A Quick Squee About Dominant Race

Yes, that's my handwriting. And an outline for Dominant Race. =D

So I fell a little behind on everything and today I decided to kick my butt into gear. Did dishes, did laundry, caught up to where I needed to be with editing. And then I wrote on Dominant Race. Aimed for my desired 1000 a day with the secret goal of 2000 if I was able. I didn’t want to push myself too hard because I was exhausted.

Instead, I churned out nearly 4000 words. Yeah, wow. I just had to do a happy dance for that. A very, very, very, very happy dance. Dominant Race is not sitting at 55% completion and the plot is coming along perfectly. The pacing is just right. I’m in love all over again — hopefully it’ll last long enough for me to finish this.

Happy Tuesday! Was it any better than Monday?

EDIT: This is my 100th post! Happy just got happier.

Editing Tip: Knowing When to Trust Yourself

I started editing my draft of Dominant Race last week.  You’d think I’d be somewhere around the 1/5th mark, right?  Wrong.  I’m still on the first 2,000 words.  I’ve edited them three times from top to bottom.  The first was fine, very basic.  The second was on bad advice and born out of insecurity.  I created a draft I instantly despised and was embarrassed of.  Why?  Because I thought my style was inferior.  I thought I sucked as a writer.

In short, I didn’t trust myself.

There’s a time to listen to advice and a time to trust you know what’s best.  Style and characters at this stage are very vague to outside eyes.  But not to you.  You see exactly where you want it to go or, if that’s still unclear, at least have some idea of what you want the story to look like when all is said and everything is blown up.

So trust yourself.  Trust you know what to do enough to confidently edit your story, but don’t think you’re good at going solo.  Those outside eyes are still needed.  They just need to read a polished, clear version of your story.

I learned that the hard way.  That’s my little tip of the week I guess.

2K Challenge DONE: First Novel Draft is Now Complete

That’s right! I’m sitting on 52,360 words and a completed first novel draft.

I'd like to thank my husband, my hypothetical cat, and let's see, who else?

I didn’t keep with the 2k a day, but I also had days where I wrote 4 or 5k instead.  Meaning I was ahead in some respects but at the same time fell severely behind.  Then yesterday I realized I was a lot closer to the end than previously thought.  My original word count goal was NaNoWriMo’s 75k.  Thing is, the story was done, so I ended it.

Now that doesn’t mean, by far, that this draft is ready for publication.  Are you kidding? Halfway through I changed the city (and the time era, for that fact).  The main setting was supposed to be Houston, TX (because it’s what I know and can describe).  Thing is, it eventually changed to the remains of Houston in what they call Hughes City.  You don’t see that change until about 2/3 through the draft.  And don’t get me started on names.  Some of the characters flip around a bit, and some just stopped getting mentioned all together.

Most of it is adverb-ville, full of telly phrases and cliche dialogue.  Why? Because I’m a fangirl and I think in cliches? Maybe. I think I’ll go with because I’m human and no one can make something beautiful in the first draft. Yes, that sounds much more dignified.

Anyway, if there’s anything I learned with this it’s to stop when the story feels done.  Word count, ultimately, shouldn’t define when you end a draft.

I know, I know, I'm awesome. ;P

So tell me, how do y’all write your first novel drafts?  When do you know the draft is done? I’d love to hear from y’all.

Falling Behind On My Word Count

College has seriously kicked my butt this past two weeks.  Last week: math quiz.  Not too bad, right?  Add in the fact that I’ve been sick.  This week: math test.  Tomorrow.  Math is my weakest point, and this whole imaginary numbers thing is making my brain look like this:

Look, Elisa's brain cells!

This high vaporization point of my inner workings has resulted in a severe drop in writing output.  In other words: I’m falling way behind on my 2k challenge.  Still, I can finish the draft by my April 18th deadline since I’m around 2/3 done with the actual plotline.  The draft is so rough though.  I do have my main points in place, but everything else is still very raw.

We’ll see how this goes.  Wish me luck.

Oh, and I’m going to start posting my short stories and potentially some of the first edited chapters of this story.  I would like your feedback on this though.  Would you be interested in seeing my writing up here?  I mean, I know the seemingly obvious answer is yes, since you’re probably reading this because I am a writer (or because you’re my friend and feel sorry for my lack of comments).

So yeah, my next blog should hold a lot more interesting content.  Hopefully.

PS: if you noticed the writing blog I had created for my writing disappeared, that’s because I made it so!  Why?  Because I had two short stories on there and three poems.  Not enough for its own blog by a long shot.

PPS: yes, I change blog looks frequently.  I think this one goes easier on the eyes, but that’s just me.