The Finish the Damn Book Challenge

I don't work outside the home as I'm a carer for my dad and unofficially so for my grandpa as well. Technically I have plenty of writing time on my hands but the reality is that someone is going to need me countless times throughout the day. I can't really tell them "this is writing time -- do not disturb".

I'm trying to learn to curb my procrastination so that I can do more writing in between other responsibilities. Once I manage to consistently hit my target I'll up it -- lather, rinse, repeat.

I guess this particular book is going to be harder than most because it's my first and I'm still learning my writing voice and how much planning and outlining is my sweet spot. My learning curve right now is slightly less than vertical with character development, plot development, sub plots to fill in where the main plot isn't moving so quick and then re-learning grammar and "stuff" that I probably learnt in school and promptly forgot upon leaving errr... over half my lifetime ago

JustKia said:

I don't work outside the home as I'm a carer for my dad and unofficially so for my grandpa as well. Technically I have plenty of writing time on my hands but the reality is that someone is going to need me countless times throughout the day. I can't really tell them "this is writing time -- do not disturb".

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That's understandable. I'm well-aware that I happen to be very lucky in my ability to devote myself 100% to books this summer. I don't foresee it every happening again.

The current WIP is now at 72.6k, which is where it's supposed to be for the night, and I think I'm going to write a bit more because I really love this book right now. It should round out at something like 87k. Due to finish it on Friday

I'm having a bad time with this novel. I've never felt so creatively blocked.

I'm actually in the editing stage but my beta reader has pointed out so many problems (all pretty minor and fixable) that I'm finding it totally overwhelming.

It's the last in my series and I just want it done so I can move on to something else. My heart doesn't feel in it at the moment.

Woe is me.

ETA: Crap - didn't read the first post, sorry, just wanted a rant!

The Unleashed
87,456
Goal: to edit and self-publish by August

So far I've edited 16 chapters out of 48

sarahdalton said:

I'm having a bad time with this novel. I've never felt so creatively blocked.

I'm actually in the editing stage but my beta reader has pointed out so many problems (all pretty minor and fixable) that I'm finding it totally overwhelming.

It's the last in my series and I just want it done so I can move on to something else. My heart doesn't feel in it at the moment.

Woe is me.

ETA: Crap - didn't read the first post, sorry, just wanted a rant!

The Unleashed
87,456
Goal: to edit and self-publish by August

So far I've edited 16 chapters out of 48

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So good so far

I know you want to finish the project, but if your heart isn't in it then you can't continue. If you aren't feeling it, you can't enjoy it and that's what writing is all about

May I suggest distracting yourself with another project? Take a few days out, if that doesn't work take a few weeks out. Keep going until your head and heart are ready and burning to finish it!

Good luck, and I hope you get out of this rut soon!

At the very least, I would take the weekend off in that situation.

I wrote 8k last night and 6k so far today, and I'm vaguely considering trying to finish the book tonight, which should be roughly another 6-7k.

EDIT (12:20am): The book is finished! It came out just a little bit shorter than I expected, at 85.2k.

Tomorrow I'll start on the next book on my list a day early

Actually I'm feeling a lot better today and have the weekend to work on nothing else. I don't really have time to take a break as I've set myself an August release. So I've just got to be a grown up and suck it up!

Once this book is out of the way I can move onto something else.

Half a chapter edited this morning and I figured out how to get rid of a character I don't need. Woop!

Congrats Arianna! Awesome work!

Guess who's back?

Arianna Sterling said:

EDIT (12:20am): The book is finished! It came out just a little bit shorter than I expected, at 85.2k.

Tomorrow I'll start on the next book on my list a day early

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Bravo, Arianna, bravo. Very well done indeed.

I've gone from 1,500 words a day most days of the week to being lucky if I get 1,500 in a whole week. Exam stress, rubbish sleeping pattern and people trouble, mainly. Then there's beating myself up over said trouble and allowing it to interfere with my writing...
Back to work properly today. I hope. I am not moving until I write up another chapter.

I started writing shortly before joining AW two years ago. After working on several half-baked ideas for almost a year, I finally began piecing things together, and began work on my first story.
Several false starts later I finally stopped faffing about with the first couple of chapters and began writing with serious intention several months ago, detailing the story to the first major climax (end of the first novel?).

