Reflections

So, here we are in month 5 of the Million Word Challenge. It’s the perfect time for a little reflection.

January
Words Written: 51,131
MWC Goal: 84,940
Pace: -33,809

I started off just as I’d hoped – making a decent stab at the challenge. I wrote 3 new shorts and added new words to two different novels (a modern thriller and a supernatural detective novel set in Victorian England).

Then, my wrist injury happened…

February:
Words Written: 8,709
Total Words: 59,840
MWC Goal: 161,660
Pace: -101,820

Most of the month, I was recuperating from my hand & wrist pain, so it wasn’t until the last 2 weeks that I was able to do some writing (and it was minimal at that).

I started working on an online serial and also did some editing on one of the shorts I had started in January.

March:
Words Written: 15,133
Total Words: 74,973
MWC Goal: 246,600
Pace: -171,627

The first week and a half, as well as the last week or so were my most productive. In the middle there, I was working on the outline for the story-that-became-a-serial (started in February).

At the end of the month, it was a new short that I may now end up folding into the new novel I’m outlining. Not sure yet…but at least I was able to double my output from last month. On the mend!

April:
Words Written: 29,142
Total Words: 104,115
MWC Goal: 328,800
Pace: -224,685

Slowly getting back up to speed, I again managed to double my output from last month. Yay me! I also wrote almost every day, but I seem to have trouble sticking to me routine on weekends. I hate to say it but I kind of think that will also become a pattern now that the weather is getting nicer. I’ll try to look at those days off as creative procrastination

April was spent working on the online serial for Camp NaNoWriMo, but about halfway through, it stalled. I just wasn’t invested in the story anymore so I need to re-evaluate it and figure out how I want to proceed. I still love the idea, but something just fell flat when I started working on it.

The end of the month saw me reviving an old story idea and hopefully finally getting it right. I also started another new short based on the novel I’m outlining – and it was a fun one to write, so…bonus!

Goals for May
If I can again double my output from last month, I’ll be satisfied. I try not to dwell on how far behind I am. It can be challenging sometimes, but it is also a great motivator.

My goals are to finish 2 shorts, start a few new ones, finish the outline for the new novel, and maybe pick the serial novella back up again.

I also need to look at all the positive things up there ↑

I’ve gotten onto a relatively normal writing routine, I’m upping my output every month, I’m writing new stories and hopefully all of this legwork will translate into better storywriting skills (and sales!).

– Mary –

PMA

Joy here, and frankly I’m feeling fairly down about this whole writing malarkey. I always knew the million words this year was going to be hard and I seem to be defeating myself.

Currently I have failed to get my favourite work published, missed a bunch of short story comp deadlines and managed almost a whole week of 0 word days.  Meaning Umbrella has slipped behind, I have a load of stuff unwritten, the kitten story is unedited and the LRP which I’m running in less than 8 weeks has nothing documented and I’m a month behind on reading and writing for the FRPG.

I’m really struggling and it goes along these lines. Work is difficult at the moment, I am stressed and as someone who suffers from depression and anxiety I don’t say that lightly. I read somewhere a blog post about how reading the walking dead is impossible after a point because there’s just no hope, things just get worse and worse and worse until you, the reader, just can’t take any more. That’s how I’ve been feeling with life the last few weeks.

So here it stops.

I’m not being miserable, I’m not just staring at a computer screen doing nothing and I’m not letting the thing I love to do slip past me.

I’m going to throw myself back into the million word challenge even if it means writing 5,000 words a day to catch up (meep). So there’s only one question left to ask.

Where do I start?

February in Review

Hey, Colin here.

The second month into the challenge and things got a little tougher. At the time of writing I’m about 30k down on January. Now, that seems like a lot, and normally I’d be lucky to do 30k in a month, but in the one million challenge world, that’s all different. You see, in January, I clocked up 97k words. I’m just edging towards 60k for February. Now in the light, it doesn’t look to bad, does it? Even 60k in a month is pretty good going, and yet because I’ve stumbled these last few weeks I feel like I’ve failed this month.

Changing Expectations

And that’s a good thing—not necessarily feeling like a failure, but recognising I can and will do better. I had a long string of writing on consecutive days, breaking that chain only on the 50th day. So now that chain starts again. And this time I don’t want to break that chain at all.

So what went wrong on these couple of weeks? It’s a combination of things, and they are the same things that have plagued me for years, two in particular:

1. Too many projects. Aside from writing my own work, I’m also working on publishing titles through my tiny indie press ‘Anachron Press.’ It just so happened with the schedule i had that I needed to work on three projects in the month of February. This meant a lot of editing, reading, typesetting and formatting and cover art work. None of these tasks are trivial; they take up a lot of time. Because I hate missing deadlines I’ve put more hours into this side of things than anticipated, making it harder for me to get the writing done.

