One word at a time ...

Whoa, just saw the word count on the co-authored work-in-progress: 103k. 

NICE. 

It's taken forever to get this far. It has survived kids in and out of school, loss of jobs, tornadoes, a move across the Pacific and "homelessness," death and countless hours/days/weeks of "I will never be motivated ever again." I'm super proud of this story, even if it never sees the light of day inside a bookstore

Ready, set, go

I’m back at work on THE STALKER.

I started last night by reading over the few chapters and scenes I have already. I like what I have—it’s a first draft, of course, so it’s not perfect, but I’m just so very glad that this story is finally coming together for me. I’ve been working on it forever. I worked on it long before I started writing on it. And I gave up writing it twice. Some of you know, because you’ve read both those drafts … :-)

Good things come in threes, right?

Make sure to drop me an e-mail/comment if you’d like to be in my group of beta readers. I love beta readers. I like comments and feedback during that first round of writing. Sometimes I’m not sure of something and readers just love it and sometimes I’m pretty sure I did something well and readers hate it. I’d much rather rewrite and rethink in the beginning stages, trust me.

I’m not just back at work on THE STALKER, I’m also back at work in real life. I started working a regular, full-time job in education last month. This does two things to/for my writing: 1) severely limits my writing time and 2) focuses my efforts to get the most out of that limited time.

These are the same conditions I wrote THE PROTECTOR under, so I’m not worried. It seems I actually get more done having less time on my hands.

There’s plenty to do:

• Write at least one chapter of THE STALKER a week
• Overhaul my website or find someone to do it for me (I’m having issues with my site provider and the technical aspect of the website, ugh)
• Feed family, cats, fish, and lizard regularly
• Watch at least some of the new shows on TV
• Read each of the new Cindy Gerard books coming before Christmas
• Keep up with web groups and return e-mails in a timely fashion

NaNoWriMo

It's that time of year: NaNoWriMo. November is National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to produce 50,000 words in 30 days. If you write 1,667 words a day, every day, you'll reach the goal. If you take weekends off, you'll have to write 2273 words on every remaining day.

Let's put that into context: I would have to write a chapter a day to reach the finish line. When I worked on THE PROTECTOR, I wrote a chapter a week. Ouch.

I'm not a fast writer. I'm not a "write now, revise later" writer. I'm a "agonize over the right words in one sentence until it's perfect and I can move on to the next sentence" writer. I draft and revise paragraph by paragraph. That takes its time.

BUT I expected to have a finished novel by the end of the year, and the end of the year is only 61 days away. Crap! If I produce just around 1000 words a day—no taking weekends or holidays off—I can still make my deadline, with plenty of stuff to edit and revise (i.e. delete). Hmm …

I won't sign up for NaNoWriMo officially, I think, but I'll do my darndest to work toward those 50,000 words in November.