Serene September - 500 words a day min - all genres

Glad about the pay. Sorry about the pain.

Excellent wordage!

Haha, Saoirse. I always have the ending (sometimes I write it first). It's all the stuff before it that gives me trouble! (Seriously. Act III is my nemesis. Also Act II. And sometimes the beginning.)

Got through another chapter, and now I think the rest of it shouldn't require quite so many changes. It's over 110K again, though, and I was hoping for something a bit more trim. Well, there's still time.

Excellent progress, Saoirse! Cutting words is just as important as adding them.

I seem to have made it all the way through the revision. Finished up at 110,081 (according to Scrivener). I've got three chapters tagged for possible removal, but I think it's unlikely that'll get me 5K. We'll see - I'm hoping to get this done in one more pass, in about a week.

And then: an overabundance of drinking! (Or probably just sleep. )

I too usually have a pretty good idea of the ending when I write. In the case of my current manuscript, the ending remained pretty consistent.

Often, the first chapter of my manuscripts is a scene of intrigue from right after the climax but before the denouement. It's likely a little bit of Chuck Palahniuk's influence and a lot of my personal quirk for nonlinear elements in narratives.

September seems like a pretty busy goal achieving month if this thread's any indication, and my September is no exception. I surpassed my 50k goal and have 2 chapters remaining.

I'm very happy that everyone is getting so much work done.

Edit: Liz - Would you recommend Scrivener? I'm getting a new macbook soon and considering what programs I need to purchase along side it.

Brechin, I'd absolutely recommend Scrivener, but it does have a learning curve. For me, though, it was well worth it: it allows me to see the entire structure of the MS all at once, and I can easily move around and archive pieces. I also love being able to easily generate multiple ebook formats (as well as Word and PDF docs).

It's not everybody's cup of tea, of course. If you're mostly happy with something like Word, you probably won't find Scrivener's extra features to be worth it. That said, you can get a fully-functional 30-day trial copy, so it's free to whack at for a while.

It comes with a tutorial, and although it's kind of screenplay-oriented (or used to be), it's well worth going through the whole thing. I can also recommend this book, which is worth it just for the section on compile settings. (You can probably find the same information on the web, but I like having it all in one place. )

I took two days off (ooo, irresponsible!) but started my (hopefully last for a while) revision pass today. I'd like to get the readthrough done by Friday, and take the weekend to incorporate the changes and polish, and hopefully send it to my agent next week.

Thanks Liz - I'm definitely going to try it. Right now, I use Word. But I also have a ton of papers that make up all my notes, research, outlines, summaries, etc. I'm thinking it may be easier to do more of that work directly in a program. From what I was reading, I can divide the document into parts instead of the way Word treats my MS as just a long single document. That would be nice.

I'm hoping that this week will be the last for my first draft. After that, it's when the real work starts.

Good luck wrapping up the draft, Brechin! (And if you have Scrivener questions, I'll happily answer any I can.)

Got through another ~140 pages of the MS. About 150 pages left. I'm adding comments for anything that isn't small rewrites, and I'll address those issues once I'm through the whole thing. Still hoping to be done early next week.

Oh, and I forgot I have a blog post thingy I have to submit on Friday, so I should probably take a crack at that tomorrow, too.

Wow, Saoirse, that's excellent news! Congratulations!

I've finished the readthrough and made changes and notes. With luck I can get everything incorporated into my master copy over the weekend. There are still a couple of sections that aren't quite working as I want them to, but overall it's in better shape than I thought it'd be. I'll probably ship it off to my agent next week even if I'm still polishing. Eek.

Go, team!

Soooooo...I have finished my latest revision pass, and should be sending it out now.

I am chicken.

Excellent words, Saoirse! And yeah, I've been there with the rewriting bit. I wish this whole process were more linear. But you're right - it will be better!

I finished a draft of one of my shorts today. Not terrible, but needs a little work.

Also, I sent my draft MS to my agent.

Not a lot of writing today. It was my mom's birthday, so we got together and marched around the mall for a while. But I did do some boosting of my latest Goodreads giveaway, and found out I got a promo slot for Book 3 that I'd given up on, yay! Now I have to figure out what to write about in the promo post. The nature of Book 3 is that it's difficult to write about it without dropping spoilers. It's actually less of a mystery than the other two, but is somehow more mysterious. (And "I CAN'T TELL YOU ANYTHING BUT BUY IT ANYWAY" is kind of a lame promo post, and is also too short. )

I also did some editing of my short story. I have a feeling it's going to get expanded a bit. It's not really a standalone short - it's a backstory event from my series - but at some point I'd like to throw it up on my blog, so I want it to be solid.

Today I did some editing of my short, noodled with some promo stuff, and wrote a whopping 55 words on a new WIP. (Which I've started a couple of times before, but I want to do it a little differently, so whee, starting over!)

You know, I've got two promo posts that are due in the next two weeks, and they're going to creep up on me pretty quickly.

So of course I wrote 3,491 new words on the new MS, and downloaded Creative Cloud so I could design myself a book cover.

You write some interesting books. I'll follow the links in your sig. Meanwhile, I just finished my 70K Action/Technothriller novel.

Good work everyone!

Thanks Liz (if I have any questions, I'll be sure to ask.) and Saoirse

I finished my first draft on Wednesday. Really looking forward to keep rewriting it, which surprises me because I wasn't looking forward to that at all until I started.

Victor Douglas said:

You write some interesting books. I'll follow the links in your sig. Meanwhile, I just finished my 70K Action/Technothriller novel.

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Congratulations, Victor! Finishing is wonderful, isn't it? (And thank you for looking. )

Brechin Frost said:

I finished my first draft on Wednesday. Really looking forward to keep rewriting it, which surprises me because I wasn't looking forward to that at all until I started.

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Yay, Brechin! I love revisions. I mean, I hate revisions, but they do such wonderful things to the MS.

I wrote 3273 words on the new MS, and 0 words on the promo posts that people are actually expecting me to produce.

Go, Saoirse! I envy you the camping.

I did no writing today, but I did have an Idea this morning while I was brushing my teeth. It solves a problem I was having with my New Thing, and I think opens up some possibilities.