JuNoWriMo

  Thank you to everyone who has encouraged me during JuNoWriMo this month.  It meant a lot to me.  I am pleased to announce that I did it!  I reached the 50k mark today. I think that my book will need another 10k or so before it is complete but I am so pleased with how far it has come this month.

Thank you again for all of the encouragement and congrats to everyone else that made it this month!

What's Up Wednesday

It is time for What's Up Wednesday!


What I'm Reading  I am trying to add some middle grade books to my reading list so right now I am reading Storybound by Marissa Burt and Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai.  I'm also reading Where Yesterday Lives by Karen Kingsbury.  Yup, I'm back to reading a stack of books all at once.  I am really enjoying Storybound.  It is such a fun fantasy story and reading MG is refreshing.  I love YA but its good to step out and read something different.  The book I'm reading aloud to my children this week is Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by Betty MacDonald.  It is fun watching them giggle over a story I enjoyed when I was little.

What I'm Writing I am still drafting my YA novel, Simmer.  It is now 41k words long.  I am hoping, hoping, hoping that it will be at 50k by the end of June.  I am realizing that for my world to be more authentic I am going to have to spend some time researching old time sailing ships and other nautical themes.  Ships, the ocean and the shoreline play a major role in this book and I want the setting to be as rich and beautiful as it is in my mind.

What Else I've Been Up To  I cleaned out my closet, does that count?  Probably not.  My oldest son is going to a vacation Bible school downtown all this week so the younger kids and I have been going on "the great bakery quest".  We used to have a bakery that we could go to for a special treat.  It had huge muffins, sandwiches with homemade bread and all kinds of cookies.  When we moved away I thought it would be easy to find a new place for us to go.  It has been a year and we still haven't found the perfect place.  We are going to fix that this week.  We have tried out three potential places and there is at least one more we need to check out.  So far our favorite place is a little coffee shop down by the bay.  It has the most delicious cinnamon rolls, not to sweet, lots of cinnamon and a warm, buttery glaze.  My kids loved it there and so did I. 

What Inspires Me Right Now  Today I am feeling inspired by my husband's tolerance of my weird writing habits and how much of my time it takes up.

Meeting my Characters

       How is it that I feel like I meet my characters when my mind is the one that made them up?  Its  slightly disturbing if I stop to think about it...  I do love it when things just fall in place, however.  I will be writing and I just know that my character likes green and that she's scared of being vulnerable and that she hides behind her bold actions.  It makes it easy to know how she will react and what it will take to motivate her.  Sometimes I stop and ponder what my characters are like but most of the time their personalities just show up.  I realized this when I was answering a list of questions I found on a blog called Writer of Wrongs.  Most of the answers were just there for the taking whether I had thought about them or not. It was really rather fun! 
    Oh, but there is a limit to this magic.  I only seem to meet the good guys in my stories.  The bad guys are standoffish and slow to cue me in to their motives and personalities.  Its more like I'm chasing them around hoping that they will drop some sort of clue about themselves.  They don't even like to tell me their names.  Maybe I need to watch more movies with compelling villains.  At least my latest villain has a name and he has brown hair.  That's a start anyway...  I wonder why he likes to pick on my MC so much...  Maybe she will tell me, seeing that she is the more talkative one out of the two.

I'd love to hear how you come up with your characters or if they are like mine and sorta just show up!

Revisions

I've been revising all week.  I'm not sure if I love it or not but I don't hate it.  That is good enough, I suppose.  I think I will find it more exciting once I get past this first round.  I'm basically reading through and answering questions about every scene.
The questions I'm asking are:

1. Whose point of view is this scene from?
2. What is the goal of this scene?
3. Is the character consistent?
4. Is the conflict strong?
5. Does it end with a disaster of a hook?
6. Is the tension escalating?

I found these questions and a lot of other useful information at writerunboxed.
It is a guest post by Cathy Yardley.
I'm not following her methods completely but it gave me a great place to start.  I have answered these questions for the first 23 scenes of my book and I am noticing some interesting facts about my writing.

• I almost always have character consistency.
• I almost never have enough action/conflict.  I come off as passive when I shouldn't.
• I have lots of hooks and not enough disasters, which is probably why my work lacks action...

I take this to mean that I'm stronger in character development then I am in plot/action.  Now that I see these areas pointed out so blatantly I can begin to improve my work (hopefully!).  I also have detected a few major holes in my plot.  For example,my main character risks his life to get information from the enemy camp.  What is the information?  I never said.  What did they do with it?  Um...  Yeah...  That is going to need some work.  They did nothing with it.  Ever.  Discovering one's flaws is humbling but I feel like I am learning so much right now and that is encouraging.

