just a little writing update

remember when i used to post my daily word count for my novel draft on this blog?

in case you're considering doing the same:  go for it!  it really helped my progress a lot.

i'll admit, since stopping this public word count updating, my draft has slowed down a little.  let's blame it on the upcoming wedding, the extra duties at work, and my addiction to dance moms instead (ok seriously though, watch this eight year old child move, it's unreal... and this is from the first episode guys; anybody else feel inadequate now?).

on the bright side, when children make me feel inadequate it inspires me to learn how to do the splits.  maybe with a few more stretchy weeks we'll get there.  regardless it's good for posture right?

but anyway, a week or so ago i finally broke the 40,000 word mark on my draft, and thought it's still rather slow going, it's getting increasingly satisfying to see my page count creep towards 150.  the protagonists finally know how to make the time machine work now.  one would think this would lead to high action adventures.  it hasn't yet, but the soap opera is getting pretty ridiculous.

when i first started writing i scoffed at the writers who said that the first novel you write is unlikely worthy of publication.  while it's still appealing to try and push this draft toward a wider audience eventually, i'm definitely seeing why this statement has been made.  it's such a learning experience to produce such a large quantity of coherent content for the first time, and i really suspect the next attempt i make will have a lot more to it and less to revise.  it's getting really tough to put off those new ideas that keep popping into my head for novel #2.

BUT it won't be novel #2 unless i finish #1 so plod along we shall!  hope everybody else is keeping motivated with your creative work.  if you need a kick in the pants to get back to something you're working on, consider this one from me!

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an enormous selfie without makeup and a confession

sometimes i deliberately don't blog because i'm embarrassed that my word count hasn't changed.

word count: 33,365

pumpkins meow and writer nerd updates

happy friday y'all (look!  i've managed to blog two days in a row now!  i must have lots and lots of free time again right?  ...right????)

okay, maybe i'm still feeling a little swamped attempting to find invitations as pretty as these ones for less than $9 a pop.  thank goodness the weekend is tomorrow.  the bags under my eyes are getting a bit too persistent even for clinique quick-corrector concealer (a travesty i say)!

bert is also one pissy monkey these days and will not stand for the idea of me getting a full night's sleep, no sir.  he isn't coping well with being left alone on weekends (sorry cat that's the reason we got you--a cat, instead of a golden retriever puppy.  deal with it).

in other news, our halloween pumpkins have apparently been bothering the stevedore with their lack of being cut open.  last night he caved to temptation (or perhaps he just wanted to entertain bert so he'd let us sleep through the whole 7 hour night) and carved bert's little pumpkin into the cutest cat-o-lantern i have ever seen in my life!  i sure am lucky to be marrying a guy patient enough to carve those intricate little whiskers.  you've got to be patient to sign up for a lifetime with little 'ol me (especially a sleep deprived version).

but now, for my totally self-centered, self-important, self-satisfied news:  i have officially passed the 100-page mark of my work in progress.  i haven't had a chance to celebrate, but it's really a very exciting accomplishment for me (i suspect there might be an extra big glass of wine for me tonight).  i could go into all the details of how proud i feel, but in order not to sound like a twit, i'll keep my comments to this:  if you've ever considered punching self-doubt in the face with a creative endeavor, i highly recommend it.  it's stellar.

now let's just get through these last few hours til the weekend is officially here.

word count:  30,726

words of others

this is a muffin.  it has nothing to do with this blog post, but gee whiz it was tasty.

yesterday was #MSWL on twitter and i'm really on a roll with my draft right now. (mswl means "manuscript wishlist," by the way.  it is a twitter mass hashtag-fest where literary agents describe what they would like to see in their query inbox... writer geek stuff etc).

as a result i'm going to be letting other people do the talking today.  apologies in advance for this quiet blogging week (there's a good chance i won't be posting friday as we'll be driving to virginia for feasting and partying of epic wedding proportions... how can you not be insanely stoked to see two people who have already spent a decade together get married?  personally i think everyone should have an emily and colin in their life.  it's a freaking testament to the modern concept of soul mates, public shout out, you crazy kids).

