On the fifth day of Christmas

I thought it would be tough to meet today's wordcount target of 5,000 words, but as soon as I got into the flow of the story, it flew from my fingers onto the keyboard.  And I thoroughly enjoyed today's challenge - from dealing with switching viewpoints as well as timeframes, to developing my characters further, and finding new sides to them.

I beat my wordcount challenge once again, but this time by 14 little words. So total wordcount today was 5,014 words, and  I punched it out in roughly under 4 hours, averaging at over 1,000 words an hour. I still need to speed it up a bit, although sometimes that raises the inevitable question of speed vs. quality. At the moment, I'm getting the words out at a reasonable pace, and the quality seems pretty good. I wonder if I speed up, will the quality drop? I guess I'll have to try and push myself and see what happens. After all, the whole point of this exercise was purely to produce a rough first draft. 

Still I'm amazed that I'm actually doing it, meeting the challenge head on. Tomorrow I push it up a notch, with a target of 6,000 words. Onward and upwards.

Lorraine x 

On the fourth day of Christmas

I re-engineered my previous schedule, and started afresh today as the fourth day of Christmas with a target of 4,000 words.  I knew it would be tough, my biggest daily wordcount challenge so far, and that I'd get little time or peace to do it. So I started with my hour's lunch at work, twenty minutes while I waited in the reception at my local GP practice, finished off with 2 hours uninterrupted tonight, and I've done it! And in fact, I've not only met my wordcount challenge for the day but I've exceeded it. Total wordcount for the day is 4,136 words. The birds were definitely calling!

Tomorrow, on the fifth day, my target is 5,000 words, although I doubt I'll get rewarded with any gold rings. And I'm probably going to have to get even more creative to meet the challenge.

Onwards and upwards,

Lorraine x

12 days of Christmas challenge - getting back on track

After failing to gain a foothold yesterday, I feel I'm getting back on track. I managed 2,037 words tonight and whilst I procrastinated at the beginning, I soon found my pace. So although I've the challenge so far has seen me slip and the stutter, I've managed in total 6,575 words in the last 8 days, but I'm roughly 4 days behind where I should be.

My plan now that I've found my pace again is to treat tomorrow as Day 4 of the challenge and to attempt 4,000 words. It's a big leap from what I've done, but I won't get any words down unless I set my sights high.  I know that in order to succeed I'll have to try and find a place I can be on my own without interruptions, but the likelihood of that happening now, particularly around this Christmas period, is slim to none. I guess I'll just have to find a quiet place in my mind.  Fingers crossed that it works.

Wearing the wrong footwear

I tried to get a foot hold, but I'm obviously wearing the wrong footwear tonight. Only managed 441 words and god was it painful!  I'm tired, and just not feeling it tonight, so I'll try again tomorrow.

Trying to get off the slippery slope

Last week I embarked on a wordcount challenge which I called the 12 days of Christmas challenge.  The main crux of the challenge was to write 78,000 words in 12 days right up to the twilight hours of Christmas Eve.

I'm sorry and both glad to say that I failed to get past day 3 of the challenge. I had a very good reason why I stopped at day 3 - an agent interested in seeing the full manuscript of Delve. Woo Hoo! And so for the next two days, I set about turning the nuts and bolts on my manuscript to give both Delve and myself as a writer the best chance possible to secure representation.

I do not know if this latest development will help me to achieve my Christmas wish, but what I do know is that since I've subbed the full manuscript, my determination on the wordcount challenge I'd set myself has slipped and now I'm skidding down that slope.  A social with friends, a day of feeling rough (not as a result of the social I must add), and the fact that I now have a house guest staying throughout the Christmas and New Year period, have all contributed to this slippery demise. 

I need to find a foot hold so I can climb back up that slope. I will endeavour to try and seek that hold tonight, and finish my day 3 target, roughly over 2,000 words. And though I think my original target of 78,000 words is out of reach now for Christmas Eve, I will continue my daily journey and see where it gets me. 

