W. J. Howard: The Courier

Showing posts with label The Courier. Show all posts

The End of One Road...

And so NaNoWriMo ends for me, one day early. Final word count is 70,191 and 317 pages. How do I feel about it ending? I'm a little sad, but also beaming, knowing that I've written two more novels in The Courier series since the beginning of September. I'm no longer complaining about what I've accomplished this year.

What's next? I've decided to continue the story I started about a highly structured society that exists without creativity. It's titled Nova's Magic and is about a 12 year old girl who discovers her imagination, and as a result she is cast out of her village. I'm not writing it for publication. It's one of those stories this writer just has to tell for herself. And it's a perfect choice to fill in my daily 2000 words because I'm writing it as the story comes to me.

I'm also planning on hitting the editing of The Courier pretty hard through the holidays. I'll be popping in here to complain about my progress periodically, so stay tuned. You'll also find me & R.J. writing about vampires over on the Bloodlegger's blog again, now that NaNoWriMo is over.

But first, I need to do some house cleaning. What are you doing now that NaNoWriMo is over?

I'm a Winner!!

How FUN! Yesterday I copied Cause for Redemption into the NaNoWriMo word counter for my first time ever, and I'm a winner...WHOO HOO!! Such a little thing, but a great feeling knowing that I've finished the contest.

Now I have to finish the novel in the next 5 days. Considering I wrote the second book in 3 days, I'll finish up this book no problem. It'll be interesting to see how many words the final first draft will be. If I stay on track with my goal of 3500 per week day of the contest, it'll be 77,000, but I think I might end up writing more. How do I feel about the storyline? Unfortunately I don't like it as much as book 1 and 2, but it's a much more complicated plot, and cleaning up the manuscript is going to take some time and effort.

And so this leads into two more goals for 2011. I've decided to do the 3 Day Novel Contest and NaNoWriMo again next year. I'm thinking of doing a compilation of modern day fairy tales across contests. It's something I've wanted to do for a number of years, but of course, I'll probably change my mind ten or twenty times before then.

Time to Set Goals for 2011

Because the holiday season is upon us, and time is limited, I've decided to start setting the goals for 2011. And since this years goals were mostly a pain in my ass and completed at the end of this year or not at all, I'm adding them to the right column so they're in my face almost every day.

There are seven weeks left of the year and I plan on unveiling the goals every Friday as I create them. This week I've come up with two. Warning, there's A LOT of thinking out loud below.

1. Achieve 50% towards remainder of 1,000,000 words of written fiction.
This is a goal I set, in September of 2008 after listening to an early episode of Writing Excuses. Basically they mentioned that the first one or two novels you write are likely crap. I know my first two were both more personal stories I'll probably never publish. They also mentioned that it takes writing one million words to begin mastering prose. These are all professionals' opinions, and who am I to argue, right? Anyways, I set the goal back then to write a million words of fiction within a certain time frame that never happened. Actually I stopped tracking it and have since written over 120,000 new words, which really surprises me considering the writer's block I went through this year.

Well, IT'S BACK for 2011 & 2012. I started a counter in the right column, but have the rest of the year's writing, so I'm not exactly sure where the total count will be for 2011 and 2012 other than an estimated 300,000 per year which is less than the 480,000 I should be able to write if I stick to a 2000 words a day for 20 days a month.   WOW! That's 4-6 novels or who knows how many short stories a year, which could lead into another goal.

2. Finish editing The Courier #1 by the end of the ~~first~~ second quarter.
I've consistently not met this goal every time I've set it, so it will be interesting to see if I meet it this time. This novel is going into its 4th draft, and now on to the math. I've taken the first 100 pages of the novel to critique group and have another 200 to subject to weekly criticism, and at 10 pages a week gets me to 180 pages by the end of the first quarter. Well, that ain't guna work. So I guess I could up it to editing 20 pages a week and attend critique group twice a week. Gosh, can my ego take that much slamming...LOL? Sounds like I'm setting myself up for failure again. Sigh. Better make it the second quarter, because I also need to update the synopsis and will likely go through the whole query letter business to find a new agent.   More goals...

Anyone else out there thinking about or setting goals for next year yet? What do you hope to achieve?

Celebrating NaNoWriMo Word Count at 50010 Today

I DID IT!!

WHOO HOO!!

50,000 WORDS!!

But when I put the total into the word count field there were no fireworks, just me sitting back in my chair smiling, which was reward enough. In this contest, that number stands out like a 4th of July burst of color in the sky anyways.

