The Weekly Write: I Need YOU! [1]

The Weekly Write is a feature where I discuss all of my writing hopes, dreams, and fails. Feel free to join me! I love to hear what everyone is doing! 

I have attempted to do The Weekly Write once before but life got in the way. 

I say, no more. 

I need your help, guys. 

I need you to keep me inspired and keep me motivated to finish all of the projects instead of thinking about them constantly and feeling like a failure. 

I often feel conflicted when discussing my writing life. For years when people would ask me what I wanted to be when I "grew up" I would always say anything but "a writer." 

The word itself sounds scary. It feels scary. And most people don't understand. 

The truth is that my entire life I do not remember a time when "a writer" wasn't what I wanted to be. I would sit for hours and write words over and over agin, or copy chapters of Harry Potter because I just liked it and I didn't think anything I said or wrote would ever top it. (Let's be legit, THAT is still true). 

Looking back on it I was constantly heading towards one goal, and I would like other to join me as I try to make "it" happen. 

Let's talk about writing! Let's talk about reading writing! 

Let's encourage each other and try to make "it" happen for all us - whatever your "it" may be. 

Here are my weekly stats: 

Total word count: 40,082

Hours spent: 5

Words added: 4,322

Dream goal for next week: 50,000 (HA!) 

Realistic goal for next week: 46,000

So, all in all - not the best week. I also did get Scrivener which has been a large help with formatting and just separating my thoughts into tangible things. 

The truth is, this book may really suck - but I'm finishing it for me. 

This is The Weekly Write, and if you would like to join in, just leave a comment with your post or we can just talk about it there. I will be on Twitter as well where I will be hash-tagging my writing woes. 

We can get through this together. 

And I really want some company doing it. 

The Weekly Write [2]

This week on The Weekly Write we get to talk about how terrible things go when I make goals.

I have created a bullet style list so you can all view my failure:

• I didn't write hardly anything.          

 I did write things, so it isn't a complete failure, but my word count for a while was lower than when I began. Why is this? Because the editing monster got me.

I started by reading my contemporary, and I just started cutting paragraphs and rephrasing. Before I knew what happened, I was on page fifty and I was ready to add more content.

I feel a lot better about this work in progress than I did last week. I have become acquainted with it again. It's like meeting an old friend you haven't seen in a while. After all, I gave it a year of distance.

I remember what made me excited in the beginning, which has to be good.

I have decided that I am going to focus on the contemporary and my goal is to complete it by the beginning of September... if the editing bug doesn't get me again.

My question though is how bad can a rough draft be? I see holes. Huge holes and I just want to fill them all in and put a ribbon on them so I can continue, but I know I should write more before I lose the will power.

I don't care who you are, deleting ten pages of a manuscript sucks. Watching your word count diminish really sucks.

I'm having issues with when to keep going back and when to go forward. Anyone else feel really weird in the middle? I've realized problems, am trying to fix them as best I can, but I'm stuck between getting everything written and fixing this darn first half.

Any advice?

Contemporary WIP- 
Word Count- 31940
Pages- 109
Editing- Tons. It's a love hate relationship at this point.
Progress? - Meh. 

The Weekly Write [1]

Anyone else have multiple partially finished manuscripts just sitting there? You see them in your documents and they taunt you. You think, "I'll finish that soon" or "I will edit that later, just as soon as I find the time..."

In my experience, the time never finds you. It never presents itself, you have to go out and take it.

This is my way of going out and taking it.

I don't know if anyone is interested in doing this with me, but I am making a pledge, a pact, a promise or whatever you want to call it, to have something new written and revised every Monday.

I will be keeping up with my weekly updates here.

If you want to write, or have a project that needs working on let me know and I may consider making this a meme, but for now at least I will be doing it.

I would love to know what you guys think!

Week One: 

Last night I realized that I had a 110 paged draft, and a 56 page draft - both for two entirely different stories. Of course I knew I had them, but it wasn't something I actively think about.

Both of these stories I started enthusiastically. I was pumped and excited and I thought to myself, "Yes, I have finally found the one!" 

I have a curse - I get excited. An idea pops into my head and before I know it, I am ten pages in with nowhere to go.

It's moments like this that I realize I don't have the whole "writing process" thing down. I get lost somewhere in the middle and I take time to figure it out instead of just carrying on. That is probably the biggest thing I need to change.

It's just, my entire life I have wanted to write. In my head writing real books with real pages (Gatsby reference anyone?) is the ultimate dream. 

You hear all of this advice on writing and for me, I think while some of it is inspiring, some of it leaves me utterly confused. I'm always waiting for the right idea. I get what I think might be the right idea, just to get lost somewhere in between. It's a struggle, and it's real.

Both of these stories I started years ago, therefore I think editing needs to be done just to get me back where I need to be. My goal is to finish editing, and write enough to get me really going again this next week. 

Novel 1 Stats: (Contemporary)
32,341 words - Goal for next week - 40,000
110 pages
3 pages edited

Novel 2 Stats: (Fantasy)
19,976 words - Goal for next week - 30,000
56 pages
0 pages edited

I'm on summer break. It has to happen... right?

The Weekly Write [1]

This is a brand new thing that I will be doing every Monday, since I have recently decided to take my writing seriously I need to keep track of it somehow. :)

For one day a week I will consider myself a writer, and I will share with you whatever I have discovered on the writerly journey so far.

This week was extremely hectic because I was out of town for Thanksgiving and I had a ton of school work to do, of course this didn't stop this editing craziness...

This is the crazy that has been my life this past week. I have been editing the partial draft like crazy, which means that I have just been going through and adding description because apparently my first draft brain hates description.

I found gems like this while going through and the question was raised, what was I thinking?

As I was editing, I made the mistake of going back through and reading my edits which resulted in me editing my edits. :(

I haven't finished the first 100 pages yet, and this week is known as Hell week at my college so it may be another hectic week, but I know that editing is a completely different game than writing.

I actually find it interesting how my vision is the same, and what I wrote and what I wanted to write in edits matched perfectly. Because of the break and the editing I have done so far, I really think I know exactly where I'm going.

I actually had a brain blast the other day where I realized something about the plot that was obvious, but I'd just never noticed it before. I'm excited to get back. My goal is to have it all done by January 1st and to have critique partners reading it the 2nd. :)