Writing Updates and Goals

     I am happy that April is over.  I loved the A-Z challenge and am happy with my collection of children's stories.  I survived being the maid of honor at a wedding and traveling 12 hours each direction with my three children (leaving our lab/Great Dane puppy at the kennel was an awesome decision!).  Despite how well all these things went, I am drained.  I am ready for a new month.

    Last month my main goal was to avoid looking at the first draft of my novel "Awaken".  I succeeded, mostly, anyway.  After spending months immersed in it I found it hard to leave it alone.  I read all of  the Tiger's Curse books by Colleen Houck except for the last 50 pages of the final book.  Somehow the library here had a review copy of the book that was complete except for the final 50 pages...  How cruel is that?  I guess I will have to go to the downtown library and hope that they have the complete book.  I also read Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare and bits and pieces of books on revising.  I didn't do much writing other than my a-z stories.  I did start my next novel though! It deserves its own paragraph so more on that in a minute.

    My goals for May are:

• read 2 YA books
• plug away at the stack of review books that's staring at me
• begin revising "Awaken"
• finish plotting my new WIP (even though I've started writing it already...)
• write 2 short stories with the end goal being magazine submission

Knowing me, I will probably draft quite a bit on my new WIP, as well. 

   I made a post a while ago about following the muse.  I am so happy that I did!  My latest work in progress makes me smile every time I think about it.  I don't know if this will be it's final name but for now I am calling it "Simmer". 

Here is a line that may or may not be included in the book but I think it tells a lot about the tone of the book.

It was their way or die, or so they said. We looked around. The mainlanders were puppets. The islander’s were asleep, afraid to open their eyes to reality. We would settle for neither. We took to the sea. 

F is for Finished!!!

This is not my official post for A to Z but I finished my first book.  Well the rough draft anyway!!!  I am so excited!  It is a big accomplishment for me and now I am left wondering, "Now What?"

Progress, Goals and Happy Easter!

   I am going to be busy with my family and writing this weekend and will "try" to ignore my blog until A to Z April starts.  Between blogging, writing, homeschooling and traveling to a wedding, April is going to be a busy month.  I'm posting my March progress and April goals now while I have a minute!
     I haven't made all of my goals for March yet but I still have a few days.  I am so close to finishing the first draft of my book.  Its hard to make myself do anything else but write.  I want to reach that mile stone so much.  I expect to be done before April begins.  I only read one YA book this month but now that we are on spring break and I don't have any lessons to prepare I should be able to get that done as well.  I hope!   A relaxing book sounds perfect right now.  I ended up working on character development more than the outline of my next book.  I'm ok with that.  Its a vital step. So, in other words, if I work at it I should be able to achieve my goals but if I don't I am still pleased with my progress.
    April is going to be crazy.  Every time I blink, something else shows up on my calendar.  Its insane.  My only real goal for April is to do the A-Z challenge.  I am excited to be apart of it this year!  I would like to write a bit on my next project while the characters feel so fresh and alive in my head but I want to keep it light and easy this month, so I'm not setting a word count goal. 
    I hope that you all have a wonderful Easter.  I shared this Bible verse last year and I'm going to include it again this year. 

John 3:14-17 
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up;  so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.  "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him

Its hard to stay focused on the real reason for the holiday and not get wrapped up in all of the hype.  I am trying to keep the meaning in Easter for my children this year in much the same way that I did last year.    The main difference is that we are a 39 hour drive from the people we usually celebrate with so I'm trying to keep my little ones busy enough that they don't get to sad about it.

Happy Easter and see you all next month!

My book has a name!

  So, I am always talking about the book I am writing and how it has no name.  Besides that, I say very little that would hint to its contents.  Today I'm going to share just a tiny bit to let everyone know more about what it is I am typing madly away at day after day.  This may or may not be included in the finished book but I think it gives you an idea of what its about.

     Screams echoed through the night followed by a deep, ominous silence.    Cazden felt as if he were frozen in place.  How could one spend a lifetime protecting someone and then just walk away, knowing that they were going to die?  A slight movement coming from the bundle in his arms snapped him back to focus.  This was who he had to protect now and protect he would, even if it cost him his own life.

As of today, this book is no longer nameless!  I am calling it "Awaken".  It will hopefully be the first in a trilogy which I've been calling the Guardian Legacies.  That could very well change but I think "Guardian" will be included in it somehow.  Now, back to typing...

