This made my day!

Besides going back to a short story I started back in the spring and picking up right where I left off, I not only wrote 1022 words for a story that only needs about 2 k more to be complete, I got a nice surprise in the mail.

It was my first place certificate from First Coast Romance Writers for their Beacon contest! And I received the judges comments as well. Two checked off "This book is superb. Masterfully written." While the third checked off "A wonderful read." Not bad! All three greatly enjoyed the story and the third expressed a wish to read more books like this.

It's perks like this that make all the hassles of writing worthwhile.

And forgot to mention yesterday that I posted over at Slip Into Something Victorian about preserving food for Civil War armies.

Feeling unproductive today

I planned to finish the end of my first draft this week, but it's just not happening. For one thing, I'm signed up for a workshop on Character Torture and already had two lessons and a homework assignment to complete. And I did such a bad job with the homework, I had to do it over and still didn't get it right.

It's a real learning experience that shows me that draft I'm trying to complete is going to take a lot of work when I get to the revision stage. I don't know if that's why I'm freezing up on the project or I'm just getting tired of working on one thing day after day.

If I can't get back into it tomorrow, I might switch to one of the short stories I've started on and see if I can do something with that to get my enthusiasm for writing back.

Of course, if I could just get that homework assignment right, I might not be so scared to go on with the draft. It's a first draft after all. It's allowed to suck. LOL.

Getting closer to 'the end'

After taking a day off, I'm back to adding to the word count of the first draft of my science fiction romance, A Pirate's Honor. In the past two days, I've added over 2500 words to the draft.

If I can fight off my procrastination that seems to descend when I'm close to the end of a project, I'm hoping to finish up sometime next week.

I do have a workshop starting on the 19th, but I hope to navigate around that and finish this project up. I'm just so close!

Wish me luck.

When inspiration wavers, I clean my desk

Today was one of those days. I don't know if it's because I'm nearing the end of my first draft, but I just didn't feel like opening the file of my latest project today. I have a plotting sheet describing what will happen in the end of the story and am currently writing an exciting scene that leads to the Black Moment, but when my writing time of the day came along, I just couldn't go into the file.

So, I thought a day off from writing might be what I needed. But now what do I do? Watching TV or reading, unless it's writing related, would just feel too unproductive and I'd regret it later. So what to do instead?

My solution was to clean off the mounting pile of supposedly important things I was saving on my desk. Some of the pile was important and needed daily, like the folder for my WIP. But there were also magazines that I was saving for reasons I couldn't remember and pages I'd printed out.

About half of the pile was important, it turns out, but the rest went into the recycling bin. The important stuff I don't need right now went into file drawers. Although the pile is now a lot smaller, it's still there. But at least now, it will be easier to find what I'm working on and what I plan to work on when this first draft is finally done.

I feel a bit more organized and plan to add to my word count tomorrow.

Post about paperback books in Civil War camp

I'm over at Slip Into Something Victorian with another post from the book, More Civil War Curiosities. The post is about paperback books distributed to Civil War soldiers.

Summer Book Challenge report

Although I wasn't able to complete the first draft of my summer book challenge book, a science fiction romance called A Pirate's Honor, I'm pleased to announce that I'm 68,936 words along.

All I have left to write is the black moment and ending. I should have no trouble completing this by the end of this month.

So, that said, my goal for September is to finish and write 'the end' to this draft.

I'm looking forward to putting this manuscript aside for a bit, so I can work on a few short stories and novellas for a change.

Writing Goals

August is over and Labor Day less than a week away. It looks like I won't be completing the first draft of A Pirate's Honor, my summer book project.

But I've written nearly 66,000 words so far and am coming up on the black moment scene. I should be able to complete the draft this month. Then I can put it away to cool and work on some short projects. I already have two short stories and a novella in various stages of development and am looking forward to a break from novel length. Maybe I can finish up a few and get them submitted before I'm ready to even start the revision on the full.

I'm looking forward to working on different genres and lengths this month and October as well. It should be a fun break.