Tag Archives: word count

Winning at Writing

I’ve heard it said that a key factor in writing essays (and probably blog posts) is that you want to answer a question. Sometimes it’s the question the audience is asking, the search query that leads the reader to your work. Sometimes it’s a question or answer interesting enough that the reader says, “I didn’t realize I wanted to know this…  but you’ve hooked me.”

It’s also often said that you should know – and write for – your intended audience. Picture the person who comes to your site. What brought them to this post? What need do they have which you might meet? What will hold their attention?

Today, I’m struggling to follow that advice. My question is simple to ask, but difficult to answer, and entirely personal, so it may not be useful to most. My audience isn’t the hapless reader who found their way to this dreary corner of the Internet, either. Rather, the intended audience is me.

The question: Why am I not writing?

By that I mean, why am I not regularly putting in effort on the books I claim I want to write, the stories I’ve promised myself and others that I will publish? Why am I not cranking out the words that pile up into paragraphs that construct chapters that build books?

It’s not because I don’t care about writing, is it? I like writing. I like finding the “just right” word for what I mean, even if it’s often a struggle. I love it when I come up with a clever turn of phrase, even if it’s less frequent than I’d like. I care about the characters inhabiting my head, and I know the way their stories are meant to turn out, more or less, if I can ever download all my thoughts and dangling plot threads onto the blank screen.

The easy answer is I’m lazy.

I might play video games instead. In a video game, you’ve got a story handed to you – possibly even well-written – plus the power to interact with the world, and sometimes to even chart the course of events that save or destroy that world. You’ve got mechanics designed to flash and chirp when you hit milestones. You unlock new powers and abilities, or watch the progress of your experience bar as you conquer your foes and complete your tasks. All the reward centers of the brain are duped into feeling much the same as when you accomplish things in real life, but without that frustrating “work” part that comes with any goal that truly matters.

The easy answer isn’t often the true or full answer, though, is it?

Why am I lazy about writing? I can be disciplined in other areas; I can see the benefits of making lasting change and force myself to do it. Why not writing? Why not a sentence a day, little by little, “bird by bird” as Anne Lamott famously suggests? Small steps add up to big results eventually. Am I too lazy to write a sentence?

Clearly not. I’ve written a bunch of them here.

So why are the sentences about my characters and settings so much harder to put down on paper than my self-pity about struggling to write? Am I just trading one form of procrastination for another? “Oh, I know, I’ll WRITE about writing, and thus, kind of satisfy the goal.”

That’s probably more of what’s behind this than I want to admit. Thankfully, I’ll never post this.

Procrastination is usually birthed from fear or boredom, or so I’ve heard. What am I bored by? Is it that I’ve kind of already told myself the story by outlining the major plot points and character arcs, so it feels like there’s nothing new to discover? Is it that the only thing remaining is the hard work of fleshing out those outline points, and that’s not exciting?

Maybe.

No, it’s fear. At least, it’s fear more than boredom. Fear that there’s no point. Fear that what I’ll write isn’t worth the effort, because I already fear that what I’ve written isn’t up to par. Fear that there are too many flaws or holes in the plot I’ve laid down in my self-published stuff – so many that it’s going to take a ton of work to fix that before I can really move on to the next thing.

Fear that what I’m writing isn’t relatable, or that it’s so banal that it’s got nothing to say. I’m talking “The sky is blue and life is hard sometimes” level of obvious truth… if embedding some kind of truth or moral is even part of the consideration.

No one’s asking for a sermon, and if they were, I’d find them a much better preacher.

Fear that the plot “twists” are more like gentle curves. Fear that the characters are more cardboard than care-worthy. Fear that the vision in my head is far removed from the end result – one of the most basic fears of every creative. “I thought I could make it turn out better than it did.”

Fear that I already know all the answers to those fears, and that none of them are sufficient to kick me into motion.

“Well, you’ll get better by doing it.” Yes, I know, thank you.
“You only improve by putting in reps. One word after the next until it’s done.” Exactly. Simple yet profound.
“Whose standard are you holding yourself up to? You just have to do YOUR best.” That’s a relief.
“You have to love the process, because that’s where the growth happens.” Of course.
“You have to focus entirely on what you can control, which is writing the best you can.” Indeed. I agree completely. That’s the way forward.

And yet, once again, I tune out the whispers of my imaginary tenants — those whose voices were once a vivid clamor, those whose exploits were once the movies playing out in my mind whenever I closed my eyes.