As a side-note, during the last few months I've completed an encyclopedic companion (27k+ words) to my story.

The story itself, as of today, is at a pitiful 22,175 words.

My minimum goal per week is 1000 words. If I can find the muse to bash out 5000 words a week instead, that would be fantastic.
How long will the story be? No idea. It's epic fantasy, so there's not really an upper limit.

So . . .
Working title: Everwalker
Current word count: 22,175
Weekly goal: 1000 - 5000 words

Over the last 3 months since we found out Blake's cancer had come back I've found myself not getting as much enjoyment from the things I've previously loved - reading and writing.

The last couple of weeks I've had an image in my head that has been haunting me day and night. This evening after the boys went away to their dad's for the weekend I put pen to paper and turned the thoughts into text. It wasnt much - just over 150 words, but it felt good, almost like a weight had been lifted.

Scott Kaelen, welcome to the thread, and good luck with your goals.

French Maiden, I'm so sorry to hear about your situation. I'm glad that the act of writing has given you some relief, no matter what the word-count was. I did a handful of "100 word" exercises during a couple of years of poor health, and even though it wasn't much, just knowing I wasn't completely cut off from my craft gave me something to hold onto.

I'm coming out of another bed spell right now. I've been able to work on the narrative two days in a row, though, which is really nice even if I'm just restoring parts of a scene I deleted while I was depressed. I seriously have to keep myself from doing that next time -- if I'm too depressed to write, I need to stay far far away from the Delete key.

Since starting to write the draft of my follow on novel, I have progressively fallen less and less in love with it. I slept on it last night and woke up this morning hating it.

As a result, I plan to wrap up my first novel entirely. I have taken a few scenes from the second novel which I will place into the first. I'll also be able to bump up my word count to around 100k.

Atalanta said:

Scott Kaelen, welcome to the thread, and good luck with your goals.

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Atalanta, thanks for the welcome.

It's been 21 hours since my last (first) post in this thread, and the current word count of my WIP is 23,912. That's more than 1,700 words typed since yesterday afternoon. I'm pleased with that, and quite excited to have finally reached a pivotal point in the story where I will soon be able to introduce new key characters and open the world up further.

It's been a good day for writing, even though the sun is gleaming outside . . . There's no emote for ambivalence, so and

Got the draft done. I was using scriv, but when I pasted it into Kingsoft, the wordcount was more.
Scrivener: 59,383
Kingsoft: 64,764

I'm going to have to elaborate in certain areas, and can cut chunks out, or rather, condense other areas. But as this is a debut novel, I'm not too worried about the wordcount. Between 50k and 100k is what I'm hoping for, but I won't be trying to push in either direction.

Now, time to enter the revision phase (aka hell), where writers are known to come back insane, or not at all...

Deepthought said:

Now, time to enter the revision phase (aka hell), where writers are known to come back insane, or not at all...

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Hell isn't so bad. Of course, first off you just need to ignore the singing potatoes...

But yeah, maybe it's just me but I'm not finding the re-runs any more strenuous than the first blast through. At least this time I won't be tearing my hair out trying to work out how it ends before I get there.

I've printed out my draft, ready to re-read (and by god, some of it looks terrible!) and I've started outlining my second novel ^_^ Will start rewriting my first novel in a couple of weeks time.

That's my update for now, not much else going on lol

My post a week ago had my WC at 22,175.

I said I would be happy writing a minimum of 1k, and in best case circumstances 5k per week.

I'm happy to say my new word count is 27,608, which exceeds 5k words written in a week. True, I've hit a very hard part of the story (which anyone following a disastrous thread I started will know about) but hopefully the following week will overcome that hurdle and allow me to continue forwards.

Dropping in again!

When I first joined this thread, my goal was to finish Book 2 (and hopefully editing on Book 1) by June.

Well, it's June, and I didn't make it. But I'm still feeling pretty good, because I just keep making more and more progress. Book 1 is about 40 percent through editing, and Book 2 is at 50K (out of probably about 100K) and the plot -- which has been the snarliest of snarliest, ye gods, if all I had to do was WRITE instead of working out PLOT I'd be long done! -- has been falling into place more and more and more. I feel like I've had to batter this one into shape with a mallet at every step; it's been kind of miserable. (But the times when I figure out where it's going and get to write, what a high!)

