Monday, April 26, 2010

Write-Your-A$$-off Day, Chicago-style, success!

Yesterday, I met up with my writing pal over at a local coffee/lunch spot with one goal in mind: sit down and work on my WIP, Through Charlotte's Eyes. Dear friends, if you're having trouble making progress in your WIP, I highly recommend finding a spot to spend most of your day to write. All in all, the 5-hour write-a-thon was a smashing success!

I finished rewriting Chapter 17 completely; added an entirely new (and lengthy) section, Chapter 18--which I'd been looking forward to writing ever since getting back from Paris weeks ago; and then started in on another new chapter. Approximately 5,000 words written/added if Liquid Story Binder is to believed.

On that note, too: Liquid Story Binder = awesome. I used the typewriter feature for most of the 5-hour writing time, meaning I couldn't go back and question what I wrote. It forced me to keep writing and keep pushing forward, which is exactly what I needed yesterday to be about.

I expect to have more of these write-your-a$$-off days in the near future. Days like those remind me why I write and what I'm working toward: not just a finished, polished novel but also making writing a full-time job.

Fellow bloggers and friends, do you write in long sessions, or short bursts? How do you keep your fingers clicking against the keyboard in order to make progress on your latest work-in-progress novel?

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

WIP Wednesday #7

Well, I haven't posted one of these in awhile. Hmm, since July 2009 to be precise. Oops. But I swear, I'm here! And I'm still spending a crazy amount of time behind my computer screen.

If I'm not working on the novel--which continues to progress, no matter how slowly--it's writing about hot dogs, or writing entertainment articles/reviews on Gather, or brainstorming new novels (yes, yes, I know, I should be focused on getting the first novel done first--but sometimes, I just can't help myself). Then there's also attempting to keep up with everyone else's lovely blogs, and keeping up on Twitter/Facebook... and then, you know, working a full-time job and somehow also having a social life away from the computer.

All of this begs the question, when is too much... too much? Probably when you don't enjoy it.

Luckily, I'm still enjoying all of it. So, here's me, still sitting behind my computer, writing. (No one really believed me when I posted on Facebook that I was giving up on my novel on April Fool's Day).

After the amazing Paris trip, I've been overcome with so many ideas for the novel, important details that I need to include in my WIP, Through Charlotte's Eyes. I can finally really envision it whole, and that's such a driving force for me to finish this novel within the year.

But along with all these details are keeping track of my timeline that moves back in forth between 2005 and 1792-3, making sure I'm not repeating things I mentioned in Chapter 2 again in Chapter 17 that don't bear repeating, and so forth. Two weeks ago, I spent at least a half hour trying to track down something I had already written that affected what happened in a later chapter... I thought, there has to be better way to go about this. There has to be a way to be better organized. And voila! I thought of Scrivener, but, alas, that's only for Mac users. But the creators of the word processing program for writers recommended some other programs for Windows, luckily.

Thanks to those recommendations, I've been using Liquid Story Binder for the past two weeks and I'm finding it so much easier to get organized, so I don't spend wasted time tracking down things that I worked on weeks ago. Phew! (Anyone else using LSB? Or another similar program? How are you liking it?)

Things are moving smoothly now. I WILL finish this draft, I WILL get it edited, I WILL get it out to beta readers, and I WILL finish this novel by year's end. To keep pushing forward, my writing pal and I are organizing our own Write-your-A$$-off day for the end of the month. And I can't wait... writing a little bit here, a little bit there on the novel, never feels like enough. April 25th can't get here soon enough!