If I asked them, I wonder if they would understand, or feel betrayed. Would they sigh knowingly with me and commiserate, or fold their arms across their chests and glare at me from across the dark room I’ve locked them in? One or two would get in my face about it — not surprisingly, I have no doubt which ones.

But I’m non-confrontational to a fault, even if the person I need to confront is myself.

Maybe especially then.

So I don’t ask them. And I usually don’t ask me either. It’s easier that way.

Maybe that’s the answer to the original question – the path of least resistance. The voices in my head can’t move a muscle, push a pen, or lift a finger to a keyboard… so I “win” by default. If you can call it winning.

Tomorrow there’s a Writer’s Hour at a library on one of the nearby bases. I plan to go. I’m excited about there being some kind of writer’s group, especially one I don’t have to lead or organize. I’m happy to pop in and smile at everyone, laugh with everyone, listen to the stories and the struggles, nod my head with the sage advice and whatever anyone’s willing to share because “I know how THAT feels…”

I know a bunch of us will probably have similar voices locked away inside, waiting for their turn to come to life on paper or a screen. I know I’m not alone in feeling the way I do.

I wonder if it will help. Maybe my characters wonder too. Then again, I doubt they’d read this. They probably already know the answer to the one question they’d ask.

Year Review

For the last three years, I have tracked my writing using a daily word count log. I find this helps me be honest with myself about what I am doing–or more likely not doing–to achieve the goals I so often claim concerning books and blogs.

2018’s average daily word count was 796. I aim for 1K a day but recognize I may not always make that. Right or wrong (not that anyone can really say), I’m not as disappointed about it as I would have been a couple years ago.

At the start of the year, I thought I might hit Fantasy Book 2 hard and get that near completion. I got several chapters in but found myself slogging through, unmotivated and lacking a clear vision. Even the outlined parts that I know or think are right for the book feel less than thrilling… so I have to go back to the outlining board for that one.

I tried completing 2017’s National Novel Writing Month project, a prequel of sorts starring one of my favorite characters from the fantasy series. I finished a few more scenes but mostly left that unattended, awaiting future revision.

I put forth a few short stories or flash fiction pieces, and some poetry, so I don’t feel like all was lost… but I neglected this blog and major projects for far too long.

Some of my procrastination might be blamed on Dungeons & Dragons. For the better part of the year, I was running a game every other week, trying to craft some interesting story arcs or surprise moments for the friends and family sitting around the table rolling dice. I think I managed to pull off more exciting sessions than train wrecks, so I am proud of that. However, the creative effort involved both satisfies the urge to write and drains me of energy to pour into more writing.

I walked into NaNoWriMo 2018 knowing that I wouldn’t succeed at hitting 50K. I don’t want to keep using retirement from the military and moving our family home as an excuse, but it’s a simple fact that more important things demanded my attention than the blank screen of a manuscript-in-progress.

The few scenes I added to my “someday I’m really going to write this character” gambler prophet were well received by the local writing group, so that gives me hope. It also leaves me wondering if I should work on that while the desire is stirred in me, instead of trying to sort out the “more important” Fantasy Book 2 and all the other parts down the road.

In any event, I am definitely starting to feel the relaxation and liberty of civilian life, and I am looking forward to ways to put my scenic location and extra free time to use in the endeavor of writing.

I’ll continue aiming for 1K minimum each day (I’m already behind!), but I won’t have nearly the same number of reasonable explanations at the end of 2019 if I don’t meet that goal.

Have you set writing goals for this year? I’d love to hear what you have planned. Let me know in a comment so I can cheer you on.

1K a Day Achievement Unlocked

Quality writing doesn’t happen by magic or mere desire. Improving any discipline takes a large quantity of effort

For me, this meant 1,000 words a day. Here’s how I got there:

In 2016, out of curiosity and as a bit of personal challenge, I counted the words I wrote all year-long. “You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” the motivational gurus say. I thought I’d see where I was at before trying to improve. I built a spreadsheet tracker on my iPad and watched the numbers build up over the course of the year. I surpassed 215K, or about 600 words per day on average.

In 2017, I decided I would set a particular goal–something that pushed me past what I had done the year before, but something I could actually manage.

I belonged to a group on Facebook where writers commit to writing 500 words a day, and I’ve seen several sites or groups set their quota around that number. ( 4thewords – a writing game website where I do a lot of my drafts, sets 444 as the daily goal). Jeff Goins is a writer who has built a platform out of encouraging others to write their own 500 words a day. I figured I’d take that and double it because I’m so hardcore! (kidding!)

