Accountability, author's timecard, word count written, feeling lonely out there?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I still have two chapters and an epilogue to go, because what I thought was the second-last chapter split. So 6kwords more today, ad still as many chapters to go as yesterday.

[Kali]

I envy you your ability to consistently churn out wordcounts like that.  I'm capable of bursts of large wordcounts, but generally only once in a long while.  I've found 2k a day doable with a push of effort from time to time.  More than that, and I burn out.  My brain wants to do something else besides plot and type.  When I hit a smooth patch where I know what's coming and I can see the scenes sharp in my head, I can sometimes blow past that but not by much.

That said 2k down today, the fights are taking shape, and I can see how this is going to end (badly).  My only decision now is which sacrifice is better...

[Enjorous]

The greater is more tragic, the lesser is happier.

[belial.1980]

I envy you your ability to consistently churn out wordcounts like that.  I'm capable of bursts of large wordcounts, but generally only once in a long while.  I've found 2k a day doable with a push of effort from time to time. 

Likewise. I can crank out 2-3K a day (more on weekends) once I've found my groove. During the summer I hit a stretch of a month or so where I was consistently hitting 2K M-F and around 3000 on Saturdays and Sundays.

I finished draft of book 1 and started right away on the next one. Unforunately for the last 3 weeks or so I've been at an impasse. I wouldn't call it "writer's block" because that implies a lack of ideas. I have droves and droves of ideas. Problem is I'm having a hard time developing these individual ideas and turning them into a workable plot. (Actually more of a discovery writer so I don't need a tight outline, just a couple of main points of conflict to use as a starting point.)

So, for the better part of a month I'm just writing down ideas. Actually I'm just thinking aloud on the page and have written somewhere in the area of 200 pages worth of ideas, plot hooks, and background information. This has lead to a lot of quality world-building that was lacking before.

I've also come up with a strange smattering of ideas that are tied together and manage to fit into my story concept. It's not writer's block. It's a matter of herding cats. So, I just hope I can find a nice big cattle prod and get them all moving in the right direction.

[Starbeam]

I've had a mindsplosion lately.  Still typing it all up, but I'm writing it faster than I'm typing it, so I don't know the entire word count, yet.  Over the weekend, not quite so good, even with it being really long--was around 3300.  But I spent most of Saturday watching Doctor Who and Torchwood with my b/f.  Still have something like 4 or 5 scenes to type up, and 2 or 3 that are wanting out, right now.

I've only been paying attention to word count in the last couple years, so never noticed before, but if I have a long chunk of time, and I know what I'm writing, I can get out several thousand words.  If I'm not certain of the scene, it's less.  But most of my writing time has been half my lunch hour, and an hour or two between work and dinner, and I can manage around 500-1000 at lunch, and about that, or double, at home.  Mainly cause half that time is spent looking at websites and stuff instead of writing.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I envy you your ability to consistently churn out wordcounts like that. 

This isn't something I would claim as "consistent"; this is "they didn't tell me until I signed the contract that they didn't want me to start the new job until ten days later than they had previously said, and I've spent all summer working on something else for good reasons when this story was bubbling under and now it's all getting released at once."  When I know I am going to get ten days' holidays it tends to fill with a wider variety of things, usually involving Seeing My People, but that much time at once with nothing allotted to it has not happened to me since I was fifteen; the current deathmarch is very much in the way of an experiment, and while it is continuing productive, the numbers have definitely fallen off since Saturday.

Normally I'm good for a few thousand words in one weekly session, maybe two when things are going well. 

[Kali]

I choose to see you as an unstoppable force of wordcounts, neuro.  Leave me with my illusions!

As of today, I'm officially at 76,278 words.  Someone who might have died has been spared, which tells me who's going to get the axe in the upcoming scene.  Now I just have to figure out what to do with Risa... 

Ah well, plenty of time to write more later if I feel like it!  For now, I haven't eaten since a bowl of cereal this morning, and it's dinnertime.  Fooooooooood!

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I choose to see you as an unstoppable force of wordcounts, neuro.  Leave me with my illusions!

I have a through draft.  Total of 91,000 words; 45k of which were done in the last 8 days.

I think I may just take tomorrow off.

[Kali]

For you, doing NaNo would be like going on vacation.   I did 50k in 2 weeks and was kinda smug about that. 

[Kali]

With a wordcount today of 4,802 words and a total wordcount of 81,120, the draft is done, the bad guy defeated, the victory bittersweet at best and downright Pyrrhic at worst. 

Tomorrow, I begin the top-to-bottom edits I know I have to make.  Then I'll let it sit before I do a finesse edit to make it smooth and pretty.  I also realized tonight that I wrote it in "my" format:  single spaced, double spaces between paragraphs.  That means that when I do the final edit, I'll also have to double space it with indents at the beginning of paragraphs and single spaces between them.  Oi!  Bad enough to do that on a 20k short story.  Why don't these things occur to me in the first couple of pages and not the last couple?

[jeno]

With a wordcount today of 4,802 words and a total wordcount of 81,120, the draft is done

Go Kali! \o/

[Starbeam]

With a wordcount today of 4,802 words and a total wordcount of 81,120, the draft is done, the bad guy defeated, the victory bittersweet at best and downright Pyrrhic at worst. 

Tomorrow, I begin the top-to-bottom edits I know I have to make.  Then I'll let it sit before I do a finesse edit to make it smooth and pretty.  I also realized tonight that I wrote it in "my" format:  single spaced, double spaces between paragraphs.  That means that when I do the final edit, I'll also have to double space it with indents at the beginning of paragraphs and single spaces between them.  Oi!  Bad enough to do that on a 20k short story.  Why don't these things occur to me in the first couple of pages and not the last couple?

awesome.  The plus is that doublespacing is easy enough in most programs.  Not so much the indenting paragraphs, though, far as I know.  And that can become so extremely tedious with dialogue; I've had to do that when copying from one program to another.

[Enjorous]

I forgot what you use Kali, but Word will indent the paragraphs for you quite easily.

[Kali]

Really?  How?  'Cause I can remove the double-spacing with a find/replace, and then I can set the paragraphs to double-space.  How do I get the indents in automatically?

[Enjorous]

At the top of the page there should be a ruler with two little arrow looking things, highlight all your text and drag the TOP arrow over however far you want the indent. That should do it.

If you're using 07 and don't see the ruler look at the top right hand side where there's a button just above the scroll bar that says "View ruler."

Hope that helps.