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Posts Tagged ‘word count’

ROW80 Check-In 10/15/14

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 15, 2014| 13 Comments »

I just checked in two days ago! Wait…I was a day late. 🙂

I’ve been making some progress. In the last three days, I’ve written for about an hour and a half, 1908 words. I didn’t write last night because I was SO upset with CreateSpace. When I got my proof, the cover of Fire Wizard was so dark and bland. Nothing like the colorful cover Anya had made for me. 😦 I just couldn’t focus. So I went to my friend’s Jamberry Nail Facebook party. Retail therapy is so effective. You know, that’s the first Facebook party I’ve ever attended that wasn’t an author’s party. It was the first party I’ve ever attended on my “real life” Facebook account. And I won something!

I did write about 30 minutes during lunch today. Wednesday isn’t usually a writing day, but since I was feeling sorry for myself last night, I thought I better make it up a little. LOL

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ROW80 Check In 10/12/14, Oops, I Mean 10/13/14

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 13, 2014| 9 Comments »

Yes, I’m a day late. I unplug so much on weekends, especially Sunday, that I sometimes forget it’s check-in day.

My main goal is, basically, to write five hours a week (trying to get about 5,000 words done, figuring on 1000 words per hour.). I stated it as five days, one hour each day, but I allow myself to make that up as long as I get five hours in for the week. I ended up only working, I think, four days, for a total of about four hours. But I ended up with about 6000 words because I averaged a lot more than 1000 words per hour. So that means I’m still on track to finish this book during this round. I’m at least going to try! 🙂

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Bad Writing Week & Dragon Naturally Speaking

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 11, 2014| 25 Comments »

I wrote 249 words this past week. Bah! I normally work on Fire Wizard on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Thursday, I decided hubby and I needed a date night. It had just been too long since the two of us had gone out together. So we went to Macaroni Grill and then to the Earth Fare store (kind of like Whole Food, I think). By the time I got home, I was too tired to write. It was kind of late. And Friday…well, that’s when I wrote the 249 words, playing with my Dragon Naturally Speaking software. More on that in a moment. Saturday, I found too many other things to do. Some productive, like cutting out a skirt pattern, and others not so much, like playing a Big Fish game and going to the matinee to see The Amazing Spiderman. Bad me.

Now, about Dragon. Honestly, I was afraid it wouldn’t be able to recognize my southern accent. But I read a speech by JFK to let it understand my speech patterns. I think this software is amazing. I would haven written more with it, but I was still learning. I could go faster saying a sentence because I can talk faster than I can type. But I have to get used to saying “period”, “comma”, “open quote”, “close quote”, etc. I was doing pretty well at the end, but I found I didn’t know where my story was going, so I knew I had to think about it some more. Anyway, the Dragon software was worth it as a business expense. It will be especially good when my hands are hurting or when my back is bothering me. When I get used to it, I think it will feel more natural than it does right now. It’s regularly $99.99, but I clicked on a FB sponsored link which took me to the Nuance website, where it was advertised as $59.99. When I put it in my cart, it was $49.99! And it comes with a microphone.

I’m thinking about doing some writing today since I slacked off last week. I never write on Sundays, but I might have to make an exception.

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Oops – A Little Late with my Update

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 21, 2014| 4 Comments »

I totally forgot to post yesterday. There’s not a lot going on anyway. I’m still working on a couple of other things that need to get done. I finished one and am almost finished on another, then one more. I’m not writing as many days as I want to (one day this past week), but I seem to be writing more at each session. I remember back when I could only seem to write about 500 words per day. But I wrote more days. On Friday, I wrote almost 2000 words in one session. So that’s like 4 days worth back in the old days. LOL. I’m hoping to get back to writing 3-4 days a week. Work is slowing down just a bit here at the full time job, so my brain power won’t be as depleted at the end of the day. Our church is doing a food thing for the homeless shelter this week, and I’ve never served at a shelter before, so that’s going to be an experience. That’s going to take up some of my time, but I think this is something that will be well worth it. As important as writing is to me, my spiritual growth is MORE important to me. If I strive to be a better person, I think life will improve in all areas. 🙂

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Goals for 2014 Round 2

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on April 7, 2014| 22 Comments »

Is is REALLY time for Round 2? Seriously? It seems like just yesterday….

Anyway, I’ve tried to find a doable word count goal. I’ve done those in the past, and I’ve done time goals. Daily goals, weekly goals, on and on. It’s so hard to find a good fit. Then I saw these spreadsheets. Word Count Spreadsheets. How can you not love a spreadsheet with Sam and Dean? I have my own word count spreadsheet, but these spreadsheets are full of awesome! And if you’re more into fantasy, check out THESE. It got me thinking about a MONTHLY word count. That way, if I have a bad week, I can still make up for it with a good week. I’m going to give that a shot and try for 15,000 words per month. The spreadsheets have all kinds of bells and whistles, letting you know how you’ve done, what you still need to do, percentages, etc. This website is also where I got my word count meter.