2. The black dog. Yup, it’s something I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of completely. Depression hangs about me like a dread anchor. Some days its light and I can move freely, while other days I’m stuck to the sea floor and drowning against inactivity. For whatever reason, these last couple of weeks have been super-tough, with the depression kicking my arse on a daily basis. There’s nothing to do but try and write through it.

There’s one other reason why I’ve struggled of late, and thats the completion of a number of short stories. I’m a fan of writing on two projects simultaneously. One big project like a novel or novella, and a short story. It means that in a day if I’m struggling with one, or i need to work through a problem in one, I still have another that I can work on and keep my word count up. But,as I’ve completed the various short story projects I had in mind, I’ve been focussing on one project and I hit a plot brick wall, writing myself into a corner and getting stuck for days on end.

I’m through that stuckiness now, and have another secondary/minor project to work on, so I’m hoping to see a return of regular and large daily word counts — if I can keep that blasted black dog at bay.

Small Successes

It wasn’t all doom and gloom though. I’ve still managed approximately 60k words for February and with the extra words achieved in January I’m on target for the million words in a year. I’ve completed and submitted a horror novella, completed and had accepted a short story, and I’m in the process of submitting two more. I have two others currently with publishers awaiting a decision. So things are still moving forwards. I just need to refer back to these small forward steps to keep me moving forwards.

Here’s to March and productivity. Onwards!

 

Tough Month

I knew I was going to fall short of the mark on this challenge, since I work full-time (sorta) and I have my finger in many pots. What I didn’t know was how short of the mark I was going to fall. I spent the majority of the days of February not writing, and a good handful of them being ridiculously sick with the flu. Some of those days I couldn’t have written much, even if I wanted to, but most of them I should have. Coulda shoulda. I plugged away today, and clocked in 4009 words, but that’s not going to make up the deficit. It’s just like playing an instrument, exercising, or learning a martial art — the day to day practice is where the benefits are. I’ve got to get back to regular writing, as best I can in my current situation. The rest be damned.

- HB

Quick update – Week 6

Hi all, Colin here again with a quick update for the last couple of weeks.

I missed out an update for last week, but I’ll combine that in with this one. So January has come and gone and I think it’s been a great success for all concerned, even for those who might not be quite hitting the target, it’s writing every day that’s been impressive. Between the challengers we have written a total of: 700,071 words for the first month of the year. That’s rather awesome. Three of us have hit the individual target of 84,940 and the majority of others were well over half way with that.

Matthew Wayne Selznick finished the first draft of his second novel during the months, so congratulations to him for that.

On a personal note my completions thus far are:

2 x Novellas and 7 short stories, 4 of which are currently out to various markets. I’m also currently 12k into the follow up novel to Artificial Evil my technothriller series. I’ll be working on that for the majority of February amongst a couple more short stories and another horror novella.

Let’s hope for an equally productive January and kick on with this challenge.

Week 4 Update + Some Project Details

Hey everyone, Colin here for another summary and some other things.

Week In Review

First up then we have the results for this week. Overall, most competitors are going strong. The combined total is down on last week by 14k, but the percentages keep climbing and that’s great to see. It’s still encouraging to see those who might not be hitting target still putting in word counts every day. That’s the name of the game here. Hitting a million words is a great target, but if you can’t hit that, if you manage to write every day you’ll have a great total come the end of the year, and that’s what this challenge is really about: encouraging writers to actually write. If you don’t write, you’re not a writer.

My Own Week

It’s been good I have to say. My second best week after week 3 (short of about 3k) but still over target. My aim is to build up a buffer in the first few months of the year while I’m mostly in drafting mode, as opposed to editing mode, which will likely cut into my writing time considerably. I’ve hit the month’s target with four days to spare, so I see that as a great opportunity to continue to build that buffer.

I’m averaging around 3k per day, with many days stretching to 4k. So far I’m finding hitting my targets easier than I thought I would, and that’s for one reason:

Multiple Projects

I’ve probably spoken about this before in my previous post, but I wanted to re-iterate the benefits of working on more than one project. My own personal approach thus far has been to have one ‘large’ project, whether that be a novella or novel, and one or two ‘small’ projects such as short stories.