I reached the end of a scene with a word count of 50,010 and have decided that's enough writing for today. Time for some Thanksgiving planning and maybe a nap after walking the beagles.

Where am I on the progress of the novel? Sure, I reached one goal, but now I have to complete goal #2, finish the story. I feel confident I'll meet that goal as well. I've started changing the ending though. Like yesterday I realized I had way too many characters to contend with so I killed them all in a mass beheading. Barry's now off with another courier who can't stand him, trying to send his father back to his cell. This is not at all how I had written the ending in the outline. But heck, it's all in fun, and I can't wait to see how the new ending turns out.

Another Happy NaNoWriMo Week

Happy Monday, all! And so starts another week of writing Cause for Redemptio in NaNoWriMo. I took the weekend off, so I was refreshed and ready to write this morning.

Decided to write to 40,000 today, which put me a bit over the daily 3500 goal. Not so long ago I was excited to reach the first 10,000 words written and now I've reached the last 10,000. How time flies when you're having fun!

Good NEWS!! I've reached the half way point of the novel half way through the contest. Now, as long as I can build up to the climax without getting carried away...

I love that I've set the habit for new writing again. Probably my favorite thing about this contest. So I've been thinking about what I'll write starting December 1st, to keep the habit alive. I started a project in a notebook a couple months ago that's in the speculative fiction genre. It's about the loss of creativity and has been a helpful story for me to write while dealing with the writer's block. I've just been writing whatever comes to me with that story, which is refreshing considering how structured I've had to be with a series. I also have another horror novel I started writing years and years and years ago that I've been thinking about quite a bit lately. 15 more days to figure it out.

What I do know is book 4 of The Courier series will be on hold for some time. Editing three books will keep me busy until mid next year. Golly gee, I love the way that sounds.

Have you thought about what you're doing December 1st?

Despite All My Whining About NaNoWriMo

I got this strong feeling this morning, after posting "... Feels like a slow day of writing is abound" that if I don't write my 3500 words today, I'll turn into pumpkin or something. NaNo's setting a habit after only 12 days. Awesome!

So rather than making the pancakes I was craving, I wrote for a half hour before taking the beagles for a walk. Maybe NaNo is good for weight loss too. Oh yeah. Don't remind me. I'm trying to forget about the peanut butter cookie binge earlier this week.

Recharged by Cookies

Gorging on peanut butter cookies yesterday squashed the slug right out of me. I'm feeling recharged for some reason today. Could also be that it's snowing. I've been dying for a snowy day of writing by the fire, and here it is.

I was just looking back at a few of my previous posts during the contest and saw Celebrating 10,000 Words Today. That happened way back on day 3. As of this morning, TRIPLE it. Wow! Another 20,000 words just seemed to fly by.

I've officially written into the second act of Cause for Redemption. Got there yesterday and am really delving into the meat of the novel now. SPOILER ALERT...Vern's back to help Barry capture his father. Vern's one of my favorite characters, so having him join the hunt only helps with the recharge.

With almost twenty full days to go, I've got to wonder when slug mode will creep up on me again. Any other NaNo writers out there needing a recharge, what are you doing to bring the spark back to your writing?

Now back to writing and onward to 40,000.

Reached 1st Burn Out Day

I've officially reached my first day of burnout. Even though I've only written 177 words this morning, I'm still motivated to write. Problem is I feel like a slug. So I expect the words to flow slowly today, maybe finishing up 3500 words by tonight.

How am I dealing with the burn out. So far I've parked it on the couch with a notebook and a glass of ice tea. Am taking a break, watching Becker, one of my all time favorite sitcoms. Seriously thinking about making gluten free peanut butter cookies for me and the beagles. Other than that, I don't plan on leaving the house today or the couch much for that matter.

Today also marks the 1/3 point towards close of contest. I'm trying not to dwell on it too much. If you read my concerns yesterday, you already known I'm not at the 1/3 mark of the story. So the thought of putting in extra time to write is probably adding to the burnout. I'm not too concerned about catching up. Doing the 3 Day Novel Contest this year taught me how to keep it on track in a much shorter period of time.

Celebrating 10,000 Words Today

How exciting! Over 10,000 words in 3 days!

That's equal to almost 4 chapters and 44 pages.

What I'm really doing is following the advice I got in an email from NaNo. Write hard and fast to start. Besides, I'd really like to take weekends off so writing ahead is a must.

