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Posts Tagged ‘word count’

Wednesday Update 7/11/12

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 11, 2012| 18 Comments »

Since I report the week’s word count on Sundays, I’m not going to list the last two days here. But I will say that I’m kicking word count butt. 🙂 My story is coming together.

I’m still working on proofing Vampires’ Curse for print.

Exercise is going well again. Anya and I walked during lunch the last two days, and as I reported on Sunday, I walked 45 minutes on the treadmill. Soon, I hope to be back to riding my bike. We’ve been having evening storms (we really need the rain!) so there’s been no outside activities after work.

I still need to work on my eating habits. I’m getting better, but I still need to tone down my portions a little more.

How is everyone else doing?

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Sunday Update 7/8/12

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on July 8, 2012| 10 Comments »

It’s been an interesting week. The heat continues to assault us here in East Tennessee. We will get some relief, I think, starting Sunday or Monday. The kittens are growing and actually aren’t getting into trouble in the house as much as they used to. Writing is going VERY well. Life is good. Here are some things relating to my goals.

1. Writing: Even though I don’t set word counts, but time goals, I like to keep up with word count. Mon-874, Tues-1464, Wed-91, Thurs-1474, Fri-0, Sat-2588. Look at that Saturday count! I don’t know if I’ve ever written that much at one time, but I was really loving my scenes!

2. Proofing: The proofing of Vampires’ Curse for print is going slow and steady. It should be ready by the end of the week.

3. Health: Exercise has been a no go all week, except for Saturday. It’s been too hot (I don’t even want to be outside when it’s over 100 degrees) to walk or bike, and I just haven’t gotten on the treadmill, except for about 45 minutes on Saturday. But, hey, that’s a little exercise. Also, my whole “quality instead of quantity” eating style is going pretty well. I’ve decided that eating less is better than depriving myself of good, tasty food, so that’s going to be my philosophy unless it stops working for me. I’ll keep you updated on that.

So, how are things going for the rest of you? Are you working diligently toward your goals? Let me know. I’m here for you if you ever need me!

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ROW Update 7/4/12

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 4, 2012| 12 Comments »

Hey, it’s the Fourth of July! Which makes me wonder if anyone will even be sitting at their computer reading this. LOL

What I’ve done toward my goals this week:

1. Word count: Mon-874, Tues-1,464. Although my goals are time, not words, I still keep up with word count. I can’t help myself. But I’ve found that when I started setting aside a time instead of shooting for a certain number of words, I actually end up writing MORE words.

2. I’ve proofed the first novella in the Libby Fox trilogy. Only two more to go, and the collection will be ready to format for print. I can’t BELIEVE how many times I used the word “that”. I know I don’t do it much anymore, but I must have “reformed” after writing the first in the trilogy. LOL

3. Exercise – not so much. I was doing well until it got so hot. It’s starting to cool down just a bit…mid 90’s…so I’ll probably go back to walking and riding my back on Thursday.

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ROW80 Check In 5/16/12

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 16, 2012| 10 Comments »

I know this is a late check in, but I’m trying to be a better employee and not do too much personal stuff at work. And I had church tonight, so this is the first time I’ve really gotten to sit down and do anything.

I finally started back on the writing last night. I only got a little over 400 words down, even though I sat at the computer for almost an hour. This is partly because I changed a couple of things I had written earlier. I know most people think you should write a first draft, then do all the editing later. I work better if I edit as I go, then I have a cleaner first draft when I’m finished. When I think of something I want to add or change, I usually do it right then. Anyway, those changes plus a little snag slowed my word count down. The snag was because I couldn’t figure out what a certain artifact was supposed to do. I’ve done a little brainstorming with hubby, and I think we’ll come up with something. He’s proven to be a lot of help lately. He had a lot of input in The Gnome. One of the major ideas in the book was his. He’s come a long way from back when he was calling my writing a hobby. LOL

On the kitten front. I’ve been letting them come in the house and play some in the afternoons. Monday, instead of staying under the couch like they did the first time, they decided it would be fun to get into my potted plant and fling dirt everywhere. I tried to sweep up all the dirt before my husband saw it, but they can fling faster than I can sweep. 🙂 I just had to wait and clean up later. I WILL eventually get pictures, but right now I can’t get them to slow down enough. They’re just a blur of fur and claws.

