godspeaker trilogy when I tried to 'call down lightning' as Holly calls it. I think being absorbed in someone else's story while trying to generate new ideas for yourself is possibly not the way to go. So tonight I intend to go over that lesson again, and we'll see how it goes.

Tomorrow, it's on to the editing. I think I may start by reading through some of the articles over at NaNoEdMo. I've given up all hope of reaching any decent editing count for March, but April, I hope, will be a better month for that. And I still have eight days to get as much in as I can.

Of course, the biggest problem I have is that I still haven't settled on a final name for my hero. But let's not dwell on the negative...

I hit 100K today and I am very definitely on the downhill slope now. I know exactly what has to happen from here on out - there may be a few tweaks as I go along, but I can see the path in front of me and it's both exciting and frustrating. Mainly, it's thrilling, because I know I can finish this now. But the fact that the end is in sight isn't actually making it any easier to reach. Every day I'll write a thousand words, maybe two, and although I've written a decent scene that had to be there the end doesn't actually feel any closer. I know I'm going to get there, and that's great, but I really just want to be there now. Knowing you will do something isn't the same as knowing you've done it.

Oh, yeah. I didn't finish by the end of February. Which means hitting 50 hours of editing for NaNoEdMo is fairly impossible. When I do get to the end, I'm going to put it down for a while - maybe a couple of weeks, possibly even longer. This story's been in my head since the beginning of November (although I was rather distracted for most of December) and I think I'm going to need to let it breathe for a while. I already know a lot of things that will need editing, and there are notes on most of my scenes for things to check and change - particularly for the second half. Although in fairness a lot of them are things that have changed halfway through, so the changes will actually be mostly for the first half! The second half though is full of brackets and sidenotes for me to make sure that names and descriptions match up.

I know I haven't finished this yet, but I've learned so much about how to approach writing a novel next time. The main thing is that while I am at heart a pantser*, life is actually far, far easier if you know where you're going. It's not necessarily faster, but I've found that since my plot revelations in January writing has been a lot less stressful. To my delight, I've also found that it doesn't ruin the excitement for me either, because I plotted in quite a general way - they need to get here, she needs to show up, there needs to be a confrontation, etc. That's meant that there's still plenty of room for inspiration to strike and for my elusive muse to take me off down some unexpected road.

There's still so much to learn, but I'm looking forward to that. I know that I've learned loads of tips and tricks as I've been writing this, mainly picked up from podcasts (e.g., Will Write For Wine, I Should Be Writing, The Secrets, The Writing Show), and I'm quite excited about reading back through the manuscript to see how my writing's developed over the last four months. I've also been following a lot of blogs relating to the publishing industry - writers, agents, editors. Some of my favourites are A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, Karen Miller, Editorial Ass, BookEnd Lit Agency and Erica Orloff. There are numerous others, but those just happen to be near the top of my RSS feeds right now!

I'm also just starting Holly Lisle's How To Think Sideways writing course. I'd been eyeing it up for a while, but then it got to the end of February and it was the last chance for new members to get the Charter member benefits, which included free access to a special forum when you graduate and various other bits, so I decided to take the plunge. I've followed through the first lesson, which is very much a mind-orientated one, and it's very interesting so far, looking at some of the mental barriers we can put up which stop us from achieving things. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the more practical exercises.

You know, I think I'm all blogged out. Time to settle down with one of those podcasts and my knitting I think. (Knitting, incidentally, is my most recent pastime. My mother taught me to knit, purl and rib at the weekend and somehow I am now in the process of making a jumper.)

Oh, and my current word count? So glad you asked. 100,963 words and counting down to the end.


* What's a pantser, you ask? The term comes from 'flying by the seat of your pants' and, in writing terms, refers to someone who doesn't plan. Someone who does plan is referred to as a plotter. There are of course many, many people who fall somewhere in between.

I missed posting last week, since I spent the whole of Friday curled up on the sofa with the worst headache I've had in ages. I can't remember why I missed the week before, but you have my apologies!

It's been an odd week - I've only managed to write on three days, but my overall word count for the week is higher than last week. I'm experimenting a little with the best methods to encourage myself to write more, and it turns out that aiming to write for a particular amount of time, rather than aiming for a particular word count, seems to work far better for me. There's something far less pressured about it, but somehow I end up producing more that way.

