La-Tessa Montgomery

Total word count produced during Week 1 of the book camp is….  3,809

Not bad, but no where I near I needed to be.  I’ll admit, the NBA Playoffs are seriously messing with my concentration this year (Go GRIZZ!!) but I digress…

At first glance, I was heading into week 2 6,191 words below my weekly goal.  So I knew I had work to do, but I was confident I could do it.  Then I looked at my daily word goals and realized I’d horrible miscalculated my daily word goal. HORRIBLY.  Bascially, I’d only set my goal at half of what it needed to be.  So instead of needing 10,000 words a week, I need 20,000 …

Like I said… I was COMPLETELY off and I blame the playoffs (go GRIZZ!!) for my suspect math calcuation skills.   So actually, I’m heading into week 2  16,191 words off my goal.  (I’m such a spazz sometimes…. LOL)

Ok, I’m off to tackle my real writing goal for the week and I hope to make a dent in my week one deficit as well.  Hmm, I may have to go off grid this week to get anything done.

(But to be clear, going “off grid” does NOT mean I’m giving up any of the Grizz playoff games. I’m  just sayin’ )

Yes, yes. It’s that time again my friends. Tomorrow is day 1 of the Savvy Authors  May bootcamp.  I’m excited to get started. My newly finished UF draft will be my project for the month.  I’m hoping I can complete the total 1st round rewrites on it, thus  putting me in good shape to start my polishing phase for it in June.

I’ll admit, this is a highly ambitious project– undertaking  a 90k word rewrite in just 30 days– but I’m convinced with concentrated effort, I can pull it off.  My rough draft is a little over 80K words and I believe I can reuse atleast 85% of it for this next draft.  My main goals are to:

1. Add a new Act I (roughly 20k words)
2. Eliminate some now unnecessary scenes
3. Rearrange a few scenes to better serve the plot
4. Add about 15-20 k of new content. 

It won’t be easy, but generally nothing worth having , nor any goal worth attaining is.   I’m not going to lie to myself and even say I’ll do daily updates here as to my process, but I will do a weekly recap.

Best of luck to all my fellow bootcampers.

It’s now July, which means my month of boot camping it with Savvy Authors is over.  I am pleased to announce that I ended up with a total of 33,504 new words on my yet untitled Urban Fantasy.

WOOHOO!!!

Ok, now for the things I didn’t do:

1) I did not finish my manuscript- I originally set  to complete a 90,000 word UF story.  Ummm, I failed to meet that goal.

Now, for the things I did right
(and yes, I only did 1 thing wrong-lol)

1) I developed a daily writing habit
2) I learned when my golden times are and how to properly take advantage of all of my writing opportunities, both the peak and off-peak times

—and drum roll please—

The most important thing I discovered during June is:

3) I had a real break through on my story. When I first started this progress, I’d given up on doing a 3 book UF series.  Why?  Because I found the prospect of creating 3 stories right now very daunting.  So I chucked the idea and set about the task of outlining all my ideas into a traditional 3 Act format.  Then, I just wrote, and wrote, and wrote.  And over 30k words later, I was still working on Act 1, and had several ideas coming to me that I wanted to include before the first major turning point. 

Then it dawned on me, I have my 3 books outlined now– each Act is a loose outline for a book.  So now I have modified my plans for my 3 book UF series, my first task is to draft  3- 60k word drafts.  This way, I’m allowed the freedom to just get the main ideas of my story out, and uncover plot threads I didn’t know were hiding away in the inner most caves of my creativity.

And I get the freedom (yes, as anal as I am, I do have a fair amount of panster in me apparently-lol) to have a fair amount of room–to the tune of 30k words per book– to smooth the story out, drop in subplots, and weave the stories together.

So, my verdict for Savvy Authors June Bootcamp– PASS with a B+

19 days have come and gone, and I am now 26% percent done with my UF draft with 23,161 words.  Okay, in the grand scheme of things, I am far off  my targeted goal. Yes, I know I’m supposed to be closer to 75% done, but I’m not.  And you know what, I’m good with that.

 Because I am an analytical geek, I made a chart of my daily production.  On a good day, I tend to hover around the 2k mark, and on a bad day, I’m lucky to pull out 500 words.

Then I decided to delve in a bit deeper & get a little more geeky, I came up with the following list of stats that probably don’t mean a thing, other than they tickle the left side of my brain:

So, looking at this I’m seeing my avg daily word count is far below the 3,214 I need it to be. But again, the fact that I am producing any daily word count is a thrill to me.  And apparently, when I have a good day, I have a GOOD DAY-lol!.  Check out that best day stat, 6,796  in one day! I definitely need a few more of those. 

