Restart

New Design, New Purpose.

This started out as a writer's blog and went off into Me-Land. Not that there's anything wrong with Me-Land, if you like endless plains and long stretches of prairies bounded on either side by hundred-year old oak trees. It's a nice place to visit.

Let's get back to the original purpose of this blog.

I wrote a book. I.actually.wrote.a.book. Yes, the same one the previous entries ended on. I completed the task and not only soared past the requisite 50,000 words to win NaNoWriMo, I also finished the book. It contains a beginning, a middle and an end.

I set down the book, after November, for five months. Thought about other things, caught up on reality TV. I let myself forget the story.

Then in March, I picked the book back up and read through my November words. Not surprisingly, it bordered on atrocious. What can I say, I wrote it in 30 days.

So, after a prolonged read-through with extensive note-taking, I set about fixing it. I am still in that phase.

I have a finished second draft, using Microsoft Word's mark-up features, and still a long, long way to go. In this case, I have much more to add than subtract - at 60K some-odd words and a lot of missing information, I am slowly but surely slogging my way to the end goal.

End goal: publication. How to get to that goal: hunkering down.

Name of the book: Cassidy

1,000 Words

Here, on November 28th, I am. About 1,000 words to go to "win" for the second year in a row. Of course, the story is a helluva lot more than 1,000 words from completion so I may have to do some serious truncating, here in the first draft, to just reach the end. For me, winning this year has nothing to do with word count (especially now the count is so close) and everything to do with beginning, middle, end.

Just wanted to crow.

Midterms

I spent much of the day writing an in-depth blog post about how I feel about yesterday's Midterm Election results. Oh, it was a good piece - full of descriptive words and palpable emotion. It had everything: rants, history, quotes. One of my best, if I do say so myself.

Then I read this piece in The Busy Signal by JA MYerson and decided mine wasn't nearly good enough - this one says it all to me. I am sorry, Wisconsin, for your loss and for those in your state who were blinded by money and lies.

http://thebusysignal.com/2010/11/03/the-loss-of-russ-feingold-lamentable-and-shameful/

1,667 Words

That's the magic number I need to write everyday. Well, I need to account for every day. If I happen to write 3,334 words in one day, then I have accounted for two days worth of writing.

But that's only if my goal is 50,000 words - no more, no less.

In fact, my goal is two-fold. Demolish the 50,000 word barrier - preferrably before Thanksgiving so I'm not worrying about it all that weekend. And complete the novel. Preferrably before the 30th when the fever is still upon me. If I go past 50,000 words by November 30th, then I am technically a winner but will it continue to hold my attention past the 30th if I don't finish the novel? That's the $60,000 question.

So yesterday completed Day 1. I started the day off, right after midnight, by writing a 500+ word prologue from the point of view of a wolf. Yes, that kind of wolf. It's like that.

Then last evening, as I simultaneously watched my beloved San Francisco Giants win the World Series, I passed the 1,667 word mark still in the narrative section of the first chapter. And as it was growing late and I'd only gotten four hours of sleep the night before, I submitted my word count to the NaNo website and hightailed it off to bed.

Tonight I hope to account for two days of writing at least; my husband is working and much of television tonight is a repeat.

Happy Day 2!

Congratulations to the San Francisco Giants! Thank you for beating Texas.