Wednesday 23 November 2011

Progress Report.

OK, It's been two weeks since my last posting, but I'm here now. Life has been busy, distracting if you want to call it that, but I'm not making excuses. I have maintained to writing every day, which is rather hard to believe. I'll admit it's hard to get the ball rolling, but once the ground has been prepared it makes it so much easier to plant the seeds that then grow into something more, it's much the same with writing. Your first... 300 words of the day may seem tedious and straining, but once you get going, it flows with you, and before you know it you've churned out another 2000 words.

So where is it at... I hear you asking. Well as of last night (early hours of this morning) I reached the unthinkable (even for me) word count of 100,000 and surpassed it by a following 233 words. I didn't think I'd be even close to hitting 50k by this time, let alone doubling it. I'm amazed at how much has been written, but I'm not holding my hopes up as there is heck of a lot of working needing done to the book when the first draft is finished.

What's still needing done?

How about the character descriptions of Christian, Amelia and Eric at the start of the book. Room details, such as the Study at the start, his sitting room perhaps, and most definitely his Cabin in Timber Varden. I also need to go back through it and fix out the tensing errors such as past tense over present. Past tense would work better by head and fingers seem to think it's fun to keep swapping from past to present then back to past again.

I'm also considering looking at how other people see things and how they feel rather than most of the book coming across in first person, when it should be first and third omi.

Can you tell I'm newbie when it comes to writing, this book I'm working on is only my second Novel attempt, both of which have been started this year, neither first drafts are finished but Timber Varden is so much further along in development in comparison to my love child Awakening. I love it's story so much, but finding it really hard to get the right flow and composure for it. So many things have happened over the year to interrupt it's pacing, but once Nano is done, I'll go back to that one, giving myself a break from this one before coming back to it.

I think, I should consider investing in a proper Dictionary and Thesaurus to help me progress further and give a better understanding of the written word, which when I compare my writing to that of others, it really does lack depth. But then, we are always told to write what we know, so if we don't know such fancy words, it is best to keep it simple, not everyone has a knowledge for nearly unpronounceable words.

Top Tip: Don't go back and make changes while you still write your first draft.
Write often, whether it's only a little amount or thousands at once makes no difference just get the words down DAILY.

Timber Vardens New Cover

I can't begin to express how much I LOVE this cover design. The person that has created this for me has done such a fantastic job with that, I couldn't have asked for anything else.

At first, I thought I might need to edit the details of the cabin in the book to match the image, until someone very rightly pointed out to me that I didn't need to as the cabin pictured has a smaller first floor, which is perfect as the one written is the same to a degree.

Oh and aren't those eyes just hauntingly captivating, so riveting they speak a thousand words alone, and they look as I imagined them to on Sati, my wolf character in the book being written.

Sunday 6 November 2011

5 Day Progress Report

Well it's now Sunday, albeit it only just by a mere matter of 34 minutes, and as promised here's my update for the week.

As some of you are aware NaNoWriMo officially started on Tuesday the 1st of November, and the aim of that is to write a novel of 50 thousand words or more by the 30th. Giving you a grand total of 30 days in which to hit that 50k mark.

On day one I made a start on my novel Timber Varden, not expecting to hit high numbers in the word count for the day. However by the time midnight came and the updated count for that day was in place, I had written 13,585 words for that day alone.

Day two came along and the book was really beginning to flow quite effortlessly by now. I didn't write as much that day hitting only 6,414. Your sitting there thinking ONLY??? I know you are I can see the expressions on your face with my trusty hidden spy cam in this posting.

Day Three, the story took up a life of it's own adding things in that wasn't in the plot. That's OK, I could handle that, it wasn't a big issue, it didn't change the main plot outlook so we were good, we had a general understanding of each other. That day I got 10,156 words written, a nice leap up from day two. By now I'm way ahead of the targeted 1667 words a day minimum to keep on the 50k target, life is comfortable.

Day Four, by the end of this day I had discovered that a whole new chapter had to be written in pushing the other remaining chapter further down the line. What was supposed to be chapter 9 now became chapter 10 and the new chapter decided it would be 9. No changing of story line required made it simple and easy for me to deal with. On this day I reached 10,203. Better than day 2, and day 3, but day 1 still holds the highest number count in 1 24 hour period.

Day Five, this is the day that has just ended. I'm tired, word out, can just about feel my fingers on the end of my cold hands but the day has been yet another productive one. The new additional chapter filled up today, but was originally only going to be a short snippet one before 10 and turned out to be around the same standard length the other chapters had fallen into, which was around the 5k mark. Today my word count isn't as high as Days one, three and four, but certainly higher than day two with 9707.

So after Five days of pretty much non stop committed writing, only stopping for an hour at night to walk the dogs, and hour mid way for dinner, not starting until 2 in the afternoon - and not to forget the mention of - I wasn't writing every minute of the waking hours I was up. It was split to such times as 10 minutes then a break, 30 minutes there then a break or 15 minutes here then eat, or 20 minutes then break. It's been the same the last 5 days. There has been the common obvious distractions going on as well, you know the likes, parent's wanting to talk to you, friends on facebook, the general goings on in the outside world.

Anyway with 14 minutes to spare before midnight of the 5th of November, I reached and surpassed the big 50k ... ok so surpassed it by only 66 words - that still counts. However the story is not done yet, there for, I with my fellow wrimo's around the world will continue to strive and serve the writing world by continuing to work on it for as long as November shall last. I will add to it daily but I need not add such vast amounts unless I am compelled to do so.

It also means that as I have reached my target intended figure by Saturday night, I can spent most of the day on Sunday relaxing, I will do some writing so don't worry about that. I won't leave my Character drowning in a lake when he can't swim, his outcome will be decided tomorrow at some point.

Until the next progress report - KEEP WRITING!!!!!!!

Saturday 5 November 2011

NaNoWriMo Progress - Week 1

Well we're almost what? A week into NaNoWriMo's mad month and after 4 days of writing I'm already sitting at 42025 thousand words. Someone wake my up now and tell me how that's even possible!!!

OK so I may have gone over the score and become committal within the first week but come on, who wouldn't if they had the time and the ideas flowing to get it done?

As I've mentioned before, this is my first ever NaNo attempted to write a 50k or more novel in 30 days. It doesn't matter if it's not complete come the 30th but you do need to have hit that 50k mark, which if all goes to plan and forms nicely then that will be tomorrow evening where I could probably have Sunday off as a reward for dying during nano who knows.

So yea.... hey it turns out, I now need to go and insert another chapter which means instead of having another 5 to work through, I have to extend that to 6. The new inserted chapter wont be long but this character has some forgiving to do before he can move on, it's not all bad he's very thankful too.

Where am I now... Oh yea I'm currently in the process of finishing chapter 8 which would have taken me on to the pre-planned chapter nine, which incidentally needs to become chapter 10.

So any way yea that's how it's at right now on the... what day is it... Friday/Saturday ... OK Saturday the 5th and it's roughly 4:39am. I should be sleeping but here I am, making record of my progress in what's been 4 days of writing, with another coming up as soon as I pull myself out of bed and have something to eat.