Month: November 2016

No use crying over missed words…

Good Monday morning! I do hope everyone here in America had a wonderful Thanksgiving! And also my wonderful friends across the pond, I hope you had a wonderful weekend. As for me, well, I had a great one. But, with a holiday that’s busy, I missed my word count over the time off.

Word counts are important to a writer, right? The longer I write the more I realize that word counts can be pushed around a little. Yes, I know I’ve written about word counts being important and technically they are, but here’s my new philosophy.

Ok, I have deadlines, just as most writers do. I know what I need to get in every day, but when things happen, say life, for instance, stressing over a day or two of missed writing, well, it can make for a miserable time. So, I’ve devised a strategy. I have a writing journal where I keep up with my word count and where I need to be every day. Then I adjust as needed. Which of course means that I might need to double up on my word count for a couple of days.

If my book needs to be 30,000 words, then I’ll set my deadline to give me 35 days of writing. I try to write 2000 words a day usually, which means that I type 1000 words for two books a day. This way if I’m lagging behind a little, then I can add to one or more days to make up the lost time writing.

You may think that five extra days isn’t enough, but if you keep a journal and keep up with the words needed to get to the end and the daily count, then you’ll see that you actually could end up with days left, which is wonderful, you can start another book 😉

Now, back to the writing, as I said, I’m a couple of days behind… A little hint, I gave myself extra days for the holidays, so…

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

Just a little reminder, fall in love with Laird Ewan before the 2nd book comes out in just days from now! myBook.to/HighlandersHeart

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Seeing it clearly…

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Good morning! Hope all is well…

Have you ever looked at your work in process and your mind was more like the picture above? I’ve done this so much that sometimes I have to step away. But what can we do as writers to clear up the fog in our brain?

This weekend I spent most of the time laying around, trying to get over the cold that took over my body on Thursday. I’d planned on doing a major catch up on word counts, but every time I looked at my laptop, I groaned. My head was fuzzy, which is understandable with a cold, but the fuzziness I’m talking about is story line fuzzy…

As you know from my many posts, I try to outline all of my manuscripts, but even then, fuzziness can take over. Just this past week I had one of those, ‘where was I headed with this part of the story’ moments. I went back and forth between my outline and my manuscript, making notes and trying to regain the momentum. The best thing I did was to step back, take a breath, then go back to it.

Ok, so sometimes with deadlines we can’t do that, but I’m not talking about stepping back a week or more, just a couple of hours. Maybe take a long walk, going over the story in your head. And yes, the walk will help clear your head of the fuzzies. I’ve worked out more story problems while putting my tennis shoes on and walking up the road. Amazing how much it helps. If it is raining, then you can watch a movie, lay back and listen to music, or even plot out another story.

But what I’m getting at is when the story gets too much to handle, step back, clear your head and begin again. It helps. I actually scraped a whole manuscript doing this. Yes, it scared me to death, but I did it and was glad I did when I started over. For some reason, we go down a rabbit hole that there’s no way out of, and that can lead to a deeper hole, LOL!

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

Highlander’s Bride is coming soon… Keep watching for the cover reveal!