I'm still fairly pleased with the plot points I've planned out, but I'm happy to report that I've also managed to go 'off piste' a little and have found myself wandering through detours I didn't expect - namely a rather spooky forest. I love the excitement of that - while it's great knowing where I'm going, finding those secret passages is a thrill unlike anything else.

I'm not sure I'm on track to hit my goal at the moment - I have nine days to finish this first draft. I really hope I manage it, if only for the thrill of meeting a deadline. I suppose it wouldn't be the end of the world if I didn't, but that will mean that my next goal - to complete NaNoEdMo - will be made all the more difficult.

Current Status
Current Word Count: 83902
Sentence of the Week: There was no echo, the words falling dead in the air, and not even a murmur came back to me. I looked around carefully, through the trees that were no longer quite so close together but which seemed to go on forever, but he was nowhere in sight. Seconds before our hands had been clasped tightly together, but now he had disappeared and I was completely alone.
Best Moment of the Week: Writing 2K in one sitting. Delicious.
Worst Moment of the Week: Realising that I hadn't written for three days straight. Yuck.

This week's big moment was figuring out my plot. It means there will be a lot of editing to do, but frankly, I knew that anyway. The important thing is that I actually know what needs to happen. I haven't done a full line - I can't work like that - but the key points, including all the details of the face-to-face confrontation, are there. Which means I have things to work towards. And knowing that has left me free to consider other things I could put in, and allowed me to figure out how to deal with other, smaller problems without having to worry about the really major issues.

It's been an okay week words wise too, although not as good as I'd like. Tomorrow is the end of WinoWriMo, during which I've written around 20K. It's not quite up to NaNo standards, but it's pretty good considering there were about ten days in total where I didn't write a word. Some of those days, I plotted - not all of them, but since I actually started on the 5th I have managed to do something every day. That was my goal, so I guess I've done okay.

For February, my goal is to finish this. I don't know how many words that's going to take, but I know that it's approximately 15 days in my characters' timeline, most of which don't need to actually be shown. I feel like I'm about three quarters of the way there, maybe slightly more, which works quite nicely at 72K.

Current Status
Current Word Count: 72189
Sentence of the Week: As always, I disguised myself carefully, making the most of a spell I could actually use to my advantage. A lightening of the hair, lengthening of the eyelashes, and slight reductions around the waist always made me feel rather more self-confident as I walked through the city, and the addition of my pretty blue cloak completed the look to my satisfaction.
Best Moment of the Week: My plotting breakthrough. Utterly exhilirating.
Worst Moment of the Week: Last night when I realised that despite my plotting, I couldn't write properly when I was completely caught up in someone else's story.

For the last couple of days I've stuck with the getting-up-earlier plan, and it seems to be working. My daily average has gone up from 700 to 1100, and although that still doesn't quite feel like enough it seems to be working with the rather 'bitty' way this is progressing. I know there's a lot left to do, but I'm struggling a bit with seeing far enough ahead to just write for more than a few minutes without pausing to collect my thoughts. And it's really frustrating. I've made notes all over the place about things I'll need to go back and change later though, and every time I've done that it's helped clarify where I am, which is good.

My aim's to reach the end of this story before the end of February, so that I can have a couple of days off before jumping in to NaNoEdMo. After that... well, I'm not sure. I think I might let it sit for a while and work on one of the other ideas swirling around, but I'll see how I feel when I get to that point.

Current Status
Current word count: 66537
Sentence of the week: I couldn't see anything in the dark misty world of our minds, but I could almost feel the world we were passing over below us as we headed west. I could sense when we were above a large town, and when we passed a pack of wolves hiding sleepily in their den. Most vividly though, I sensed when we began to approach the Elves. - It's not that it's particularly well written - it's just that it really feels like fantasy, and I think that's something I've been struggling with a bit.

This week has been a bit slow really - I've had lots of work to do, although I have been extremely bad about putting most of it off (don't mention tax to me right now). But just knowing it's there makes me put other stuff off too, which means that I end up not getting round to writing until 10 or 1030 at night. Today I made a point of getting up earlier than normal, and got about 400 words written before I started work. In total, I've only managed about 3K since my last post.

More positively, though, I've also done scene summaries for everything so far, and gone through everything to make sure that I know what I need to tie up with the rest of the story. That does mean that I've also spotted a few fairly big problems with the story so far, but so far I'm resisting the urge to edit. I really want to get to the end of this one. (Partly because I haven't managed that yet, but also because I then really want to write the backstory for one of the other characters - her history is fascinating me and I am desperate to find out more about it, but at the moment it's not fitting in to the current story.)