The first book only took 7 months to write and that's how I set my goal for this one; since I'm only half done it looks like it's taking twice as long. But progress is good, and I have 20K of Book 3 written already, as I've been working on that sometimes when I stall out on Book 2. I've been writing every day and for much of the day on most days I don't have to work, so progress has been steady (and in fact, if I combined my "scrapped" file with the real file, I'd almost have the full word count I'm expecting . . . alas for plotting issues!).

I'm going to set a new goal to finish Book 2 by December and also have Book 1 in publishable shape by December (I hate hate hate editing . . . to be fair, putting so much time into editing Book 1 has probably made Book 2 slower as well, which I should have anticipated in my goal-setting but didn't!).

It's been a beautiful warm winters day here in Oz and I've spent the whole weekend with my beautiful boys and my Mummy.
Took the kids to the park, while they played I sat and wrote.

Monkey said:

A challenge born out of frustration.

The Rules:

1) You must do something to your novel before you can log onto the internet. You can add a single sentence or edit your last one, but it has to be something, and you have to do it every time.

2) You can't start any other projects until your current one is finished. This includes outlining. (You can jot down ideas, but that's it, Bucko!)

3) You must have a daily, weekly, or monthly goal that is absolutely doable for you, in your current situation, right now. It doesn't matter how small it is. That self-imposed goal should be your absolute minimum number of words for the time period specified.

4) You must post your working title, word count, goal, and updates here so that you can be cheered on.


Any takers?

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I'm taking the dive. One of my biggest flaws as a writer is finishing a story - I need my ass kicked. I will no longer be working on anything other than Teenage Wasteland.

Teenage Wasteland - Young Adult - 100k wordcount goal. I'm starting a new job this week, so my goal for this week is to just finish the first chapter. I'm currently at 750 words (due to a complete rewrite - thankfully, I had only written 3k words).

Wish me luck.

French Maiden said:

It's been a beautiful warm winters day here in Oz and I've spent the whole weekend with my beautiful boys and my Mummy.
Took the kids to the park, while they played I sat and wrote.

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Sounds nice. A warm winter's day seems a contradiction in terms to me, but then again I'm English.

K.B. Parker said:

I'm taking the dive. One of my biggest flaws as a writer is finishing a story - I need my ass kicked. I will no longer be working on anything other than Teenage Wasteland.

Teenage Wasteland - Young Adult - 100k wordcount goal. I'm starting a new job this week, so my goal for this week is to just finish the first chapter. I'm currently at 750 words (due to a complete rewrite - thankfully, I had only written 3k words).

Wish me luck.

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Welcome. Come on in, kick your shoes off, get comfortable.

I'm going to kick my shoes off, recline the chair back and go to sleep for the evening. I'll definitely be comfortable.

French Maiden said:

It's been a beautiful warm winters day here in Oz and I've spent the whole weekend with my beautiful boys and my Mummy.
Took the kids to the park, while they played I sat and wrote.

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Your climate will forever be a mystery to me. Glad to hear you got some writing done

Welcome K.B. Parker and good luck!

JFitchett92 said:

Your climate will forever be a mystery to me. Glad to hear you got some writing done

Welcome K.B. Parker and good luck!

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hehe, it's hot all year round here. I think I even got a little sun burned. Having said that, it's evening now its rained a little & now we've got the heater on. Because we are so used to heat we (the majority) are sooks when it comes to the cold.


Was great to get that little bit of writing done, I'm planning on doing some more this evening and when we go home tomorrow morning I'll put it all onto the computer as it's just written in a note book atm.

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Welcome K.B. Parker

50 words off 900 tonight. Feels good to be back writing again. Hoping nothing comes along and runs it for me.

French Maiden said:

50 words off 900 tonight. Feels good to be back writing again. Hoping nothing comes along and runs it for me.

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That's good to hear, Maiden

I have started editing my first novel. Currently working on the bigger chunks that need editing before I go over the novel word by word.

Read "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers" which has helped me a lot!