I declared my goal: 1000 words a day on average. I knew there would be days where I didn’t write a single word, so I added that caveat at the end.

I built a new spreadsheet for 2017 and adjusted the formulas to fit each week and month. I had also started using a Bullet Journal recently, and got sucked into the Pinterest-perfect trackers and spreads I saw online. I decided to make a daily pixelated word count page in my journal, with colors representing how much I did or didn’t write.

Far too much brown in the mix.

Over the course of 2017, I adjusted my expectations here and there… some months had far too many 0 entries or brown squares on my tracker, and I started thinking, “Maybe I’ll hit 300K total… maybe I’ll hit 250K… maybe I can just do better than last year.”

November is National Novel Writing Month, where participants try to write a novel of 50,000 words or more between November 1st and 30th. I knew I would score some significant word count during that month, but it wouldn’t be enough.

Four months out from the new year, I realized that if I wrote at NaNoWriMo pace for the rest of the year (50,000 words in a month), I could meet my goal. That realization was followed by several days of less than 1000 words.

NaNo actually produced some great results for me, coupled with a family journaling project, so I cranked out over 80,000 words in that single month. December slowed down a bit, but I still managed to do more than 1K a day average, and on the 31st, I crossed my finish line with a year-long total of 365,468 words.

Now I’m not claiming those words are quality, but I firmly believe that the key to producing some quality is a quantity of effort. The work creates opportunities for quality to bloom.

It’s like saying “I will spend quality time with my kids.” That doesn’t happen by saying, “Okay bud, we got 10 minutes of real quality time. Go.” It happens by spending frequent time together, which makes room for those few, magical moments to blossom into memories that last.

It’s the same with writing, or so I tell myself. With that in mind, I saw Jeff Goins post about starting the year off with a 500-a-day challenge. Since his influence sparked my original goal, I’ll try his method and commit to writing 500 words every day for at least all of January. They may not all be great words, but that’s not the point.

Happy new year to all of you following or glancing at this in your Facebook / WordPress feed. I hope your 2017 was filled with accomplishments and your 2018 looks promising. What goals are you setting for this year?

Putting NaNo to Bed

Another November passes, and another National Novel Writing Month comes to a close.

You win a self-inflicted nervous breakdown! Also your manuscript needs infinity revisions.

I’m proud to have put over 50,000 words into my project, but I’m most excited about connecting and re-connecting with writers in my area. Not only did all four regular members of our base writing group dive into the challenge this year, but a WriMo participant from a few years ago jumped in (and won!). On top of that, I met four writers I didn’t know prior to the NaNoWriMo events.

Not everything went perfectly.

I had the privilege once again of serving as a Municipal Liaison for Japan–specifically Okinawa.

We have three stellar individuals on the mainland who managed the bulk of the nation’s participants. On island, our group had a rough start that forced me to develop some guidelines and contingency plans for future NaNo events–stuff you hope you never have to enforce, but you realize should be in place “just in case.” Yay for opportunities to grow and practice interpersonal skills!

The librarian on Kadena is passionate about writing groups–participating and supporting–so we enjoyed an array of Keurig coffee cups and a constant influx of writing resources. (Anyone need a journal? Here’s a stack. Need a book about researching how bodies decompose? I know a great one we might even have here… Stuck in your manuscript? Try playing around with some poetry magnets or story dice.) Who said libraries aren’t cool?

Great participants and a supportive location made my job easy and enjoyable!

My writing felt like a mess more than usual.

In the past, I approached NaNo like a plotter, laying out the overall course of the story with key milestones I knew I needed to hit as well as rough scene ideas documenting who needed to say or do what and for what purpose. That usually works for me, like following a recipe of cake mix. I have a little bit of freedom to substitute ingredients, and I can change plans in the middle if I really want to do so. “I think I’ll turn this into cupcakes instead of using a standard 9 by 13 cake pan. I’ll switch out the oil with applesauce for a healthier option.”

Some people are “pantsers” who sit down with a blank document and go to town, allowing the muse and the characters they’ve created in their minds to develop on paper in whatever way the story unfolds. More power to all of you who can manage that.

