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NaNoWriMo Days 9-12

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Day 9 – 645 words

Days 10 and 11 – Nothing

Day 12 – 1,150

Total so far: 14,573

Yeah, I’m wa-ay behind. Between writing up a co-op lesson, helping my kid get his video ready for his film-making class, taking a sick kitty to the vet and putting together the “Yes, You Can Be Published (For Free)” course for Tuesday night, I haven’t had a whole lot of time or energy to do much writing. And to make matters worse, Tuesday night into Wednesday morning I’m working an 11 pm to 7 am shift at a new  house in Penfield. This means class will wrap up at 8:30 pm (or so), and then I’ll be crawling back outta bed by 10:30 to run down to Penfield to stay up all night. Oh yeah, I’ve really thought this through.

On a positive note, I have the rest of Wednesday and all day Thursday off. I hope to rest and finally get some words cranked out. My son will, doubtless, want to watch a “guy flick” with me on Thursday, but I should have quite a bit done before that time.

The bright spot is that Tree of Liberty has now (finally!) passed the 50K mark, and once it’s done, I’m gonna be looking for some BETA readers. I’ve got a few in mind, provided that they leave me reviews once I post it on Amazon. I may yet do the same thing with Topheth.

I’ve been rethinking my overall publishing strategy – as in, actually developing one for 2013. I hope to actually plan out my launch and marketing rather than just dumping the books on the market without any regard for when or how I might try to sell them. Yes, this means a slight delay for the books I’m currently completing, but I believe it’ll work in my favor overall to do things a little more deliberatively.

NaNoWriMo Days 7 and 8

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Word count day 7:   3,766
Word count day 8:  +  221 (So far)
Total word count:   12,441

For some reason, I just can’t get started today. I’ve got ideas. I kinda know what’s happening now with The Tree of Liberty, and after the election I’ve been rather re-motivated. Like so many Constitution-lovers, I fear the future, too. Maybe more so now than ever.  The guiding concept behind Jefferson’s Road was giving the Left an excuse to do what they’ve always dreamt about doing: turning the U.S.A. into the U.S.S.R. Now it looks like they’ll go for that even without the excuse. Now they believe they have a mandate, for crying out loud. And what with the Republicans gleefully accepting defeat yet again, there’s little to stop them.

Except us, of course. And that’s gonna get ugly.

I don’t want to turn this into a political rant. I’ve got a whole series for that. But I am grieving. Maybe that’s what’s keeping me from putting words on a page. I don’t know.

Topheth is coming along nicely as well. Cranked out some serious verbage on that last night. It’s another dark, grim story in Janelle Becker’s world. I hope those of you who liked The Coppersmith will give her another go in this book. Should be fun!

All right, enough. I just wanted to get the update in. I’ve got about twenty minutes of the day left, and I need another 900 words or so to reach my target goal. I’m getting back to work, now.

NaNoWrimo Days 3-6

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Day three – 1,829 words.

Day four – Goose Egg. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Then again, it is the Lord’s Day. Spent time with the family after church and watched Blue Like Jazz that evening. Loved what Don Miller had to say about being truth-tellers rather than salesmen when it comes to faith and God.

Day five – 1,485 words. A little lean, but climbing back in the saddle. The rest of Monday was spent at co-op, where I could only generate a measly 35 words… due largely to interruptions and tiredness.

Day six – 1,586 words so far. I’ll be able to crank some more out after I get some sleep from the overnight (and after voting is done.).

As it stands right now, Topheth has about 60K words written, and The Tree of Liberty has 45K. I’ve written about 4.3K words on Topheth, and 3.95K words on Tree. Of course, that’ll all change when I get some more to do this.  I’m 1,745 words off my goal for the day. I hope to get back ahead, and then capitalize on my third overnight tomorrow to gain some serious mileage before next Sunday rolls around. Then maybe I won’t fall quite so far behind. On a positive note, we’ve only got one more week of co-op left, so I’ll recover most Mondays in the month as well.

NanoWrimo Day 2

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Word count: 3,355.

I spent the bulk of my writing time finishing the revised outline to Topheth. The story has grown in such complexity from when I first began it five years ago. It might take longer to wrap up, if only because there’s so much more depth to it than I’d originally imagined. Nevertheless, I’m going to endeavor to complete the book in October no matter what.

I’ll be returning to The Tree of Liberty with today’s efforts.

NaNoWriMo Day 1

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Word count update: 2,615.

