I made very good progress this past week, despite overthinking everything last Tuesday to the point where I could not write a single word. This is a habit I have. I run the plot line over and over, picking out every flaw, every tiny detail of why this can’t possibly work. The only way I can make any progress is to shut off my logical mind and just write scene by scene. I find that I iron out the snags as my characters evolve and grow.

And this breaks the book down into managable sizes. It is true that writing an entire book is overwhelming, and some days, I still think I will never manage to finish another one. But when I tell myself I only have to write 1,000 words, part of a scene that I sort of know where its going, I know I can at least manage that. So one piece of a scene leads to another, which leads to another and so on and so on. The big picture gets taken care of one small piece at a time.

This beginning draft is really chaotic, I have multiple scenes to move around, a couple where I want the POV changed, and the flow is broken up about every five pages or so, so next week I might work on getting it put into a decent organized draft. But for this week, I need to get more word count done, past the point where I abandoned my longest project–20,376 words. Once past that, I think I will be fully committed to the book and it will be entirely too late to back out. Here’s keeping my fingers crossed.

So totals. I did 4,104 words this week. I need to bump this up to over 5,000 to make my goals, but its progress. My grand total so far 17,292. I wrote at home this week and the library, so my snack total was only $2.51. I have 4 hours and 15 minutes total writing time–which isn’t a lot for those of you who don’t think you have time to write a book–$42.50 and I put in $30 gas. 

Grand totals 17,292 words and $265.85 for a cost of $.015 per word. At this rate a 90,000 word manuscript will cost me $1383.67. Hmmm, with the gas my total cost  is up this week, (unless I have completely screwed up my tally, which is entirely possible).  We’ll see how it balances out.

These things are important, and I have always been a proponant of having other creative interests besides writing, especially ones that include some sort of physical activity. The body must move between bouts of sitting hunched over the keyboard. Stretch. Breathe.  Dancing is my preferred exercise of choice. Find something to do you love, or else it becomes a grind and you will never keep up with it.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard authors say they have gained fifty pounds,  killed their back and wrist muscles,  or developed diabetes or some other physical ailment because they spend all their time writing.  (Granted that is their choice, but it’s not mine.) Get a life! Get out and play, have fun, dress up. Belly dancing lets me work up a sweat, dress like a gypsy queen, and move like a seductress. What more could one ask for? My husband and I also take ballroom dance class on the weekends, and I’m heading there in just a few minutes.

So, you ask, what were my stats for the week? Not wonderful, but not horrific. I did manage to get 2,192 words, about half my goal. But that’s okay, it’s still progress, and this coming week is clear sailing. I also spent a lot of the down time running plotlines, character motivation and other big manuscript ideas across my mind, fine tuning the points as I progress through the book. Yes, I have to go back and change some parts of the beginning to match, but I can do that later.

THE BEGINNING DOES NOT HAVE TO BE PERFECT TO MOVE ON! Memorize this line and repeat it frequently. You can go back and change the beginning to match during the re-write. Keep moving forward. Keep the draft flowing.

I actually worked for 3 1/2 hours, $35, and since I wrote one day at home, I only spent $5.04 in snacks.

So the grand total so far is: 13, 188 words. $190.84. = $0.014 per word which will cost me $1,302.36 to finish the book at this rate. Whew! Making progress.

At any rate,  here are the stats for last week. I wrote 4,552 words, paid out $8.81 for snacks and $60 hourly. I had a momentary lapse back into insanity this weekend, really wanting to ditch this work and start one of my other projects, but I’ve managed to resist the urge so far.

Still, I’ve abandoned manuscripts up to the 20k mark, so I’m not out of the woods yet. Keeping myself on track for now.

Gia

$12.50 hourly. $2.51 snacks. Gas still holding out great!

Some of my other favorite writing CDs are the sound tracks to Kingdom of Heaven with Orlando Bloom, and King Arthur with Keira Knightly and Clive Owen. If anyone else has suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Gia

I also opted to change some pretty big issues with the plotline, but being only 4,000 words into the story, it was a good time to make the decision. I did resist the urge to go back and re-write immediately (which tends to send me on that loop of never getting past the first 15,ooo or so).  Instead, I marked the pages that need to be changed on a day I sit down to edit.

On the plus side, I had a character walk in that I wasn’t expecting, and the story has taken on a different feel because of it. I think it works, because obviously this character is ready to go!

$2.14 snacks, 891 words, $17.50 hourly.

Getting a bit down on myself, wishing I was one of those authors who can spit out thousands of words per day seemingly without effort, and put out a novel every two months or so.  Sigh. My process doesn’t work that way, and I have better things to do with my time than wishing it was different.

I have learned to accept that I can only do a thousand or so words a day, it’s always been like that for me, with the occasional breakthrough scene that keeps me going another few hundred words beyond that. I am a clean writer, I can’t vomit words onto the page without thought of how they sound. I have to clean things up a bit as I go along. The beauty of this, however, is that I have very few revisions once I get to that stage of the game, and I enjoy the revision process because I do take some extra time in the first draft.

Even at my thousand words per day, five days a week, I will finish a ninety-thousand word manuscript in sixteen weeks. I usually revise in two or three, which gives me a good solid two books per year, with the possible novella or short thrown in for good measure. In the end that’s not a bad output, and even the longest of books begins with the very first word.

Appreciate your own process.  Own it.  Make it work for you.

As an addendum, I had some very defeating dreams last night and today I feel like a failure before I’ve even gotten started. Isn’t it funny how these things can affect you? Chris Vogler calls them threshold guardians in his work The Hero’s Journey, beasts that one must conquer in order to progress. (I could have done without them this early in the process.)

A quote for the day:

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.

Ray Bradbury

Costs: $36 – tow, $25 – gas, $4.78 – snacks, $37.50 - 3.75 hours writing. Total=$103.28

Total word count= 2,446

Are you all laughing? I am. At this rate, I will be bankrupt before getting halfway through the book.  Hopefully this week will be more productive, less costly.

Gia

Not that my outfit is anything to write home about. Anonymity is my friend

Gia

Then, I couldn’t get out of the driveway. No problem. A quick shovel and all was well.

NOT. 

 So another quick shovel…and here’s the thing. The driver’s side door doesn’t open. So I reminded myself not to close it while I was shoveling, but of course I managed to bump into it just enough the lodge it shut. Not all the way, mind you, just enough the stupid lock latched.

Okay, I’ll just open the passenger door.

NOT!

Somehow I managed to lock the @#$%$#@*&% doors. I have no spare key, my husband has them at work. But I found the extra remote control.

YAY!!! The day is saved…

Until the &$@#@! remote doesn’t work.  So now my car is running out of gas in the driveway and I am ready to cry, feeling totally defeated before I even get started.

This sucks! Bad.