Accountability and A to Z

I thought about saving this post for the 1st, or Saturday, but I'm forging ahead!

First: update on progress on eWife 3.0, prototype first draft completed a few days ago(yay), it's short but it has all the major scenes in it and is printed out and in a notebook for following along with daily writing schedule. Second story for the Romance Fast-track on the Harlequin forums, roughly plotted out and ready to start on if I decide to storm ahead on it.

Second: A to Z

Decided to give this a go. First year doing it, and I'm terrible with schedules so it might just go to hell, but giving it a shot!

I've prowled the blogosphere to see the approach of others to this bloghop, and most seem to have a theme of some sort. The only theme I can keep to with any kind of regularity is being ridiculous. I can be ridiculous 24/7, so I guess that's my theme: Snapshots from Ridiculousville. We'll see how that pans out :)

Accountability Update & Bready stuffs

Loving the snowflake method for writing. First time using it, and feeling ridiculously empowered. Building from one sentence to one paragraph to one page... and on to a (short) prototype first draft takes all the overwhelmed feelings away from the process. No start at A and write 60K words and hope you end at Z, the gradual expansion makes it all feel very possible. It's comforting.

First draft goal has evolved. Harlequin announced a fast-track for their Romance/Riva subs, and since Riva is where I feel my voice belongs within the Harlequin family, I've derailed from eWife enough to start working on another story. Much as I am uncertain about my ability to write two projects at the same time, my first draft on eWife by April 1 goal has become Prototype First Draft by April 1, and actually I'm ahead of schedule on that.


Amending goals to include prototype draft of the Fast-Track Riva manuscript, along with first chapter and synopsis by April 23, which is the end date on submissions.

Finally, is it crazy to feel like I'm cheating on my wildyeast starter to contemplate baking with any other kind of leavening? Seriously, I'm like... if it doesn't use the starter, I ain't making it. That can't be normal. I don't even know if you can use it for stuff like... cookies. Or biscuits!

Books, Accountability, and The Walking Dead

First, I have to say I love winning books! I actually got the one from the referral link a few posts ago, and am happily reading Louisa George's debut today, which I just noticed isn't available for purchase through harlequin.com, only Mills&Boon. Only three chapters in so far, but loving the characters! I also managed to snag a Superromance(ebook link: Here Comes the Groom) from Karina Bliss the other day on the Superromance blog, so it's next on my TBR pile.

On the goals: So far, so good, though it might be a two steps forward, one step back sort of 'so far, so good.' I am keeping up with daily word count, but today I decided to start the story over. So much has changed I feel like having a rewrite of the first couple chapters will be more in tune with my vision of the story, and will also help propel me into the way the rest of it needs to go. Plus, it should be pretty easy since I already have written this once. Or twice... Okay, this is the last time I'm starting over before finishing the entire draft... but I am starting over again today: eWife v 3.0.

Who's your daddy!?

Finally, I'm addicted to The Walking Dead. Like, really addicted. I knew I loved it because it's all about the characters and how they change during their tentative zombiepocalypse survival, but I never really put together how much it was like a soap opera with a living dead backdrop before. It's no wonder people get addicted to it.

I even actually connected(briefly) with a, er, somewhat unsophisticated cousin(who I usually fail to interact with) over The Walking Dead. I asked her: which character do you like the best? And who do you think would be the best leader? Both of her answers were: Daryl (which really didn't surprise me, I do live in Appalachia). So I'm going to ask ya'll: Who do you like best, and who would you want to follow? And WHY? That's the important bit. What is it about these characters that inspires or interests us?

For me, I just love Glenn, he's still sweet and I think he has more innocence about him than Carl does, and Carl is like... 10 or something. It's neat to see him remain untainted, somehow, by all this. Bad stuff might make him sad for a bit, but he rebounds, and still thinks of others first. I know that overall, this is Rick's story - he's the protagonist, the leader/character who struggles the most with whats moral and what needs to be done. But, I have to say, if it was all about staying alive, I would back Shane to keep me alive. I hasten to add: He could keep you alive, but only until his bad people skills and hair-trigger forced you to kill him, OR YOURSELF.

And as much as I hate to admit it(since it doesn't speak highly about my maturity, stability and reason), sometimes that caveman thing Shane has going on is hot. You know, a really destructive kind of hot. Future burning-bed kind of hot. And to my shame, I must concede I still have the urge to fix the bad-boy. What's up with that? I should be past that by NOW, surely.

Goals and Deadlines

A few things about accountability. I need:

• small deadlines/goals to keep me moving without overwhelming me
• accountability somewhere public, with the threat of shame... because I have no concept of time, or really, just a general problem with assigning values to numbers, and I will goof-off if I'm just sure I have time to spare.

Which leads to me not knowing what is a reasonable amount to write in a day. I can do the NaNo math and say I need 1667 words per day to hit 50K in a month, but is this reasonable or is this a drive-yourself-crazy amount of words?

I could just be setting myself up for failure with this, but here we go with goals:

• 10 minutes free-writing by hand every morning before leaving bed. Wake up, write. No excuses, even if I'm doing the peepee dance. Anything goes.
• At least 1000 words per day
• First draft current WIP completed by April 1, even if it is way short of overall word count goal. First draft is for laying out story, more words will come later with layering in description/emotion.

New Voices/Accountability Take II

Saturday night, the wee hours, and I am somewhat pleased with my first chapter content. I still like the story. But, as usual, I think my writing skills rival those of a deranged chipmunk. Sane chipmunks obviously write *much* better, duh.

My critique partner has been swallowed up by real life  So, going to go over it again, lament, possibly play a death dirge, and then send to a lovely romance-loving peer who has kindly offered to read it.

Promised to have a version of it to her Sunday morning to read, and will keep to that schedule.

Though I must confess, the confidence gremlins are running AMOK right now, the nasty little buggers.

Current life goal: Do stuff to assure my next incarnation is a sane chipmunk. I'm not sure what stuff yet. Eating more nuts? Sing in high squeaky voice... climb trees. Omg, wikipedia just informed me that chipmunks are omnivores. Those suckers HUNT prey. If that's not just a Disney nightmare in the making, I don't know what is.

Back to work. Don't want to waste these *awesome* insights on my blog when they could obviously make my WIP the BEST. STORY. EVER. *ahem*

Accountability

The first couple chapters in a new project are extremely slow and un-fun for me. There are many reasons, which I will probably write about at a later date! This post is solely to give myself a public deadline so I stop doing silly, unproductive yet highly amusing procrastinationalatory(like make up words) stuff.

Present Status:
Word Count: 2500 (possibly extremely lame words)
Plotjitsu: Lots of scene cards already written up so I *should* know
              where to go if I can stop questioning and dithering.

Goal 1: Rough draft of Chapter 1(approx 4K words) completed by the weekend
Goal 2: Polished and uploaded by midnight EST Sept 15.


BTW: If you are an unpublished romance writer and you want to give the competition a go, it's free, and information can be found at www.romanceisnotdead.com -- there is also a Facebook group page located here