Results: Crash,… but no burn here

Crash Test DummySo the Camp NaNoWriMo event is done and my modest goal of 30,000 words wasn’t quite met, but I still count it a success.   At 17,816 words, I didn’t complete what I’d planned to accomplish, but given the life events I was dealing with, I made progress, and that’s what really counts in the end.  While I won’t be giving myself any participation awards, nor be able to tout winning at the event as an accomplishment this time, I did make some good progress on the next novel’s story.

I did have angst, once again, about starting on the next novel before I have completed the first novel’s rewrite, but this time I’d decided to use the camp time to write the novel outline instead of trying to wade in directly to the second novel itself.   I think I’ve resigned myself to knowing that creating the novel outline first works best for me as I can let my imagination go wild during that process.  Once I have the story down, and have imagined all the twists and turns that the plot will take, I can then use that outline as my guide to do the real work of making the novel come to life.

Let’s face it,…writing a novel is a lot of work, and doing it part time, after working a full time job, is a challenge at times.   I found that in this Camp NaNoWriMo event, I was disappointed that I didn’t make my goal, but I also cut myself a little slack as there were a number of things going on at work and home that needed to be dealt with.  I’ve started to realize that this is the reality of my situation and I just have to do the best I can.  It may take me a bit longer to write novels, but I’m not doing it full time, so that’s just the way it is.  I’m not going to allow this to be a reason to procrastinate, as that’s not acceptable, but completing each project is going to take some time.

I’d love, someday, to be able to write full time, as an occupation, but you need to have some measure of success to get to that level.  As I haven’t even gotten my first novel out there yet, that’s nowhere in my reality.  Even when I”m able to release “Inheriting S.O.F.I.A.“, the odds of it becoming a worldwide best seller are pretty slim, but I’d be happy with even modest sales for my first work, God willing.  Now I need to finish the first novel, so I”m switching back to finishing the 2nd draft re-write, beginning with page 159.  Only about  120 pages left, and then I’ll need to decide if I’ll use a profession proofreader or not.

So I don’t consider my time at camp a total crash and burn, just a crash with no casualties, after I’d driven for awhile and gotten closer to my destination.  My next post will be on the re-write progress, as that’s my only writing job until it’s done.

“Burt’s Bots” Novel progress at Camp NaNoWriMo:
Outline:  17.816 words
Novel 1st Draft:  13,367  (no work done on this at camp)

“Inheriting S.O.F.I.A.” Novel Progress:
1st Draft Novel:  78,198 words

Camp NaNoWriMo Time!

Camp NanoWriMo
Okay,… I did crash and burn for the November National Writing Month event, but I think I have a handle on why.  I was rushing to get into my second novel before completing the rewrite of the 1st,… and I was trying to do it in a different way than I’m comfortable with.  I don’t think I really figured out why that didn’t work out well until recently.  I’ve been coming up with new ideas that I really like for the new novel just this last week, so it really helped me to know that I do best when I outline my story first.

I think I use my outline to really dig into the possibilities of the story, and then flesh it out during the actual writing process.  I work best this way as my writing, in actual practice, is done in fragments of time, sometimes separated with small, and sometimes large spans of time.  Given this, the outline allows me to get my bearing again when returning to the story.  To remember where I’m going and the ultimate direction I want to take the story.  I don’t think my stories are extremely complex, but some components need to fit together, even if my audience won’t necessarily be engaged in the nuances.

So hopefully I won’t embarrass myself again, and will have some better progress in this Camp NaNoWriMo experience this April, but I’m looking forward to it.  I’m going to continue to work on my new Novel, “Burts Bots,” but I’ll be backing it up a bit and will start with my outline first, then when done, will take up the novel where I left off.  I’ll count all the words I write for the outline and add those for the novel beyond where I left off to get towards my 30,000 word count goal.

I liked the previous year’s Camp NaNoWriMo with it’s cabin mates that you can touch base with about your progress as it’s very motivating since others are participating in your writing experience with you, and you in theirs.  If you are an aspiring writer yourself, and have an idea you want to work on, I’d invite you to get on board as it starts tomorrow.  Check out the website at: http://campnanowrimo.org/

So wish me luck in camp.  I hope to make some good progress and have some fun in my new story.  Here’s the project at hand, and where I”m starting from.

2nd Novel: Burt’s Bots
Outline:  1,283 words
1st Draft Novel:  13,367 words

Rewriting or Polishing?

