October 2020 Challenge - Write Every Day!

Day 16 - I edited the blurb for Barney, Mr. Thomas, and the Alligator Creature. I also did a little work on the 3 book in the series, Barney, Mr. Thomas, and the Serum Maker.

My cover art might come in today or tomorrow (I need to check the date they told me). I'm waiting with fingers crossed that it wasn't delayed, thought the artist kindly told me they were booked with other requests so it might be delayed. They were nice about it so I'm cool if it gest delayed a little bit (just not too much). Kindness is key with this type of thing.

UPDATE: I checked the seller's original message to me. The artwork should come on the 18th (tomorrow)

Hmm, I think I need to take a break from writing, ie at least the putting words on page aspect of it.

Day 16 - a page of longhand flash in the small notebook; let's call it 300 words.

Day 17 - so far, a drive-by. Having access to the Internet at home has proven both a blessing and a curse. Damn you, Tobey Maguire memes!

I've got three hours till midnight. I'm going to hop off the 'Net, dive into my rewrite and see if I can make the most of them.

Daniel - I have been called 'astounding' for the first time in my life just now. Thank you - and it sounds like you're having a great time with the poetry Nice!
Cindy - congrats on the 440.
Moon - sound like things are coming along nicely
Keithy - hope it's all good, and that you get a lot figured out on your break
Ptero - hope you get some good productivity


Day 17 -


WIP - added words. In the Summer Chair. On a very cold, rainy and dark morning. But my hands didn't *freeze* so - I'm keeping summer alive. I'm storing up Summer Moments for the Dark Timez of December and January (strangely enough, January is the time that our orbit brings us closest to the sun)
R/SC - got my plants in off the porch - frost warning tonight
BP/$$ - job 4 hours, a bit of GIMP, put an ad for the apartment on facebook

Day 17

Word Count - 346

A Deadly Spill of Scarlet - As I might have related, my cover image for this book in no way meets Kindle Create specs. To wit, the height was way too short. I enlarged it and converted into 600 dpi and put it on the editor just to see what it looked like. Yikes, was it stretched. But it was just right on the KDP cover makers and saved successfully, so I’m good, I hope. Another new scene. Billy's out of the alley and back in the cantina, trying to drown his heartache over Carolina.

Layla - Congrats for words added.

A nephew got engaged today at a family party. They are still in high school but they've been together for four years. So, who knows. But his family is all excited. His mother, my sister in law, put the date down as 10/17/31. Uh.

Day 17 - 1396 words.

The cover art is coming in today. I can't wait. It's pretty early here and the artist is from Venezuela so they're time (I think) is an hour ahead of me. Anyway, I'll absolutely do an update post when the art comes in.

Day 18: 1,788 words. Snapshots of different scenes rather than a continuous chapter. I'm struggling with telling the story chronologically at the moment.

That's so exciting, The Second Moon! I look forward to your update.

Day 17 - did just short of a page longhand, we'll call it 250-300 or thereabouts.

Today turned into a literal drive-by: I was sick of being in the house, so I took a four-hour road trip into the mountains to look at autumn leaves. Saw a lot of great scenery and possibly a dead bear. (It was on a divided highway, so probably death by 18-wheeler.) Looks like it's going to be flash again tonight. I'd better make myself a schedule and stick to it tomorrow.

Cindy - congrats on the 346 - Hope that cover works out ok
Moon - congrats on the 1369 (the 3 times table )
Animad, congrats on the 1778
Ptero, sounds like a good trip (except for poor old Bruno )




Day 18


WIP - added words - was very hard to get started
R/SC - cooking, gardening, a bit of home-spa time
BP/$$ - job 6.5 hours

Just a quick look to see how you guys are doing. Seems like lots of progress.

I don't think I've ever written scenes entirely out of order Animad345... that makes my brain hurt. I do a lot of visualization and internal writing of future scenes, but I have to wait till I'm close in the book before I put them on paper.

Speaking of on paper, I've added another 3k to the latest story and the bad guys are starting to show up. I'm not sure why one of them turned out to be handsome and cold at the same time.

The other is going to be a sneaky surprise to the main characters, which is a change for me. I've never tried writing a character who seems a perfectly fine ally until the moment he shows his true colors.

Catching up time


Keithy: That's really rough, but sometimes that's the kind of stuff we have to hear. Your story will end up stronger. Take time to regroup if you need to
Ptero: What do you mean by personalities? Like are you talking about dissassociative identity disorder? I know multiple people who are professionally diagnosed with it and media...doesn't do a very good job representing it. Have you done research about it?
Layla: Good job on words and more words. Wish I could send some of the heat we have here to you
Daniel: Great job on the poems
Cindy: Congrats on 440 words and 346 words
Second Moon: Exciting! Can't wait to see it. Ands lots of words, too! Awesome
Animad: You can always fill in the gaps later. 1,788 words is great progress
Kerry: Nothing wrong with some good-looking bad guys Great work on all the progress


Whole weekend (Fri-Sun):
Non-bird words: 1,437 on [game]
Editing prep: Gonna start putting [birds] into Scrivner tonight

Friday I was still feeling really bad and trying not to google if I needed to go to the doctor or if this was secretly covid symptoms. But come Saturday I felt better. It was Pokemon Go community day so I ran around outside in the fresh air and caught a bunch of Charmander(s? how do you make it plural) and that was a really nice change of pace. I tried out the Scrivner tutorial and bought it; it's perfect for [game] since I need pictures for puzzles and my MS Paint diagrams of scenes. Started the actual script, got the first...scene? Done. Now doing the second, which is still in the tutorial phase of it.