This year, I think I fell in the middle of the two–what some NaNo types call “plantser.” I had much less to go on than my last three NaNo drafts. The rough bones of a story arc bounced around in my mind, and I jotted down certain key points at the bottom of my manuscript Word document, but I had nowhere near the detail or preparation of previous efforts. It showed, as I left myself a lot more notes with questions to follow-up on, gaps or plot holes I could see while writing, even basic details like “insert her mom’s name here.”

On the one hand, “plantsing” gave me enough freedom to do as I pleased, changing up the events in the story as I wrote, to fit new ideas and revelations. It also gave me enough signposts as reminders to keep me moving in my intended direction. “Not saying you have to take the left lane onto I-80, but Chicago is far down the interstate in this direction, so you do you.”

I kept distractions to a (relative) minimum.

My favorite author Brandon Sanderson released the next novel in his massive epic fantasy series, The Stormlight Archives. Those books are so good, my non-fantasy-reading wife even loves them. That has been sitting on my iPad for the last three weeks, taunting me, beckoning with one finger crooked. “Just one chapter… that’s all… won’t take long… come on…”

The Netflix Punisher series came out mid-November, and I am a sucker for Jon Bernthal’s amazing combination of brooding / unhinged. Dude is like the stacks of unstable dynamite from my favorite 80s post-apocalyptic games. Sure, you might gain something by searching this, but you probably ought to back out of the fallout shelter slowly and forget what you saw here. (Fans of Wasteland might know what I’m talking about. The rest of you can take pleasure knowing I suck at analogies.)

I watched one episode the night it came out, then forced myself to close the app.

Thor: Ragnarok was a must-see, so I used that as my reward for getting ahead of schedule early. Justice League was going to be a mid-month reward, but I started falling behind and never found a good time to see it. In 20/20 hindsight, given the reviews and images, maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

My pained smile when someone asks how NaNoWriMo is coming this year. “Yeah… I’m writing words or something…”

The addiction to video games kept its hooks deep in my flesh-husk. While I pulled away from WoW, and only played a couple hours of the intro of Horizon: Zero Dawn – The Frozen Wilds (omg such a great game), the mindless entertainment bug bit hard about three weeks in. For inexplicable reasons, as I looked at the Blizzard launcher on my PC, I realized that I own Diablo III, and I never played through the fifth act expansion, nor have I tried the necromancer class they added long after the game’s release. Easy fix! A few minutes of monster-grinding and loot-grabbing wouldn’t affect my writing too much, right?

In the course of a week, I played through the whole story and raised my overpowered goddess of death to just shy of max level. “Just one more level… just one more quest… just need to kill this one boss…”

Really, with an army of skeletons fighting for me, it just seems unfair.

I’ve put 75,000 words on various projects this month.

I started this year with a goal of writing a thousand words a day. Like many New Year’s resolutions, that lost steam after the first month or two. By about April I recalculated my goal. (500 words wouldn’t be too bad, right?)

In September, I realized if I cracked down and wrote like NaNoWriMo every month until the end of the year, I would make it. That didn’t pan out, though I exceeded my 1K/day goal. After the last month of grinding, I’m sitting at about 320K, with a few different projects clamoring for my attention. (I’ll post about one of them soon, because it has been both fun and valuable to me.)

Not saying those words are great words… but they’re something I can edit, revise, or cut, which is better than a blank page on screen and a bunch of imagined plot lines in my head.

All of that to say, I’m sort of sorry I was gone for the last month (plus), I’m not too worried because I can see how many or how few views come through, but I’m grateful for those of you who care enough to read this and/or support me, even if it’s just asking, “How’s that writing coming?”

Cue the wild-eyed Superman pain-rictus. “Pretty good,” I say through clenched teeth, choking down my self-loathing. “Everything is fine.”

Ups and Downs

I’ve posted about my word count tracker and daily / monthly / yearly goals in the past, but I haven’t provided an update on that in quite some time… probably because I’m disappointed at the low numbers and slow progress. 

Life has been an airplane in severe turbulence for the last two weeks – rapid descents, attempts to climb out of the bumpy ride, moments of radiance above the storm before another cluster of dark clouds obscure everything else.

I know, everyone has results, or excuses–one or the other, rarely both.

My 18-year-old daughter, our oldest child, just got married a week ago. I’m a jumble of equal parts happy celebration and hopeful concern. The Bee heard all our warnings and listened to all our worries. But she remained determined to move forward, and we decided it would be better to stay supportive and connected than to resist and watch her do whatever she pleases without us being a part of her life.

