Mythomania May 500 words/day--all genres welcome!

Spent the weekend feeling like mccardey's fugue-y old lady who has taken to drink and then realised I have flu. Lay in bed and mapped out a draft of scenes and notes on characters.

Wrote 300 words and changed two previous sentences. I can't get the rhythm but when I feel better it might come back to me. This time I have only one POV and that will make things simpler (not easier).

Like speirbhean, I need my mystery to be more mysterious.

Afternoon, all. I have written el zilcho since my last post. I have various excuses lined up should anyone require one.

Ugh. It's absolutely not the way I would normally work, but I swore to myself that I would get 1,000+ words today before I stopped. I haven't gone back and looked at them yet (I'll save that pleasure for tomorrow afternoon) but I managed 1,038. They're Luke's first words, and I had a lot of trouble finding out even how I wanted to write him. His voice isn't coming through yet, but - hey - there are words. And the more I write, the more clearly his voice will come if I trust it. So - yeah. 1038 words.

I hope this is a smart way to work (for me). I'm not convinced. Worth a try, though.

Must trust it more...

That's it for today, though. Five and a half hours is too much for my poor old back.

Wrote 2000 words this morning on my sequel, then got the idea for a short during my workout. I know people say not to work on sequels for career reasons, but I think leaving mine was a mistake. It sort of gagged my muse.

She's enjoying the fresh air now.

1020 for me this morning.

Hope everyone had a pleasant Mother's Day weekend.

Some productive people! And others I have faith will get that way when they're done percolating stuff in the subconscious mind.

I went back and fiddled with Chapter 1, which is either A) a total waste of time and perhaps even a delaying tactic or B) utterly crucial to a deeper understanding of my characters and their motivations. So either that means I totally suck as a writer or I'm doing great. I wish I had a writing fairy who could tell me at the time which was the case.

Then I started Chapter 2 with the character whose actions during this moment I am least certain of and got 500-ish words along there, but they may well not make final draft. Now I will go read a dull government document I downloaded that's going to be important to my verisimilitude and that he'll be reading.

And yesterday evening I wrote something unrelated, very short, for a contest and submitted it, got back an immediate email praising my powers of invention, which sounded good last night and today makes me think he's not very insightful or sent the wrong person the wrong email. (It's official. I'm a writer again.)

You know what? I just had a look at the wordage today, and it's better than I thought. I think there's going to be a book here, I really do... I'm going to have to change a lot of the words, but the pace is there, the rhythm is right.

Good to hear others are making progress --

I'm also thinking about pace and rhythm because my tendency is to rush things and I need to let them develop quietly and subtly.


Sat up in bed this morning and wrote four pages (approx 500 words) by hand, will input and edit later. Some very good compelling lines and an exchange between two characters, then just trudging.

Me, just editing, and not often enough. Hopefully I have the day to myself tomorrow without duties.

Just counted up what I hand-wrote last night and it comes to 731 words, which is a nice surprise. I'd expected closer to 500. I have a flight this evening as well so hopefully I'll write another scene or two in the pub/departure lounge.

Just done a quick calc and I need to write 860 words every day before I go on holiday to meet May's target. Yikes!

Sounds like everyone has had a productive day. Mine has been productive too. I managed to get rid of my visitors.

Tonight I will switch off the internet and write!

Yay no visitors!

I haven't been writing new words, but I've been editing. I'm almost finished with Chapter 6, which is almost halfway through the (long) novel, so that's actually quite a bit. I'm planning to be finished by Thursday and send it off to the agent.

Not sure of my daily counts the past few days, but I am still hugging close to the road of 500 words a day.

As of today, I have 7386 for the month, or 492.4 words/day.

My ending is running long.

I wanted this story to be a little shorter than the last, but it looks to be running longer.

Can't wait to see what I can edit out.

930, starting to treat one of my heroes badly (poor schmuck, he's really a hapless, good-natured Joe, and I really hate to do it to him, but that's what fiction is about). Yesterday's research created a wave of ideas for the exciting Act II/the middle (or whatever your preference is for terms), so need to go jot those down now.

Happy writing, all!

Tons more editing today. Three chapters left! Almost there!

I've also managed to chop another 2,000 words out of it. Kind of ridiculous when I think about how much of this one has already been sliced and diced.

Good morning!

1,139 words in this morning's Starbucks session. I am still building up to the big climactic battle with the big bad supernatural beastie. Taking me rather longer than anticipated to get there.

Exams and such recently got in the way of me working. D: A foul thing, indeed.

Since my last post, I've only written about 700 words D:

808 words in the airport lounge yesterday. All nightmares my MC has - not sure my arachnophobic wife is going to enjoy reading this chapter...

1300++ words today. Still Luke - still no real voice. Still not sure that this is the best way to work for me, but I'm going to keep going till Friday and spend Friday afternoon revising and seeing if there's some voice in there that just wants a bit of room around it.

It is good to see coloured fonts again (I use different colours for each character when I'm in wordage-mode).

Very little actual writing today. A work project is busting into my writing time, but that will be over tomorrow. Only about 300 words and a kickin' title for a new story.

Have a great write!

About 800 words done, but off on a tangent. And I had read some fiction that kept influencing what i was writing, a borrowed voice.

Never mind, tomorrow is a new day [she said in a hackneyed little voice].

WordCount, don't let it get you too down. Sometimes other things just have to take priority. I'm sure you'll get lots of time to make it up after finals.

1,184 words today! Always nice to do more than a thousand in a day.

Somehow writing scenes with dialogue is much, much easier than ones where it's all mute action.

1085, after missing a day. I did get some editing done last night--just not my stuff.

Good news is that the new glasses I ordered yesterday should allow me to stare at the screen longer. I decided that all the time I spend writing, editing, and goofing off online warrants a pair of glasses formulated just for the distance of my computer, rather than my bifocals where I see the top of the screen in my distance script and the bottom through my close script, and neither are exactly right.