Scrivener Rewriting WorkWell in my case, it’s really a bit of both.  I think I outlined well enough that I don’t have massive issues  to work on, but scenes will be changed and disappearing character’s will be fixed, but much of everything else is polishing.   Sure, I’ve found my fair share of spelling and grammatical errors, and I am having to fix sections that repeat scenes or have other conflicting information, but progress is good and I can see the end is still a ways down the road, but definitely approaching.

As with most of my novel writing journey, I don’t really know if my techniques are the best, but they appear to work for me.  I did a read of my novel with a red pen on hand, and made notes on parts that didn’t make sense, or where facts changed from a previous chapter.  The red ink did flow for spelling errors as well, but thanks to my Scrivener’s program spell checker, it wasn’t too awful.  My lovely wife was kind enough to have gone through a read of my first draft as well and made her own notes of questions, observations and spelling errors so that helped a lot too.  Thankfully she liked the novel as well, but she is a little biased so my ego’s not swelling up too big.  Still wonderful to me to have satisfied my first reader, particularly this one.

So my method now is to take my first draft novel with red pen marked edits and do the physical rewrite in my Scrivener program.  It’s a little disjointed a process though as I do a quick look at the papers with edit notes, then go at it in Scrivener, but I inevitably get ahead of my marked papers in the program itself.  Then I go back to make sure I didn’t miss any of my previously marked issues.  Thankfully, I haven’t found many issues I didn’t catch a second time, but I did find just a few that I didn’t catch on the first.  Guess that’s really part of the process, but I hope it ends up in a well edited novel with as few mistakes as I can possibly manage.

Considering that people will be paying for my humble little novel, I think I owe it to them to do the best I can to make it as readable as possible, as well as what I hope will be an entertaining story.  I’ve been looking into hiring a professional proofreader for a final check, but the costs can be in the $1,000 level and up, so I’ll probably not go that route because that’s a pretty big investment to make for a first novel.

I think it would pain me very much to read reviews that indicated they found a lot of errors in the words I’d put down on paper.  I don’t want to go the analysis paralysis route either, though, so at some point soon, I’ll be making my last skim over everything and making the final push to get it published.  In my day job position, this will entail my “coming out” with my novelist aspirations as I’m required to notify my employer of any outside business activity, and selling books, no matter how few (or hopefully many) fits into this definition.

So after all this time, working on this first novel of mine, I’m getting very close to publishing it on Kindle and other platforms.  I’m hoping the rest of the rewrite goes well, and I get closer to the ultimate goal.  Partly because I want to see “Inheriting S.O.F.I.A.” live, and that won’t happen until it’s published.  Another part, though, wants to finish this story, so I can move on to the next one.  Almost there.

Novel: Inheriting S.O.F.I.A.
1st Draft Rewrite Progress:  Up to Page 72 of 351 (double space proof copy print)

The Best Laid Plans,…

My poor under-worked MacBook Pro.
My poor under-worked MacBook Pro.

The great line from a poem by Robert Burns which John Steinbeck used for his novel ,.. “the best laid plans of mice and men, often go awry,” comes to mind as I look at my lack of progress during the NanoWriMo event this November.  I’d planned to be on fire to complete 50,000 words into my new novel by month end, but given that I’m only at 13,366 words, it’s not likely.

I’m liking the new novel and story very much, so that’s not really the problem.  I’m thinking there are a couple of things that have gotten me off track.

First and foremost is the guilt factor.  I have all the edit points noted on my hard copy of my first draft novel, ‘Inheriting S.O.F.I.A.’ that are ready for me to start working on my second draft, but I’d put that aside to do the NanoWriMo event.  I feel that I compromised on this as not finishing what I started makes me feel bad.  I’m into the new book already while leaving my first project to languish, thinking that I needed the NanoWriMo event to spur me on to get more writing done per day, but it just doesn’t feel right.

Secondly,…in my rush to ready myself for this month long event, I also compromised the way I write in that I normally complete an outline first, hashing out the plot details and discovering new twists I want to add in the process.  While I started my outline for my second novel, and have an idea of where it is ultimately going, I don’t have it completely fleshed out yet.  I probably don’t even have it completed enough to get to the 50,000 word mark, if I’m honest with myself, and that’s not usually how I’ve worked in the past on writing projects.  In fact, the times I didn’t have my outline envisioned were when I created long, rambling stories that didn’t come together all that well.  I like to envision the story in the outline process, but this new novel isn’t completely envisioned yet, so that’s been bothering me.

Throw into the mix that in November I had a very tense day job work event to deal with and a little holiday called Thanksgiving as well, and there was even more distractions than usual to keep my from writing.

