Yarnagogo's Treadmill

Monday

Man, it's been forever since I had a day OFF. I struggled like hell to write all week at work, and when I transcribed it, it was one measly thousand. And it had been so HARD to get it done. Sigh. I need more time off. Plus, I'm in that interminable spot where I'm moving forward plot-wise without knowing how the climax is really going to form. Bah. Treading mud.

1. 9:28
2. 1 hour
3. I will just write. See where the plot takes me.
4. 10:26, one hour
5. Went pretty well -- I kept writing, only checked email once, got more done in one hour than I got done all last week. And I think I know where I'm going next.
6. Tomorrow I'll be back at work. Of course. Sigh. I will write something. That's my goal. To write at least a sentence, even if I'm at work and it hard as hell. Might be easier, after all, I was working on a sexy scene last week, and that is MIGHTY hard to work on at the J.O.B.
7. I'll write for an hour, as much as I can, and I won't beat myself up if I only get a few sentences.

Hey, I made it to the second round in the Gather.com contest! One of the top 25 out of 300 entrants! Woot! Will yarnagogo blog it tomorrow. Proud of myself. It's a little thing, and it was vote-driven, but it's still a fun thing.

Phew

Bah. I can't treadmill while at work. And I'm always always always at work. And it'll continue this way for another couple of weeks.... I *have* been writing at work, just not as much as I'd like. Okay, I'm just pitching a fit, but it's hard. And today, this morning that I was going to spend writing, well, it's flown away from me, and I've been dropping a line here and there, but not working very hard at it. So here's my lame-ass written when I'm almost out of time grumpy treadmill.

1. 12:12 - starting trying to write around 10:30am
2. Was going to work until 1pm
3. I was going to work on getting my characters out of the mire they're stuck in. Motion! I need motion! Or motrin. Or something. Back in a minute.
4. 12:47, stopping so I can get ready to go out.
5. Frustrating morning -- couldn't stay on task until I actually started the treadmill, but it's like a whack upside the head with a pen -- once I did complain up there, I was able to write. I moved them out from where they were stuck in plot to where they're back in character and moving. Not sure I believe them right now, but it's much better than it was.
6. Tomorrow I'll work on completing this scene -- Nadine is acting out of character right now, but it's for a reason, and I want to get her back to her own solid footing.
7. I'll work for an hour in the morning, maybe at the cafe. I have a much harder time writing at home.

Only wrote 3605 words this week, and I was aiming for 5,000. But I did write every day. That's something. Better next week.

Keeping Score

I've been treadmilling in my head at work this week. I get to work at 6am. I use the first two hours of my shift to settle in and get comfortable. At 8am, I start writing. Through interruptions I've been averaging about 1200 words in two hours. I find that two hours is all I can comfortably do, splitting my brain like that. The job is obviously more important, and I drop the writing every couple of minutes to do something that needs to be done. But it's usually pretty quiet during those hours, and if I stick to it and put my head down, I can get it done.

I've been writing longhand, and then later in the day opening the computer that I share with a coworker and taking forty-five minutes or so to bang the words in. I'm not thinking or editing, not even really trying to avoid typos, just trying to get it all in there as fast as I can (although I do catch interesting things and change them on the fly). I find when I have twenty pages of handwritten work to type out, I just hate it. But eight pages at a time, that's do-able.

So yep. Wrote 1288 words on Thursday, 1188 on Friday, 1100 today. My goal right now is 5,000 words a week, and I've met that, and I'm working something like 80+ hours this week (I'm on an 18 hour shift right now, sigh) so I'm taking tomorrow OFF. I think I'm going to take tomorrow off of everything, actually. Maybe I'll go to the movies, if Lala wants to see a chick flick. Otherwise, it's a pajama day. Not doing anything that isn't relaxing and fun.

Wednesday

Well, hello. Here I am. Ready to start writing on the second novel. To continue, that is. It's just been so long since I actually wrote this piece....

1. 10:07
2. 1.5 hrs.
3. I'll jump right into whatever I decided the next scene will be. I won't check email. Nope.
4. 11:29, almost an hour and a half, 2000 words, working most of the time.
5. Worked on several scenes. Feels like I'm not quite sure of the characters yet -- still living with the last ones, perhaps. What makes these ones different? What makes them real?
6. Tomorrow I'll work on thinking about the characters and into the party scene.
7. I'll work at work. I'll write in my journal and transcribe it when I get home. See how that works.

Well.

Work does not agree with the treadmill journal, or at least, not while revising. I *did* work last week during my 62-hour work week, but I just focused on finishing the quick read of the current 1/2 novel-in-progress. You can't really plan a work amount when you're working 911 -- I would read as long as I could, and then I'd answer a phone, put in a call, have three conversations with co-workers, answer two more phones, then read another paragraph and start over again. I could only manage that craziness about an hour a day, so I got the work finished, and roughly line-edited, and that's all.

So now I'm ready to figure out how to get from the middle, where I am now, to the end, which I kind of know. There's this big blank spot in front of me. Sometimes I like to lie in bed when I can't sleep, and instead of thinking about to-dos or bills, I think about whatever I'm working on. I never expect a breakthrough, and god knows, if one happened, I'd forget it by morning, but it's fun to think so hard about something that the characters ramble your dreams the rest of the night.

Wish they would solve how to get from here to there, though.

1. 10:50am
2. 1 hr or until I have what I want.
3. I will plot. Scene by scene, until the end. Ack!
4. 11:43am, almost an hour
5. I think I really did  plot it all out, and it made me laugh out loud once, so that scene, at least, will be fun.
6. Tomorrow I'll dive into the first new scene. Would like to finish this book by Oct. 15th, so I can get ready for nanowrimo. Or, as I'll be doing it, NoBoWriMo, since I think I'll be writing a collection of essays, deliberately flouting the rules of it being a novel.
7. I'll write here at the cafe in the morning.

I feel confident now that I can finish this book. What I'm worried about is going back to the first half and making it match the second half. Ah, well, that's the editing phase, isn't it?

Hey, a romance editor hit me up after reading my chapter on Gather.com and said I was a good writer. She works for an erotica house, so my work isn't for her, but she thinks that I'll do well targeting the house I had in mind.... So exciting to hear! And right now I'm #3 of 300 in the competition! Who knows what'll happen, but I'm well chuffed right now, just having fun watching where this goes.