Monthly Archives: July 2013

And So It Begins…

09 Tuesday Jul 2013

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So this is going to be a fairly short post.

The good? I started writing yesterday. And I’m not gonna lie, it felt good to get the words out. I’m never sure if it’s great, or if it’ll keep through the rough draft edits, but words out are words out and I can expand or compress later. I really need to stop worrying about the future of the draft and focus on getting the draft actually out of my head.

The bad? It wasn’t nearly as much as I was hoping to write. Though it’s a start. A single step in the right direction. I just need to make sure I follow that step with more throughout the week.

I will say part of not hitting my goal was because I started to not feel well, and that’s continued into today. I’m wondering if I should have stayed home with how I’m feeling, but with two hours left once I’m off the little break, it’s already too late to do much but tough it out and crash on my face when I get home.

I am looking to get more words out, by tooth or nail tonight. Though quite honestly I may take an offline approach and notebook the word count from bed once home.

An Almost New Start

08 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in Personal Thoughts, Writing

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My weekend was… well interesting. We got out to the trailer and I was able to do a massive amount less than I wanted to. Usually the schedule is we get out, mow the grass so there are less mosquitoes, dust and clean the trailer a little, put beds together, and just… rest. Which usually involves a movie after dinner and then me retiring to my section of the trailer to read/write/play Animal Crossing/etc.

That’s not exactly how it went down when we got there.  For starters our canopy ended up bulging and stretching because it caught water and just kept it instead of letting the water slide right off. But most importantly, there was a tree down over our back fence. Thankfully it missed both the storage shed and our canopy. The owner mentioned it to us when we stopped in before heading back to our spot, and had mentioned that she’d have guys out there to get it done that weekend sometime. Well, needless to say my parents couldn’t just let it sit. We spent most of Friday afternoon/night trimming all the smaller branches off of it and settling them into a pile that the owner could haul away and then thanks to our neighbor loaning a small electric chain saw, we ended up cutting a good chunk of it back, almost to the fence. Which, while we did end up doing the work the owner was supposed to do, we got some good firewood out of it. Not that it’ll be useable until next year, but firewood.

And once that was done, and we sweet talked our neighbors into mowing for us later that weekend so we could leave, we went home. And then spent that afternoon sprawled and lounging at the house because zomg tired from being up since 6am Sat morning. And Sunday wasn’t any better. Though I did figure out approximately how far I’m behind on my word count. And the numbers ain’t pretty.

My original goal was about 667 a day. Averaging that up to 700 words a day, I should have had 18900 by today done.  I have 2000. See what I mean about not pretty? My goal, starting today, is to average between 700 and 2000 words a day so that come July 31 I’ll be caught up.

And that offer to accept prompts to get more juices flowing in the original work direction still stands.

Weekend Plans

05 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by in Personal Thoughts, Writing

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So about a mouth back to date I decided to restart, and for the most part reboot, my novel. And since then it got to about two thousand words before my life and the world kept me busy. And I’m well aware that these are excuses and not reasons. I should be able to find a couple hours in the day to sit down and crank out a thousand words. And I plan to do that starting roughly Sunday.

I’m back into the swing of going to my job and chiropractic visits, and I’ve dropped from three times a week to two times a week now, which will open up a little more of my afternoon until I get hired as full time at work. And the massive project that was getting a Newsletter is now finished and over, and I wanna say about 60% of the five page Newsletter was written by me. Never again. NEVER AGAIN. I will have help next time if I need to crack out a whip. But it’s done. It’s been emailed out. So now I can take a deep breath and focus on my novel.

To make up for the month behind-ness of everything, I’m planning to set my daily word count goal at two thousand words a day so that hopefully by August I can drop back down to one thousand a day, or keep up the two thousand pace and get the rough draft finished that much quicker. Goals, but I don’t want to burn myself out with them either.

There’s also the question of whether I should try to participate in NaNoWriMo this November, but I think part of that will depend on where I am in my WIP. Whether I’m far enough along that I can share headspace with a new WIP or whether I’m still far enough from the end that 50K in 30 days would do me some good. It’s all a matter of how hard I crack the whip on myself.

Later today and into tomorrow I’ll be heading off to the wilderness of Indiana. Camping. Partially to see how the campground is doing so we have an update for the fest I coordinate in August, and partially to see how my, and my parents, trailer has faired the flooding and storms out in the area. I’ll be printing out what I have of my WIP to get back into the headspace and see about writing a little more of it by hand while I’m out there. Means I’ll have to type it up later, but if it gets words on a page, I’m good with it.

Though I’m thinking of figuring out some prompts to get me back into writing original work and not fandom stuff too. Just to get the juices flowing better. Any suggestions? They’ll be posted when I answer them, if you give me some.