I made it to 70,170 words yesterday! And though I wanted to go up to 75,000 words, I ended up hitting the end of the story, therefore, I'm done writing my book!!! I've finally written an entire book!!! I'm going through already for the first edit (Stephen King suggested waiting 6 weeks before the first reread, but I don't think I have that kind of willpower, especially since I'm unemployed NOW and might have a much busier life in 6 weeks).
:)
The events that took place on Friday morning make me want to cry forever for the families who lost their young children, and for those children who didn't get to continue experiencing the long and happy lives they deserved to live. I have no idea how someone could be capable of even contemplating such horrible actions and I wish someone could invent a time machine and give that day a do-over...and have it end with those kids getting tucked in like any other normal Friday night.
:(
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Sunday, December 9, 2012
17 Days :D
I will be finished writing my FIRST EVER FULL BOOK in only 17 Days!!!!! You know, as long as I keep writing a thousand words a day for 17 days (and I'm way too excited about this book to slack off this close to the end). It's moving along wonderfully too. Some last minute decisions were made on the ending today too...things that will help for the next one. There will probably be about four total, I think?
I can't wait to edit it enough to be able to start submitting it to agents. Holy crap am I excited about this entire thing...it makes my skin tingle.
Changing the subject...
It's definitely the holiday season in the Dillman household. My husband got me my Christmas present yesterday and was able to wait about 30 whole minutes before he had to give it to me (he did wrap it though).
YAY!!!! And I'm already having a ton of fun with it :)
~~~~Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!~~~~~~~
I can't wait to edit it enough to be able to start submitting it to agents. Holy crap am I excited about this entire thing...it makes my skin tingle.
Changing the subject...
It's definitely the holiday season in the Dillman household. My husband got me my Christmas present yesterday and was able to wait about 30 whole minutes before he had to give it to me (he did wrap it though).
 |
A DSLR Camera!! |
~~~~Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!~~~~~~~
I also got a wifi SD card...which I purchased for myself a couple of days earlier. It's called an Eye-Fi SD card and when it's used in a camera, it automatically uploads the photos taken with the card to the program of my choosing (iPhoto, please). It has been working flawlessly and is really changing the way I use my camera.
So all in all, today was a really excellent day. In fact, this weekend has been really amazing. I can't even express how excited I am that I'm finally accomplishing a goal I have wanted to achieve since I was single-digit aged.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
74% and a Timeline :)
I am 74% through my manuscript and the story is parallel in its storyline to the amount of words I have written for it. Today, I just took a really fun turn in the story (kind of an awful twist, but it had to be done). The idea came to me while I was walking my dog the other night, and it was one of those 'Ah Ha!' moments. What made it even better was the fact that it was over a mile and a half into the walk and I was passing my street and debating whether or not I should just finish the walk early. I toughed it out and the creative book idea side of my brain rewarded me for it.
In this extra 3/4 of a mile, I pretty much came up with the final really exciting climax of the book. The end is going to have to work itself out but I know pretty much how it needs to go. This climax was something I didn't really have yet but it fit the whole story perfectly.
A week or two ago I purchased the book '2013 Guide to Literary Agents' on Amazon and I started reading through it a few nights ago. I'm really excited about the whole process I'm going to go through to see if I can get my book published. Here's my planned timeline:
Some of those things might not go exactly as planned but it's a rough estimate.
So yea...lookin good! :)
PS...
I'm allowed to be disgustingly optimistic right now because I'm still just writing the first draft...after I get a million rejections I'll definitely change my tune.
In this extra 3/4 of a mile, I pretty much came up with the final really exciting climax of the book. The end is going to have to work itself out but I know pretty much how it needs to go. This climax was something I didn't really have yet but it fit the whole story perfectly.
A week or two ago I purchased the book '2013 Guide to Literary Agents' on Amazon and I started reading through it a few nights ago. I'm really excited about the whole process I'm going to go through to see if I can get my book published. Here's my planned timeline:
December 31, 2013: Finish the first draft
January-March, 2013: First read through and edit (also take notes on major issues I need to work on..I'm going to take advice from Veronica Roth and her blog post entitled Revision, Day One: The Read Through).
