Tai Manivong's Blog, page 2

Consistency

I hear a lot that consistency is key, in education, in working out, in classroom management, in writing, in learning new things. The funny thing is, that is one of my biggest struggles. Making the time to write my novels consistently everyday is challenging. Summer break officially starts on Wednesday, June 2, 2022 and I am hoping to start some consistent habits this summer that I can keep up through the year. 500 words a day would be 3 novels in a year.

Great insight today

I had a great power hour today! wrote over 600 words. But the best thing was, I went on apple books and saw a great review and the reviewer was asking about the 3rd book. That is what it is all about, connecting with readers. I am currently working hard on finishing books 3 and 4. I just wanted to give an update! Now i'd better get back to writing!

Been out for a bit, I hope you are staying safe.

Hello everyone, There was a tragedy in our family so I have been off the internet. Everything takes a back burner when bad things happen. I haven't had a chance to write or edit, but I am ok with that. Once things are to a place of stability, I will write again and get these next books out. I hope you are all safe and healthy, and working through whatever you are going through. Remember there is always a way out, a place to go, someone to talk to.

And School begins....

Tomorrow starts the official work day for the school year. I am still hoping to make progress daily on my novels. Today I wrote 977 words and revised a chapter. Progress isn't going as well I as would like, but I realised I need to give myself some grace. Teaching and being a mother takes a lot of time away from writing. I was stressing about how much I have to get done with new training and getting my classroom ready. There are already scheduled after school programs to attend and it all feels a bit overwhelming. I do love teaching, but it is a very time consuming job. I also love writing. I've heard that some teachers who are writers, write only in the summers. I am going to try to write at least 15 min daily on my novels. I'd love to hear ideas of how to find more time to write, if you have some leave a comment!

Making progress on Book 3

I wrote 1000 words today. I have been reading through chapters, revising, and editing. I haven't fully complete the first draft and am hoping to add 8000 more words, but the book might require a little less to end. This week I had family visiting, so not as much time to write. This beast mode challenge has definitely helped with my writing motivation. I am still going to try to finish 3 novels by September 31st, which means I have to write about 2000 words a day. I some teacher trainings next week, but I'll make sure to find some time to write. I promised myself I would publish Chalcedony by December. Still on target to make that happen.

Revising!

So I have 7 days left till my own deadline of finishing my draft for Chalcedony, book 3 of The Dragon Keeper Chronicles series. This week I didn't get as many words in as I wanted to, but I revised several chapters. I am working towards looping and writing in the dark. Looping is where you write 500 or so words and then read over and edit. I had a lot of random places where I had ideas written but not complete paragraphs or places where chapters didn't really go together. I had let this novel sit a little too long and had to clean it up. But this will help me when writing the next two books in the series. A lesson I learning is that it's better to write the whole series and then publish the first book.

3 weeks till school starts and 1101 words

I went to work on setting my my classroom. Teaching second grade this year. I also had a dream about being at school. You know the school year is close when you start dreaming about teaching. I have been listening to The Crystal Shard, By R.A. Salvatore. His series was one of my favorites growing up. People usually give the advice, that to become a better writer you need to read more. When I am not writing, teaching, taking care of the children and pets; I am trying to read a lot of best selling books to become a better writing. Always trying to improve. It has been a lot easier since I started listening to audio books. That still counts right?

Today I hope on a live writing spring and wrote 1101 words today. If you are interested in some live writing check out

Micheal La Ronn https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcdjxp-TGOOucIV1rMDS8jw and Dale Roberts https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKv8xcrFntOERL7NUXgkypg youtube channels. They are full of writing advice and are very inspiring for new writers.

943 words today!

I was watching a youtube video by an author that said the average person writes 250 words per hour. Today I decided to see how many I could write if I had one uninterrupted hour. That hour happened today. I wrote 863 words in that hour and about a hundred more later in the day. I ended up editing some chapters and ended up deleting 1537 so I still need about 8,000 words to finish the first draft.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention. I updated my website. It looks very modern!

Here are a few lines from my work in progress

“Stealing from me is not a wise decision” The dragon said calmly.

“How did you know?" The question flashed in her mind before she could quiet it.

“Invisible dragons are not hard to detect, if you know how to look.”

381 words

So far my novel has 32,565 word and my target is 43,000. But really it depends on where the characters take me. 17 more days till my first draft is supposed to be finished. I am super excited to be writing again and making progress on my series. Today was a cool day, cloudy compared to sunny and 90's, so we went out with the horses. I love days like this. I am making memories with the girls.

Have a good night everyone, keep on reading and writing.

Writing at the Fair

I took the girls to the renaissance fair yesterday. My oldest are teenagers now so they went to explore the fair on their own. I am more of a show watcher then a shop browser, so while waiting for the Joust tournament, I sat by a stucco wall and wrote in my notebook.

There was a small mouse who had taken up residence there. I gave it some bread from my sandwich. I bet after the fair is over it runs around collecting food. The image of Templeton from Charlotte's web comes to mind.

I typed in 380 words of what I had written and will type the other in tomorrow. I am behind on the word count I would like and hopefully will catch up tomorrow. School is just a month away, and then as a teacher I find little time to write. I should have took a picture of the tournament for this post! oh well, next time.