I find I can’t always put more than 2.5k/3k into one project in any one day. I always get to a point where either I have to start a new scene (which is always a source of ‘the resistance’), or I have to think about a complicated structure. Trying to do those at the end of a day’s work isn’t easy so that’s when I switch to one of my other on-going projects. In my case: short stories.

Sometimes I’ll only add in 500 or a 1000 words to this secondary project, but over the course of the mouth that really adds up, bolsters my daily count, and gives me more material to either submit out to various markets, or have ready to put into a collection (I’m currently planning on doing both).

What I’ve Been Working On

Here’s a quick list of the projects that have occupied my 86,105 words so far:

1. A horror novella code-named ‘The Thing Under The Mountain.’ It came in at just over 37,000 words and is destined to be submitted to a small press. It’s set in the Canadian Rockies and has a distinctive lovecraftian/weird feel to it. It’s an expansion on a very short story I wrote many moons ago. That story has haunted me for years and I thought it’d be a good time to expand it and see what was lurking beneath. Status: 2nd draft. 
2. A science-fiction / cyberpunk novella titled ‘The Daedalus Project.’ This was actually supposed to be a short story. It’s a modern retelling of the Minotaur myth, but used as an allegory to the Internet and the fight for freedom of Information. I had outlined a few scenes and guestimated it would run to about 5,000 words. However, the world and the characters took over and soon it had grown to 14,000. The short story version was supposed to be for an anthology, but alas, it’s now far too long and I will seek other markets for this story. If it doesn’t get picked up then I’ll likely self-publish this one as it has a similar tone to my novel ‘Artificial Evil.’ Status: 2nd draft.
3. 4 secret short stories ranging from 4.5k to 8.5k. I cannot tell you anything about these yet. Status: 3rd draft.
4. Most excitingly as of this last weekend, I started work (again, after a few false starts) on the follow up novels to Artificial Evil. I’m working on books 2 and 3 at the same time (chronologically of course). I’m still in the outline / rough scene stage and exploring the various options. I’ve introduced some new factions to the world, and a new POV character. So far this is going well and now that the two novellas are in the editing stage, this will take the place of my main project for at least the next 6 weeks. Maybe more. Status: SHINY new thing.

So there we have it. The week in review and what I’m working on. I’ll no doubt update this again in a week or so. Keep on writing them words!

Late to the party (as normal!)

So I’ve signed up for the Million Word challenge. As with so many of my writing challenges, it started off on Twitter, with Colin setting himself the challenge of writing and grew from there. I’m a little late starting and if I’m honest, I’d been debating whether to take part. The word count breaks down to 2740 words a day which is higher than the output for National Novel Writing Month and having done NaNoWriMo a number of times, I know how arduous that can be.

The latter part of last year was really difficult for my writing. I struggled to get words on paper and when I tried to get into the minds of my characters, there was just … nothing. I’ve got notebooks of ideas but nothing inspired me, even updating my blog became a chore. I signed up to take part in National Novel Writing Month in November as normal but I battled to reach 9,000 words before calling it quits. Even writing my diary was too much. At first it was strange, then upsetting, then scary: how could the voices which has filled my head have gone so quiet? Would I be able to write again? How did all the stories I had started finish?

With a deadline rapidly looming I began to panic. I had the opening line of the story and nothing more. With the expectation that I would produce an 8,000 word short story, all I had was twenty. Seriously, a week to write 8,000 words and nothing but an opening line.

So I did what writers for generations have done: I sat down and forced the words to come. It wasn’t easy, there was a lot of procrastination (on the plus side, my wardrobe has never been more organised) and there was even more frustration but finally the words started to flow. For a first draft it’s not too bad, and needs work, obviously, but after having a word blackout for so long it was really refreshing.

Which brings me back to the Million Word Challenge. To say a million is a lot of words is an understatement. In order to complete the challenge we’re all going to need to complete a NaNoWriMo a month, plus extra. Luckily blog posts count and obviously all my short stories will be added to the total. I’m hoping that knowing I’ve got a daily word count will encourage me to write during my lunch breaks and perhaps take notes during my walk to or from work. I’m keen to get reviewing more movies for my website, there’s always my ‘Wacky Wednesday’ posts and I hopefully editing my various works-in-progress will up my word count.

Do I think I can write a million words? Those who know me would probably agree that I talk a million words in a day so in theory getting them onto paper shouldn’t be too hard. However, it will be tough. I know there’s going to be times when I will want to give up but then I also know that there are some amazing people who are suffering right along with me and by the end of the year I know I’ll have been part of the most amazing ride. So good luck everybody, see you on the 31st December!

Geri Clark Hellery