Deep breath, center, excitement, time to write!

I did a little rereading of my previous blog post to get myself in the right frame of mind. I can't wait to be a professional writer.

• Current daily target = 306 words.  
• 2 hours (9:00 -11:00). Saturday mornings are my favorite. 
• My goal is to complete the 2 unplanned scenes. They should be pretty short, just giving a window into the day to day world again. (These are the types of scenes that will probably get cut later if nothing interesting happens in them.) *
• I would then love to write the next planned scene. I've been waiting on that one for awhile. I'll see how well I can switch gears.

* Note: My guidelines for a scene: Piece of plot happens, character development, learn something about story/background/plan that you didn't know before. I like to have all 3 but if 2 of the elements are solidly in there and there is a bit of fun reading it, I will be attached enough to keep it for my first reader's input.

Time to turn off the internet. I will update later.

Strength training for my dream job

In the path to professional authorship, I want to build up my threshold for switching gears.  I need to develop routines between scenes, 5-10 mins, where I move my mind from exhaustion and euphoria to a pause in things, put the old scene away.  Recenter, peace, reclaim excitement and move focus completely to next scene.

The only way that's possible is to develop ways to recharge my brain, free up the cobwebs from the intense concentration, refresh and move on.  I will start developing methods during the weekend/today. Already I've started working on setting up the next scene before finishing my work each night.  Just a start into it, any small piece, so that during my time away from writing, my sub-conscious is puzzling out the next scene.  And when I open the project the next day, it's already focused on the next scene. (I'm not still looking at the old stuff, except if I want to re-read to get a flavor of the story again. But my focus of struggle should always be the current scene, not yesterday's work.)

And always, my main thing is to keep WriteTrack realistic and updated.  My actual daily goal will stay low.  250-350 as an amateur = success.  If the word count gets too high, because I've been away, I push the date out until the word count gets back to a reasonable amount. 

1251 words- another scene out of my head and captured on the page

1251 words tonight. My new total is 10,139 words. Rolling over 10K (in the end section) is a nice milestone to celebrate.

And so is this scene.  It went off in a direction I never planned.  But totally makes sense now. Fits perfectly with the story. And at the end I was still able to pull in the planned part.  So my next planned scene can happen. (although I have one minor scene in between that my MC needs to do.  And possibly my character needs to spend time eating. (I need to figure out whether my char needs some social time- actually she hasn't spoken to b, z, a or the l's in quite some time, at least not in any on page scenes.) It's be nice to see how everyone else is faring and getting along).

Yup, I'm doing that... adjusting Scrivener now...

So relieved.  I couldn't get my brain focused. Real world was really stressing me out. 
I love pretending I'm already past that. I no longer work in a cubicle with supervisors and objectives. 
It was nice to imagine the day in the future when I have the free life.

I finally found a little quiet space in my head.  And I wrote out some more to get myself past that. Things like "What happens next" and "Whats the worstthat can happen" and the summarizing sentences.  Once I wrote enough of the summary I was able to go back and make them into story sentences.

Also it helped to go back to reread a few scenes.  Rough (and there was some ugly) but I was actually in the scenes.  It helped me remember how to get into the story, instead of gliding on top, in summary land.

My new daily goal is 306 words.  Hmm, it's kind of nice maybe to add a few words in the next scene tonight.  And that way I'll already be part of the way done with tomorrow's words.

In need of inner peace- dreaming of my perfect future

Some day I will be writing my books full time. Right now I would be in my upstairs personal office, next to the home gym, at my custom desk with my lovely cubbies. My window is to my right. so there's no glare but lots of lovely, natural light. And I’m typing away. Hubby is outside in the wood shop working on custom furniture that he’s putting in the next house he’s selling.Sometimes I can hear sounds of the saw, but mostly it is peaceful and silent. It's nice to know he's there, living his dream too. We've arrived at our oasis.

It’s a beautiful home, and it’s peaceful and my schedule is my own. I work for myself, my own hours, whatever schedule works for me. Every so often I might get up and make myself a cup of decaf coffee or tea. Or I will make some ice tea and sip away at it as I work.

