Time flies when you’re . . .

. . . forgetting to update your posts.  In my last post, I lamented the fact that it had been a month since I updated.  That was just over two months ago.  So clearly I mended my ways.

That being said, I at least have an update.  TBTWNE is also The Battle That Would Not Lose.  Try as I might, I haven’t been able to come up with a draft version that really appeases me.  I’ve made several attempts, but nothing that satisfies me.  So I’ve decided to move on.

It’s now time to start step two of the revision process.  Tomorrow I take the file to Staples to print out the second draft, and then I start the line edits.  It’s 487 pages, so if I average 20 pages per day, it’ll take 25 days to finish the line edits.  I’m not sure if that’s a totally achievable pace (it’ll depend on how many edits I have to do per page), but that’s going to be the pace I hope to go with.

I figure that TBTWNE/TBTWNL will get some work-over through this part of the process, so I’ll end up with something I like a little better. 

Now I’m also planning on updating this blog more regularly.  To kick it off, over the next couple of days I plan on posting on some of the things I’m looking for while doing line edits.

So here’s to the second draft, and the third that is yet to come.

Goals and alike abound!

So I’m not the only one with goals/resolutions/things I hope to accomplish in the next year.  Here are some of the things others want:

Alex wants a six pack.

Uppington intends to enjoy the writing process more.

Nova will finish her new novel.

Victanguera wants to feel like anything is possible.

J.C. has several goals.

Tamara also has multiple plans for the new year.

Dara puts together a list that puts mine to shame.

Good luck to all of you, and everyone else who has something they want to accomplish in the next 364 days before we arbitrarily flip to the next new year.

2009 Goals

In about 27 hours, it will be the year 2009 here in New York.  I will be knee-deep in a bottle of scotch, a game of poker and a hearty cigar.  It’ll be fun.

On Thursday, I’ll find my way home, maybe run a couple of errands, and then end up right here, in front of my computer.  Life will go on, just like it did last year, the year before that, the year before that, and so on.

That said, the 365 (and occasionally 366) day period that we use to define a “year” can be a helpful construct in planning our future.  To that end, I’m a believer in establishing goals each year.  I differentiate goals from resolutions, by the way, because resolutions are figurative absolutes, as in “I will do X, I won’t do Y.”  Goals are malleable, and are simply targets.  “I hope to accomplish X, I hope to avoid Y.”

I’m not going to list a bunch of (non-writing) personal goals on this blog — that’s not why I have it, that’s not why you (of course this is a figurative you, since it may not actually apply to some of my readers) read it.  The following goals are all related to my novel(s) and the 365 days that follow tomorrow:

• Complete my work in progress and get an agent
• Come up with a basic viral marketing plan for the novel when it is published
• Plan out and complete the first draft of the second novel in the series

What about you?  What are your writing goals?

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?

Even better than I thought…

After I wrote my last post on Monday, I ended writing another 250 words before going to sleep.  Yesterday, I blew past the 1,000 word mark, settling at 1,900 words.  That puts me over th 60k mark, and definitely on pace to finish the first draft by the end of the year.  At 750 words per day (average), I’ll finish on time, with one day off each week.  On top of that, I have a long break in November (I’m taking most of a week off for no reason other than that I have vacation days to burn), which should help push me through any slow periods.

Things are looking good.

50k

I’ve passed the 50,000 word mark, though it happened later in the month than I would have liked.  My original goal was to get to 60,000 words this month, but with only five days left, that’s not happening.  I’m actually just short of 51,000 words right now, so I’m hoping to get to 55,000 by the end of the month.  That would put me at the half-way point.  Since I’m hoping to finish the draft by the end of the year, I would need to do a little more than 650 words per day starting October 1.  We’ll see.

Goals

As I sit here waiting ever so faithfully for my laptop to finish charging (when you plug it in at night, it helps to make sure the cord is actually plugged into the wall), I’ve been thinking about my goals for the next month.  I’m hoping/expecting the next 30 days are extremely productive ones — I’ve been rolling recently, and don’t see a reason why this would stop.  To top it off, I’m taking off a couple of days this month (to go along with the fact that I’m off today), and with no major plans I expect to focus almost exclusively on my writing those days.

So I figure that I should be able to easily reach my base goal — 2,000-3,000 words per week (and plan on being on the higher side of those, so ~12,000 words for the month), plus, given three extra days of writing this month, I should be able to do 15,000 words in the next 30 days.  That’s an average of 500 words per day — nothing overly cumbersome.  So my first goal for the month is 15,000 words.  Depending on my progress during the month, I may add in a stretch goal, but that has yet to be seen.

My second goal is one that has been eluding me for quite some time — the title.  I have yet to come up with something that really strikes me as an appropriate title, but I also haven’t really spent time sitting down and really just thinking about it.  I’m not sure that I’ll be able to come up with even a working title this month, and that’s okay.  My goal, however, is to spend one hour each week thinking about it, even if nothing comes to fruition.

45,000 Words — Does it really matter?

I’ve hit the mark — 45,094 words — with two hours and twelve minutes to spare.  Of course, as Joesph points out in the comment to my last post, is it worth it?  I began responding to his comment, and then realized that it warranted a full post, so here’s his comment:

You know, it is very good to have daily or weekly goals in order make sure you continue making progress over time, but I worry that setting an arbitrary goal like 45k by the end of the month, and then trying to cram it in, will just end up hurting your writing.

If you miss your goal one day, or one week, that’s fine, that’s life. The important thing is to keep moving forward, and to make the quality of your writing the highest priority, not the quantity.

Plus, constantly killing yourself on random evenings to reach a goal can actually make you dislike writing, in the same way that most people dislike jogging when they focus on the bathroom scale.

And my response:

I agree — while I hit the 45,000 word goal tonight, if I missed it I wouldn’t be too worried.  My weekly/monthly goals tend to be fairly reasonable — 2,000-3,000 words per week, with a monthly goal in the 10,000 word range, only actually require a couple of good nights a week worth of writing (on the good nights, I can pump out a good 1,000+ words) to hit.  More important, however, is my goal that I have to write something every night.  I’ve had nights where I only push out 100 words, and it takes awhile, but I make myself do it.

The only thing that has really held me back this weekend has been my own attention span.  For some reason, after a full day of work, when I come home, I find it fairly easy to concentrate on my writing for a couple of hours.  When I don’t have to work, I find it far more difficult to do so — I get distracted by every little thing and find that four hours have passed and I haven’t written anything because I’ve been too busy doing X, Y and Z.  Once I hit the groove, it tends to come out in bulk, and if I set little targets for myself, I find it easier to keep going (such as, you can walk the dog for the eighth time in four hours after you’ve written another 250 words).

If the words just didn’t want to come out today, I wouldn’t have pushed them simply for the purpose of reaching 45,000 words — I don’t want to sacrifice quality for quantity.   The issue was that the words were there, and they wanted to come out, but I couldn’t focus on what I was doing for long enough to let them out.

Pushing through…..

I’ve already completed my goal for August (hitting the 40,000 word mark).  Based on the progress I made getting there, I figured that I could make my stretch goal — hitting the 45,000 word mark before the end of the month.

This week wasn’t particularly productive — a couple of outside factors in my life conspired to thwart my progress.  Still, as I write this I sit on 43,311 words — 1,689 words short of my stretch goal, with 7 hours and 50 minutes left in the month.  Can I do it?  I sure hope so.  I’m going to keep plugging away at this one, seeing if I can indeed hit 45,000 words by the end of the day.

I’ll update my progress at the end of the night, or early tomorrow.