Met my goal yesterday: fixed some words, added a few others.
Today’s goal: to finish this chapter and be at least satisfied enough with it to let go of it and move on.

I’ve got one more chapter and an epilogue to write before I’m done and two more days to meet my arbitrary Halloween goal. I’m not optimistic. But I will probably start looking for beta readers very soon if anyone reading this is interested. Leave a comment or send an email.

I’m annoyed with myself.

Yesterday I managed 1000 words. Go, me. Unfortunately, quite a few of them were rewrites of Saturday’s 500 words. I finished out the day with 1200 words and a vague feeling of dissatisfaction.

This morning, I finally figured it out. I ended my previous chapter with Rose shrieking in exasperation. But these 1200 words don’t pick up with her having that same energy level and they should have. There’s some cute stuff in there, and I’m not completely unhappy with the flow of action, but the tone is wrong. So today I’ll be back on that same 1200 words, trying to make Rose’s actions, thoughts and emotions consistent with where she was, instead of the sudden drop in her tension level which is what I wrote over the weekend. Progress, I suppose?

At least I understand where I went wrong. But I’m vexed with myself for not having seen it Saturday morning. I didn’t quite waste two days (words are never wasted!), but it feels like I came close.

Today’s goal: to fix this scene AND move on. I want these words to be better and some new words to be produced. My Thursday deadline is fast approaching.

Wrote my 500 words yesterday, then promptly returned to my Grimm binge. C came home while I was watching, giving me my first reason to explain that I wouldn’t be yelling at the television if I didn’t like the show. If I’m watching a show that I don’t like, I just sort of wander away. I get distracted and think of something I should do, and then it turns out that the entire episode has played while I was off moving laundry around and writing a to-do list and checking my bank statement or whatever minor task was more interesting than sitting still in front of the screen. Most television shows fall into that category for me. Grimm, on the other hand, at least through season 2, involves wanting to throw things and much complaining about characters’ behavior. I can’t wait to get back it today. 🙂 I might also have to swing by some fanfic forums, too, and find out what sort of stories people are writing.

First, though, 1000 words on my story!

Totally broke my chain yesterday. Smashed it into pieces. I kept getting distracted, feeling like I had plenty of time, because I had nothing that I planned to do except write, write, write.

And then I started watching Season 2 of Grimm. Ten episodes later, I still had the feeling of being in a really good book that I just didn’t want to let go of. But today, I’m not going to start watching until I’ve written at least 500 words, and done at least a few other useful things. Laundry, maybe, and running errands.

I think I’m finding it hard to let go of this project. I keep adding little bits instead of simply writing the last two scenes. I’ve been working on it for so long.

As soon as I poured my coffee this morning, I started another pot brewing. Today will be a two-cups-of-coffee day. I have no idea whether that will translate into good writing or not. I sort of suspect not, but it was COLD when I was walking my dogs. (Okay, cold is relative: it was cold for someone who’s lived in Florida for several years and never wears socks and doesn’t turn the air-conditioning on until the inside temperature hits the mid-80s. I tend to think anything below 70 is freezing. It was, at worst, in the mid-60s. So, you know, “cold.”)

I finished up yesterday with a 1200 word document. I could say, therefore, that I wrote about 600+ words, but actually, I think I wrote more like 1000. This week’s writing has been very typical of my progress. I started a chapter on Tuesday. Didn’t know where I was going with it, noodled around, dumped lots of words on the paper. Finished with under 500 that I thought would be in the final book. Wednesday, I thought about the scene, looked at what I’d written, added a little more. Yesterday, I ripped it all apart. Expanded parts. Added dialog. Got rid of repetitive actions. (Why do my characters need to nod so much? Why, why, why?) Moved phrases around, tweaked jokes*, kept writing, came up with a good idea that screwed everything up, fixed the screw up, polished some more and kept going. Yesterday’s 1200 words will definitely be in the final book, but they don’t have much in common with Wednesday’s final words. I definitely count the day as a win, and hope today can be as good. I’m so close to my ending, I’m starting to dawdle.