And the words flow nicely, smoothly because it’s just me and my space. And I can just do my work and write my words, with joy. I am free of care and worries. Home and life are all I have and it is good and peaceful. And once I finish my words for the day, I will go out to the little teahouse and sit by myself and meditate or commune with nature or watch the fish. Life is really good now.

Maybe tonight I will go for a swim in our pool.

I am here now. And these are my daily words. What will I write, now that I have arrived at my future me?

As I go into the next frontier...

Continuing on from yesterday- I am indeed very excited.  This next scene and the planned next scene after that are ones that've existed in my head for over a year (I might need a scene or two inbetween; I'm going with the flow of course)

It's exciting to finally be here.   Now to just type out the details. :)

During my lunch break today, I got myself solidly into the scene with about 92 words, sort of summarizing some of the details.  It's good time to start already.

320 words are my goal. I have 1-2 hours available (more I suppose if I need it, it is Friday after all)

And an important thing to remember- this is rough skeletal first draft.  I don't need details, I definitely don't want prefection, I just want something I can use to revise the details later.  Time to have fun with this fun, mysterious scene.

Turning off internet now. I will update later.

Goal reached

770 words. I did not worry about ripples.  Actually it all seemed to work just fine.

I finished another scene.  They are running short. I am not really get into the scene with details and character and dialog.  To be honest I wasn't feeling this scene so I couldn't get into it.
But boy am I excited now.  Moving on.

Some really neat stuff came out of it.  My villain gave her a great new toy It's all a wonderful little development for use in the next book.

And now my next scene can finally happen.

I did it- I made my word count goal two days in a row- woot, woot.
(new daily goal is 320 words/day, not so bad)

More importantly the stage is set for the next crucial scene (and actually setup with all the pieces I need, it actually fits and works)- I've been waiting to get to this point for awhile.

No, no, no, no !!!!

Silly writer, ripples are for kids.

Move on.  Worry about tying it together later. Worry about whether one scene/character/event contradicts another one L-A-T-E-R.

Write now - revise later.

Do I never want to finish this little thing?  It's my first book- let go of perfection in first draft.  Trust the process. Trust the subconscious to handle the details (or cut and change stuff later).  I PROMISE to have a "Lost Scenes" section on my author website. No effort is wasted and why take all the fun out of the first draft? All this worry has dragged down my writing and blocked me up.

Breathe deep, let it go, trust the process. Move on and dive deep.

Time to figure out what to do next

My unexpected duh moment last night means I have to figure out whether the scene works, if I can keep it, and how the ripples work.

My villain knows who she is therefore all the henchman do too, that's the way it works. Cause - Effect - DUH.

[loud sigh, you didn't get to listen to. Feeling overwhelmed and also mystified how anyone keeps all these plot points in the air at once] :D

Goals:

• 327 new words tonight. 
• Verifying my last scene caused ripples not tsunami
• Let's get to the next scene already!

All this hard work will pay off some day when I get to publish and put it on my bookcase. Hardcover please. :)

Goals for Today. Results 413

Finish current scene in all it's ugly, glory so I can get on with it (or at least get 330 new words tonight).

I have an hour til 6:30.

413 words to finish out the scene.  It partly did what I wanted but it was ugly too. 
I discovered something unexpected too which changes things but I think it was time someone figured out my MC's secret anyway... seriously, who better than my wolf in grandmother's bonnet?

Formatting?

So formatting doesn't like me and has squished everything in my last post into one ugly paragraph.

Yuck! I refuse to waste any more time on this... moving on... [lied here]

I'm so sad right now and obviously way too easily distractable.  [checking if this issue is now fixed]

It is fixed.

I wish they hadn't upgraded me- I prefered the other version. This has way too much clicking.

It's the end of April already...

I love Spring - it's my favorite time of year.

I love my blog and writetrack and Scrivener. I've bailed on everything, but it's here waiting for me- it's not angry, judgemental. I can just pick it all up again.

In my time away, I did write a few bits and pieces:

• I was able to add 717 words to my Write Track total, bringing me up to 7705 words, out of a goal count of 30,000. (30,000 is just a bogus number that I don't really care about).
• I've completed 11 scenes so far.
• I have 16 planned scenes still to do, although I kind of expect closer to 26 scenes, when all is said and done.
• In Write Track, I adjusted my end date to July 1st.
• My new daily word count goal is 328 words/day.