Writing: A Progress Report

I have been writing again, more seriously, more regularly. I retired although I'm still freelancing, and the time I used to spend getting up and going to work, I spend getting up and going to work. I keep almost the same schedule yet the time is spent on my own stuff and I work for clients in the afternoons. Mornings I try to write. Mostly I succeed. As I told a dear friend, quoting Bird by Bird, the key task is to sit down. Then open the file. Type the next word. And sooner or later you will write a few sentences and then it starts to work and flow, a trickle and then sometimes a torrent.

I also told her that if she has the data gene, keeping an Excel file is a huge help. Something in my psyche is deeply comforted by entering the new word count after every flurry on the keyboard. And that's another reason that NaNo is such a huge help in this lonely world--just you and the page. And the keys. And the words. Having those fabulous charts, the steady upward slant, even the days with no words, no gains, they aren't so disheartening.

One of my new self-sabotage devices is to keep multiple projects going at the same time. That way I can skip around, and dither, and avoid those rough passage, the choppy middle when the plot is simply ridiculous and devious and elusive and I can't outline it, and the index cards are no help. No problem. Work on something else.

So since I am a counter and a grapher and an Excel addict, I will report here on my recent progress. Since November and Nano I have three been working on three projects:
Rosalita, a YA urban paranormal that I've been working on off and on for several years. I have almost finished it except for a gnarly patch in the middle of the second half. I began November with 30,317 words and now have 45,000, again of 15,000.Earlidoucet, a literary novel, a brand-new project, began November at zero and as of today have 6,041 wordsLife List, a memoir, began November at zero and as of today have 25,379 words and it is completely outlined with each chapter summarized and most of them with a few paragraphs to give me something to jump off of. I did this one at the behest of an agent, who has been very helpful to me over the years but has never been the right agent for anything I write.So that's not bad. 46+K words in four and a half months. Of course, real NaNo people do more than that in one month. But that's okay. 
I have several finished MSS in the drawers, all of which have gotten full reads from agents and multiple "almosts." I am tempted every time I hit a rock in the river of these three projects to pull one of them out, revise it and self-publish it. I may do that eventually. And I did some revisions long ago, when they came back with helpful feedback. In every case I am now seeing those novels differently, through the lens of time. And I know some things that I can what to do to make them better. 
And I now have the time and the freedom to do it. What is squishy is my will. But it's really nice, the time and freedom thing.


2016 Reading List:
8. Chasing the North Star, Robert Morgan
7. The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin
6. H Is for Hawk, Helen McDonald
5. Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins
4. The Road to Middle Earth, T.A. Shippey
2-3. A Darker Shade of Magic, A Gathering of Darkness, V.E. Schwab
1. The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante