NaNoWriMo 2015: Day 6

Today I was off from the day job, so I was able to get some extra words in: 2453. Had another new character walk on stage, and a possible change to another slowed me down. Tomorrow’s forecast is for rain so I hope to maintain a steady pace through the weekend.

Head on over to DoSomeDamage.com tomorrow for my first weekly recap.

Day 1: 3464 (3464 total; 46,536 remaining)
Day 2: 2325 (5789 total; 44,211 remaining)
Day 3: 2637 (8426 total; 41,574 remaining)
Day 4: 1709 (10,100 total; 39,900 remaining)
Day 5: 1732 (11,900 total; 38,133 remaining)
Day 6: 2453 (14,320 total; 35,680 remaining)

NaNoWriMo 2015: Day 5

Normalcy. After yesterday’s skirting of disaster with the crashing MacBook Pro, today was just normal. Woke up a tad late and realized I forgot to load the coffee machine. End result: I had less time in the morning session. Also, new characters entered the stage so I had to suss out who they were. Slowed me down. Only got 1204 in the morning. A combination of iPod writing and more laptop writing tonight got me up to 1732 words today.

 

Day 1: 3464 (3464 total; 46,536 remaining)

Day 2: 2325 (5789 total; 44,211 remaining)

Day 3: 2637 (8426 total; 41,574 remaining)

Day 4: 1709 (10,100 total; 39,900 remaining)

Day 5: 1732 (11,900 total; 38,133 remaining)

NaNoWriMo 2015: Day 4:

The theme of today was flexibility. This morning’s writing session was interrupted when my Mac wouldn’t start. So, I shifted to connecting my iPod Touch with my Apple keyboard. I managed 1100 words or so, but knew I needed to make up the deficit. I wrote some on the iPod at the day job, but deadlines and meetings ate up all my break time. Not much writing done during the day.
 

Throughout the day, my mind wondered if I had lost all my data. I diagnose the problem, fixed the drive--took apart my laptop and extracted the drive to repair it--and got it working again. Finished the day at 1709 words.

Day 1: 3464 (3464 total; 46,536 remaining)

Day 2: 2325 (5789 total; 44,211 remaining)

Day 3: 2637 (8426 total; 41,574 remaining)

Day 4: 1709 (10,100 total; 39,900 remaining)

NaNoWriMo 2015: Day 3

Another good day today. I wrote 1708 words in my 5am session. It’s a great feeling to have the daily word count completed before the day job starts. I got 451 written on the iPod sitting at Starbucks waiting for my book club and then another 478 tonight to round out chapter 6.

Day 1: 3464 (3464 total; 46,536 remaining)
Day 2: 2325 (5789 total; 44,211 remaining)
Day 3: 2637 (8426 total; 41,574 remaining)

NaNoWriMo 2015: Day 2

First NNWM day on a work day. Rose at 5:00am. Wrote 1,244 words before work on the laptop. Wrote additional 796 words on the iPod at breaks during the day. I finished off the night with another 285 to round out a chapter.
Day 1: 3464 words
Day 2: 2325 words (5789 total; 44211 remaining)

Now Available: The Tale of the Naked Man

It’s not every day that the passengers of a stagecoach in the Old West see a naked man hiding behind a rock. But the motley group of people on a stage bound for Uvalde, Texas, stop and question Finnegan McCall, naked as the day of his birth. He claims to be the new manager at the bank in town and a thief stole all his clothes.

But if Finnegan McCall is telling the truth, then who is the stranger at the bank claiming he is the new bank manager? And why is this stranger asking the assistant manager to open the safe?

Available exclusively at Amazon.

$0.99

NaNoWriMo 2015: Day 1

I had a good start to NNWM 2015. Instead of sleeping in the extra hour, I woke up at regular body time for a weekend. Yesterday, that was 6:30am. Today, it was 5:30am. With coffee steaming next to me, I started in on Gordon Gardner 02.

I did two sessions totaling two chapters. The first was 2287 in 81 minutes. The second was 1177 in 35 minutes. I’m keeping track of my time and words/hour this month to my efficiency on weekends as well as weekdays.

Day 1: 3464 words

Book Review Club: Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker

(This is the October 2015 edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For the complete list, click on the icon following this review.)