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ROW80 Check In 4/8/12

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 8, 2012| 10 Comments »

I just have a few minutes. I’m on my way soon to a birthday party for a one year old little girl. That ought to be fun! Then, tonight, my oldest son and his wife are coming for a visit. So this will be a busy day. But a good kind of busy. 🙂

I had a pretty rough start with Round Two, but that’s because I was writing the WRONG STORY. I posted about this a couple of days ago. The story I was trying to write wasn’t working for some reason. Then, suddenly one morning, this other idea started coming to me. THIS was the story I was meant to write. So things are going much better now. I managed to write 1247 words Friday and 843 words Saturday. I’m still behind because my goal was 700 a day, and I’m still counting those first four days I was struggling with a different story, so I was four days behind before I started this story. I’ll have to admit, I’m once again writing about a vampire, but that’s what came into my head, so I have to write it. And the title came to me as soon as the story did. That has only happened to me once before, and that was my short story, The Beast in the Mirror. I usually struggle a lot with titles.

I actually had an idea for my next scene on the Christian romance, so I’ll be writing that at lunch on Monday.

I hope everyone is having a great day, and I hope I can get to some of your blogs in between all the stuff I have to do today. 🙂

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Beginning of ROW80 Round Two 2012

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 2, 2012| 27 Comments »

I’ve been with ROW80 since it’s beginning, and I can’t tell you how much it’s helped me learn discipline in writing. I’ve published three novellas and am about to publish…well, it’s either a short novel or long novella. Anyway, I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot.

So my goals for this round? Since I’m shooting for a novel instead of a novella, I’m going to up my word count goal from 500 to 700 words per day. We’ll see how that goes and if I need to change it or not. Okay, this thing starts today, right? I sort of feel lost because I don’t have a good outline. I’ve always been a pantser, so the ideas come as my fingers fly across the keyboard. Since I was going to try to be a plotter this time, I’m full of anxiety. Because I can’t THINK of an outline. I have a vague idea of what’s going to happen in the book, but it’s not concrete. Okay, so I need to outline my vague ideas, right? I may end up being a pantser/plotter hybrid. LOL

Exercise goals are going to start out at 30 minutes five days a week. That’s actually what I’m doing right now, getting up at dark-thirty every morning and walking on the treadmill. (I actually did some light running on it once.) I plan on upping that goal as my body gets used to the exercise.

Those are my two main goals for this round. I may add something later, but these are the two I’m focused on right now. I’m going to do some writing on my Christian romance, but I’m not setting goals for that. It will happen as it happens.

Good luck everyone!

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ROW80 Check In 2-1-12

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 1, 2012| 10 Comments »

Yeah, I know, it’s late in the day, but it’s hard to do my Wednesday updates when I’m here at work. So let’s see what’s going on.

For my current WIP, the garden gnome horror story, I’m still behind on word count. It’s because I’m not writing every day. I’m having a little trouble with it right now. For starters, it’s going in a direction I didn’t really originally intend. I’m going to let one of my beta readers take a look at it early and see if it’s so bizarre that it’s falling apart or if it works. If I go in this direction, I’m going to have to go back and add a few things to make this all make more sense. But I think I can make it work. Also, I originally intended for this to be a novel, not a novella. In horror stories, especially the slasher kind, things move pretty fast. But I think I moved this one a little too fast. I wanted to get at least 50K words out of it so it could really be classified as a novel. Right now, I’ve written about 35K words, and I’ll be lucky if it makes it to 40K. So it’s right on the cusp of being a novel. Most of my novellas have run between 25K and 26K. So I’m not sure what to do with this. I know it needs a little more fleshing out, which will be done in the second edit, but I don’t know if it will be enough. I refuse to pad it just for word count.

Things are going well on the Christian romance I’m writing. I’m not setting a particular word count goal on this one because I never know when I’ll be going out for lunch instead of staying in and writing. I’m sort of shooting for at least 500 words for each lunchtime writing session. So far, the word counts have been 579, 908, and 926. I still don’t know whether to use my real name or another pen name. I wanted to use my real name so the people at church that read Christian romances would know it was me. But now I’m thinking I can use a different pen name and just TELL them it’s me. That way I won’t have to worry about stalkers and such. Because some authors actually get them.