Story's coming out nicely! Lots of fun conflict and action in the first act, although the storyline is slow going. Not exactly what ya want to read at the beginning of a novel to hook you in, but that's what editing is for.

More Courier News
I came up with a new title for the first book, although I'm not totally set on it. What do you think of Bargain for Eternity? Starting to notice a pattern with the titles?

I updated The Courier page (click tab above) with short bits of info on the first three book in the series. Should be adding info soon about book 4. I'm about to start the outline due to all the ideas that are coming to me while writing Cause for Redemption. Let it flow, let it flow, let it flow.

The Courier's website/blog is officially dead as of yesterday. Still have the web address, which now forwards to The Courier tab above.

Switching To Scrivener 1 Day In...Am I Crazy?

Yesterday R.J. introduced me to Srivener, a tool for writing documents. Anybody else out there using it?

I watched the video and was interested enough to download a free 30 day trial. Ten minutes into playing with it I was hooked. So I've decided to use it the next 29 days not only for NaNoWriMo, but to add the 4th draft of book 1 of The Courier. Am I crazy?

Oh, and they're actually selling a half price copy to anyone who wins NaNoWriMo at the end of the month. Another incentive to finish.

NaNoWriMo Begins

Day 1 of writing for NaNoWriMo is complete, and as you can see to the left I stopped at a little over 3500 words. I wanted to stop at 5000 words, but it's already past 2:00 P.M. here in Denver and I don't want to settle into a routine of using Nano as an excuse not to get editing done on book 1. Besides, there were a few things that slowed me down today:

I got up 45 minutes late because Michael decided to sleep in an extra hour this morning. How could I possibly let him do that alone?

I forgot to set up the manuscript template. Not that it set me back that much. Was just that I found I've made some changes to another manuscript but hadn't applied the changes to the template I use.

I got really distracted and had fun adding word count and a blow-by-blow in the right column. Oh, and updating my word count on the Nano site, which was running really slow, but that's to be expected the first couple days as we're all so excited to start.

Had some trouble finding character information I thought I'd transitioned back over to the website where I manage background on novels. I'm really messy about maintaining character profiles, but I found an amazing set of questions about novel characters in Dynamic Characters, How to Ceate Personalities that Keep Readers Captivated by Nancy Kress. Now it's just a matter of creating a template out of it and using it.

Like in the 3Day, the challenge of filling in backstory on a new novel in a series has reared its ugly head. There's got to be some easy way to carry the info over or create a checklist of stuff the reader needs to know. I guess I'll create it for book 4.

All in all, it was a fun day of new writing and I'm looking forward to starting day 2.

Ready or Not...NaNoWriMo

I'm SOOOO ready!!!! Bring it on!

Outline is pretty much done. Still expect to make a bunch of changes as I write and add new stuff like I did with the 3Day. But, I've reached a point where I'm adding way too much detail, so I've decided to leave it alone until Monday.

I'm feeling antsy about starting. Actually think I was ready to start a week or two ago. Probably because I've had the story idea for Cause for Redemption in my mind for a good 9 months. It's been a couple months since I finished the first draft of Warrant for Damnation and haven't been writing anything new but the outline.

Today I had to distract myself from adding more to the outline, so I made a chocolate cake, gluten-free orange cupcakes and rice crispy treats. Kitchen's still a mess. Now I'm ready to kick up my feet, watch a movie and share a bottle of wine.

Down Days

I got up this morning not wanting to do anything but stare at the walls. I didn't feel much different yesterday, so I spent 5 hours sorting through CDs, wrote yesterday's blog post and spent the evening at critique group with nothing to read. So far this morning my biggest accomplishments has been working on a quilt for Quilts for Kids and adding movies to our Netflix and library queues.

I think I really wore myself out earlier this week, editing the same 10 pages over and over again. I got what I wanted out of it though, so I don't regret it. Moving forward.

Oh, and the most fun so far today is this top 10 list of country songs Michael emailed me this morning:

10. I Hate Every Bone In Her Body But Mine

9. I Ain't Never Gone To Bed With an Ugly Woman But I Woke Up With A Few

8. If The Phone Don't Ring, You'll Know It's Me

7. I've Missed You, But My Aim's Improvin'

6. Wouldn't Take Her To A Dogfight 'Cause I'm Scared She'd Win

5. I'm So Miserable Without You It's Like You're Still Here

4. My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend And I Miss Him

3. She Took My Ring and Gave Me the Finger

2. She's Lookin' Better with Every Beer

And the Number One Country & Western Song...

