The Ebb and Flow

And after a short leave of absence, I’m back and I’ve picked up writing my book. This blog is by no means dedicated to updates of my life, so I’ll just mention that during the last two weeks, my family has moved and I’ve been sick the whole time—still am actually. Those two facts have made it impossible to keep my writing up since part of the time, my computer wasn’t even accessible.

Just last week though, I started attempting to get back up to three pages a day again. I have kept a log on how much I’ve been writing each day though—here’s a look.

Just so there’s no confusion, I recently had a brilliant idea for a book series. I’m going to write that book eventually, maybe even right after I’m done with the current one I’m on, so that’s why there’s a page 1, 2, and 3 recorded on my calendar. It isn’t actually the first pages of the story, it’s the plot synopsis that I’m working on now, just so I don’t lose all that juicy material that my brain’s been cooking up.

I think this upcoming week that I’ll get back on track with my 3 pages a day regimen, but I can’t be certain. We’re still unpacking and getting back into the swing of things, and I’m still sick, feeling quite bla.

Week 4

Totally forgot to post how many pages I did last week, so here’s the progress I’ve made on my book so far from start to finish.

So I’m writing page 89 right now. Pretty good for four weeks of writing. As you can see, on the 19^th, I had to take a break from my customary 3 pages to fix some plot structuring. I had to rework the ending just a bit due to changes in the story from the storyboard. Which brings me to my next point: I’m almost done with my story!

This is actually a bad thing. I was hoping, based on the amount of story outline content I had written up, that this book was going to be much longer, but as of now, it’s sitting around 42,300 words—a shorter book than most.  Now, I’m still not done. I predict it will end up being around 50,000 words when I finish the first draft, but that’s still a short novel.

Here’s my plan: on my second pass through, I’m going to fill in events and chapters to provide more detail and hopefully craft a better story since right now, it’s kind of skimpy in a few areas. I’m guessing that will add another 25,000 words to the story, leveling out at 75,000 for the first book in the series. That’s a number I think I can deal with as far as novels go.

Well that’s my update. I’m really happy with the book so far, and know exactly where I want to expand some sections of the book on the second pass. So far my plan has worked, to keep writing consistently every day. It’s kept me excited about the subject and story, and I’m anxious to get it published and out into the world.

Week 3

Week 3

Yup, that’s me today. Crashed. I’ve decided to cut back on writing on the weekends. My original plan was to write every day three pages so that I would rack up the word count, but also keep my forward momentum with the story. It seems like when I used to start back in with writing on Monday after taking a two day break, it would take me a good hour or two before I was getting into the grove with my story; so, I think I’m still going to shoot for one page both Saturday and Sunday, but not three, since it’s just too much.

Last week I had just enough time to write one page before having to take care of things, and this week was the same. I’m pretty beat coming to the end of this three weeks of writing three pages a day. Hopefully I’ll be able to make up the four pages (that I’m knocking off of the weekend) during weekdays. We’ll see.

Week 2

Wow. This week was tough as far as writing went. I barely got an average of 3 pages done a day. Saturday I had a 12 hour Pathfinder (basically like D&D) session I went and participated in, and 4 hours of General Conference I listened to which left me with just enough time to write one page. My two extra pages I did earlier in the week were used to keep me on my 3 page a day quota, so it’s all good, still on track. Today was tough too with 4 hours of General Conference to listen to, but this week is now over, and I survived. I'm glad I decided to start with 3 pages a day instead of 4....

Week 1

Today marks the first full 7 day week of writing 3 pages a day consecutively. It was pretty tough, but I managed through it. Writing on Saturdays and Sundays is going to be the most difficult thing about this regimen.  I’m just not used to writing on those days, but I did succeed this week, which gives me some hope.

In total, I was able to write 23 pages during this 7 day stretch. I might be able to bump that page count up one or two next week, and I’ll definitely try to do that, but I’m pretty pleased with 23 pages in a week.