She and her husband just left the island yesterday to head back to the States, where he will probably enlist in the Air Force soon after their return. That’s awesome and provides some certainty of security. 

Our first of four leaving the nest is, naturally, a painful but necessary process. Wifey and I are working through the emotions and adapting to a new normal.

As I typed this, I was sitting at the base exchange getting ready to sign a bunch of copies of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Military Families Edition, in which I am a contributing author. I asked for permission to sign and place an origami bookmark in the two or four copies I expected them to put on the shelves–instead, they decided to order 40 and prepare a display. It’s a cool thought that something of my work will be out there for others to see. 

On top of that, they’re crafting plans for a book signing or at least a meet-and-greet with interested customers. As the manager put it, there’s a community connection and an increased value in “I shook this guy’s hand, I talked with the lady who wrote this story.” (There’s another person on Kadena who contributed, so we’re trying to get both of us into the same place at the same time.)

Signing books at the Base Exchange 

The salespeople in charge of books provided enthusiastic help, placing bookmarks, lining up copies for signatures, and snapping pictures for some eventual publicity. They might even work out a radio spot.

Going from celebrating a wedding, to saying farewell to my daughter and her husband, to experiencing a form of success and publicity as a writer–it’s more chaos than a kindergarten class high on candy and Kool-Aid.

A couple days ago, I drove the newlyweds out to a shopping area so they could get some Indian take-out (my daughter’s last chance to eat at her favorite restaurant on Okinawa) and Japanese candy for relatives in the States. “I’ll just hang out at Starbucks while you do your shopping,” I told them. After all, that writing word count was still looking pretty bleak.

“You could come with us to the candy store when we’re waiting for the food,” she suggested. 

It hit me that pretty soon I’ll have all kinds of time to sit in coffee shops, alone with my writing. I wouldn’t get another such opportunity to have time with my daughter for… well, we’ll see how long it ends up being.

Stickerpics with me third-wheeling
Word counts are a tool, a motivational aid meant to track progress toward the overall goal of completed writing projects. But the word count isn’t the be-all/end-all of writing, and writing isn’t everything there is to life. (It hurts a little to type that.) 

What matters more is the conscious choice about what I’m doing with my time. Word counts can help reveal when my efforts are slipping or when I’m succeeding, but sometimes it’s okay to see that string of zeros. Other things are more important. 

The Chase

I see, from afar,

Fleeting glimpse of her fleeing

Playing hard to get 
This game that we play

Chase sensations and passions

Always reach for more

And she knows that I

I can’t just let her go, no

She knows I’ll chase her

This dance that we do

Cat and mouse meets the tango

She’s at it again

My inspiration

Curls a finger and beckons

Sighing, I follow

– 

I wrote this at a lovely Creative Writing workshop I attended this past weekend. The facilitator sang a series of haiku he had written years ago, accompanied on his acoustic guitar with something like a Spanish sound. I pictured a carousing and carefree pursuit during a fiesta through dusty, packed-earth streets in a Mexican town. He invited us to write our own haiku to show the variety of meanings and thoughts that could still fit the same rhythm and song.

I debated whether to go in the first place. My dance with my writing muse has been far from a cat-and-mouse, let alone something so intimate as a tango. More like “go sleep on the couch while I make an appointment with the divorce lawyer to draft the necessary paperwork.”

About a month’s worth of word count entries read ‘0’ and the status of my current projects remains unchanged. Scheduling a writers’ group has been problematic, and the pace of work only seems likely to increase. 

But the Muse crooks that painted nail at me and flashes that smile, and like it or not, here I go again. 

I’ve been listening to Brandon Sanderson’s recorded lectures on YouTube during down-time, and Stephen King’s On Writing audiobook in my car. Though the base library version is scratched up a bit–“theme is what unifies a novel into a plea- plea- plea- plea- pleasing whole”–there’s still so much down-to-earth insight that I can’t help but enjoy it.

He talks a lot about writer’s block while at the same time talking about–in his own life–putting his nose to the grindstone and pumping out several pages a day, every day, seven days a week, all year ’round, Christmas and the 4th of July included. 

He and his muse must get along a lot better than mine. (Actually he also talks about that, and his muse sounds like quite a jerk.)

The end result of the weekend is my little group of three or four writers can connect with a larger community in the initial forming stages on island. And I wrote a snippet of dialogue for Fantasy Series Book 3 (when book 2 is barely started). And there’s that poem.