Most of that went to The Tree of Liberty. I did finish the next chapter of Topheth, however, and realized something significant: I am so far off my old outline that there’s no hope of recovery. No matter, the story is far better now. But it does mean I’m gonna have to map out the rest of the story sometime today if I’m going to finish it this month.

And So It Begins…

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Yay! It’s National November Writing Month!

Egads! It’s National November Writing Month! One thousand, six hundred sixty seven words a day for thirty days straight.

The good news is: I finished the new outline for Tree of Liberty, which means I should be well positioned to git er done before the end of the month. The bad news is: between Tree and Topheth, I’ve got about 55,000 words needed to finish both books. Thus, I’m going to be busy. Very busy.

And, of course, nothing changes during November. I still have to work full time. We still have a major holiday to contend with. I still have to produce a sermon for church every week (and no, none of that writing counts towards NaNo.). And I still have co-op lessons to write.

On top of that, I’ll be teaching my course on how to publish independently at the Webster Public Library on Tuesdays, November 13 and 20 from 6:30-close.

At any rate, if you want to follow my progress, you can check how I’m doing here on the blog, or at IndieAuthors.com, where I’ll be posting daily updates.

After the Storm…

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Well, we survived my sister’s wrath (inside joke. Gotta know my family), and the kids and I spent this morning cleaning up debris along our street – especially helping the neighbors who had some downed trees in their yard. Nothing too big to handle. It always kills me when people act shocked that neighbors help each other out. My God. What kind of society have we become that such is so unusual. Neighbors are supposed to help each other out. That’s why we live in communities.

Proverbs 27:10 says, “Do not forsake your friend or a friend of your family, and do not go to your relative’s house when disaster strikes you— better a neighbor nearby than a relative far away.”

At any rate, we’re fine and so is everyone else on our street, too. Power’s still out, though RG&E’s website says it was restored at 11 am. It’s a waiting game, I reckon. In the meantime, we’ve got propane to cook with, and a gas water heater for showers and such. Freezer on the back porch will keep the milk cold till things start working again.

Thanks to everyone for your prayers.

In the meantime, I’m still gearing up for NaNoWriMo, and I’ve picked up a new reader for In the Widening Gyre, so I really do need to wrap that book up in December. I’m at the library right now, using the local internet (wireless is out), just trying to wrap things up before the session times out. I’ll be going in to work an overtime shift tonight (called in “sick” last night ’cause we were under evacuation orders. Had go-bags packed and everything, but turns out we didn’t need to leave.). Hopefully, I’ll get some progress done.

I’ve gotten most of Tree of Liberty outlined now, and I think I see where the problem is. I’m gonna try to use the rest of today to finish outlining the story. Maybe then I can actually get this sucker done.

Planning Ahead…

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So I’ve agreed (in principle, at least) to use this year’s NaNoWriMo to finish The Tree of Liberty and Topheth… and if I have any time left in December, to wrap up In The Widening Gyre as well.

The Tree of Liberty has been giving me particular fits. I don’t want to give anything away, but let’s just say the whole thing feels like I’ve been swimming through mud. It just doesn’t have that particular urgency to it that I expect it to have. Thing is, I know exactly where this story is going and how the whole series ends, but I’m just sorta stuck right now.

There are two things I’m going to try, beyond just plowing through it in November. One, I want to strip the whole thing back down to outline (and I’ve never outlined a Jefferson’s Road story before), and see if I can’t figure out how to speed things up. The second is an insight my son gave me last night (And I don’t know how he recognized this). In the first two books, my main character, Peter Baird, is primarily reacting to what’s going on around him. He does act and make choices, of course, but he’s essentially a reactive character. In this book, I’ve been using him more as an actor, less as a re-actor (there’s a nuclear joke in there somewhere. Like, maybe that’s why the book has no energy? Guffaw.). So maybe the character himself has been resisting what I’ve been trying to do with him. It’s something to consider, at least.

Topheth is steaming along fine. I should have no real problems finishing it… so long as I can keep the heat on (shameless pun).

In the meantime, I’ve finally started successfully outlining the next Jonathan Munro Adventure. I’ve been wanting to do a story that takes place in Russia called The Music of The Spheres, but until this morning, I just didn’t have a good sense of what happens. But I picked up my pen and paper around 10:00 this morning, and now I’ve got almost six handwritten pages of outline done, with lots and lots of stuff happening that’ll keep it going right on till the end, I expect. This is good, because the second Jonathan Munro book comes out next Spring, and I wanted to have a third one ready to send off to my editor as soon as it does. This will give me a head start for the new year, and I should be able to get the whole thing finished in plenty of time.