March 3, 2013: Turning 30 (AHHHHHHH)!
March, 2013: Sending the manuscript to my friend in Louisiana for a first read through (thanks Dan!)
April-May, 2013: Revisions and more revisions (tips from Dan and second read through after fixing major issues)
June, 2013: Sending inquiries to agents
July and on, 2013: Get an agent, publish book, become successful best-selling novelist.
Some of those things might not go exactly as planned but it's a rough estimate.
So yea...lookin good! :)
PS...
I'm allowed to be disgustingly optimistic right now because I'm still just writing the first draft...after I get a million rejections I'll definitely change my tune.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
50,030
Ahhhh! At the start of November, I decided that in honor of NaNoWriMo, I would use the writing vibes from the thousands of writers in the world to get my book to 50,000 words. I was at somewhere around 30,000 words at the start of the month (keep in mind, that's a little over 3 months worth of work on this project). Tonight, as I'm sure you have guessed, I made it past my goal!! YAYYYYY!!!! And not only that, but I'm a whole crapload closer to finishing my first ever full-length novel!!!
So yea, lots of !!! these in this post. SOOO...I wrote a whole bunch of stuff right here...well, about two longer sentences that made up a paragraph...and they're all gone because I wrote some dashes that looked like an arrow pointing at those explanation points in the beginning of this paragraph and it turned the whole paragraph into a weird internet code that I had to delete. Whoops! Moving on...
Now that I'm this far into the book --and I'm just repeating myself here-- I'm worried it'll be awful. Then I'm worried that it'll be amazing. Then I'm worried again (and most often) that it will be just terrible.
I have a friend who is all willing and eager to read it. I'm going to go through and do one edit before I let him though, but it has been really nice this whole time knowing that someone is going to give me real live feedback before I send it off to agents.
Once the manuscript does hit either the digital mailboxes or the physical snail-mail versions, I'm going to expect some heart break and humility. It's hearing about books like 'The Help' that gives people like me fairy-tail type dreams though. The common theme in this type of business is that it's totally normal to get rejections left and right until someone finally bites. That could be after the 50th rewrite, but it doesn't mean I ever really have to give up on this particular story that I've had my heart set on for nearly a decade. Persistence. It's the motto I've used for my jewelry business, which has seen a real boost in sales lately (thank you Christmas). And it's the motto I'll definitely use for this, which has been a dream of mine for at least 10 times longer than the jewelry business.
Either way, I need to get to bed now. I wasn't even supposed to finish this many words today. I ended up writing about twice my average because I couldn't sleep. The story itself is really developing perfectly though and I think it's about to get even more fast paced. I might see more late night writing sessions in the future?
New goal....
FINISH it before 2013...because 13 is a super unlucky number. Hopefully that doesn't affect me getting someone to buy this thing but I don't want to take the chances that it'll affect me finishing it.... :-/
So yea, lots of !!! these in this post. SOOO...I wrote a whole bunch of stuff right here...well, about two longer sentences that made up a paragraph...and they're all gone because I wrote some dashes that looked like an arrow pointing at those explanation points in the beginning of this paragraph and it turned the whole paragraph into a weird internet code that I had to delete. Whoops! Moving on...
Now that I'm this far into the book --and I'm just repeating myself here-- I'm worried it'll be awful. Then I'm worried that it'll be amazing. Then I'm worried again (and most often) that it will be just terrible.
I have a friend who is all willing and eager to read it. I'm going to go through and do one edit before I let him though, but it has been really nice this whole time knowing that someone is going to give me real live feedback before I send it off to agents.