1. It's Hard To Kiss The Lips At Night That Chewed My Ass All Day Long

Finding Barry's Voice

I did it! I finally found Barry's narration voice. Only took a year and a half.

Why did it take so long for his voice to come to me? I got Margery and Vern almost immediately. Nina was also pretty easy. I even got Pete, who you'll meet at the end of book 1 and he's a major character in book 2 and 3, right away.

By the way, the picture to the right makes me nauseous. How about you?

With Barry, I've always felt a connection to him, can visualize him perfectly, and can even sense his presence in the room with me. But for some reason I was having a hard time completely capturing the tone of his voice and his personality in the narration. Now that I've got it, I blame it on that first person present thing. Way back when I started the story, I thought it'd be easier to write in it. LOL! Boy was I wrong. Like most protagonists, Barry's constantly in situations where he has to think fast or choose between the lesser of two evils, so he inevitably makes lots of bad decisions. Capturing his voice during those moments, before he has a chance to think through his actions or embellish on his experiences, as he would in past tense, has been one of my greatest challenges.

How'd I find Barry's narrator voice. I edited and rewrote and edited and rewrote the first chapter about twenty times with the intent to find it. Insane, huh? Well, it worked.

One other comment about writing and reading first person present. We writers who tackle it get a lot of flack about how uncomfortable it reads when you're not used to it. But after a year and a half of writing in first person present, it's hard to switch back to past tense. And recently I started reading Back on Murder by J. Mark Bertrand, which is really well written in first person present. After reading the first few pages of his book, I've realized I prefer the way it reads as well. So come on publishers, give us more of it.

What a Mess!

I was getting ready to write a blog post on finding your character's voice and I happened to notice a post that I forgot to publish. Oops. Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to read if you find yourself unorganized in the middle of writer's block.

I have a private Google website I use for all my novel planning. R.J. and I also have one for Bloodleggers. In the past, these websites have been more than helpful in recording ideas, tracking characters, plotting, outlining, etc. Well, I stopped maintaining them far too long ago, and what an outdated mess they've become! Thanks to The Artist's Way tough, I've been in cleaning mode for a couple of weeks now.

I've been working my way very slowly through the sections, taking the time to read each chapter twice and complete all the exercises, so at times I find my progress is a little ahead of where I'm reading in the book. Like when I read this after hitting my office like a Ms. Clean tornado a couple Wednesdays ago.

One of the clearest signals that something healthy is afoot is the impulse to weed out, sort through, and discard old clothes, papers, and belongings... By tossing out the old and unworkable, we make way for the new and suitable... When the search-and-discard impulse seizes you, two cross currents are at work: the old you is leaving and grieving, while the new you celebrates and grows strong.

So this is where I am at the moment, working through my writer's funk. Only now the cleaning has moved to the computer. One thing that came out of cleaning up the office was a pile of hand written story ideas and edits I need to incorporate into the novels. Looking at the pile, it occurred to me I may have brought on some of the writers block by being so unorganized and scattered. Time to clean it all up and get on with the writing.

You'll be happy to know I officially exited the clean up mode a couple weeks ago. The office is immaculate and the website back in use, including a nearly complete outline for book 3 of The Courier.

Nearly 10 More Weeks Until 2011...Oh My!

I'm taking a short break from editing to say hello and catch my breath after realizing the end of 2010 is just around the corner. And we haven't had any snow here at the house yet. Did notice lots of new snow on Longs Peak while walking the beagles this weekend though. That's always a welcome sight.

In my last post I complained about how time consuming maintaining The Courier Novel's blog has become, and since then I've decided to shut it down. Or at least forward the domains here, which I'll probably do some time today. Kinda makes too much sense to take the previous parts off the Internet for awhile considering all the editing I'll be doing for the next few months. I'm not feeling too concerned about doing this because the site has not had much traffic lately.

So what's that you ask? What about the ending I still haven't released? You'll notice there's a new tab on this blog where I'll be adding all kinds of stuff from the old blog here. So as I finish editing the last few chapters, I'll release them here as well as on Twitter. But, like I've already announced, Warrrant for Damnation, Cause for Redemption and all the other books will not be released on Twitter. You'll have to wait for publication.

13 more days until NaNoWriMo starts. CAN'T WAIT!!

The State of My Blogs...Again

Heavy sigh... So I'm on my blog soapbox again...and I've had wine. Uh oh!

Drinking Rutherford Ranch's 2007 Sauvignon Blanc. It's ok for a white from California. Still haven't looked up the reason, but they've been producing some really bad whites for the last few years.