But the word count didn’t show zero that day, so I’ll take it.

On the Record

My writing word count spreadsheet mocks me. So many zero entries in the last week! I just finished a 6-week Mandarin Chinese refresher course, which might explain some of the lack of effort–except there was hardly any homework to occupy my off-duty time.

No problem, I told myself. I’ll do amazing writing things over the 4-day weekend for Memorial Day. 

Yeah, not so much.

Problem-but-not-really 1) Overwatch is amazing and I want to play it just about every waking moment even though it’s basically run into battle, use whichever character’s amazing powers, then die and do it again. 

Seriously, it’s fun. Evil fun. Like “lock up the PlayStation 4 so I will maybe write a word in the near future” fun.

Problem-but-not-really 2) I did some other creative things instead. A couple weeks ago, I picked up the handy talnts app (which I keep reading as ‘taints’ and I really don’t like that mental image but there you have it). It’s basically LinkedIn for creative people. The app has an option to share YouTube videos of which I had none. But a family friend asked me to record a worship song for her, and I marked “pianist” as one of my talents in the app… kill two birds with one stone? Sure why not!

Indescribable
While my Christian friends might appreciate the rendition of Indescribable, I have a lot of other friends who won’t care. But I know there’s a special fondness in the heart of many gamers for the music of Final Fantasy VI, particularly the Opera Song. So here’s that one too.

Final Fantasy VI Opera Song
All in all, my word count is shameful to behold over the last week, but it was a nice break. I’d already written more words in May than in any previous month this year, so I don’t feel too bad. 

Early May Diffusion Update

May is off to a good start on the ol’ word count tracker.

In January to April, I only had one other week where I reached >7K words.

Roughly a thousand words a day, on various projects, for the first half of May. I can live with this.

Additionally, I enjoyed some opportunities to hone my craft and improve my understanding of all things writing. I picked up Sol Stein’s much-lauded classic, Stein on Writing, and I attended a workshop on story structure led by an award winning sci-fi author who for various reasons retired and decided to teach on Okinawa, Japan.

Not only that, but my local writer friends and I finally held the first full-fledged, in-person critique group that we’ve been talking about off and on for over a year. Getting fresh eyes on a segment of Diffusion chapter 1 helped me identify what’s working well and what I should clarify.

Also I discovered–to my chagrin–as far as readers are concerned, I named a character “G-Mail.” One of the things I love to do in crit groups is read portions of everyone’s submissions out loud. Your ear catches things your eye glosses over when reading silently… like the fact that Gemail (pronounced in my head as guh-mail) turned into Gmail.com for everyone else.

This morning, I’ve been working on the overall outline. I’m a planner with sci-fi and fantasy… and pretty much everything I write, now that I think about it. Planning means I need to know Point A and Point Z, along with several landmarks and stops in between. There’s room for some creativity between these points, so characters can still surprise me as I write. But conflicts and character developments have to lead to certain key events–especially if I want the reader to get to the end and look back, thinking, “Oh, there it was all along, how did I miss that?”

I’m definitely not doing the “seat of the pants” method of “write whatever comes to you.”  My multiple Grant & Teagan posts for BlogBattle entries are the closest I can get to that, since it starts with a word prompt that gives me an idea for a scene.

So one of the unrealistic things about fantasy and YA fiction is how the main character just so happens to be the linchpin of the entire world, connected to and holding everything together. And there’s room for that in the genre–it’s kind of expected. 

Sure, you have stuff like Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (a.k.a. Game of Thrones), where riveting, beloved characters are killed with extreme prejudice. And as a result, certain fans look down on books that don’t have a double-digit death count of potential fan-favorite characters. But that’s the exception, not the rule.

Still, even if the hero/heroine is the center of that novel’s universe, there has to be a reason for all this attention. And in fantasy, one favorite way to get there is prophecy–partly because it fits the genre, partly because it ties current events to the past, and partly because the myriad ways characters misinterpret it can lead to wonderful conflicts (spoilers for my book 2 and beyond, haha).

Also you get to dabble in poetry, because as The Lego Movie taught us, “all this is true, because it rhymes.”