So far today, it's a total of 765, which is about what I've managed the last couple of days. But since it's only 10, I have a bit longer to stretch out my writing time, and I think I'd better go make the most of that!

Current Status:
Current word count: 63980 (with a few more later tonight hopefully)
Favourite sentence this week: Finally her eyes wandered down to settle on the quivering ball of fur I was holding, and a soft smile crept over her face. Because in context, it says so much more than the words.
Best moment of the week: Realising that despite the feeling I've been having of not knowing where to go, I do actually have a lot of places left to visit in this story.
Worst moment of the week: Realising that the villain's destructive plan needs a LOT of work.

Today was a good day. I finished up the latest chapter, bringing today's count up to 1052 words and making the week's total nearly 5K, fairly evenly split between my WIP and various fanfic projects. Not brilliant, maybe, but better than I've been doing. And better than I'll do this week, since we're going away again.

I declare it a good week's work.

I went through a period a while ago where I had routines for everything. I'd get up at a reasonable time, shower, clean the bathroom, turn the PC on, put the laundry on, have breakfast, start work (or play, but the principle was the same). I'd wash up straight after the evening meal so that the kitchen was always in a reasonable state and I'd usually cook from scratch. I even hoovered the house regularly. Then I lost it. And that's too easy to do.

Anyway. I need that back now. Today I didn't get up til midday (woke at 11, having gone to bed around 2, then read for an hour), went shopping in the middle of Saturday afternoon (bad idea), did a couple of bits of website stuff here and there but not much, and didn't do any writing til 10pm. That's where I'm going wrong. I need to get up in the morning and write. I tried the timer today - managed 417 words in 15 minutes. Not my greatest record, but still, it was 10pm. And I don't do working late - I get silly.

I need to kick myself into gear. If I can be at the computer before hubby is at his, then I should be using that time for writing, not waiting til he's gone to watch TV at night. So I guess that's tomorrow's aim - get up, don't stay in bed reading, and instead of playing around on forums that I don't even post in, get writing. It's not like I don't enjoy it when I do.

So after the sheer oddity of the weirdness that was NaNoWriMo and the start of the longest bit of writing I've ever managed, I'm trudging a bit. I'm not particularly worried - I had a whole week during November where I didn't write a word, and although it wasn't ideal I still got 50K done before midnight struck at the end of the month. But it's a bit sad to look back at my November spreadsheet and see that on the days I was writing, I was averaging between 2 and 5K per day. Since I hit that 50K my biggest daily word count has been 725. Today was 703.

Still, the story's there. I had a couple of days where the next scene just wouldn't come - not because I didn't know what would happen, but because the new characters refused to make themselves known to me. So I sat it out, read a bit, wrote a scene from elsewhere, tried some collaging, and eventually went over to http://elouai.com/doll-makers/new-dollmaker.php and spent ages going through that trying to picture one of them. Eventually she fell into place, and the shop dummies that were standing in place of my characters reluctantly gave up their seats. It's still not quite right, but I've got through that bit and it's a start.

I know part of the reason I'm not writing as much now is that I'm not setting goals. During NaNo I stuck with a timer, 15 minutes at a time for the most part, and it worked. I wrote. For some reason I'm reluctant to continue that, but it means that my writing's been a bit here and a bit there, a couple of lines at a time, which isn't really that great for focus. Of course it doesn't help that I've been feeling rubbishy, but still, I've been sat at the computer, and there's no real reason for me not to write, so it feels odd not to be throwing myself into it. I want to finish this story; there's still so much to tell, but at the moment I'm just having to put one foot in front of the other. I guess I'm just working with what I can see in the headlights.

I'm actually looking forward to editing this, which is a first. Because I've written it with basically no outline, making very few notes along the way, I'm itching to get back to the beginning and just sort it out. I don't want to do that until I reach the end though - I need to carry on the momentum without looking back for the most part. Streamlining, editing, that's supposed to come later.

I think tomorrow I might try the timer again. I won't force it; I've heard enough warnings about how writing when you're not feeling it really isn't worth it. But if I can write for 15 minutes, I can hit 500 words. If I do it twice, that's 1K I didn't have before. That's nothing. Half an hour in the day. Even if I am feeling under the weather. Dainara would have no sympathy for me.