Michell Plested's Blog, page 12

NaNo 2017 – Day 28 – Rollercoaster

I was on a definite high on day 27. Day 28…not quite so much. I’m definitely feeling the effects of pushing everything (including sleep) off to hit my word count goals every day. I managed to get my 2,000 in but I’m not sure I love what I wrote. That’s okay. I need to write it in order to have something to edit, right? Number of Words for the Day:  2,024 words How I Hit my Word Total for the Day I had a book signing so I didn’t get started until about 8:45. Wrote straight through. Today’s Goal: 2,000 words I have another meeting tonight. It means leaving the house shortly after I get home from work. I’ve been […]

NaNo 2017 – Day 27 – Some Milestones Hit

I knew I was working towards 60,000 words last night and I achieved that goal. The one I wasn’t really aware of was the 75% complete on Scouts 3. Hitting that was a surprise and brought a huge smile to my face. That was for a couple reasons. It means I’m in the home stretch, which is always nice when writing a new books. It also means I survived the 60% blahs – that time when many authors hate their story, want to quit and can’t see any way forward. Best of all, it means that I’m still going strong and I’m writing the part of the story I probably knew best in my mind. I should have very little […]

NaNo 2017 – Day 26 – Enhancing my Calm

Day 26 was not a wonderful day by any means. It started out fine but it ended on a frustrating note. I was almost vibrating by the time I got to my writing (at 9:30 PM). I expected that, with being upset and not focused at all that day 26 would be my first failure of the month. I’m happy to say I was wrong. I decided to try anyway and after a couple hundred words I found myself calming down. A couple hundred more and I was able to sharpen my focus and by the time I hit one thousand words I had a good rhythm going again. Number of Words for the Day:  2,055 words How I Hit […]

NaNo 2017 – Day 25 – Book Signing Day

Day 25 was a day spent at a local Christmas Fair. I sold quite a few books too, which was awesome. Then we went to a movie (saw Thor again). I knew I was going to be going late so I managed to get my writing done between the Christmas Fair, errands and the movie. I’m very glad I did it then too because it was late when we got home and the only thing I wanted to do was go to bed. Number of Words for the Day:  2,103 words How I Hit my Word Total for the Day One long writing session. from 5 – 6 PM Today’s Goal: 2,000 words The Grey Cup final is tonight. I’m […]

NaNo 2017 – Day 24 – Late Night Writing

Lots of back-to-back events yesterday starting with work. Then I drove about an hour to do a book signing/Fall Fair and then an hour back home. By the time I got home it was 9:30 PM and I still hadn’t done any writing. I briefly considered calling it a dead day. Briefly. Then I stopped whining to myself about being tired and sat down at my computer. I powered through, but it was hard going. I’m at the point in the story where I really don’t have much idea what’s coming next (much like the past two weeks). The difference now is, I’m at the major conflict and, while I know how I want it to play out, I don’t […]

NaNo 2017 – Day 23 – The Train Keeps Chugging Along

The thing about goals is, once you achieve them it’s so easy to back off and stop. At least, for me it is. That being the case, I was a bit concerned I would stop my progress once I hit 50,000 words. And yes, I do appreciate how odd it is that I’m worried about how I am going to go forward. I don’t have a split personality. Not exactly, but I definitely have my author persona (which I bring out when I’m doing training or book signings as an example) and I have my, let’s just lay around and watch television persona. Granted, the later one rarely makes an appearance anymore. The one that does show up is the […]

NaNo 2017 – Day 22 – 50,000 in 22 Days

I did it. There were times last night when I wasn’t sure it would happen. The first of those was when I didn’t actually start my final push until 9:45 PM. I still needed 1,500 words at that point so I knew that no matter how fast I typed, I was going into overtime. At 50,007, I decided I could call it a day. That was around 10:30, I believe. I still wrote fast, but due to the delayed start I was later finishing than I like (for full disclosure, I don’t ever sleep well and I get up at 5:30 AM so I need to go to bed relatively early). Still, it was worth it. Challenges for the Day […]

NaNo 2017 – Day 21 – The End is in Sight

My official goal for yesterday was 2,000 words but in the back of my mind I had a different, more ambitious goal. My very first NaNoWriMo took me 22 days to complete. As of day 20, I was only 5,000 words shy of the 50,000 word goal. What if I upped my game a little and finished strong? What if I did 2,500 per day on the last two days? So, I sat down and worked to achieve my stated goal of 2,000 words. When I hit that I still had more story in me so I kept going. When I faltered just a little, I checked my day’s output and realized I was only sixty-odd words shy of hitting […]

NaNo 2017 – Day 20 – 45,000!

I knew I was close to hitting 45,000 words. I also knew I had previously scheduled activities going until later (in this case, my Scouts and I were volunteering for the Salvation Army’s Christmas Kettle program). I got home about 8:30 and immediately sat down to write. As I got closer to 45,000 I started checking my word count. I was ready to quit for the night when I first checked; I was less than 500 words away. Should I go for it or not? I decided to plunge ahead (again, checking my word count every few minutes). I wanted to leave myself something to pick up on for my next day’s writing but I also wanted to hit that […]

NaNo 2017 – Day 19 – Still Battling

Readers seldom see the effort that goes into writing a book. I remember when my second Mik Murdoch novel, Mik Murdoch: The Power Within was first published. It took me months to write it and more months to edit it. I received my first email asking when the next one would be out. That was both rewarding and frustrating. Stories have this nasty habit of becoming a huge burden at the 2/3 mark. That is the time when the author has been living and breathing the story for a long time and is thoroughly tired of it. The excitement that was there at the beginning has faded into something that is approaching hatred. Fatigue, certainly. Writers just want to get […]