So for the rest of the day, I’ll be writing up the outline for The Music of The Spheres, and then tearing into The Tree of Liberty.

As an aside, in a few weeks I’ll be teaching a class on Tuesday nights at the Webster Public Library for how to publish independently. We’ll be meeting in the common area on November 13th and November 20th from 6:30 on. The cost is $20 apiece if you want to attend, but I’ll basically be teaching how to design covers, publish, and promote online. It’s the same material I’m presenting in our homeschooling co-op, just taught in two, two hour sessions instead of eight thirty-five minute classes.

Dude, Where’ve You Been?

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I received this email from a friend this morning, and thought I’d share it with you:

Dude… where’s the writing/publishing updates?

I need to know what’s going on with my writing friend’s authoring endeavors (perhaps because I may somewhat slightly a teensy bit be living vicariously through said endeavors?)  🙂 🙂

Anyway … why is it so quiet on the website?

Hope all is well. And that you’re still selling many books.

And finishing the third book in the Jefferson Road series……….

🙂

Greg

This is what I sent in reply (slightly edited for personal content):

I’m still plugging away at stuff. Concentrating mainly on Topheth (Coppersmith sequel) and previously mentioned JR. Just figured out a major plot point in JR this morning (I do my best writing in the shower for some reason).

The book sales have petered off since the first major push of September. I’m needing reviews on the next two books (Spilled Milk and Eye of Darkness) before I can do any more formal promoting (something about five reviews needed minimally, though my publicist wants ten for the next one we promo. Yikes!).

So I’m just concentrating on getting something new finished. I’ve also been helping a friend with his book covers and formatting. He’s leaving his publisher and going indie, so I’ve been commissioned to assist. It’s good for a couple hundred bucks.

I plan on NaNoing this year (from NaNoWriMo – National November Writing Month and the attempt to crank out 50K words in 30 days), so I’ll use that time to get one or both of these books off my plate.

Other than that, I’ve been doing a lot of home repair. Just finished reinstalling a sump pump in the basement. The seal on the previous pump’s motor broke, and the entire motor housing got contaminated with water. Electric motors and water don’t mix. Anyway, they had an older pump down there that the motor still worked, but the pump fan was damaged. I repaired it with JB Power Weld and reinstalled. Hope it works!

So between housing repairs (washer, dryer, sump and vacuum cleaner), and overtime, I haven’t gotten a lot written. But I am still writing!

How ’bout you? What’s new on the homefront?

– Michael

Yes, it’s true, I’ve been somewhat absent from the site for a while. I should add that I’ve also begun the next installment on The Dragon’s Eye Cycle. Spending time with that when the main projects are just getting a little too frustrating. The advantage of fantasy is that I don’t have to do that much research as with other books.

The other thing I’ve realized – and this is essentially true of the Jefferson’s Road series, is that every new book gives me less and less freedom than the book before. The previous works constrain me in ways that a new novel doesn’t. I have to ensure that I’m maintaining consistency throughout, and the more I write, the harder this gets. My hat goes off to others who’ve done this and done it well (JK Rowling comes to mind – radically different genre, of course, but still: seven sequential books that have to remain consistent with the previous installments, or there’s hell to pay!)

At any rate, I hope to have some new material for y’all soon!

Enough to Quit

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As of this writing, I have now earned enough money from selling my books to quit my job. No, not my regular, 40 hour gig, but my part-time weekend job cleaning a hair salon (God bless you, Chad, for the opportunity!). I was earning right around $300 a month cleaning on the weekends for a couple hours each night, spending my time scrubbing toilets, mopping up hair clippings (they stick to everything!), and polishing mirrors.

No longer. Well, at least not for much longer. I’m giving my friend time to find a replacement. As much as he needs, of course, but the point is this: I’ve made enough money selling books in the past two weeks to pay for more than two months’ worth of cleaning.

Now I have the chance to actually go home at night and spend more time in the evenings with my family. This is the first step taken in a huge dream for me. Okay, technically, it’s not the first step. Writing the books and publishing them would come before that. Let’s call it a significant milestone, then.

The next mile marker is being able to walk away from overtime and taking my holidays when I have my holidays, instead of taking them on my regular days off. Just getting down to working only 40 hours a week would be huge, frankly. After that, the next mile marker is earning enough to quit my day job. I don’t mean to say that I’ll actually do it–at least not right away. But it’s still something I can see on the horizon. Except now it’s just a little bit closer than before.