So, in first draft form, here’s a part of the “Daughters” prophecy that helps explain the motivations of and manipulations by characters in positions of power. It also plays a big part in the growing conflict between Lyllithe and Josephine:

In centuries yet far beyond I see four years of blight

When ev’ry soul is shaken and their hateful foes delight

As all the pow’r of Hell breaks forth with endless appetite

For blood and death and chaos plunging nations into night 

In centuries yet far beyond, behold the Naurchoth’s rise

Whose rifts shall tear asunder and darkness blot the skies

Whose wrath—though slowly kindled—shall break forth as a flood

Let mankind’s candle dwindle, drowned in a sea of blood
Daughter of Puremight, hold back no more

Daughter of Twilight, fulfill what you swore

For the Daughter of Midnight stands at the door

With an army of Shadewrought ready for war.

Daughter of Puremight to break and restore

Daughter of Twilight, to bind up the core

Of the Daughter of Midnight whom all abhor

As she shatters and scars Avatars we yearn for

Daughter of Puremight, do not stand alone

Daughter of Twilight, move past what you’ve known

Lest the Daughter of Midnight come into her own 

And annihilate all that remains of the Throne 

April Update

So I wrote over 21,000 words this month. 

On the one hand, that’s more than any of the previous months since I’ve started tracking my effort. 

On the other hand, it feels like so little progress being made on any of the various projects outlined in my head or my OneDrive files. Plus I totally failed at my Camp NaNoWriMo goal of 30K on a particular project. (I think I got about 9K done on that draft.)

Positives: 

I thoroughly enjoy the little games we play to get ourselves writing. My NaNo writers’ group tried doing word sprints a few times this month, and I enjoyed the camaraderie. The weekly (now bi-weekly) Blog Battle is another such activity, especially since the misadventures of Grant and Teagan is like a brief vacation for my writing brain. 

Great interpersonal interaction helped out this month. I had the privilege of meeting a Japan NaNoWriMo member who lives on the northern part of the nation–she came down to Okinawa for a vacation and was able to attend a write-in. I caught up with an old friend who happens to be in town–a guy who read my fantasy novel back when it was a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in story form. We chatted about character arcs and came up with some better ideas for where all the threads are headed and how they interact with each other. Then I sold a couple books and created a personalized art version of a signed copy.

And it looks like we might get a local critique group going finally.

Negatives:

I left my WattPad novella Echoes pretty much dead all month. I’ve got the last third of it outlined, just need to sit down and write it. I also have the last bits of PERDITION outlined (my NaNo sci-fi project about psychic reconnaissance). Same thing, I need to sit down and write. And I haven’t touched Diffusion (the fantasy sequel to Diffraction), since this month was supposed to be all about finishing off the NaNo draft.

Lots of ups and downs, “coulda, woulda, shoulda” moments, and a general sense of I could have done more.

But April is over and done, no changing that word count. I guess I have to go with my Mom’s old suggestion of “Why don’t you make this activity into a game? See how many (fill in the blank) you can do in an hour, then try to beat it!”

Alright, May. I raise my tasty Jack and Coke Zero to greet you. Challenge accepted. Out of sheer fairness, May, since you have an extra day, I wrote nothing on the 1st of the month. 30 days to do better than 21K. Let’s do this!

What’s your goal this month? Do you have one? If not, why not? Let me know in a comment.

Most Words in a Week

I started logging my daily word count this year in an effort to 1) see how much I am or am not accomplishing, and 2) push myself to do more. 

Camp NaNoWriMo kicked off in April and I thought I had a good guesstimate of how many words I could knock out on my April project. And last week I logged the most words of any week this year. 

  
7,442? That’s my best effort this year?!

I got a few word sprints in with my virtual cabin-mates. I spent a couple hours at Starbucks on Sunday, cranking out words. And Thursday I took it easy to spend some time off with my kids and to get over a headache.

Still, it feels like a weaksauce effort. I can only guess how much time I spend browsing Facebook (then closing it, then reopening it a minute later as if everyone may have just updated). I don’t know how many YouTube videos I watched of Gordon Ramsay swearing at people (it’s a terrible but addictive vice). And when I “need to veg” for a bit, I make time to level up yet another toon on World of Warcraft. 

I’m sure I did better in November during the actual NaNoWriMo event, or December when I finished up my book revisions and got Diffraction onto Amazon and Kindle Unlimited (hint hint).

But I’m nowhere near the goal I set for the month on my Camp NaNo novel… not even if I count all the words written on other projects.

I know these things take time and effort. And I’m happy that I have 7400+ words more than I had the week before.

But good Lord this is not an easy discipline to master. 

Maybe I should take up cooking. Gordon has some great “how to” videos…