Once the manuscript does hit either the digital mailboxes or the physical snail-mail versions, I'm going to expect some heart break and humility. It's hearing about books like 'The Help' that gives people like me fairy-tail type dreams though. The common theme in this type of business is that it's totally normal to get rejections left and right until someone finally bites. That could be after the 50th rewrite, but it doesn't mean I ever really have to give up on this particular story that I've had my heart set on for nearly a decade. Persistence. It's the motto I've used for my jewelry business, which has seen a real boost in sales lately (thank you Christmas). And it's the motto I'll definitely use for this, which has been a dream of mine for at least 10 times longer than the jewelry business.
Either way, I need to get to bed now. I wasn't even supposed to finish this many words today. I ended up writing about twice my average because I couldn't sleep. The story itself is really developing perfectly though and I think it's about to get even more fast paced. I might see more late night writing sessions in the future?
New goal....
FINISH it before 2013...because 13 is a super unlucky number. Hopefully that doesn't affect me getting someone to buy this thing but I don't want to take the chances that it'll affect me finishing it.... :-/
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Still Thanksgiving
So, I went back a few blog posts (which was about how long it took me to get to the beginning of this blog...this year anyway) and I sort of regret not keeping up with you. I am currently at 64% with my book (Holy S****, right? compared to the last time I updated you) and on Chapter Twenty Two (is there supposed to be a hyphen between Twenty and Two? Shouldn't I know this?!).
My story is moving along pretty much exactly how I want it to. Somedays I feel awesome about it, and others I'm overwhelmed with fear that it'll be a flop when I'm all done and finally doing my first read-through.
I listened to that whole Audible book about the 'Successful Novelist' and loved it. I might re-listen to it soon. I then listened to Stephen King's 'On Writing', which was also a great motivator. Now I'm on to 'Stein's On Writing', which is so far my least favorite of the three, but I can't tell if it's because of the narrator or the book itself. Either way, the fact that I'm listening to audiobooks about writing, reading a book in my genre ('Matched' by Ally Condie, totally addictive and I'm loving it), still unemployed (not proud, just finding it helpful for the book), and able to drive 10 minutes to the nearest Barnes N Noble.. have all been adding to the recipe that is me finishing my first ever book.
It's not like I got to this point without a lot of dedication and struggling. Like I said a few months ago, I was a damn busy woman when I started writing this book. For example, the first two weeks of writing this involved a full-time job, a ridiculously busy two weeks of two summer courses in grad school (basically a full semester crammed into 4 weeks), Jane, selling a house, and I think there was a bout of strep throat in there too. Then, when school was done, I still had the job, the house selling, Jane having strep and me getting it AGAIN, and then actually moving to the other side of the country.
Right now, I'm getting about 750 (average) words written a day but I'm still in school and my jewelry shop had a crazy busy spurt. Plus, no more daycare (we miss them soo much! Hardest part about leaving dubois...saying goodbye to Jane's first friends :( ) ...so yea, lots more time now, but still really busy. I think all of that helps in getting me to write when I do finally have time. Then again, on some days it's definitely placed on the back burner in order to really shut off for a bit.
I guess right now I'm sort of giving myself a shout out for how far I've gotten. 64%. Damn. Obviously if I don't reach the story's end by 70,000 I'll keep going. But for all intents and purposes (I suck at common phrases..is that even right?), I'm gonna finish it if I get that far, you know? And if I go past 70,000 words, I'll be at 105%, 110%, etc. :)
64%!!!!!!!!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
My story is moving along pretty much exactly how I want it to. Somedays I feel awesome about it, and others I'm overwhelmed with fear that it'll be a flop when I'm all done and finally doing my first read-through.
I listened to that whole Audible book about the 'Successful Novelist' and loved it. I might re-listen to it soon. I then listened to Stephen King's 'On Writing', which was also a great motivator. Now I'm on to 'Stein's On Writing', which is so far my least favorite of the three, but I can't tell if it's because of the narrator or the book itself. Either way, the fact that I'm listening to audiobooks about writing, reading a book in my genre ('Matched' by Ally Condie, totally addictive and I'm loving it), still unemployed (not proud, just finding it helpful for the book), and able to drive 10 minutes to the nearest Barnes N Noble.. have all been adding to the recipe that is me finishing my first ever book.
