November 14, 2006

Well, it seems that November is a terrible month for me to write. I don’t have near the time I do on other months because of family activities and work - then the family visit break in there, which is actually more than a week this year. My parents are coming out for five days and then we’re going back for four days. Then I lost my last weekend, which was the make or break point, due to being so ill I couldn’t even write. What a bummer.

I’m still plugging along on my nano project, but I don’t hold out much hope at getting it anywhere near the 50,000 word mark by the 31st.

At present, I’m at about 6,000 words. I estimate this first novella’s rough will be finished at 30,000 or maybe even 20,000. This will be a series of novellas using the same main character. Looks like I found the project to shoot for electronic book markets in a few years. I want to have three of them completed and then put them out there in electronic format. In that field it works better to have multiple titles by the same author … or so they claim.

November 7th, 2006

I know - I've let this blog slide. There's been some RL issues going on and some major decisions that we had to take care of. Involved a lot of away time. But that away time allowed me to visit the book store about four times. That doesn't sound like much to many people, but it's major to me - there's no real book stores that are less than fifty miles away from where we live. I loved my visits - got to do so much research, pick up new books, and spent time in Panera or Starbucks.

Writers on the web blog about how little a writer actually works in a coffee shop and that writers who claim to work in one really are just playing around. Not me. I can focus so much better there. I did some kick-ass editing during my recent visits. If only I lived closer and could go there a few days a week for editing sessions... I think it's the background noise that helps me focus. I've always had ear ringing and the people help me forget that and concentrate.

Actually, it was heaven ... I'm a sucker for good coffee shops.

I’ve made my In-Human story a Nano project. So far, I haven’t gotten a whole lot of time to work on it. I have about 4500 words so far. Not too shabby considering I get to work on it for an ½ hour to 1 hour at a time. I’m happy with my progress. I really can kick out the words.

I wanted to get 10,000 words each of the five week sections on the calendar, so this is really a lot less than I set. But understandable. The first week was just too busy for it - and I had something to do yesterday that used five hours of my time alone. Sad as that was, I’m so happy and thrilled to have accomplished that other task.

I’m also in the middle of coding for the website. In the middle of this, I got my own webspace paid for on www.dragynspice.com And I had problems right the first day. Killed the time that I set for kicking out 2000 words.

That’s ok. I’m all for Nano and support what they do whole-heartedly. I’m just not a nano fanatic where everything else is set aside to make sure that word count is met. If I was, I’d have it done in two weeks.

This rough draft writing is the easy part though on this - just write and let it out no matter what it is. The tough part will be the editing. There’s a lot that will go into this book. Gaps to fill in, characters and situations to flesh out, and a ton of research. I came to a place where I needed more insight, so I used up time last week on 20 pages of research. Very fascinating. I’m really excited about this book. I think it will hit a lot larger audience than my regular writing.

On the already scheduled front … on stand by. My non-nano time is taken up with the website building and the life planning stuff we’re going through at home right now. It’s bad timing for Nano, but it’s also very important to our marriage and family life. I’ll be glad when we’re truly settled down … could be why many people don’t go into the writing professionally until after their kids are gone.

Of to office work and Nano-work.