Scrivner is pretty neat; I think it'll be really helpful for the editing part of [birds], especially since I'll be needing to break up chapters and rearranging scenes. I'm still probably going to be using Excel for actual outlining and maybe also for some worldbuilding/referencing but having the text itself in there seems like what I'll do.

I hope everyone had a nice weekend!

Quick drive by day.

Day 17: 623 words
Day 18: 1202 words

Crossed the 120k mark. There's a strong chance I can finish the first draft this coming weekend. This week will be the final push into the finale. I'm excited!!

Honk, honk, driveby. I took the weekend semi-off, just doing some thinking and stuff. Back to it today though.

Day 18

Word Count - 403

A Deadly Spill of Scarlet - Billy and Jimmy make amends. All these little scenes have clues to the crime or otherwise move the plot forward.

Layla - Congrats on added word. They accepted the cover so I’m good.

Chase - Awsome 1437!

Day 18 - 14 words. (reason for terrible word count below)

I was waiting and waiting for the cover art that was supposed to come at noon. While waiting I read a book, watched TV, played video games, etc. I kept checking my e-mail and was getting ticked off. Guess what? It never came. I went to bed and would jerk up gasping at nightmares about my cover art being awful. Then this morning I got a e-mail from the artist saying they are having bad power outages in Venezuela. I talked to my mom about it and she said Venezuela is in a very bad place with power outages and politics. Now I feel bad about getting ticked off. My thoughts are going to the Venezuelans today.

Cindyt - Yay for the cover being accepted!



ice - So exciting

ChaseJxyz - Any shiny encounters? (I don't play Go but I have joyfully played other Pokémon games)

Kerry - Your villains sound neat.

Layla - I didn't get the joke in your comment for a bit. Sorry. I'm the worst at math.

Ptero - Sounds like a pretty drive (expect for the dead bear).

Sorry I haven’t checked in. I have completely stalled out. Maybe I’m just not ready to write this next book. I don’t know where it’s going or what it’s about. Maybe I should be over in the Writer’s Block forum.

Day 18 - about half a page of flash, 200 words if I'm lucky
Day 19 - finally got back to Book 1. Just put in 803 words of a reworked section, with more new words than I expected. Addy's about to find out those two handsome cowboys who saved her brother from a back-alley mugging are from the same family that nearly wiped out her family roughly sixty years ago. Now she has to get her brother out of the hospital before they can get the chance to finish what their ancestors started. And what's going on with that guy up in the ICU? More to come...

Popping in quick.

Managing to revamp one of the (three) troublesome chapters. I think it's better. A lot of the small edits are taken care of.

I'll probably tackle a few medium edits tomorrow.

kerry - Hello! Congrats on the 3K
Chase - good to see you, glad to hear you're feeling better. Cograts on the 1437
April! Honk honk back atchya
Cindy - congrats on he 403. Glad to hear about the cover
Moon - congrats on getting words in on a nervousness day
sandree - good to see you! I hope you find that balance soon
wooly - nice work


Day 19


WIP - added words, only a few, but I'm glad I managed it.
R/SC - walk in the woods! Groceries, cooking, chores & some administrative stuff
BP/$$ - GIMP

Hello everyone, mostly a driveby.

Cindy - I like your artwork.

I did lots of moping and mulling today between jobs, thinking about how what I've learned.

Beep beep.

Oh, wait, Keithy. All I did was buy the stock image and up the color satuation on lunapic and slap it on the KDP cover maker and dicker with the elements.

Cindyt: Nice work!

Second: Waiting for an email is the worst.

sandree: Ah, sorry to hear that. FWIW I was in that situation after finishing Book 3 and basically needed a month or so off before I was ready to return.

Pterofan: Excellent wordage!

Woolly: Nice work with the edits.

Layla: Yay for the words. How’s GIMP coming along?

Keithy: Ati Evada right back at ye.

2876 yesterday for Book 4. I can’t emphasise enough how rough and ropey this first draft is. Still, onwards we go!

Day 19 - 0 words. I took a skip day.


In better news...THE COVER ART CAME IN! I REPEAT THE COVER ART FINALLY CAME IN!

It looks great! I'll share with you as soon as I can figure out how. I've shared art in the past but it was tricky. I could always post the pic to Instagram, but I'm not sure if those without IG accounts could see it. Or I could add it to my signature for a little bit. Or I could change my profile pic/avatar to it... I'll figure something out.

EDIT: I've changed my profile pic to the cover art. Feast your eyes on it!

Ice: 120k! Awesome progress!
April: I hope you had a nice weekend off
Cindy: great work on 403 words
Second Moon: I got a lot of shiny Charmander! And the art looks great!!!
Sandree: Hopefully you'll find some good help there
Ptero: Nice work on 1K-ish words
Woolly: *waves* I'm glad you're making good progress
Layla: Glad you got some word outs
Keithy: I'm sorry stuff is kinda rough right now


Day 19:
Non-bird words: 994 on [game], tho a good chunk is copy/pasted from elsewhere. I'm almost done with the "this is the basic mechanics" tutorial. Had to make some drawings for what a scene would look like. This project is first person, being written as a script instead of prose, and I have to take into account player interaction and what happens if they do something wrong/that I don't want them to do and write with that in mind...it's totally different and is working my brain to figure this style out.
Editing prep: Finished putting [birds] into Scrivner and chopping it up into scenes. Wrote down more stuff in the editing to-do list

Day 20 - Did 289 (re)written words this morning. I'm going to take another shot at it shortly. This version is working out so much better than the original. I had no idea the first draft was so bloated. No wonder it stalled.

Got two more assignments lined up, starting tomorrow. That'll get me through the end of October and pay off some bills in November.

Second Moon - WooHoo for the cover! Love that gator!