2000 words yesterday, 1900 today. It’s not the perfect trend, but it’s still pretty satisfying to hit those numbers.

I also spent a big chunk of yesterday browsing cover designs, and wrote a 2400 word cover design brief today. Yep, I’ve taken the plunge. I’m getting the covers of all the books re-designed by a professional designer. It might seem strange that I decided to pay to have the covers redesigned after so recently raving about how much I loved the cover of A Gift of Time, but that’s actually almost why I did it. I do love the cover, but I also know that it’s not quite good enough. It’s like loving a story while wishing I hadn’t written it with quite so many adverbs. I’ll see how it goes, I guess, but fingers crossed I fall just as much in love with the new covers. The designer knows ALL about my tastes now (2400 words worth) so we’ll see. 🙂

Goal for the rest of today: let my hands and arms rest. I’m feeling the tension in my wrists of an extremely extended World of Warcraft day. Not good. But tomorrow–or maybe even after dinner–I’ll be back with Fen. I’m looking forward to it!

Yep. Best writing day in weeks, when I finally gave up on writing what I thought I ought to be writing and wrote what I felt like writing instead. And–ironically–the character leading the way in this story has a filthy mouth. Brief clip:

And with his dark eyes, shaggy hair, excellent ass—yeah, the guy was hot, even if she was so not his type.

Still, he’d definitely flirted back. Maybe for him she had the good-girl appeal, the neat and proper bookstore clerk, working nine-to-five, studying six-to-twelve. Or maybe he’d seen the hint of the bad girl she’d once been under the surface.

Maybe he’d caught a glimpse of one of her tattoos. The one twining close to her collar bone sometimes peeked out under her button-down collars, and in summer, when she didn’t wear tights under her skirts, the ivy pattern up the back of her leg was easy to spot.

Still, why he’d liked her wasn’t the point. He had liked her. He did like her. No way was he agreeing to this bullshit.

 

Poor Fen is being murdered. I wrote 2600 words and they flowed like water. With lots of cuss words, lots of possibly not quite coherent bits, I just let go. Didn’t read it before I posted it to fictionpress, don’t intend to. I want to write this book in fast-forward, revisit it when it’s done.

And for the first time in days, I had fun–really, delightful, awesome, crazy fun–while writing. The scene was as clear to me as if I were watching it on a movie. A character that I knew was a bit player turned into a psychopathic charmer who didn’t die when he was supposed to, another character who was supposed to be mild turned out to be a formerly suicidal, tattooed, cutting-experienced survivor, and the shallow boy love interest turned out to be Anakin Skywalker. Oh, so fun, fun, fun.

Lesson to be learned: write what you feel like writing, whatever it is.

Lesson I most likely have learned: nothing.

I will forget this. I’ll keep going back to things I “ought” to write. But damn it, when the fingers are allowed freedom they do good stuff. I really wanted to write good “shit” there–that’s because Fen is still controlling my fingers and she seriously swears a lot. An effing lot, and I just had to battle with her to make that effing instead of fucking, which is what she wanted. Jeez.

Characters should be allowed to roam free, even when they swear a lot! I know it in my head, I wish I could learn it in my fingers.

My business is starting to feel like a real business, because somehow it’s almost 2 o’clock and all I’ve succeeded in doing this morning was email. And on a Saturday! But there’s something very satisfying about that. I did get off to a late start, so that probably has something to do with it, too. (I made myself a shrimp and egg breakfast burrito with sauteed red onion, shrimp, jerk seasoning, salsa, scrambled egg, cheese, and avocado. It was meant to be an omelet but didn’t work out that way–the fillings were too heavy for the egg. And while delicious, it wound up being one of those meals that dirties far more dishes than it’s worth.)

Anyway, writing yesterday was some words–probably about 500. And then I reached the end of a scene and wasn’t sure where to go next. The story beats concept is sort of working, but I need to detail my transitions a little better. At the moment, it feels seriously jumpy to me, and I sort of seem to be writing “time passes” material without getting anywhere. One of the other pieces of writing instruction that I’ve got in the back of my head is that every scene should have a goal and, at the moment, my goals seem a little clear. Or rather my character’s goals seem unclear. My goal is still setting up the story, but my character doesn’t have a goal. I think I’ll bear that in mind today.

Goal: Keep writing. One word at a time today!

…but two steps forward. Managed almost 800 words yesterday, but deleted 300 of them this morning. I don’t know where I was going, but it wasn’t on a path that I feel like staying on. 

I did read a couple useful things yesterday, though. One was a writer on reddit talking about letting her inner teenager get free. Something about the image resonated with me. The other was a line from the book Write. Publish. Repeat. I’m basically skimming the book–the authors take an awful lot of words to say even the simplest thing–but I highlighted this paragraph:

Writing fast helps you to capture your most natural voice. Done well, it also leaves you with copy that’s easy to edit. Manipulating your thoughts into elegant prose takes a long time. Capturing unedited thoughts as they fly through your mind, however, can yield clean, concise copy with clarity and voice as is the case with Johnny. (Johnny’s note: Sean added that flattering sentence, but for some reason I can’t bring myself to remove it.)