Wandering Thoughts

    What an interesting day today was.  I am so glad that my children are tucked in bed and sound asleep.  I'm hoping they learned the valuable lessons that I was trying to instill in them.  Lessons such as:

1. Dirty underwear make a terrible hat.  
2. If you have to scale a pile of boxes to reach something, you probably don't need that item.
3. If you have to try to lasso something with a jump rope in order to reach a different item, you probably don't need it either.
4. While you are on top of the boxes, attempting to use a plastic hanger to zip line across the closet is also a bad idea.
5. Sadly gummy worms are not high on the nutritional scale.
6. Dancing and napping are not the same thing.

Yes, that pretty much sums up my day.  Now I am resting up before I attempt to put the house back together.  My ice cream maker is humming in the other room. A day like today calls for home made blackberry vanilla bean frozen yogurt. 

    Now that I've shared all of those amazing lessons with you I suppose I should get around to the main reason for this post, my writing!  So far setting monthly goals is  working beautifully for me.  I feel more relaxed and that keeps my writing fun, which is how I like it!  I am less than 10,000 words from where I want to be at the end of the month, I am over halfway through my reading goal and I have a start on my outline for my next project.  Now I need a name for my current work...  Why is finding the right title so hard?  Maybe the frozen yogurt will help.

50,000 Words

   I am so happy that I just have to share.  My story is 50,000 words long!  I was so filled with doubts that I would never be able to write anything novel length but I am doing it! So far I am right on target for my March goals.  I will hopefully have a complete first draft very, very soon.  Now I'm going to go write an outline the old fashioned way.  My hands need a break from typing and sometimes a pen and paper is just plain soothing.

March Writing Goals

          I learned something about myself in February.  Daily goals stress me out.  If I get a little behind I feel like a loser.  It doesn't matter if I did extra on a different day, I still feel like I failed.  This month I am going to set my goals for  for the entire month, not a goal for each day.
My goals are:

• write 30,000 words on my novel
• make a basic outline for my next book (I keep thinking about it, I may as well write it down!)
• read two YA books

   I have a few other things I would like to accomplish but I am not going to set them as goals.  If I set to many I will stress myself out and probably not achieve any of them. I am slowly working through some books on writing and I will continue those.  I will also continue my book review books.
 Maybe I should write out monthly, not daily, house keeping goals too....  Its worth a try!

Weekly Progress

   I have officially reached the half way point in my novel!  I am aiming for a total of 60,000 words, but of course if it goes a bit longer than that I wouldn't mind.  Right now my work sits at 31,319. 
    My goal for this week was 7000 words and I surpassed it by 400 words.  My story has doubled in length so far this month!  Now if only I could think of a title.  Everything I think of sounds over used or falls short for some reason or another. I suppose the right one will hit me one of these days.
As for today,  I am not adding a thing to my manuscript.  Hopefully the extra time will be spent catching up on my reading and enjoying time with my family.

February Goal Progress

       My writing goal for this week was to write 5oo words everyday and to figure out my plot.  I still want to work on my plot a bit but I am much happier with it than I was.  It seems to be falling into line quite nicely.  I had been worried that my story was a spineless blob of words but now I am feeling hopeful in its potential again.  A lot of that is just my change in outlook.  The more I wrote, the more I remembered how much I loved this idea in the first place.  As for the word part of my goal, I soon realized that I am now a much faster writer than I was previously.  The words just kept coming, so I just kept writing.  I did over 1000 words a day.  My total for the week was over 8,000!  That is a big accomplishment for me.  I am changing my February goal to 1,000 words a day.  It seems realistic for me now and I love seeing a steady amount of progress on my total word count.

Sick Kids and Goal Updates

       My poor kids are sick again.  At least two of them are.  The third one is running away from the others begging them not to breathe on him.  Chicken soup is on the menu for today.  I am sad that my babies are sick but a slow paced day full of soup and Blue's Clues doesn't sound that bad.  The past week was full of running around.  Today I plan to air out the bed rooms and wash the linens, maybe I will even light a candle and read with my little ones.  We could all use a relaxing day.
     I have been sticking with my writing goals this month!  I know it is barely into February but I am pleased to have a positive start to it.  Hopefully it will set the tone to a productive month.  I have learned that if I spend time thinking about my characters and settings throughout the day I can have a decent idea of what to write by the time my kids are in bed.  When I finally sit down at the computer the words flow (usually!) and I have been writing close to double the words of my original goal.  I love how my characters are becoming more and more alive in my head! 
    Well, I have hidden from life long enough...  I need to go make some soup!