So even though there is some guilt as well in not finishing the NanoWriMo event as planned, I’m pulling back on my overly ambitious plan for novel number two, and am going back, for now, to finish my first one.  Definitely a crash and burn situation on my NanoWriMo plan, but I think it’s best for my writing style that I deliver my first baby before working on the second.

In thinking about my outline first preference, I know that some writers don’t work this way.  They like to compose things by the seat of their pants and use the actual process of writing their novel as their way of exploring the possibilities of their imagination.  I guess I do this as well, to some extent, but I put that in the outlining process of dreaming up the whole story.  I never follow the outline religiously, as you’ll always come up with things in the process to make your story better, but it helps to keep me on track otherwise during the actual writing process.  This also seems to help me keep track of the details, which can be considerable in a novel, and allow me to concentrate on the creativity of the story details.  I think for my personality, it’s the best way for me to work, and actually allows me to extend the creative process out farther, in both the outlining and writing stages.

So that’s my elaborate excuse for failing at my plan to complete 50,000 written words in November.  Instead, I’m hoping to have my second draft of my first novel completed by year end, and then I’ll send it off to a proofreader and continue work on my second novel’s outline first.  To me,…that’s the right way to do things

2nd Novel, 1st Draft:  Burt’s Bots
November 29th, 2015:
Outline:  Partially done for the first part of the story
Novel Word Count:  13,366

 

 

November’s NanoWriMo is On!!

November's NanoWriMo Event

I shouldn’t even be writing this post as it’s November and I’ve committed to write 50,000 words by month end, but I thought it would be right to publicly state that I’m in it to win it.  I’m into my second novel now, making progress but I’m only a little over 10% there, on my fifth day, so I need to pick up the pace.

For some reason today, I’m not firing on all cylinders, so I didn’t get that much done.  I’m hoping I’ll gain more ground during the weekend.  I have a troubling work week ahead, so that might be weighing a little heavy on my heart right now, but I’ll keep plugging away.

So here I go, on my way,.. I hope, to a 50,000 word count by the end of the month.  Yikes!!

November 5th, 2015:
2nd Novel, 1st Draft:  Burt’s Bots
Word Count:  5,493

To Rewrite, or Write,…That Is The Question

A question I think I’ve largely answered in my mind, but will admit publicly here now.  I’ve already poured through the 1st Draft of my novel, “Inheriting S.O.F.I.A.” and have all of my notes down, but I still need to go through the second draft and do the rewrite on paper.  Sounds like a plan, you might say, but then enters the possibility of a new idea for my next novel that came to me shortly before completing the last one.  Add to that, the NaNoWriMo event in November, which challenges writers to complete a 50,000 page novel in the month of November.  I suppose I could use the NaNoWriMo event to do the rewrite, but considering I won’t be really writing 50,000 words in the process, it doesn’t seem right.

So I’ve decided to take a non-traditional route and use the November event to begin writing my second novel, even before completing the rewrite of the first.  Now this is the point where you might expect me to hang my head in shame,..but it’s not.  I fully intend, and am quite anxious to complete my first novel, but the NaNoWriMo event is quite motivating and I want to get the most out of it.  If I don’t have 50,000 words to rewrite on my 1st draft, I fear I’d waste some momentum.

So here I go, doing the nontraditional move and trying to get my outline together for book number two, before one is even completed.  Yes,…there is guilt involved.  My first novel isn’t even born yet and I’m looking forward to the creative process of writing the next one.  Admittedly,…rewriting your first draft isn’t as exciting as getting into a brand new story.  Realizing that you had characters start in one scene, then they just disappeared entirely, or finding sentences you’d written that you can’t figure out what you were trying to say.  These are the mechanics of rewriting your first draft, which still involves creativity to make the book  a hopefully good read, but isn’t as exhilarating as getting into an entirely new story.

But here I promise,… to the world and myself,.. that right after this NaNoWriMo event, I’m going back to the rewrite of my first novel to finish what I started.  And when that is done, I’ll find a good proofreader to make the final polish, and will then self publish “Inheriting S.O.F.I.A.” while also looking for an Agent to get it to a traditional publishing house.  From there, I can then work on finishing the first draft of my second novel, which won’t be completed even if I am able to write 50,000 words in November.  God willing.

Finishing the First Draft!

Finishing the First Draft!

I FINISHED MY 1ST DRAFT!  The last chapter has been written and I’ve finally finished this fairly large body or work and gotten my story out.  I had a great push in this last month thanks to the accountability of my Camp Nanowrimo experience.  This nonprofit website was create in a Spring Camp style and participants were grouped in cabins per the camp theme.  Most of my cabin mates had the same kind of 30,000 word count goals similar to mine. Well actually my estimate was just over 31 thousand words to complete my novel but I came up about 6 thousand words short of my projected end point.