So today I’ll see what I can do with writing fast.

Today’s story beat is one line: NIGHTMARE

Did I somehow imagine that I would get 1000 words out of that? It seems like an awfully long nightmare.

Yesterday’s free-flowing, “just write whatever” approach worked. I managed to break through and actually did finish the day over 1000 usable words. Even, dare I say, reasonably entertaining words. So today I’m going to try again, using my single word beat as my starting point and seeing how it goes.

Yesterday, at about 6:45, writing devolved into a stream of consciousness that included, “And this is totally boring. Like totes boring. Like the boring-est thing ever written.”

In other words, not the best writing day. But I started a company, which was fun–bought a domain name, filed out a DBA, submitted an ad to the Orlando Sentinel, began building a website. $150 later, I’m a publisher. 🙂  

I found a website template that I really liked. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to add submenus to it, so I’m not sure it will work for me in the long run. I may just have to decide to keep the color combos (black, grey, and a bright raspberry that I like because it looks like a rose) and find another one, but the template search is time consuming. I’m not going to start that today until after I stream-of-consciousness myself out of my stuck place and into something better.

Today’s goal: 1000 words, even if they’re terrible and nonsensical and will all have to be cut. My fingers just need to start moving.

Didn’t exactly make it to unstuck yesterday. I wrote a sentence.

Today, however, I managed something like 750 words–enough to get a perfect 1000 word clip that satisfied me and ended a scene. I am 99% sure that it was because of a review that showed up on Amazon, though–exterior locus of validation problem, anyone? Still, no need to argue with success. Tomorrow I move on to a new story beat, and a lovely dramatic scene. It ought to be fun to write.

My motivation has been non-existent this week. I re-worked story beats on Tuesday, then forced out 248 words on Wednesday. I couldn’t even come up with an extra two to make it 250!

I’ve been struggling a lot with my writing goals. I started out the year resolved to turn writing into my career, to take it seriously as a money-making venture, to invest in it with the expectation that it will become my means of support. And immediately writing became hard work again.

The practical side of my head was pushing me to write practically — stop with Tassamara, start a New Adult series, look at the market and write what’s selling, in a fast and furious sort of way, and in response, the creative side of my brain went on strike. But I think the war between the two sides reached a detente yesterday, when I read Writing Reality on wonkomance. Not that I need to add armpit hair or condoms to my stories, but I need to write the way I write. Writing for someone else isn’t going to work, so I might as well not even try.

At our Wednesday indie alliance meeting, I copied down a quote from a book of Geoff’s that said, “Write for the person you know best: yourself.” I may have to paint it in giant letters across my wall so that I can start every day seeing it, but that’s what I’m going to try to do. And now, I’m going to get to it.

Goal for today: get unstuck.

But sort of similar: http://www.kalynskitchen.com/2010/05/recipe-for-spicy-whole-wheat-sesame.html

Short version: instead of the dragon noodle sauce (which is 1 part sriracha, 1 part soy sauce, 1 part brown sugar) make a sauce using rice vinegar, soy sauce, sriracha or Thai Chili Garlic paste, grated fresh ginger, sesame oil and vegetable oil. (The proportions from the recipe are precise, but probably don’t need to be: personally I’d go with 3T of the vinegar and soy sauce, 1T of each of the others for simplicity’s sake.

Otherwise, it’s dragon noodles with chicken added but no egg. Cook the noodles, drain them, return to pan, add chicken, green onion, cilantro, and sauce.

According to Kalyn, it’s not as good the next day, but I love it cold, so I say make plenty.

Exploring my beats today and I decided: this wants to be a long, long story. A long fun story. Akira wants to go to the Belize Zoo and the Cayo market. She wants to go inner-tubing in the caves and she wants to meet the little boy ghost who’s haunting the river bank.

So for an hour I happily scribbled scene notes down. They can go to the zoo, but what else will happen there? In the market, does she run into another ghost? Does Zane get frustrated because he can’t protect her?

And then I realized–this isn’t a romance. Zane and Akira are already together. Yes, the relationship is going to have some moments of strain as they face adversity together. Yes, their alternative approaches to solving problems is going to become a front-and-center conflict. But they start out the book on their happily-ever-after and they end it there, too. Is it cheating my readers if I’m not writing romance after writing three clear romances? Will people be disappointed?

I spent the next few hours anguishing over such life-and-death questions. And then I remembered–I’m just writing my first million words. And I’m self-publishing. I can do anything I want to do. This isn’t a career–it’s fun. So tomorrow the little boy on the riverbank returns and Akira and Zane head to the zoo. And my story beats start expanding, probably by a lot. I haven’t resolved the question of what happens to my old lady ghost, so I still need to work on that, but one way or another, I’m writing this story the way it wants to be written. And if, at the end, all I have is another 60,000 words to add to my million-word goal, well, that’s good enough.

I need to remember more often that my goals are 1) to have fun and 2) to give other people some fun and 3) to become a better writer and that 4) to earn a living through writing fiction is the kind of fourth that doesn’t even get near the medal stand.