Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.
- Napoleon

Friday, November 9, 2007

Update

Considering I offered to encourage and spur other writers on - kind of as a refuge for those who either weren't able to do Nano, or weren't interested - I thought I'd devote Fridays to giving updates.

Right now, R2L has been in the works for a month. I started this puppy on October 9th, and I've been hard at it ever since. In that time, I've written more than 60K words (as of last night, as a matter of fact). Since I began, it's been 30 days. Out of those thirty days, I did at least some writing almost every night. I missed 7 days - five of which were due to illness. Over those days I wrote, I averaged 2615 words a day. I didn't average in those missed days. My weakest day was 1184 words, and my best day was 5488 (a Sunday, of course).

The last day off I took from writing was Halloween, so that makes 8 days in a row (9 if you count tonight, and unless something unforeseen happens, I plan on writing tonight). I'm going for a personal record. Actually, since I didn't keep records on the first two books, this is probably already a record.

Aside from R2L, I also sent out a short story to a lit magazine this morning. It wasn't a recent one, but I go through infrequent spurts where I send my stories out to one or two mags, and then wait. The story I sent out this morning was Haudego. The tagline for the story is: When Dr. Manny Kanton finds the key to eradicating selfishness, the drug he creates has side effects he never conceived of.

Also I got an update on the short I sent out to a contest last March. I didn't make it into the finals, but the letter said my story was a 'top runner-up'. Unfortunately, I think they say that to all the entrants, just to be nice. Still, it was good to hear.

So, give me the dirt on your writing accomplishments this week. Nano or not, all accomplishments count. (And that includes editing, plotting, outlining, brainstorming, writing, etc.)

P.S. I'm coming up on my one-year anniversary with this blog. Look forward to a contest on December 2nd. I'm contemplating prizes even now.

Have to celebrate, dontcha know.

6 comments:

Alex Andronov said...

Well people started receiving my book in the post this week which has been a great moment for me. Really interesting to see their reactions.

I have also started a short story where anyone can contribute the next word. It should be fun to see where this rather random method takes us.


Congrats on both the writing every day record and the 1 year anniversary!

Anonymous said...

So far I've been making excellent progress.

I'm working on the first draft of a project at the moment, trying to get it down by Christmas Day.

I want to start the final round of deep revisions on a different project the first of the year. But I need some mulling time on the revisions. The book went through a major mutation during my last round of revisions and I need to decide whether I want to keep what I have, or go back and try to tweak it so its closer to my original vision of it.

So, I'm trying to hammer the first draft of this new WIP down as fast as I can. I started it November First and just hit the 21,000 mark--so I figure I'm a little over a quarter done. I'm averaging 2.5 a day and 2315 words.

My best day so far (a Sat) was 5769 words and my worst day was today, at 1015.

My goal is to write everyday at least 2 hours, preferably 3. Today was my nineth day in a row, I haven't missed a day yet.

I'm running a competition with myself--basically, my aim is to write every day until this draft if finished. something I've never managed to accomplish before.

Wish me luck!

Theresa

B.E. Sanderson said...

Congrats on the book, Alex, and thanks.

I'll wish you luck, Theresa, but since we make our own luck in this writing business, I'll also wish you success. Sounds like you're right on track. Good for you. Racing against yourself is the most satisfying, because you always have a worthy competitor. ;o)

Alex Adams said...

Way to go, folks!

I'm 20K into my unoffical Nano WIP. So far, so good. I'm averaging 2K per day, but they appear to be good, solid words.

B.E. Sanderson said...

Way to go, Alex! Woohoo! =oD

You go girl!

Edie Ramer said...

Happy Anniversary, and congrats on all your progress. You rock! I finished a first draft, 90k words, in 2 months. I took last week off. Now I start the revisions. I hope I'm done by the end of the year. It depends on how much I need to revise. My last two books needed major rewrites.