Thursday 22 March 2012

No G&T :(

OK, I'm admitting that I didn't make my aim to finish chapter 7 by the weekend ... I got to 1,578 words but not the magic c.2,500 so I didn't get the G&T.  Maybe I'd set my sights too high.  I'm getting on with chapter 7 though ... now around the 2,000 mark so nearly there.  My new goal is to have finished chapter 7 and have started chapter 8 by Sunday evening ... more manageable, even if chapter 8 startes with one sencence :)

Thursday 8 March 2012

Breaking the barrier

I've broken through the 10,000 word barrier on the YA novel.  Starting a new project's easy - just bash away and a few thousand words later you've made a good start, but it's keeping up the momentum for the 'middle bit' that can be a problem.   Work/family life etc can throw up unexpected diversions that mean the writing gets shoved back to the bottom of the pile.
Small goals seem to work best for me.  I'm aiming at a 60,000 word count for the novel - when you're right at the beginning and only on 3,525 the chances of ever reaching the golden 60,000 seem pretty remote.  So for now I'm working on smaller goals ... climbing up to 10,000 didn't seem nearly as hard or impossible.  It also means I'm 1/6th of the way through.   I'm going to work to a 5,000 goal each time - I've set up an Excel sheet and every time I do any writing/editing on my chapters I frantically do a word count at the end so I can enter the figures and see how what the total word count is, how many to my next mini goal and also how many I need to write to reach 60,000.  Currently I need 4,050 to get to 15,000 which is only around two chapters worth ... if I can get them written by the end of Sunday I'll have a celebratory G&T :)