It's not like I got to this point without a lot of dedication and struggling. Like I said a few months ago, I was a damn busy woman when I started writing this book. For example, the first two weeks of writing this involved a full-time job, a ridiculously busy two weeks of two summer courses in grad school (basically a full semester crammed into 4 weeks), Jane, selling a house, and I think there was a bout of strep throat in there too. Then, when school was done, I still had the job, the house selling, Jane having strep and me getting it AGAIN, and then actually moving to the other side of the country.
Right now, I'm getting about 750 (average) words written a day but I'm still in school and my jewelry shop had a crazy busy spurt. Plus, no more daycare (we miss them soo much! Hardest part about leaving dubois...saying goodbye to Jane's first friends :( ) ...so yea, lots more time now, but still really busy. I think all of that helps in getting me to write when I do finally have time. Then again, on some days it's definitely placed on the back burner in order to really shut off for a bit.
I guess right now I'm sort of giving myself a shout out for how far I've gotten. 64%. Damn. Obviously if I don't reach the story's end by 70,000 I'll keep going. But for all intents and purposes (I suck at common phrases..is that even right?), I'm gonna finish it if I get that far, you know? And if I go past 70,000 words, I'll be at 105%, 110%, etc. :)
64%!!!!!!!!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Litchfield Park, AZ
Happy Thanksgiving
I don't know if I'll get any novel writing in today but I can't stop thinking about how close I am to finishing my first real full-length novel. I'm 45,000 words into it, which is almost twice as far as I've ever gotten in a project before.
I'm really planning on going through with my original idea of getting a MacBook Air as long as I kept it up this long. Just so you know, getting a new computer wasn't the reason I got this far...but now I really feel like it'll be a lot of help. I started using Scrivener this past week instead of the Simplenote app (though I don't have anything against the Simplenote app...I really like it in fact, but I have gotten too deep into the story and need the assistance of the organization that comes with Scrivener).
Anyways, I have this awful feeling that there might be a book or series of books out there already with the same story I'm writing. I haven't ever come across any, but I'm writing a genre I don't read too often (except for the really mainstream versions, like Hunger Games and the Divergent series, which is more the route I'm trying to go with my book). I'm taking my chances anyway, obviously, considering I've already gone this far with my idea (and I've had it since I was a kid). Even if it gets rejected left and right when I actually start sending it out, I'll survive and try again (holy moly, I am going to send a real book that I really wrote to agents in order to try to really get published...this is seriously a dream come true, and I don't mean that to sound cliche or sarcastic in any way....because even if it does get rejected, just this step of finishing it and sending it out is something I always felt was unreachable for me).
So...it's Thanksgiving! My toddler (2 year old now...growing like a weed) is pressing every last button I have, but she still makes me laugh 3 <--that was a gift from her...she's past her nap time but she didn't even take a nap yesterday, so I'm not getting my hopes up for today. We are having a small thanksgiving this year.., since we just moved across the country a couple of months ago..but also because we accidentally left the turkey out over night and it went bad...so we're eating a tiny 'turkey breast' ...the only already thawed out version of turkey we could find at our local grocery store. Big bummer!
I hope all of you out there are also having a great Thanksgiving!!! Jane wants me to read to her, so I'll have to end here. :)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I'm really planning on going through with my original idea of getting a MacBook Air as long as I kept it up this long. Just so you know, getting a new computer wasn't the reason I got this far...but now I really feel like it'll be a lot of help. I started using Scrivener this past week instead of the Simplenote app (though I don't have anything against the Simplenote app...I really like it in fact, but I have gotten too deep into the story and need the assistance of the organization that comes with Scrivener).