This Camp Nanowrimo experience began on April 1st and with every writing session you were to post your word count totals.  I must admit that it really energized and standardized my writing efforts.  Since this was all being done part time, it’s taken me some time to get this done, but the camp helped me to get into the daily writing habit.  I had a great desire to keep my word counts up.  I was no longer writing all by myself, with no accountability.  I suddenly had peers, also with their own writing goals, whose progress I could see and whom I showed my progress to as well.  This was very motivating and really encouraged me to write often.  It’s a different experience when you are working in tandem with other aspiring writers, also working hard on their own stories. 

The site had a message board where each cabin member could leave comments on their progress, and often encouragement to others as well.  It was a really great experience and really helped me to make that final push to complete the first draft.  They have a more famous event in November where they challenge writers to complete their 50,000 word novel in that month alone.  I plan to take up that challenge with a new book idea that’s been percolating in my head, but that means I have to get busy on the next phase of this 1st novel,.. the rewrite!

While it’s a sweet victory to celebrate the completion of my novel’s first draft, like any other work, it’s going to need rewriting, polishing and editing.  This process promises to be easier than the first, but it’s still going to be a substantial amount of work.  This will be the phase where I’ll no doubt find multiple flaws and misspellings as well as intended elements I left out entirely, or repeated more than once.  The document I have now is definitely not ready for prime time for sure, but it’s my story, created out of thin air, and now out of my head.  Now comes the refining of what I’ve done.  Now comes the crafting of this story into a novel that I pray people will enjoy.

Your prayers are still welcomed as I enter this new phase of writing.  I’ll take a very short break and then will start by reading what I’ve created. Prior to this, I’ll finish reading a good book on the rewriting process so as to hopefully provide some useful times.  But for now, a minor celebration for my wife and I, and my thanks to God for helping me get to this point.

April 25th, 2015:
Current Novel Word Count:   78,198 Words
Percentage towards 1st Draft Goal:  100%
Title: Inheriting S.O.F.I.A.

3/8/15: Writing with the End in Mind

Writing with the End in Mind

I haven’t added anything to this blog in a while, so let me bring the blogosphere up to date.  As I stand now, I’m approaching a 62% completion rate, which isn’t very impressive given the time I’ve been working on this project, but it is progress.  At times, it’s a little hard to see what the end result will be.  It’s hard to imagine that my humble little story will end up as a novel that hopefully at least some people will enjoy. I don’t take the commitment of someone to read a novel lightly and I want my book to be an enjoyable experience that they find worthwhile of the decision to read it.

That vision is where I’d like this novel I’m writing to end, but having never done this before, I really don’t know if it’s realistic given the kind of writer I am. 

Perhaps it’s not good for an aspiring novelist to document all his hopes and worries in a blog like this.  It may not be the best way to build a “platform” as much of the literary world indicates I need, but I have faith in God that He’ll lead me in the right direction.  My status recording spreadsheet has the words “Pray before you write,. Honor God” written in a bold, yellow highlighted box so that it can’t be missed when I log in a session. This, I think, helps me to keep me on track and moving, although slowly, towards the ultimate goal.  

I pray that this book will be well received and that many people will like it, but in a sense, that’s really out of my hands.  I can only write the novel I feel is the right story, the story that has to come out of me.  The rest, I’ll leave in God’s hands.  That’s not to say I’ll just blindly put something out there without trying to make sure it’s the best it can be, or that I won’t look for ways to promote it, but ultimately, it’s up to God if its a success or not.  My life is in His hands, so if it’s an activity that He wants me to be encouraged in, something that truly honors Him, then it will work out.

I do realize that I need to step up my efforts to complete this first draft.  Sure,.. there are things going on in normal life that get in the way and have distracted me from completing this goal, but by God, I will complete this book, God willing.  What makes this even more important is that I’ve come up with an idea for my next book.  Ironic that this would come when I haven’t even finished the first one, so it gives me an even greater sense of urgency to get this story out.

I had purchased, late last year, the voice dictation program called Naturally Speaking from Dragon.  I’d gotten it to see if it would be helpful for my mom who is having sight issues lately, but in testing it, I found that one of their claims for the software is quite true.  Using it with my Scrivener writing program I realized that it significantly increased my writing speed.  I’m not sure if this is because it forces me to really concentrate on what I’m writing, or it’s the increased speed at which my thoughts go from my mind onto the document, but it makes me faster.  This may be a great thing that allows me to increase my productivity, although it’s not always possible to use since I have to basically speak my book into the headset microphone.  If I’m writing on the couch, next to my wife who’s trying to concentrate on a show she’s watching, or a game she’s playing, this isn’t practical.  Whatever the true reason that it makes me faster, this is a good tool that I plan on using in the future.