Today’s goal: 1000 good words (I’m raising my own stakes!)

*Tweaked jokes. So I’m in Rose’s POV. She’s the ghost of a girl who died in 1957, and notoriously fond of television. Long story but if you could only use one of these lines, which would you have chosen?

They were a perfect match. Like Bogart and Bacall. Grant and Bergman. Dean and Castiel.

or

She was sure of it, as sure as she was that the sun would rise in the morning, that blondes had more fun, and that Dean and Castiel were meant to be together.

Obviously, not everyone will get this joke. I figure that people who don’t will just move on (that’s what I do when authors make pop-culture references that I don’t understand) but for those who do (ahem, Lynda), which line would you have saved?

I didn’t quite break my chain yesterday but I came darn close. I managed about 100 words. After our business meeting, my whole brain got given over to thoughts of publishing companies, profit-and-loss statements, taxes, investments, names, names, and more names, genre definitions, tag lines, and on and on and on. It wasn’t wasted time, I hope, but I couldn’t manage to break out of it enough to get my story flowing again.

Thursday is my busiest day and I never manage to get a lot done, but I’m going to try to be very focused this morning and in the few hours that I have in the afternoon. I’m too close to the finish line to lose my focus now!

Yesterday was a day for flailing around. I thought I knew where I was going, but I lost track of the point of the scene. Wound up spending a while writing words that were more about what I wanted to accomplish than actually accomplishing anything and finished with 470 words that fit within the story. It was still a successful day: I definitely wrote at least 1000 words over the course of the day, even though most of them don’t contribute to my total.

Today’s goal: 1000 again. There’s a good chance I’m not going to make it, since I’ll be out for a chunk of the day and thinking about things other than my characters, but I’d rather aim high and miss.

Wound up spending a little too much time on last-minute research yesterday. Helicopters, EMTs vs paramedics, gunshot injuries. No knowledge is wasted, but I’m beginning today feeling as if most of my research isn’t going to get used because there’s still so much I don’t know. I’m just going to be glossing over the interior look of my helicopter.

I still managed 500+ words, though. Today’s goal will be 1000. Or maybe a precise map of how these last few chapters will look and what they need to include, plus a few hundred words. In fact, I may start there, with some solid brainstorming to get the words flowing.

It’s just after nine on Saturday night and I’m actually posting today’s word count today, because I am so darn pleased with myself.

1900 words, and I killed off my heroine. I’m quite Joss Whedon about death–she’s coming back–but at the moment she’s bleeding out on a gravel driveway and I am so tickled by her death scene. I’m sure I’ll have edits for it later, but it’s…I like it. I’ve spoiled you guys for it already by telling you the punch line, but the way it flows is just perfect to me. (Today. Tomorrow I’ll probably change my mind.)

SPOILERS:

Short version: Her foresight comes back. She knows what she’s going to see. And then I describe the bad guy getting shot. Which does happen, so it’s not a cheat. But then the bullet passes straight through him and hits her and it becomes obvious that what she saw was not his death, but hers. I even–accidentally!–set this up by decribing the gun, at first sight, way back when, as “ridiculously large.” I’m figuring .357 Magnum, which has excellent overpenetration risk and yes, can blow through one person and into the next quite easily.

So, yes, successful day. And I even know how tomorrow’s words start:

In her fifty-plus years of afterlife, Rose had never been so darn annoyed.

Yesterday’s word count: 500+

Today’s goal: 1000

I’ve spent a frustrating couple of hours this morning trying to take care of something that should have taken ten minutes, so I’m finally starting to settle down to writing in not the best mood. I’m hoping that the annoyed energy I’m bringing to it will help me be really, really mean to my characters. Today they get to suffer! With any luck, I’ll finally decide who lives and who dies.

I’ve got 12 days left to reach my goal and for the first time, I’m starting to worry that I might not make it. I need good writing days and no back-tracking. But at least the words continue to add up. My total word count right now is about 67,000–as long as my first book already.