Back to blogging. Besides writing about NaNoWriMo over on The Courier novel's blog, I've been publishing more of the story for the past week or so, and I'm SOOOOO sick and tired of having the two blogs to maintain. Why did I separate them? Oh yeah, the whole marketing an unpublished novel thing. You can't see me, but I'm shaking my head.

Anyways, when I started publishing more parts for The Courier today, I had a realization. Okay, maybe I came out of denial. That damn blog and the whole Twitter novel thing has really consumed a lot of my time. Let me also remind you that at one time I also published it on three other writer's websites. Another heavy sigh...

I'm beginning to feel abused, and I'm the abuser. Oh my!

So I'm back here blogging. Only here going forward. That means the NaNoWriMo blogging is moving here. So in case you missed it.

I created a separate account by the name of TheCourierNovels today for use in NaNoWriMo. Add me as a buddy...

After coming up with a long list of titles that were really bad, I finally came up with Cause for Redemption today (yesterday) for book 3. With only a few weeks before NaNoWriMo starts I don't even want to think about changing it until after the contest is over, so I added it to my NaNo page today.

Quick update on outlining. It's coming along nicely. I've got the major plot line set and have filled in quite a bit of the detailed outline. Have created quite a few new characters too. Will I be ready to start writing on November 1st? Absolutely!

In closing, I apologize for all my flaky blogging. If you do read here, consider it just a writer evolving.

3-Day Novel Contest Entry Received

Just wanted to mention that I received notification today that the 3-Day Novel Contest has Warrant for Damnation. Got email notification five minutes after I made a mental inquiry, wondering if they'd received it yet. Does that make me psychic? Anyways, they sent me the badge to the left that I survived. Now they spend the next two months reading the entries. Still don't expect to place in the contest, but I'll let you know when they announce the winners.

Manuscript Mailed...Bottle of Wine Opened

YAY!! I just got back from the post office about 30 minutes ago. My manuscript is off to Canada, and I'm breathing a few sighs of relief.

I underestimated how long it would take me to type in the hand written stuff, so I finished typing up the longhand around 1:30 P.M. today. Won't be doing that again.

Now I wait for confirmation the 3-day Novel Contest has received the manuscript and a certificate I completed the contest. I won't be holding my breath, waiting to see if I've won. I submitted a second novel in a series and expect whoever reads Warrant for Damnation to be lost a bit because I still need to write in A LOT of the background from the first story. Doesn't really matter though because I entered for the experience and to catch up on writing I should have finished earlier this year. And being caught up FEELS SO GOOD!!

What am I doing next. Well, Disneyland is out because, as an adult, I hate amusement parks! Gotta do some work on the next part of Bloodleggers so R.J. can get to editing. And I've already started writing the outline and describing new characters for the next in The Courier novel, which is still nameless. NaNoWriMo here I come.

No writing this weekend though. I plan to sit in a comfy chair and read God Emperor of Dune. HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND ALL!!

I Did It...WHAT A RUSH!!

I finished Warrant for Damnation in the 3-Day Monday night with one hour to spare. WHOO HOO! If I had the energy yet, it'd be time to celebrate. I still have to mail off the manuscript, so maybe then.

I was going to write this blog post yesterday, but I was in a vegetative state. Have to say that today is like waking up from a comma. But other than that, as the title states, WHAT A RUSH!!

I don't think I've learned as much about my writing abilities in my career as I've learned over the three days of the contest.

All in all, it was a BLAST! I loved the challenge and that everyone rallied around my progress. It really helps to have family support.

Probably the greatest lesson I learned about my writing is that I don't connect as easily to the story and characters while typing. When progress slowed on Saturday afternoon, I decided to write long hand. I immediately picked up speed and the story came out of me quicker. Unfortunately it means that my hand is still a little sore. I feel like I should have known this because I've written quite a bit of most of my novels using a hand held recorder. It's another method that flows well for me.

What I loved the most is there's no time to let the negative thoughts take over. I only remember twice, thinking the story was crap, but squashed the feelings in a matter of seconds. So while The Artist's Way is helping me work through my writer's funk, the 3-Day opened the block with explosive force.

Will I do it again? Hell yeah!! Time permitting, next year I'll be entering again, but I won't be writing book 3 of The Courier. I plan to write it in NaNoWriMo this November. You read me right. I've already collected all my ideas for #3, and I have a month and a half to outline. Stay tuned...

About W. J. Howard