Saturday, January 23, 2016

Write On!

For those of you who are new to my page, in addition to being a web designer, social marketer, and graphic designer for work, and being a musician and songwriter for fun, another of my hobbies is writing. To date, I've written four novels, a songbook, and my father's memoirs (links to buy below); I am currently working on the second volume of Dad's memoirs, two more novels, a book of short stories, a poetry book, and a cook book.

Suffice to say, my life is busy enough that I rarely have time to seriously devote to writing any more, but I've decided that I need to finish another novel and at least one other project before the end of the year. In that spirit, I am embarking on my own, personal FebNoWriMo. It'll be like NaNoWriMo except with fewer days and lower word count. I'm shooting to write 25,000 words between February 1st and February 29th (it's a leap year!), which means I have to write around 862 words per day to reach my goal.

Let me tell you, 862 words is nothing. When I was writing my espionage novel, Devil's Handiwork (not yet released), I routinely wrote around 3,000 words per day, but I think that is mostly because I outlined. A lot of writers don't outline, and, you know, whatever works for them. Me, I need an outline, even if I just toss it after it's done, I have a road map. As I am writing, I may deviate from my plans in the outline, and sometimes, that means that the books takes a dramatically different turn that what I'd planned, but that's okay! Most times, the deviation makes the whole thing better. But having a plan definitely helps me write: I wrote the second book in my Sorrow Stones Trilogy in 28 days using that method. I wrote the outline and then just elaborated on that sparse summary, often deviating from it, and the end result was something that I am really proud of, even though almost no one has read either it or the first one in the series.

So, keep me accountable, readers! I am going to post word and page totals every day in February. **finger crossed**



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