So here I go, trying to make another push to get this first draft done.  I’m entering into another very pivital scene which will take my heroes into a whole new realm within the story.  Things are getting very dramatic and there is about to be a lot of action.  Should anyone out there be checking out my humble blog, reading this recent post, please pray for me to complete this project and in a great way that honors God.  I can ask for no better thing, whether a handful of people read it, or it becomes a bestseller.  That’s what I really want to complete and I thank God for the ability to test my dreams in this way and for allowing me to pursue it.

March 8th, 2015:
Current Novel Word Count:   52,559 Words
Percentage towards 1st Draft Goal:  61.8%

8/11/14: Fabulous Fifty!

Fabulous Fifty!

Fabulous Fifty Percent that is.  As of this day, I’m past the fifty percent mark with the first draft of my novel.  As I’ve estimated the novel to come in at around 85,000 words, so this puts me at the halfway mark.

On one hand, I feel bad that it’s taken this long to get here, but on the other hand, I have to celebrate this milestone.  When faced with such a big project, it’s really the only way to do it.  So today I celebrate getting to this point with this self congratulatory blog post.

I still can’t reveal anything yet about the story itself, but my characters are now in the thick of things.  I will guide them through the rest of the first draft until I arrive at the 63,750 word mark which is my next milestone to work towards.  That will be the three quarters done mark and will really be an encouraging goal to reach.  

Hopefully I’ll make better time in getting to that next goal than I feel I did for this last one.  Maybe I should make a shorter goal, say to the the nine sixteenths mark?  Well,… maybe not.  Three quarters done feels like a real goal to work towards.  And I’m determined to make it there sooner than this last goal.

Considering that I’ll have less words to complete to get to this next goal, perhaps it won’t seem so daunting.  Maybe it will come much sooner than I’ll expect.  God willing, as I’d like to start to feel the project is getting closer to completion.  I’d like to see this dream realized.  At least with a completed first draft.

August 11th, 2014:
Current Novel Word Count:   42.541 Words
Percentage towards 1st Draft Goal:  50%!!!!

7/14/14: Blog Drought

Blog Drought


While California is currently having a terrible drought, I’ve also had one of my own in regards to posting to this blog.  My last post was nearly three months ago so I’m feeling rather guilty.  I guess in some way, I didn’t want to add to this blog as I didn’t think I had a lot of progress to report and that was a sense of shame for me.

As I look at my last post, I’ve only progressed another 15.6% towards completion of the first draft.  Not particularly impressive for nearly three months of time gone by, but I’ve been thrown some curve balls recently at the day job.  This has really sapped my attention and much of my time so I didn’t have a lot of extra unstressed moments to write, and when I did have time, I didn’t have much enthusiasm for it.  I can’t really say much about the distraction, but I don’t feel guilty for reacting this way.  Recently,… things appear that they may be getting better though, so I’ve been trying to step up my writing efforts. 

My next goal is to hit the 50% completed mark.  I’m fairly close to this, but still need to put in the hours.  Speaking of that, I’ve added another two cells to my writing spreadsheet.  One adds up the time I’ve spent in actual writing so far, which comes out to 81.2 hours.  If broken down into an 8 hour work day, that would be a little over 10 days. The second cell uses my average words per hour calculations based on recent writing sessions and projects that I can complete this first draft in about 21 1/2 days.  Needless to say, though, I need to pick up the pace.

I feel more confident that I’ll be able to increase my average words per hour count and get my first draft done sooner.  I’m in a very exciting part of the book which is fun to write, but also challenging as my characters are being pushed to the limit.  I’m hoping others will enjoy the story I am putting together but I have to complete it before I’ll ever be able to find out if they do.

I’m trying not to look too far ahead, but this will be only the first draft of this novel.  When this is done, after a brief celebration on my part, there will still be the second and third drafts to work on.  That won’t take as much effort, I’m hoping, as I’ll be tweaking and changing what I’ve already written, but it will still be a large block of work ahead for that stage of this project.

But for now, 50% is my goal.  How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  (PETA,… I’m only kidding and would never eat an elephant)  So hopefully I’ll chug along at a better pace, but I’ll try to be better about documenting it here.  I don’t want to take too much time away from the novel, but will definitely check in on the Blog.  Particularly when I hit the 50% mark!

 

July 17th, 2014:
Current Novel Word Count:  37,236 Words
Percentage towards 1st Draft Goal:  43.8%