Then, just for S & G’s (& to tickle the left side of my brain more) I wanted to see what my first half of the week production was vs. the last half of the week.  While the numbers are not really statistically relevant, I found it interesting. With Saturday and Sunday writing included with the “last 3 days” figure, I would have expected my production to be really off the chain on the weekends…. Apparently not-LOL   .  But what this does show me is that I am more focused on my writing when I have a finite time during the weekday to write (usually 2-3 hrs only) vs. unlimited time (in theory) on the weekend. I think I procrastinate more on Saturdays & Sundays because “I have plenty of time to write”.

Because I got to thinking about it and couldn’t resist, I made a stacked column graph that shows what I’ve been spending my writing time on the last 19 days:

You know, I am shocked and amazed (no, really I am ) that I have actually spent more time writing than outlining. Me thinks I’ve truly made a break through here. Am I really learning that the best way to finish a novel is to just write the damn book? Hmm, time will tell…

Okay, enough time wasting.  Time for me to get my butt in gear for some writing today. I’m planning on wrapping up Act 1 and then outlining Act 2, hopefully setting a new personal best in the process. 

 
Side Note: as I was writing this, one of my CP’s and I were IM’ing back and forth about being right brained and left brained.  As it turns out, we are both fairly even brained, her more so than me.  I tend to lean towards my left side more, but today I am channelling my right brain.   This bodes very well for me and my word count goal of over 5K today.  I’m hoping I can even kick on the after burners and do a new personal best today.   7k – 10k would be a very nice addition to my word count. In case you are wondering about all this left brain vs. right brain business, I did a post on it a little while ago with links to two tests you can take. One is a quick visual test, the other a short questionnaire <here>. 

My test results are fairly consistant in that I tend to always be close to the middle, but leaning towards the left side.  I took the quiz again this morning for fun & today I’m 58% left brain, 42% right brain.  I find this quiz accurately describes me as a whole, but to get a sense of which side of my brain is peaking at any given moment, the visual test is key.  Today I woke up with the overwhelming urge to knock out the rest of Act 1–via fast draft, so I could work on my Act 2 outline.  A quick look at the visual & it told me that  my right brain is actually peaking now.  Good timing I’d say.  The right brain is the side that deals with the big picture side of things better.

“All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?”  

–Philip Pullman

I came across this quote this morning while I was searching for a motivational quote to post to my Savvy boot camp team W.O.W. (stands for Wordsmithing Other Worlds). While this was not the zippy, quick witted one-liner I was going for to spark us into action, this one struck a resonant chord with the writer in me. Today is Day 7 of the June Savvy Boot Camp, and after 6 days of writing, I am staring square at being 11,726 words short of the weekly goal I’d set for myself during this process. To say I’m disappointed is an understatment–I am quite unhappy with myself.  So I felt the need to craft a little Note to Self:

There are no excuses, I am 100% to blame for my own productivity.  My daily goals are very doable–I’ve learned to temper my excitement and set attainable goals over the last 2 years.  As long as I am DEDICATED and exert some SELF-CONTROL, I can make my daily word count goals.  Yes, it is a bit high at over 3k a day, but the purpose of the boot camp is to push yourself hard for a short amount of time to see what you can accomplish.  At least, this is the goal of the boot camp for me.  So unless I get my butt in gear, I’ll be doing me a big disservice. 

See, I’m not really all that concerned with finishing an entire draft in this month (although trust me, I want to), I’m more concerned with showing me–specifically the part of me that doubts and second guesses every step I take, every word I write and my dream of having a  spot in the literary world as a published author– what I could accomplish with concentrated effort, dedication and prioritization. Like I said, my daily goal is a bit of stretch, and I know that some days will be better than others in that other priorities will sometimes trump my writing for the day.  Looking back on the past 6 days, I can honestly say this is not the case, I’ve just not put in the effort I’ve been needing to.  I’ve had one really stellar day–hit over 6k that day–but I’ve also have 1 day in which I didn’t write one thing, and several days where I hovered around mediocrity with a average of about 1,200 words.

So today, I’m getting serious about my efforts this month because I owe it to myself to see what I can really do.  I owe it to myself, and no one else, to see (1) what I can really do if I push myself a little and treat my efforts with the respect it demands and (2) see if I can meet the goal I set forth for myself for the month of June.  I’m tired of setting goals, then giving myself the okay to not reach them because the kids were a distraction or I was busy at work or I was  tired or I just didn’t feel like it…

It’s early and I have a full day ahead me (I’m in a very busy season with my day job and my kids will be back home today after spending a week with the grandparents).  While it is not likely I will hit the 11,726 mark needed to go into week 2 flush on my word count goal, I will surely give my writing the effort and respect it deserves today as I try to break through this mark. 

I will update this post, and my word meter with today’s progress before I head to bed tonight.

**Update: Word Count from 6.7.10–2,129**