The Never Ending Battle Against the Battle that Would Not End

I’ve been neglectful.  Very neglectful.  It has been over a month since I last updated, and my posts were sparse before that.  I’d like to say it’s because I’ve been churning out volume after volume of prose.  Not true.

In reality, I’ve been battling time goblins every step of the way.  Work hasn’t let up yet — in fact, it’s been busier than ever.  One of the other attorneys is stuck in Federal jury duty, meaning that the rest of our workloads jumped.  That’s on top of the heavy load we’ve all been carrying the last few months.

I’ve also had some busy times personally.  Mind you, these aren’t bad things — I got engaged and my fiancee and I have been out looking for a condo.  There have been obligatory family visits, and a bevy of birthdays.  Most of those days I’ve had to deal with work as well.

So I’m still working on step one of the revision process.  Specifically, I’m still working on TBTWNE.  I’ve tried to rewrite it in several different ways, none of which work for me.  I’ve tried putting it aside, but that hasn’t worked either.

So I’m trying one more thing.  I’m going to rewrite it, start to finish, breaking up the passage with the changing of narrator.  I’m then going to slide it into the appropriate spots of the book, around the intervening chapters.  Hopefully that’ll take care of it.

Getting closer…

Unfortunately, work hasn’t let up recently.  There was a three day span where it looked like things would clear up, and then it got even busier than ever.  I should be thankful — the busier I am, the better my job security — but it’s not the most conducive atmospohere for writing.

I am getting along, however.  I have two chapters to write before getting to TBTWNE.  I should finish those chapters this weekend, and then get to TBTWNE during the week.  By the end of next weekend, I hope to be done with the draft.

Sometimes silence isn’t golden

I haven’t been updating this blog as often as I would like.  While I wish I could say it’s because I’m flying through the process of revising the second draft, that’s not really happening either.

The past couple of weeks have been hectic to say the least at work.  We’ve had a number of “emergency” projects come up (of course, they’re only emergencies because the clients didn’t come to us when they should have), which has led to late nights, taking work home for the weekends and generalized exhaustion.

Through it all, I haven’t been getting through the revision process like I was hoping.  I’m barely done with anything on the list, but since things seem to be normalizing at work, I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get back on track.

Feeling guilty…

Yesterday, I printed out the 476 pages that make up my first draft, three-hole punched them and stuck them in a binder.  Seeing it that way made it real for me — I completed the first draft of a novel.  It’s a euphoric feeling — I’m light-years ahead of where I’ve ever been, where I ever thought I’d be.

Soon I start the revision process (which I will discuss in my next post).  Until then, I’m taking a few days off.

In the past, when I’ve taken a few days off, it’s been fine.  Even earlier this month, I knew I was going to take a couple of days off.  No problem.  Now that the draft is actually finished and I decide to take a few days off, I feel guilty that I’m not writing.  I know I shouldn’t — I’m following the plan I had set out for myself when I figured out how I would do the revisions.  Still, there’s a certain guilty feeling that goes with taking a couple of days off.  That bodes well for the future — I expect the next novel will take less time to complete.

Talk about progress…

My first entry on this blog was July 31, 2008.  At that time, I had written 30,141 words.  Today, I’ve opened up my novel and find I’m at 80,143 words.  That’s 50,002 words in the span of 3 1/2 months (113 days to be exact).  It seems like a ton of work.  It seems like it’s hard and arduous to do.  You look at a number like 50,002 words and say, “whew, that’s a bunch” (ignoring you Na”No”ers who are trying to get to the 50,000 word mark in a month).  In reality, that 50,002 words reflects a relaxed pace — it only took an average off 442.5 words each day to get there.

Yes there have been slow days where you only get a couple hundred words out in the span of a couple of hours, and yes those days are frustrating.  There are also good days, where 1,000 words seem to leave your fingers in the span of one hour and you’re so into it you keep chugging through and end up with a very accomplished day.

There are days that you are sick.  There are days work drains you, and you’re stuck in traffic for hours trying to get home.  There’s the game that you just have to watch.  Occasionally, you’re obligated to visit family.  The dog ate something it found on the floor and is throwing up everywhere, so you have to follow it around with a mop and bucket.

Guess what — those things happen to everybody.  They happen to me, to you, to the random guy you don’t know.  And it’s okay.  There are days you literally can’t write (can’t get to a computer, broke all your fingers, etc…).  There are days you really don’t feel like writing.  You have to differentiate between the two.  On days you can’t write, you don’t write.  On days you don’t feel like writing, too bad.  Do it.  You’ll thank yourself in a few months when you have a completed draft.

Half a step forward, half a step back.

Yesterday, I only wrote 500 words, about half of what I would have liked.  It put me to just over 79,500, so still on pace to finish by the end of the year, but a little behind where I would have liked to have been.  The cold hit me bad yesterday and my brain didn’t want to work.  So 500 words, when my brain is fighting me, is pretty good.

Unfortunately, as I looked at what I wrote today, I had to scrap about 400 words of it, because it really didn’t make sense in the grand scheme of story.  So instead of being about 500 words behind, I’m now 900 words behind.  My brain has cleared up some, and it’s willing to work right now, so I’m going to start catching up.  I figure 1,200 words per day for the next four days will put me right back where I want to be.