Now on to another thing. I have an idea for a…hmmm, what shall we call it? Cozy mystery? Romantic mystery? There will be a romance and a murder mystery. There will be food involved. And it will be okay, because it’s part of what the shero does, so no one can say I’m talking about food too much. I’m looking at you, Pink Hammer. Bwa ha ha. And this is where I have to decide if I’m going to use Lauralynn or my real name or another pen name. I’ve been seriously thinking about creating a publishing company so I can publish under that imprint for two different names. The only drawback to doing this is that I would need to buy my own ISBN numbers instead of letting Smashwords (for ebooks) and CreateSpace (for print books) assign the ISBN, which would show those two entities as publishers. I would like some opinions and feedback on this. If I understand the process correctly, you have to have one ISBN for print and another for ebooks. But I THINK you can use the same ISBN number for the ebooks at all retailers. You just can’t use the same one for e and for print. Is this correct?

So that’s all for now. I would love to hear your comments!

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ROW80 Round 1 Wrap UP

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 27, 2014| 9 Comments »

After my super “heavy” post last time, I need to keep this light. LOL

I’ve been with ROW80 since the very beginning. I’ve had good rounds and bad rounds. But I’ve been here EVERY round. The ROW80 community is awesome!

How did I do? Not so well. Not terrible, but not up to expectations. For this round, I wrote 19,534 words. I could have done much better than that. It averages out to about 227 words per day. I actually only wrote 14 days this round. So if I only use THOSE days, then my daily average is 1395 per day. See how you can look at something in different ways?

I will say, a lot of the reasons I had for not writing were legitimate. I’ve been doing some proofing, which actually makes me more money that my writing does. And then Susan, Kait, and I started The Forge: Affordable Book Finishing. So I have been a little busy. Writing is my passion, but I need to do what is going to put food on the table, right? So I plan to do both. 🙂

Here’s to a great Round Two! There’s something about spring that makes me more energetic.

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ROW Update 3/16/14

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 16, 2014| 15 Comments »

This has been a great writing week. Although I only wrote three days, I still managed to churn out 5,837 words! Yesterday, I wrote almost 2,400. Hubby was gone, so the TV in the living room was off and I was at my desk in my office, the sun shining through the windows beside me. Coffee was on the desk beside my computer. A couple of pieces of sugar-free chocolate. The conditions couldn’t have been better! 🙂

I really think it makes a big difference WHERE you write. If you have your own writing place, I think your mind says, “Okay, this is where I’m supposed to write”. I’m so glad I was able to fix up my son’s old bedroom and make it into an office.

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ROW80 Update 3/12/14

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on March 12, 2014| 12 Comments »

I told my husband last night that I would love to be able to sit down and write 2,000 words. Guess what? I DID it. Yep, I think it was 2,026. It was funny, I was in my office and the sun was shining, and I had the windows open. The birds were chirping. Then my husband yells, “Are you working in the dark?” I looked around, and it WAS dark. And getting a little chilly. I had been in there for an hour and a half. I always thought I wrote about 1,000 words per hour, but apparently it’s more like 1,000 words in 45 minutes. 🙂

I hope this momentum continues. When things slow down at work, things will be easier, I think.

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ROW80 Update 3/9/14

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on March 9, 2014| 8 Comments »

Just a quick check-in. I only wrote 1,111 words this week. My full time job just drains me this time of year. I have nothing left for writing most days. I would have gotten some writing in yesterday, but I was involved in helping with a wedding shower at church, which involved cooking, actually BEING there, then cleaning up. I so hope next week will be easier.

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ROW80 Update 2/23/14

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 23, 2014| 10 Comments »

Hello all of my fellow ROWers, as well as those who are not ROW80ers but still loyal blog followers! I appreciate you all so much! 🙂

I’ve had a really good writing week. I hit my 5K goal for the first week since this round. I wrote 5,213 words this week. I’m really getting into this story, and I hope my momentum continues.

A word about page fright. I’ve noticed I’ve had that with the last few books I’ve written. I’ve finally figured out why I didn’t have it as much before. I’m not afraid of novellas, so when I was writing those, I wasn’t scared. It’s these full length novels that scare me. I don’t know why. I think there’s a part of me that’s always afraid I won’t be able to write enough words. Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with writing novellas. My only problem with them is they’re not really long enough for a paperback. And I really like having copies of my book I can hold in my hand. And I have a few readers who still read that way. I have some more thoughts about novellas and short stories, as well as genre, but that’s for a different post.

I’m trying to revamp my website just a little bit. For my book page, I want just the covers, then a link to another page when you click on the cover. Then that page will have the blurb and the first chapter of the book. I never dreamed this would take so much time. But I think it will be better once I get it done.

Have the rest of you met your writing goals this week? If not, are you fired up for next week?

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