"people love to be thoughtful at the very end of a tragedy because that’s the precise moment when nothing more is required of them." - gladstone

"What I see is a good man, m’lady. And they’re not like buses: there won’t be another one along in ten minutes." - anna [downton abbey]

"Deviation from social conformity is increasingly seen to be something in need of a pill." - giles fraser

"i chose a half-measure when i should have gone all the way.  i'll never make that mistake again." - mike [breaking bad]

"The vanity of existence is revealed in the whole form existence assumes: in the infiniteness of time and space contrasted with the finiteness of the individual in both; in the fleeting present as the sole form in which actuality exists; in the contingency and relativity of all things; in continual becoming without being; in continual desire without satisfaction; in the continual frustration of striving of which life consists." - arthur schopenhauer
word count: 27,239

the winds of change

well it's officially too cold to go to work without a jacket anymore, and let me tell you that is the opposite of awesome.

autumn is so bittersweet.  a warm sunny fall day in michigan is as close to perfect as this place gets, but they are few and far between the cold, rain/snow mix days that remind you winter is a six to eight month season round these parts.  on saturday we got one of the nuggets of indian summer and we tried to stay outside as long as we could until we met up with my family to celebrate my grandma's birthday.

with the official end of summer over the weekend, it feels like everything has switched gears entirely.  it's hard not to notice the seasonal changes when hoards of college students are constantly around.  now is the time when the huge outdoor parties begin to shrink indoors.  people are more fashionable now until they have to begin hiding under layers of wool and down-filled parkas.  i can't say i'm excited for the freezing weather ahead, but with a few exceptions, now until christmas is typically a time of year that completely flies by.  perhaps its the inclusion of steve's birthday right around thanksgiving, or the fact that our dating-anniversary falls between thanksgiving and christmas, but we rarely get a chance to come up for air until the new year once october rolls around.

through all this, the thing i'm trying to focus on most is getting back at that dusty word document known as my work-in-progress.  though the thrill hasn't quite worn off of getting engaged and moving in together, the novelty of it all doesn't quite clog up my brain as much as it had been doing.  now that the weather is taking it's uglier turn, i'm hoping it will be easier to stay busy with indoor projects like my writing.  a busy life is a recipe for writers block, but i'm optimistic that the holiday stress will seem small compared to all the madness we've been through lately.

word count: 25,024

decorating sneak peek

i actually DID blog yesterday, i swear.  i posted a creative writing piece that i immediately reverted to a draft when i decided i liked it enough to submit to a short prose competition.  as blogging counts as "self-publication" i decided i would take it down until i hear from the editor.  if you are a writer interested in entering check it out here.

in other news:

yesterday my cow skull arrived in a giant box stuffed full of shredded paper.  his name is jeff and he's already family.  if you have been following me on instagram, you're probably aware that life lately has been about decorating, decorating, and more decorating.  when moving, the options at hand include organizing, cleaning, unpacking, and decorating, so i obviously picked my favorite and am allowing the mess to slowly kill me inside.

side note:  the images in the bottom right picture were pages from old project portfolios that were being thrown away at my office.  i saved a couple more of these portfolios from being thrown away featuring sketches, floor plans, and elevations of other buildings.  after the interest i received when i posted the picture to instagram, i'm considering framing a few more for a giveaway on this blog.  good idea, bad idea?

also, this saturday we are touring wedding venues.  it's pretty mind-blowing having all this getting married stuff evolve into reality.

word count: 21,046

today is an honorary weekend

not really, i still have to go to work and stuff.

but we did some epic moving this weekend and so i'm going kinda slow today to give myself the break we didn't really get.  and i finally caught the germs that steve has been complaining about lately (blerg)...

and i didn't work on my draft on friday so i'm focusing my writerly energy there today, which is going pretty well.  

hope you all get your week started on a creative, or otherwise wonderful foot!

