Write-a-thon Days 2 & 3

Day 2 and 3 were good.


Day 2 -- worked at coffee shop

• Made tracking / management spreadsheet for this draft.

• Fine-tuned estimates -- estimating 150 - 190 hours for this draft.

• Worked on Snowflake (outlining method), and Synopsis

• Spent extra time working on ZPF artwork (this is a distraction as it was not part of this week’s plan).

• Wrote 2800 words



Day 3 -- worked at Museum of Nature and Science

• Awesome work environment. Best view of Denver, overlooking park with view of downtown & mountains. On-site food & drink. Mostly quite. Lot to look at during breaks. Only complaints: unsupervised children (loud/disruptive), and no public internet.

• Worked 7-facts short story. Spending time on this as it may grow into a novel.

• Made several updates to outline.

• Wrote 3422 words.

• Note: still in ‘pre-writing’ phase, no work done on manuscript yet.

Write-a-thon Day 1

Started write-a-thon with an average day, not terrible, not spectacular. Focused on pre-writing activities.
• Set up files for next draft.
• Started character dictionary.
• Reviewed all existing files.
• Wrote 2021 words -- all in brainstorming / outline.
• Have not touched the actual story yet.
• Sketched character designs for 4 zombies (for use in ZPF blog).
Non writing:

• 35 minutes cardio
• Installed new router (old one did not play nicely with Apple products).
• Ate 80% healthy.

Write-a-thon

At the start of a week-long writing spree. The plan is simple: write until I drop each day.

 

Had some trouble deciding what to focus on as I have just completed a long project and have not ramped up the next project.

 

Options are:

• Short story spree -- crank out ~5 short stories to polished form and submit.
• Start revision of YA Steampunk book
• Write rough draft of MG mystery
• Write rough draft of YA mystery

 

Each of these has appeal:

 

Short stories: I have not refreshed my list in a while, and I only have one pending publication in the queue, so I really should sell more shorts this year to keep my name work in front of people. I also have a serious idea backlog for short stories.

 

YA Steampunk: Rough draft is done. It’s a good story. Needs revised before anyone sees it. Completing this will give me two saleable books.

 

MG Mystery: Based on Doofus, this short book will be a fun Middle-Grade mystery. This too would give me a second book to sell, and I *might* be able to complete a draft during the write-a-thon.

 

YA Mystery: A new project. I have done a little exploratory writing with these characters and the setting (contemporary high school), but the outline is little more than a three page sketch and some character write ups. Would be fun, but unlikely to get through a draft.

Hurray!!!

Done with the 4th draft of ZPF. Trimmed it down to 90K and worked out the plot glitches pointed out by my beta readers. Now it moves into more intensive marketing.

Finished two weeks earlier than projected, so I have a little breathing room. Not sure what to focus on next. Could move right into cleanup of the steampunk book, could revise and submit some short stories, or I could try to bust out a draft of a middle-grade novel I outlined back in December.

Leaning toward the short stories as I haven’t had a new one come out in several months, but don’t have to decide this instant. I’ll think it over and see where I end up.

What I have been up to

Not blogging...

Went on social media hiatus, not blogging, twittering, or face booking. Nothing deliberate about it, just fell into an intensive writing period and did not make the time.

So here is what I have been working on:

Forbidden, a YA Steampunk novel set in Victorian London: Completed world building and wrote the rough draft. Draft came out to 106,000 words, with 102,000 in support files (outline, brainstorming, world building).

The draft came together nicely, but it will need substantial rework -- at the mid-point it shifted from an ‘academy for gifted boys’ setting, to a Dickensian workhouse setting, and the tone became darker and far more dystopian. With this rework, I expect to have a clean draft by the end of the year (ready for first readers, and possibly submissions).

Also writing a new draft of Zombie Proof Fence, a YA novel set 3 years after a zombie apocalypse. This draft is based on feedback from several very kind first readers, and is mostly fine-tuning and trimming.

Sadly between the novels and other commitments, I have not found time to work on short stories or to blog. However, I am through the intense drafting on Forbidden and into editing mode so you may be seeing more on the blog.

Guest Post: Cereal Morality

Today we have a guest post by Dan Morehead, who takes a moment to ponder the relative morality of breakfast cereals:

The cereal Trix is of uniform sweetness, every piece is a party. The advertisements for Trix teaches children that you should withhold sharing with those who look different "Trix are for kids." In truth rabbits are omnivorous and Trix would be a nutritionally appropriate foodstuff for them.

Lucky charms features lucky marshmallow bits which are a reward for eating all the more nutritious brown bits. The advertisement encourages kids to embark with adventuresome spirit to boldly find where 'Lucky' has hidden his breakfast. Once found Lucky shares his bounty without any grudge. The cereal, like the marshmallows, is a reward for discipline and initiative.

Lucky Charms is therefore a far more moral cereal.

Writing 101: Meticulous Attention to Detail

I keep metrics. Lots of them. It sucks up a few minutes every single day, but it helps my writing, my motivation, and my sense of progress.

 

For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, here is the definition from Wikipedia: “A measure for something; a means of deriving a quantitative measurement or approximation for otherwise qualitative phenomena.”

 

In short, metrics collection = measurement.

 

Most writers use the metric of wordcount, looking at how many words they have typed on a given day (I am at 267 words today, including these).

 

I suggest you begin collecting metrics. The two most important are:
1) how many words you write each day, and
2) how much time you spend writing those words.

Begin recording this in a spreadsheet. Watch those numbers over the next month or two and I bet you will see them go up (this is the motivation factor).

Some other fun things your can do with them:

• Determine which schedule works best for you--are you more productive writing in the evening, or morning?
• Determine which environment words best--did you write more at the library, or the coffee shop?
• Determine how long it takes you to complete a project--if you have never measured this before it will be illuminating.
• I do not suggest you calculate your net hourly income from your writing as for most writers this will be depressing. Still, it can be calculated if you keep good metrics.

 Here are two snapshots of my own metrics, and if there is interest I can post more advanced metrics advice (maybe even spreadsheet design tips...):

 

My daily wordcount spreadsheet (notice how it is broken up by project, I wrote 5.75 hours and produced 4.3K words.  It was a good day for me.):

 

 

And the summary graph for my current work in progress. This summarizes a few sheets of data, but note how it shows how I am performing vs. my goal, and how my productivity fluctuates week-to-week: