Gettin' it Done

I've been writing consistently for the past two weeks.
(Go me! About frickin' time, right?)
So far I've managed to add 13,000 words to Firechild in the past week and a half and each day I'm writing more than I did the day before. It feels AMAZING to be writing every day again - I feel as if my mind is waking up and I'm constantly being flooded with new ideas. The fact that I'm going to sleep at night looking forward to writing the next day is a good sign. I don't remember the last time I felt this motivated.

We seem to have finally settled into a temporary schedule - temporary because, let's face it, I'm still working on newborn and toddler time and that can be a finicky thing.

My typical day now looks something like this (excluding the days I go to my actual paying job, because those days have their own issues and rarely involve much writing time):

I get up sometime between 5am and 7am to feed the baby.
I stumble aimlessly around my apartment making coffee then sit to read whatever catches my fancy that day (facebook, writing blogs, some novel I've been into). I attempt to wake my brain up.
If I'm having a good morning, usually determined by how much sleep babyboy allowed me the night before, I will have started writing by the time my little girl wakes up.

I recently started hearing a lot about the Pomodoro technique and laughed when I realized that I already seem to have my own version of that. I write until I hit a section of the book where I need to do some brainstorming or when my brain is just tired and needs some fresh perspective - need to visualize, can't decide what sort of snappy remark my character makes or can't focus on what comes next due to my daughter screaming for "Yo Gabba Gabba" on Netflix. I usually take a break, feed my kids, wash some dishes, pick toys up off the rug etc etc all the while running through the dilemma that made me pause until I'm ready to tackle it.
Then more writing until the next need for a break arises.
My daughter naps somewhere between 11am and 1pm at which point I'll attempt to sneak a shower and work on one of the million household projects on my to-do list before settling down and getting back to my keyboard.
This pretty much goes on throughout the day until my husband gets home from work.
So far its been working and I've been amazingly productive, not just in my writing but also with everything else. It feels wonderful though I wonder how long I can keep going at this pace.

I've been writing somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 words per day, 4 days a week. That may not seem like much to some people, but I don't exactly get "uninterrupted creative time".
I think it's pretty amazing.
I have a general word goal of 125,000 (or 500 pages roughly) and have been keeping track of my wordcount per day. I'm not usually a wordcounting writer, but since getting writing done in the chaos of my home is tricky, it helps me see my progress day to day. The novel is finished when it's finished whether its more or less than the wordcount goal - plus, I thought it might be nice for you people out in blog-reading-land to watch the progress as well so you can hold me accountable.
If I continue at this rate the "re-written first draft" (is that an oxymoron?) should be completed and ready for editing by the end of September.

So, you all keep waving your pom-poms and watching the words pile up and I'll keep pecking along on my keyboard.

Thanks for reading my rambles!

Procrastination is death

I keep coming up with new ideas for stories and projects to work on - really GOOD ideas that I'm excited about, but it makes me wonder:

Is this just procrastination kicking in?

A hidden, inner fear of failure, or a worry that finally finishing this novel I have worked on for so damned long and thought about constantly would be the end of something I would miss like a long-lost lover. Or, on the optimistic side, perhaps since I am working and writing again consistently my brain is just reveling in the creativity.
I like the second option better.

It leads me to believe that once I've finished this novel I will not slow down or stagnate but will be able to jump from one inspired project to the next. I have Book 2 of the Firechild series already mostly written (I checked the word count the other night and was shocked to realize that I had already written 425 pages of Book 2 that just need to be re-written and the story finished, which means I should be able to turn around and publish Book 2 fairly quickly after I finish Book 1.)

I also have Lusus Naturae mostly written, also just needing the same treatment.

Add to that the Crow Series I've been brainstorming (I started writing for it in May while I was on hiatus during my third trimester of pregnancy) and about half a dozen other ideas I've been thinking over. There is also a graphic novel I'm dying to write with my husband doing the artwork.

This just cements the fact that I desperately need to finish this novel as scheduled. I have so much to do and procrastination is just going to kill me slowly. The more I write, the better I feel - the more motivated and inspired I am.

Keep focused and finish. Don't let self-doubt or procrastination sink it's nasty claws in and distract me. I'm making progress - just keep taking steps forward and I'll end up at the end of one and the beginning of the next.

And we're back . . .

I've been absent for few months and for good reason - I've had my hands full.

I had the baby towards the end of May, and things have been hectic ever since. Having a newborn along with an energetic toddler, I'm surprised I haven't lost my mind yet. What this means for my writing project is that I've had to take a break and re-evaluate how I'm going to get the work done. In order to keep working, I'm having to get creative with my methods.

For the initial update, when I say I have my hands full I mean it literally. Since new baby boy is EBF (for those of you who don't know what EBF is, let's just say little man doesn't take a bottle) this means he is in my arms 90% of the day. Kind of hard to type when my hands are full of a wiggling nipple-muncher.

Also, it is safe to assume that sleep is nonexistent.

So, since I don't have free hands for typing, I'm experimenting with Windows Speech Recognition program on the new laptop so that I can continue to work during the day.
(Hell, I'm using it right now. We'll see how it turns out...)

With all of the new stuff going on in my life, my writing schedule (and of course my blogging) has been thrown way off course. Anyone with little kids knows - your time is not your own. I'm working on toddler and infant time here.This doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about it constantly. I am going to try to use this speech-to-type program to continue working on my novel re-write and hopefully catch up.

Just this past week I manage to find one of the versions of Firechild that I have been looking for for months. As I've said before, I've been working on this particular novel off and on for 16 years and there are at least six different versions of various sections as I experimented with first person, third person, flashbacks and tense to try to find the voice that worked best for the story. All of the other versions had been copied into my Scrivener Project but this particular one had eluded me. After digging through my chaotic files, I managed to find a printed copy of the version I have been looking for.

Luckily for me, I've always been paranoid enough to print out everything after I type it, so even though the digital copy is missing I still have something to work off of for this rewrite. This particular version held some sections and ideas for the novel that I had never written in the other versions, so it was important to find it and include them in the rewrite.

I'm very excited to get back to work and try to make up for lost time. Even though I am months behind, I still anticipate finishing according to schedule. This will get easier once my baby boy starts taking regular naps (in his crib, not my arms) and I can work freely - you know, use my hands and stuff.

As far as the blog goes, now that I'm working again I hope to post updates more regularly. I will most likely revamp both websites as I have had some new ideas in the past few months that I would like to implement. The blog is a learning experience for me, and we're still in our blogging baby-stages - growing and changing until we find our way. It may take me a little while to get the website back up to snuff and I will probably only be able to post sporadically. With so little free time, and so much to catch up on, my main focus needs to be on finishing the novel. This means my blog posting (and all the random other things) will take a backseat.

Well, this was a very long blog post, but considering it was three months overdue that seems appropriate.

Enough procrastinating! Back to the novel!