Anyways, I have this awful feeling that there might be a book or series of books out there already with the same story I'm writing. I haven't ever come across any, but I'm writing a genre I don't read too often (except for the really mainstream versions, like Hunger Games and the Divergent series, which is more the route I'm trying to go with my book). I'm taking my chances anyway, obviously, considering I've already gone this far with my idea (and I've had it since I was a kid). Even if it gets rejected left and right when I actually start sending it out, I'll survive and try again (holy moly, I am going to send a real book that I really wrote to agents in order to try to really get published...this is seriously a dream come true, and I don't mean that to sound cliche or sarcastic in any way....because even if it does get rejected, just this step of finishing it and sending it out is something I always felt was unreachable for me).
So...it's Thanksgiving! My toddler (2 year old now...growing like a weed) is pressing every last button I have, but she still makes me laugh 3 <--that was a gift from her...she's past her nap time but she didn't even take a nap yesterday, so I'm not getting my hopes up for today. We are having a small thanksgiving this year.., since we just moved across the country a couple of months ago..but also because we accidentally left the turkey out over night and it went bad...so we're eating a tiny 'turkey breast' ...the only already thawed out version of turkey we could find at our local grocery store. Big bummer!
I hope all of you out there are also having a great Thanksgiving!!! Jane wants me to read to her, so I'll have to end here. :)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Saturday, October 6, 2012
31% and almost 22,000
If I had a nickel for every time I think about writing and publishing this book I'd be as rich as J.K. Rowling. I can't help feeling so excited about it this time. I've started and stopped a writing project at least half a dozen times and this is the best I've ever done. The only issues I'm running into this time are the problems of remembering important plot points that happened earlier in the book. It hasn't become too severe of an issue yet though. I've had these issues before and they've contributed to me quitting projects in the past so I'm happy there isn't a major problem with it (yet).
Getting a MacBook Air is my hopeful solution to this becoming a serious road bump. I can use Scrivener again when I have a smaller and more portable computer.
I'm writing exclusively on my iPad now (did I mention in an earlier post that I'm using the app Simplenote for this?). If they come out with a mini iPad, I'm going to trade this larger one in for it...but that won't be until I swap out my computer though. I sound like a terrible person, but I guess I'm not the only one who sells their outdated technology on eBay for the newest 'best' thing.
I know I've talked about the MacBook Air before. The one I want is probably a tiny bit bigger than the keyboard/iPad combo I'm using now. I'd stick with the current set up if I could use a good program like Scrivener on my iPad. I really look forward to having an actual computer with the ability to get super organized on this book. Plus the MacBook Air will be much faster than my computer now because of the hard drive being solid state and not needing much to access its contents. The battery will last longer, there will be less risk of having any problems losing info in the hard drive, it'll be super portable. I can't wait!
Hopefully I'll have a chance to write today. Right now, I need to get my husband, toddler and self ready to go to Shippensburg..we're meeting my longtime college friends there for the day. I can't wait for this either!
Just under 2 weeks until we will be in Phoenix!!!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Getting a MacBook Air is my hopeful solution to this becoming a serious road bump. I can use Scrivener again when I have a smaller and more portable computer.
I'm writing exclusively on my iPad now (did I mention in an earlier post that I'm using the app Simplenote for this?). If they come out with a mini iPad, I'm going to trade this larger one in for it...but that won't be until I swap out my computer though. I sound like a terrible person, but I guess I'm not the only one who sells their outdated technology on eBay for the newest 'best' thing.
I know I've talked about the MacBook Air before. The one I want is probably a tiny bit bigger than the keyboard/iPad combo I'm using now. I'd stick with the current set up if I could use a good program like Scrivener on my iPad. I really look forward to having an actual computer with the ability to get super organized on this book. Plus the MacBook Air will be much faster than my computer now because of the hard drive being solid state and not needing much to access its contents. The battery will last longer, there will be less risk of having any problems losing info in the hard drive, it'll be super portable. I can't wait!
Hopefully I'll have a chance to write today. Right now, I need to get my husband, toddler and self ready to go to Shippensburg..we're meeting my longtime college friends there for the day. I can't wait for this either!
Just under 2 weeks until we will be in Phoenix!!!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)