Don’t even ask about my exercise progress….

On watching TV (yeah, I know this isn’t a goal) – I’ve watched lots of episodes of Dark Shadows. I’m LOVING this. It’s so much fun to revisit the show that started my love for vampires (and other paranormal beings) as a kid.

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ROW80 Check In 1/29/12

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 29, 2012| 20 Comments »

It’s been kind of a weird week. I took a break from writing (and most everything else) for a week because I really, really needed it. I started back on Tuesday, but I’ve only been writing every other day. On the days I have written, though, I’ve written more than my usual word count. My cumulative goal is 500 words per day. This is how it went: Tuesday-1220, Thursday-1384, Saturday-1312. So since I started back on Tuesday, I’ve written an average of about 783 per day. Not too shabby. Also, I started my Christian romance on Thursday and wrote 579 words that day and 980 on Friday. That story seems to be going well. I’m going to stick to my guns about only writing that one on my lunch hour at work so I can keep it separate from what I’m writing at home.

On the proofing, exercising, and housekeeping front…well, I’ve not done so well. It seems like the devil is out to get me on the exercise. Every time I plan on walking on the treadmill, I get an awful pain in my foot. It’s not always the same foot, either. It’s very strange.

I hope I’ll get around to visiting some of your blogs today and tomorrow. I took a break from that, too, and I really miss it.

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ROW80 Check In 1/25/12

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 25, 2012| 10 Comments »

I know a lot of you didn’t see Sunday’s post because I couldn’t get the linky tool to work for some reason. It was just being wonky, I guess. But I had said that I just stopped everything and decided I needed a break. I took about a week off from writing and all the other stuff I had been doing. Last night, I picked back up on the writing. My goal is a cumulative 500 words per day. Taking a week off put me almost at 3500 words behind. Yesterday, I sat down and cranked out about 1200 words. I was pretty pleased with that. If I can just write a little more than 500 each day, I’ll eventually get caught up. And I’m not going to stress about it. Hopefully, I’ll be back to visiting everyone’s blogs by the weekend. I might visit a few here and there until I build up my momentum again. But I think I’m back in the saddle again!

On another note, I have a strange idea. I know several of my fellow paranormal romance authors also write erotica under another pen name. I’m kind of thinking about going in another direction. I’m thinking of writing Christian romances under my REAL name. I have a lot of friends at church that like to read Christian romances, especially those by Karen Kingsbury. I just thought of an idea for a Christian romance and it keeps picking at my brain saying “Write Me!”. The thing is, I’ve never been able to write two stories at the same time, and I don’t want to fall behind on my paranormal romances. So I’m thinking I can write the Christian romance during my lunch hours at work. That way I can separate it from what I’m writing at home. I’m not going to tell anyone what I’m doing (except my mom and my cover artist) until one day I’ll have a shiny new romance book to share with my church sisters. What do y’all think? Am I crazy? And I’m determined that mine won’t be as sappy as Karen Kingsbury’s. Because hers make everyone cry. LOL

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ROW80 Check In 1/15/12

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 15, 2012| 16 Comments »

First…if you haven’t checked out my previous post for today, do it! There’s a giveaway! When I scheduled that post, I had forgotten it was the same day as a ROW80 check in day. But I HAD to do it today because, well, it’s my birthday. 🙂

Anyway, back to the subject of this post. I’m a little bit ahead of my cumulative word count. I didn’t do my 30 minutes a day on proofing the print book, but I spent about an hour and a half on it today, so I made up for a few days. I’ve enjoyed this proofing because I had forgotten how much I loved one of the stories in this collection, See Me. It has a little more humor than most of my books. Exercise and housework has been a massive fail. And I have an excuse for this. I got hooked on The Vampire Diaries and was watching several episodes a night on Netflix. That show is addictive. I’m happy to say that I’m caught up now and will only be watching it once a week on TV. I’m watching the original Dark Shadows on Netflix now, but I’m not getting caught up in it, so next week I’ll be taking time to do what I’m supposed to instead of drooling over Damon watching The Vampire Diaries.

Anybody doing better than me on exercise? I hope so!

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