It’s going to feel good, realllllllll good, when this draft is done.

Fighting on multiple fronts

Things have been slow on the posting front, but it’s okay.  I’ve been a bit under the weather — there’s a cold going around, and of course I got hit with it.  Together with getting back into the whole swing of work (it’s amazing how taking just under a week off really throws you off), it’s been a long couple of days.  That being said, I’ve still been productive on the writing front.  I was a little behind after the weekend — only 76,000 words, when I was hoping to be 78,000.  I hit 78,000 yesterday, and should make it to 79,000 tonight.

I’m still on pace to finish by December 31st, even accounting for the holidays.  In fact, if I can keep up the pace of the last few days (though I’m not necessarily expecting to), I’ll be finished with the first draft before Christmas.  Either way, New Years should be punctuated with cigars and scotch.

To top it off, my preparations for the second draft are coming along better than expected.  My second draft will consist of major revisions only (in other words, adding or removing wholesale passages).  As I start to move toward wrapping things up, I’m developing a list of things that need to be added, which will make the first step of the revision process faster.  Note that I will be posting discussions about my take on the revision process when I get to it.

Getting there….

It’s been an up and down week of writing.  As I expected last week, I just got to 70,000 words (in fact, I didn’t get there until Sunday).  What I didn’t expect (or really think about) was that Sunday and Monday were going to be slow days as well.  Since I was only working on Monday, I had a couple of projects that had to be finished, so I ended up spending some time on Sunday working on them, and didn’t get out of work until late on Monday.  Add to that the time I spent helping my roommate pick up his new car from out of state, as well as a nice sit down dinner, and I ended up being very unproductive (on the writing my novel front) on Monday.

Tuesday wasn’t horrible — I got in a little bit of writing — but most of the day was spent traveling and visiting some family members.  Again, not the most productive day.  Yesterday, on the other hand, was a pretty productive day.  I got in about 1,000 words — decent for one writing session, though not as much as I would’ve liked.

Today, however, was a great day.  I got in over 2,000 words.  My morning session and my evening session were both very productive.  I’m just shy of 74,000 words, and will hit that by lunchtime tomorrow.  With a couple more days to get some good work done, I’m hoping to go back to work on Monday with ~78,000 words under my belt and some serious momentum to push me through the next six weeks until completion of the first draft.

So how’s everyone else doing?  Are you finding that time goblins are stealing your chances to write, or are you vanquishing the foul demons and persevering?

Feels good to be going again.

I now have my laptop back, and my desktop is fully functioning.  Over the last few days, I’ve made some good headway, and have been making up lost ground — I’ve already made up for three of the five days in which I had been unable to write.

It feels really good to be writing again, I must say.  Since I have gotten into the habit of writing six or seven days a week, it’s become a comfortable part of my routine.  It was very frustrating skipping nearly a week’s worth of writing.  I think that’s the key — once you get to the point where you feel bad about missing a day of writing, not because you know you have to write just about every day, but because you want to write everyday, you’ve reached the first stepping stone to success (note: when I say success, I mean however you choose to define success, whether it means simply finishing a book, getting published, or whatever else it may mean to you).

It seems that it’s taken about six weeks to get to that point — where a daily ritual becomes habit.  It’s also taken the realization that the word count is always going up, getting closer to that goal.  I’ve often found that it can be difficult to see the trees for the forest — 300 words (the smallest tree I plant on any given day) isn’t a big hunk out of 110,000 (the forest I’m expecting to end up with), but 300 words each day still gets you to that inevitable goal.  I’ve gone from the frustration of feeling like I’m so far away to the joy of seeing my progress on a regular basis.

I do think having this blog has helped tremendously.  Beyond the support from my readers (and I do thank you all for the kind words you’ve relayed), it allows me to see my progress over time.  When I first started the blog, I had just broken the 30,000 word mark.  I’m now at more than double that.  Realizing how far I’ve come is a huge motivator for me.

I’ve also come to realize that I don’t need inspiration to sit down and write — the act of sitting down and writing instead inspires itself.  Now I will say that I get the occasional “that’s brilliant!” moment, while sitting at work or driving around somewhere, which then inspires me to write the next passage in the book.  Yet, even when I don’t get those moments, I don’t worry too much about it.  Once I start writing, while the first few words may take a little time to get down, the words eventually pick up momentum and fly out on their own.

It feels good to write, and it definately feels good to be back at it.

Technical Difficulties

When last I posted, gentle readers, I had just finished a good weekend of writing.  Then what happens?  Hardware failures.  The hard drive that contained my OS decided to develop a bad sector.  Of course, the bad sector has to develop smack dab in the middle of my boot sector, completely crippling the computer.

After several days of work, I managed to rescue all the important files (including my book), before having to reinstall everything.  Talk about a pain in the ass.  Add to that, my laptop was on loan to someone else, so I was basically sans technology for almost a week.

I’m back up and running now, and I made up some ground today.  I should be back on track by this time next week.  More importantly, I’ll have my laptop back tomorrow, so I’ll have two means of writing if I were to have problems again.

Updates will be a little sparse until I’m caught up — lots of work to do.