This week, after a bit of a hiatus, I got a good 3500 words. Sometimes all Ineed is a bit of momentum. And to remind myself that it’s okay to have a few pages that totally suck. I love when they seem to suck less when I look over them later.

 Caroline

It’s time for me to admit that I have become sufficiently derailed. Work, the flu, school…I have a myriad of excuses up my sleeve and yet none of them really hit the heart of it all. I am finding that I have been 100% side tracked by the question: what do you want to say? And if I think I’ve answered that one….then it’s: how do you want to say it?

I keep rolling my half written chunks of articles and short stories over in my head and I feel as though I’ve lost my voice. As though somewhere between beginning and pausing I’ve realized that my voice has shifted, that I’m saying things that I don’t want to say, that I’m using words I don’t want to use.

So what to do now. Just wait it out? Sit around and hope that my voice comes back, or that a new voice shows up? I feel that I’m letting down my part of the bargain on writeagogo. I had grand ideas for what I would get done and planned to post some of it (really! I did plan to!). and now it’s as though I’m sitting in an empty room staring at the wall with a cold cup of coffee in my hand saying “why?”

I have continued to tell myself to “shake it off” over the past few weeks, but now I realize that I think I need to just let this feeling happen and let myself sit in it for a while (like a pig in …). From there maybe something will come.

How’s everyone else doing? It’s hard to hear you all over the deafening scratch of pencils and clicking of keyboards.

jen c 

Not very much, but I set up a new little writing nook, and it makes me want to sit there writing. And I finished up an article and sent it out just a few minutes ago. The magazine prefers electronic submissions (good on them), and I got back the Auto-Reply Thank You But Don’t Hold Your Breath note, so at least I know it went to the right place.

The last time I sent out a query, I did it hastily, on my way out the door to the destination I wanted to write about. I read the query later, and it had TWO typoes. I have no idea why they accepted my pitch, but I’m glad they did.

I checked this one today about a million times, and I hope everything is spelled right. I’m so glad I did it, though! How ’bout you?

Rachael

I didn’t pot last week (WordPress and I had a bit of a spat) but I got 3500 words. WooHoo!

And this week……nothing. But it’s only Wednesday, right?

Caroline

If there’s one thing I learned in the Runagogo challenge, it’s that if I truly think I won’t be able to do something, I write about it. On the days that I HAVE to get out there and run or risk dropping too far behind, but I just can’t face it, I can’t put the running clothes on, just can’t do it, then I go write a post about how hard it is to get motivated, and then I immediately go run, no problem.

So I’m hoping that tack will work here. Because yo, I can’t get motivated. It’s my first official week of Writeagogo (yours too? What a coincidence!), and I will just die if I don’t hit my target of three thousand words this week. And so far, on day four, I got nothin’. Yet. Ask me in half and hour.

How ’bout you?

- Rachael

I have a confession. Although I signed up for Write-A-Go-Go with all the best intentions, I’ve only written about 1500 words in the past two weeks, and only 500 of those have been on my NaNoWriMo project, which is the one I’m trying to focus on.

Sigh.

If I may explain a bit… I hit 50,000 words in the last couple of days of November, and coincidentally, during a scene in which one of the main characters of my novel (an urban fantasy) was killed by the villain. I had been planing on killing off this particular character all along, but ended up really liking her, and not wanting to see her die. I know, I know, writers need to be able to kill their darlings. My problem was that I just simply lost interest in the story without her, because of the three main characters, she had become the most sympathetic one. Furthermore, by that point, the story had become a tangled mess, and I felt like I’d just lost my grasp on it all. So I didn’t touch it for several months.

The 500 words I’ve written for Write-A-Go-Go were a re-imagining of that scene, in which she doesn’t die, and while it feels more right, the rest of the story remains tangled and out of my control. But I love this story. I love the world, I think the characters are really interesting and well developed, and I think it’s got a lot of potential buried in it. I don’t want to give it up. I just don’t quite know how to get back into it.

All right. I think writing all this out has actually helped–I’m feeling better about my novel now. I think I’m going to spend some time brainstorming ways to get my characters from here to the end of the novel, create a new outline, and get back on the horse and keep writing.

Working on the final draft of my first story now, and it’s just about done.  One more story and I can fill in the dreaded application…  It’s only 1500 words, but it’s been through many revisions to get here.  And it’s not a steaming pile of poop like I was afraid of.

W00t!

AliHawke

I’ve been taking a hard look at the story I intended to work up into a novel, and I think it’s much better suited for short story form (~ 10,000 words). I have about 12,000 words down already (don’t freak out – most of it was written before I joined Write-A-Go-Go), need about 5,000 more to hit the end of the story, and then I’ll go back and prune between 7,000 and 10,000 words. (This won’t be as difficult as it sounds.)

The numbers geek in me wonders how to adjust the raw word count in the case of revisions. If I cut 3,000 words in the course of a week, should I count that as +3,000 towards my total? How about rewrites, which may result in net same number of words, but they’re better words? Or – terrifying thought – should I task myself with writing three first drafts of 10,000-word short stories for the challenge, then go back and revise them later? (But that’s three whole stories, eek!)

I’m using the “Angst” category for this post in a tongue-in-cheek sense. If I can come out of Write-A-Go-Go with a completed work ready to ship, I’ll count it as a win, in a “spirit of the law” sort of sense. Mostly, I’m wondering if anyone else is in this position.

3 drafts, 1 final draft, two first drafts. And that’s my weekly goal! Dang! this might work.

Well, I’ve been writing on and off ever since I learned how. And it strikes me that the off times have coincided with my life in general sucking – the past few months, for instance. So maybe if I can get back into writing I’ll have some good vibes bouncing around the universe to help me with reversing all the suckage.

 Alas, I’m not off to an inspiring start. I’ve scraped together about 1000 words this week. But the first week never really counts, right?

Caroline