word count: 14,812

bits and pieces

i couldn't really sleep last night, which made me expect today to be dreadful.  quite the opposite, i'm rather punch drunk and giddy for the following reasons:

due to packing, i have tons of clean laundry right now.

steve comes home tonight!

the guy who wolf whistled me this morning definitely appeared to live inside of a building (ok giddy might be a bit much to say about this one, but it's a step up from getting accosted by homeless men).

and.....

i have successfully surpassed the 10,000 word milestone with my draft!

that one, for me, is really big.  if you need a little perspective that's 39 word doc pages with 1" margins double spaced times new roman size 12.

of course, this also means i'm only about 1/5 of the way there, but it's pretty exciting when you have the opportunity to surprise yourself.  given my track record of false starts i honestly expected to peter out somewhere around nine pages.  i cannot express how glad i am that i decided to keep myself honest by posting my word count to this blog (thank you everyone who encouraged me to do this).

the thing i've learned about creativity so far is that, even though the work is more fun, it's still work.  inspiration isn't all it's chalked up to be.  creativity is a skill, but a creative project is a task and it requires the same mundane, frustrating, laborious crap that i see everyday in the workplace.  realizing this, makes the task at hand seem a lot more manageable.  if i can plug away at databasing building stats, i can definitely plug away at a novel.

"Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties -- all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name's Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion -- these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated." - david foster wallace

"No kid can do whatever they want to do. It's a total lie, but they have the right to try to do whatever they want to do. That's their right, to aim to do whatever they want to do. And you know what? Life might kick you in the face, life might not let you do what you want to do, but [my grandparents] always taught me that, you know, 'Go for it! Yeah, you wanna do that? Go for it, son, you've gotta do it.'" - james mcavoy

happy giddy tuesday, folks!

word count: 11,329

music for summertime & a little extra

2009

here's a look at what i've been listening to lately.  as far as i'm concerned, summer wouldn't be summer if it didn't have its own personal playlist.

when the link takes you through, be sure to click the one that says "click here to start download from sendspace" because other buttons are spam:
click here to download the free mix!  

bombay - el guincho

i could be dreaming - belle & sebastian

oh no! - marina and the diamonds

here comes your man -the pixies

kick you out - caesars

from a window seat - dawes

daffodils - charlene soraia

isjaki - sigur ros

what are you guys listening to this summer?

i've been putting photos and side projects on the back burner lately because i'm really pleased with how well things are going with the creative piece of fiction i am writing, and it's keeping me pretty busy.  i've hit the 20 page / 5,000 word mark, which is an early milestone, but an exciting one nonetheless.

and also:  today and tomorrow are the last 2 days to enter my giveaway!

word count: 5,194

on trying to write fiction

yesterday i decided to skip blogging because i successfully added over 1300 words (or about 5 pages double spaced 12p tmn) to the creative piece i am currently writing.  on the one hand that doesn't sound like a lot (one of my prouder moments in college was successfully cranking out a 15 page, 4500 word, A- paper on Cosmology in under 10 hours) but writing fiction goes a lot more slowly for me than academic writing.

on the whole i feel a lot more secure with this piece of fiction than i have with others before it.  i finally googled, "how to write a novel," only to determine that the path to doing it is both a lot harder and a lot easier than i had ever given it credit for being.  i definitely excel at writing characters, but, quite frankly, i always really sucked at developing a story arch.  i had it in my mind that if i fell in love with my characters hard enough, (which is a challenge since i really prefer to write about rather despicable, flawed people) they would eventually lead me to some grand adventure on their own.

but, at least at this point, i know where these characters are going and it's been a huge step forward for me.  and for just shy of 2200 words total there are already a lot of characters: andrea, grace, ruby, dylan, olivia, craig, steve, patrick, sam, "blondie."

i'm toying with the idea of signing off my future blog posts with the current word count of my, what-i-eventually-hope-makes-it-to-be-a-novel-someday.  to try and keep myself motivated and productive.

have any of you guys tried to write a piece of fiction over 50,000 words (who am i kidding, what about 20,000)?  how do you stay motivated / productive with the same creative piece?

word count:  2,154

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