July 500 words a day---All genres welcome

Glad you started this, AnnieC. It's not even six am, and I've written three words so far.

Oh.

Oh my.

Ow! How'd you get three sticks?? I still only have one!

I let yesterday slip away word-wise but worked out a nasty plot knot that's been bugging me on the WNQIPY (work not quite in progress yet). So I'm good to go for later today. *cracks knuckles*

1,000 new words so far. It's a bit info dumpy, but I'll clean it up on the rewrite.

You have permission to poke me (just with one stick!) until I announce I have finished my synopsis. I HATE synopsis.

ETA: wrote 334 words of a new short story. It's gonna be a longer work, not a flash piece. And I didn't work on the synop. Poke away.

Alas, I did not get any scintillating prose done today. I decided I had to back off and consider motives and character relationships. If I'm going to knock off somebody, I like to have a good reason for doing it. So, I am just checking in!

for your 740 words Annie.

Plotting is good, Dian. No new words yet today (it's only 7:30. cut me a little slack). But after I logged off, I got a new idea for a short and wrote a couple hundred longhand. I'll type it in and get a count later.

timidly puts hand up...

I think I need to be in for this month, simply because I need constant poking with a big stick to get any work done.

Ultimately I run out of excuses not to write (did somebody say 'easily distracted'?) So far no words for July, but we are only on the 3rd.

Can you stockpile your 500 words a day? If I write 3500 words on Sunday, will that make up for not writing anything during the week???

And what if they're not terribly good words? Do they still count?

Shara

Shara, welcome.

ALL words count. What if you just work on daily goals? If you don't make it one day, the next is a clean slate. The "stockpiling" can be a setup for failure.

Every day is fresh, and every word counts.

And there's a nice group of supportive people here to hang out with.

Hi Shara! This is a fun thread, and it really does make a difference in your output. And don't worry if your words on any day don't strike you as being very good -- mine regularly stink, and like GW said, all words count.

Annie and JD, great job.

For me 804 yesterday -- on the now-WIP! That was my opening scene. I can tell it's not great but it's a start. Plus 162 on a flash fic piece I'm working on.

Soccer Mommmm...

ETA: everybody feel free to poke me with a stick too. I want to keep my momentum up this time.

1300 words tonight!

I chickened out of going to my aerobics class (big scary thunder storm put me off!) so I made a deal with myself that if I wasn't going to exercise, I had to spend time writing. So at least I could feel virtuous in some other way.


Shara

Haven't written anything in three months :-/ On the other hand, I finally came up with a title for the story I've been meaning to send out into the wilds and printed it out with the determination to do a first round of mail tomorrow.

I'll go write my 500 words now.

Yay Shara! w00t!

Hiya Thump, welcome! Good for you for getting back into it. We're all here for ya.

Shara! and great job!

Hiya, Thump! Welcome back.

Moth! you write, girl!

me? Um....shuffles feet....I'm a bad kitty. I started a new story and wrote 1,000 on it and mapped out the rest. I just love the story and plan to finish it. No new words on WIP and nothing on synopsis. I know. Poke away.

Not been writing for too long now, so decided I really need to get back to it. Also thought it would be a good idea to play in other parts of the board. So tonight I worked a little bit on a couple of stories.

564 on the first.
472 on the second.

I like the first one the best so may stick with that one. Oh, and can I have the whip instead of the stick? I seem to need that one more.

The good news: over 8000 today.

The (possibly) bad news: a whole new section of the novel opened up and (1) I don't know if that's a good thing or not and (2) it's going to take me a while longer to finish it.

Shara said:

Can you stockpile your 500 words a day? If I write 3500 words on Sunday, will that make up for not writing anything during the week???

Click to expand...

I definitely think you can "stockpile" words.

Coincidentally, I'm on the Weight Watchers diet at the moment. On this diet, you can stockpile calories. You can overeat one day as long as you eat within your calorie limit the next. And it works: I've lost 13 pounds in about 5 weeks.

Same with writing. If you have trouble getting pen-to-paper (or words-to-monitor in most cases) one day, just write like crazy the next to make up for the slippage.

I think a finishing line goal is good. It makes you can accountable for the work and keeps you trudging forward. If you write 2000 words every weekday, for instance, as I'm trying to do, then you should be able to write an 80,000 word novel in two months, which is how long it took me to write my first.

AnnieColleen said:

but this puts me over my guesstimate back at the beginning for how long this thing would be (80K), and the story's not near done. But then, I know I have to chop quite a bit from the beginning (dropped a character I thought would be major, among other things), so I s'pose it'll even out. And this one moves things along to the next major piece of action.

Click to expand...

Same shape I'm in, AC.

I've actually just come up with, sort of out of the blue, a new narrator. I have 225 pages of one voice, and then here comes this second voice, a very minor character, who charges into the narrative.

My litmus test is always, as I'm writing, "Would I want to read this?"

And I don't know if I would like that sort of intrusion.

But now I've got about 30 pages of that second voice, so I guess it's onward and upward.

Mel said:

Not been writing for too long now, so decided I really need to get back to it. Also thought it would be a good idea to play in other parts of the board. So tonight I worked a little bit on a couple of stories.

564 on the first.
472 on the second.

I like the first one the best so may stick with that one. Oh, and can I have the whip instead of the stick? I seem to need that one more.

Click to expand...

763 words today.
I decided, after an abortive experiment, that trying to writing a mystery without knowing in advance who the killer is, and what the motive is, simply does not work for me. I took off some time to plot out the where, why, how, and who and now I feel MUCH better about it. "I know where I'm going," as the old song goes.

Will Lavender said:

Coincidentally, I'm on the Weight Watchers diet at the moment. On this diet, you can stockpile calories. You can overeat one day as long as you eat within your calorie limit the next. And it works: I've lost 13 pounds in about 5 weeks.

Click to expand...

Hey, I'm on WW too! I'm on the Core plan and I've lost 11 lbs in about the same length of time! I agree about stockpiling words. Except that I'm more inclined to the "catch up" mode. If I don't write my 500 one day, I try to make up for it in the next couple of days. It makes me feel virtuous.

1000 words tonight!

Most of which involve a dialogue between two characters that is kind of taking me by surprise!

I like this challenge idea. I feel obliged to find time to write words every day. Really, there is no reason why I can't find half an hour a day or so. I keep making excuses as to not having the time, but they are just excuses.

Thanks for support, everyone.

JDCrayne, I'm writing a mystery, too, sort of 'on the hoof'. I'm pretty sure 'whodunnit', and why, but at this point I'm not sure of the logistics, or how to insert the clues so it doesn't come out as being completely implausible at the end. Still, it's a first draft. I'm sure that by the end of it the plot will have revealed itself and I will know what I need to do to fix the problems.

Shara