Book Review Club: Take Off Your Pants!: Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing by Libbie Hawker

by
Scott D. Parker

National Novel Writing Month is just over the horizon and that means everyone is trying to prepare for the sprint that is NaNoWriMo. I think most who read Barrie’s blog are familiar with the concept of writing a 50,000-word novel in the 30 days of November. I’ve done it--although not solely in November--more than once. Back in August, I hit 50,000 words in 21 days so I know I can do it. However, I didn’t complete the novel until mid-September. Yes, I know six weeks to write a 92,000-word book is nothing to sneeze at, but I wanted to see if there was a way to optimize my process and get a book done in 30 days.

Enter Take Off Your Pants. I don’t know about y’all, but when I hear the word ‘outline,’ I still think of the way we were taught back in high school with Roman numerals and capital letters. That may work for a five-paragraph essay in high school, but it’s not the best way to outline a novel. So how do you do it?

I’ve found the method of Lester Dent, the old pulp writer who created Doc Savage back in 1933. There’s a famous ‘formula’ for writing a 6,000-word short story. It’s pretty good and it’s scalable. But it didn’t have the true skeleton I wanted. I love seeing how other writers create their books, and Hawker’s book shows you, step-by-step, the process she uses.

She mentions a few times certain light bulb moments went off for her as she read other books on the craft. Well, I had one reading her book. You see, up until this helpful ebook, I have attempted to create outlines for my novels and stories, but what I started doing is crafting a plot. I started with an opening scene, the hook, and went from there. Scene after scene, event after event, I put my characters through the paces.

I always ran into a road block somewhere in the middle. I rarely fretted because I’d always re-brainstorm when I got stuck in the middle. I didn’t particularly like that, but it allowed the vicissitudes of the writing to meander along the general direction of the ending.

Hawker’s methodology is different. Sure, she gets to the scene-by-scene stuff, but she starts with character. Okay, well, I did that. I got a character and he had to go through stuff. Nope. Hawker suggests starting with character and then his flaw. What the heck? Why would you start there? Well, let me tell you a little something. I'm planning my NaNoWriMo book now (the second Gordon Gardner novel)...and merely by focusing on Gardner's flaw, nearly half of the outline emerged almost fully formed. Yeah, I couldn't believe it either. Here's my light bulb moment: by focusing on the flaw and the character as the through-line of the tale, the plot pieces are all but written. Sure, there are details, but half of my novel is, arguably, already planned out.

And I've not even started writing in the individual scene beats. The overall arc is there, the map. That was my light bulp moment.

Take Off Your Pants has numerous little nuggets like this. She has a set structure she uses. She introduces the structure, explains it, and then uses one of her own books as examples. She takes you, step by step, from zero outline to a completed one. Something that helped me was actually doing my own outline while reading and highlighting the book. By the time I finished the book, I had the overall arc all but complete. And it was only the 12th of October. And, best of all, that process only took me a few hours (of reading and writing). I got very excited when I realized how straightforward this process actually is.

Now, I can't wait for November to get here!

If you're in the planning stages for NaNoWriMo or have struggled to complete a novel, trying to Take Off Your Pants. You might be surprised at how fluidly your story flows out of you and onto paper. It has for me...so far.

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@Barrie Summy

Forgotten Books: Ed McBain

Today, on Friday's Forgotten Books*, Patti Abbott suggested we focus on Ed McBain. I didn't read a new book for this week's post, but I'm posting my three former reviews.

The Gutter and the Grave


Cop Hater


"Monsters"


For the complete list, head on over to Patti's blog.

Now Available: The Agony of Love: A Triple Action Western

John Hardwick loves his wife like a Shakespeare sonnet: full, complete, and without equal. Unfortunately, John now finds himself in the crucible of infidelity. He knows the other man’s name: Alton Raines, a professional gambler. John is a good man, not prone to violence, but the images in his mind’s eye—of his wife in Raines’s bed—puts murder in his heart and a gun in his hand.

Available exclusively at Amazon.

THE PHANTOM AUTOMOBILES: Now on iTunes

For y’all wanting to read THE PHANTOM AUTOMOBILES on iBooks, this is your lucky day. Gordon Gardner’s first investigation is now available at iTunes.