Now I've just got to hold on tight.  ;)

On the third day of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas, I only managed 947 words of the 3,000 word target. It was not through lack of effort, or want, but merely through distraction. There has been a development on Delve which requires my full attention for now, but I will resume the 12 days of Christmas hopefully tomorrow or the next day, with renewed enthusiasm.

Still my 947 words were clocked in about 30 minutes. Getting faster at least.

Lorraine x

On the second day of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas, I hit my 2,000 word target in at a shave under 2 hours, averaging 1,000 words an hour. I sat in my reclining armchair which is much more comfortable than the kitchen table, with telly off , laptop on lap, and husband out at the pub.

The first hour the words flew as I got into some unexpected dialogue between three of my characters which actually worked well, the second hour was definitely harder and every so often I counted my wordcount to see how much further I had to go. I ended up at 2,034 words. No partridges or turtle doves (can anyone tell me what a turtle dove is, I have no idea), but plenty of words down. 

I must say that this process is quite exhilarating. I'm having to be very disciplined about it, not stopping until I've reached my target, but if I'm ever going to get up to 12,000 words, I need to be hitting more like 2,000 words an hour. There's plenty left in me yet, so I'll keep on trying, and reporting my progress. 

Lorraine x  

On the first day of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas, against a target of 1,000 words, I managed to cross the finish line at a modest 1,150 words. I sat at the kitchen table, with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice for company, and took 5 minutes to roughly plot out the structure of the next few scenes, before getting down to it.

It took me 90 minutes to churn out 1,150 words, at an average rate of 766 words per hour.  A bit slower than I'd like but still the words that came out were pretty decent, and brought me to a close on Chapter 4 and into the opening scene of Chapter 5.

So day one is at a close, and I'm glad to say I haven't yet spotted a partridge in a pear tree. I had a tree in my scene, a big oak tree but no birds.

Twelve Days of Christmas

This morning, with my short story near to completion, I knew that I'd have to motivate myself to pick up The Curse where I left it, at around 16,600 words. And then I realised that we only have 12 days till the eve of Christmas, and a challenge formed in my mind.  

It started with a very simple concept  - 12 days until Christmas, 12 days of writing. And then I thought if I used this opportunity as a countdown to Christmas, using a daily multiple of 1,000 words, i.e. producing 1,000 words on day 1, 2,000 words on day 2 and so on until day 12 itself with a target of 12,000 words, I could well have myself a rough first draft by Christmas.  In twelve short days I could accomplish a wordcount of 78,000 words, and adding that to what I've already done, I'd end up with a first draft of around 94,000 to 95,000 words.

Sounds exciting in principle, right?  But I know that if I am going to achieve this master feat, I will have to sacrifice certain things - watching Masterchef and Grey's Anatomy, surfing the net, and most of all, sleep.  I also appreciate that as the wordcount targets increase, I will struggle to get the words down without some kind of technique. But this is the funny thing - I came across another blog post today, was referred to it by a WriteWords friend - http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-day.html

It's written by author Rachel Aaron and explains the methodology she adopted to go from 2,000 words to 10,000 words. Now I'm not one to ignore the synchronicities in life, so I'm going to give her system a go. And although I may not have gone to the same extremes of plotting as she has, I think I have a decent plot and structure to give me enough of a steer to work with.

I think I can do it, or at least try. Call me ambitious or foolish but 12 days of sacrifice will I think be worth it, if at the end of it I have not only a first draft, but can wake up Christmas day knowing that I've done it and can enjoy time with family and friends, eating turkey and Christmas cake, and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. And when the Christmas break is over, I can sit down, print out my first draft, and look at it with fresh eyes.

So it starts tonight. It's late, and 1,000 words seems a long way off but I will at the end of each day report on my progress.  If you are working on a wip and want to join me, please do. You can join me on Fast First Draft or simply comment on this blog on your progress. Your mulitples can be in the thousands, or hundreds. At the end of the day, whether you write 7,800 words or 78,000, you'll be that much further on.

Wish me luck. Lorraine x