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Meri's Corner

~ A Writer's Thoughts and Reviews

Tag Archives: co-author

Catch Up

12 Monday Apr 2021

Posted by MBenson in Personal Thoughts, Writing

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amblogging, amediting, amwriting, balancing, books, co-author, creativity, discoveries, enjoy, fantasy, goals, life, original fiction, original work, ramblings, real life, thoughts, time, time management, what do, writing

I’m not even sure how we’re almost half way through April, I’m going to be completely honest with you. February and March passed quickly, leaving barely a trace of themselves behind as I stand here blinking at the progression of time. I mean, I know that they passed, my co-author and I worked really hard to finish our first draft by the end of Feb, which we ALMOST met deadline for. We technically finished it on March 1st, but that’s a close enough finish that I’m super happy with it.

March flew past in a blur. Things ramped up at work and I used March as a month to let the draft sit and get some space from, though we’re almost halfway into April and I am reminded that I need to dig into the edits now. I have some edits to make because I had someone read it and note all across it, plus re-reading to see where it needs edits myself as well. But I have faith that I’ll get there, and that we’ll get there, because my co-author is planning to read through and edit the draft after I run through it.

Meanwhile we’re already trying to outline books two and three so they’re all in line with each other from the start. We want to make sure the book plot and the overarching plot of the trilogy work well across the three books. So all the outlining and planning for us. And still pretty on par with our July release deadline we set for ourselves.

Life wise, things have been as they have been. Which is to say, the world is still in a pandemic, we’re mostly still stuck at home. I and my mother have both been fortunate enough to get the vaccine, we both work with hospital staff and doctors, pharmacists and residents who see patients so we were in the 1B section of the population. For those who might be wondering, neither of us had much in the way of side effects. I slept for the day after getting it, she was tired the day after but over all after 24 hours we were both fine. And we’re still making sure to be super careful and follow all the masking and hand washing recommendations.

I’m really glad that the weather has warmed up again, I’ve decided that while I’m working from home I’m going to strive to take like, an hour or two on the laptop and work outside so I can get some fresh air and get out of the house a little while still working. Of course, after the first day of doing this, it’s rained every day since. So, fun times there. And because of the rain, my migraines haven’t been great, though I’m trying a new medication recommended to me, over the counter, and it seems to be helping some. I still have them, but they’re less crawl under my desk and cry these days. So I can work through them so long as I’m in a hat or a non-florescent lit room. Small favor.

Over all I’m hoping to get back to writing on here more consistently. Wish me luck.

I hope, dear readers, that you’re staying healthy and safe.

And time vanishes

12 Tuesday Jan 2021

Posted by MBenson in Personal Thoughts, Writing

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10kWritingChallenge, amblogging, amediting, amwriting, balancing, books, co-author, creativity, discoveries, enjoy, fantasy, goals, inspiration, life, musings, Nine, online presence, original fiction, original work, possible wip, Project Norse, published work, ramblings, real life, thoughts, time, time management, update, Urban Fantasy, what do, WIP, word count, writing

So I lost my weekend to the best reason possible. All the words. All the words is definitely a good thing to lose time to though. My co-author on Project Norse and I decided to try and do a 10K words in a day challenge for our respective Saturdays.

As a whole, the challenge went well. We realized fairly early on that our time zone difference made for an interesting addition to the challenge, because with her in the Philippines and me in the United States, being fourteen hours apart means we can’t just boomerang the novel back and forth between us all day. For a good chunk of the writing time, one of us was sleeping while the other was writing.

We made it work though by working on different scenes in the novel at once. Like, I think we were working on four or five different areas to go back and forth with each other, but then also we had a couple areas where one of us took the lead on a certain scene and ran with it.

Neither of us hit 10,000 words on Saturday, but both of us got a little more than halfway through. She finished her 10,000 words on her Sunday. I didn’t, because I ran into a secondary challenge for a long da like that. So back in May 2019 I had my dominant hand’s wrist in a cast. And ever since that accident I’ve had serious problems with my wrist when I over work it.

Well apparently it feels that 6,372 words it decided was over working it. My morning went super well and I was able to get a little over 2,000 words before breakfast, but it had started to ache after that and just get progressively worse through the day as I tried to alternate between resting it and working on more words as I could.

Sunday was pretty much a get nothing done, only rest it day. Also, all the grocery shopping and things I had meant to do that I pushed off from Saturday, so no real other words happened over the weekend. But still, we were able to get about 16,000 words collectively on our novel over the weekend, which is awesome! Since we have that July deadline for publishing, it’s great that we’re able to make so much progress on it as a whole for draft one. As well, when we were awake at the same time and not writing, we were able to flush out our outline to really hone into the timeline of what we what to happen when and how we kind of want it to go so we have guiding things to get us there. Overall, it’s a super productive weekend.

And then yesterday I also realized part of the problem with my wrist is that when I have to work on campus and cover the front desk, that the angle the desk is at compared to the chair is part of my problem. We’ll see if anyone complains about the chair, because I lowered it by like a TON, but I’m hoping since it’s just a little lever, that they’ll just shift it for them when they’re on campus and no one will complain. But the angle was not okay for me anymore. within the first hour of working at the desk my wrist felt like it did after writing 6K words from Saturday, only worse. So yeah, something had to change. I also shifted how the monitors were set on the desk, but those were put back after my shift so no one had to worry about them.

I’m hoping my work week goes fairly quiet as a whole, and I can continue to get words in on the novel. I really want to continue this momentum that we’ve found on getting things done on the different chapters. I’d personally love it if we could have draft one finished by either the end of January or the really early beginning of February so we can get those edits in hard and fast.

Hope your week goes well, readers! And if you did anything you’re proud of, drop a comment and let me know!

Also, if you’re wondering what the image has to do with this post, well, it’s partially just because it’s my kitty and I love him. And partially because that’s legitimately how tired I feel right now.

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