Castle in the Clouds

Well, I'm moving right along. Up to 73K now. I'm also excited to report I may have someone interested in doing the cover art for my novel. I'm planning on self-publishing through LuLu .com and would like to have the option to use something other than their stock covers. Lucky for me, a friend of mine knows a decent artist who has indicated an interested in doing the artwork. I realize self-publishing isn't for everyone, but I think in this instance it's the right choice for me. Here are the contributing factors to this decision: This project is a gift..one that I would like to give in a nice and tidy package and not a ream of loose-leaf pages. Waiting on an agent or publisher to pick it up could delay the act of giving this gift to the recipient for several months (or years) The market is drowning in vampire stories. Don't believe me? Walk through the romance aisle at your local B&N or Borders and tell me every other title isn't related to vampires and ...

It's been awhile since I've felt this way while writing. Everything has been built. All the chips are in place. The traps have been sprung. Now it's just a matter of letting the momentum carry the story through to its natural conclusion. The hero and heroine have been apart for several chapters now. It's time to reunite them. After all, it's hard for love to blossom when the object of one's desire is never around. Falling in love is not sex. It's not lust. It requires an emotional and mental connection that transcends the flesh. So it's time to get them back together and to keep them that way. Of course, during the last few chapters I've had a few unexpected plot developments. I think they're good. I think they work. This recent deluge of inspiration has pushed me over the 70K mark. To be exact, I'm at 71,336 words. I have written over 2ooo words today. And I loved it. The story just flowed. If this continues, I should be able t...

Total words: 69,152 This means I've gained 669 words since my last post on this subject. Not too terribly bad. Since the beginning of this little 70-Day venture I've added 5,695 words to the WIP. I'm hoping to break the 6K mark tonight. Another 305 words should not be impossible to get before bedtime!

I plan on working on the story a bit more tonight, but I thought I'd take a break and put up my weekly totals. I have written over 5000 words this week. The actual number according to my calculations is 5,026 words since Monday. Not bad. Not bad at all. Not when you consider I ended up taking a couple of days off this week. Next weeks challenge is to keep writing when I need to complete my mid-term essays for my Travellers in the Middle East course. Not to mention starting Paper #2 for my Witches and Witch Hunt course. I know it'll all fall into place, but writing this story would be much easier if I didn't have to worry about homework! I know. Woe is me! If I'd watched a little less television this weekend I might have actually managed to complete at least one of the essays...or written a couple thousand more words. Either would have been good.

I've made progress! As of right now I have 66,083 words. That's 2,084 words more than I had this morning. I am delighted. Thrilled. Eager to keep going. So, I'm not going to waste any more time here. I've got about an hour left before bedtime. Let's see if I can't get another 500 words.

I knew it would happen eventually, but I really thought I'd be a few weeks into the challenge before I failed to write anything at all. That's right. I got nowhere fast on the story last night. Although, in a feeble attempt to redeem myself, I did open the WIP and tweak a few sentences before heading off to bed. The problem started when I got home last night. Being Wednesday and therefore a school night for Mom, I didn't get home until 7:20ish. First thing I noticed were my son's bloodshot eyes and pitiful expression. I had sent him to school that morning with a sore throat. Apparently the sore throat mutated into a sore throat/headache/fever by evening. Right. Mommy-mode kicked in and I lost a couple hours to snuggling and thermometer checks. After the kidlets were put to bed we ended up with company. My car has developed a spontaneous leak, so my hubby had called over a friend of his to help with the detective work. Yeah, they still don't know what's going on....

Way past my bedtime. Tonight's word count: 585

This will be a brief update. I managed to write 677 of the 1000 words I wanted to get yesterday. While I didn't quite make my daily goal, I consider this a good start.

I wish I could say I did it. I wish I could say that I met my goal and completed the rough draft of my novel. I can't. Although I started out strong and definitely made progress, I fizzled. School started for both me and the kidlets . I started exercising on a regular basis (I know! The shock!). Of course this meant that something had to give. Unfortunately, it happened to be my writing. I lost lunch hours to homework. I lost evenings to exercise, helping the kids with their homework, or inept housecleaning (seriously..my house is a wreck). Only recently have I been regaining momentum. After I finished reading the last few pages of my reading assignment on my lunch hour, I pulled out the WIP and actually managed to get a couple hundred words. At the end of the 70 Days of Sweat my WIP total word count is 61,086. This means I gained a total of 23,424 words. It's better than nothing, but I really wanted to get my 60K or more. I wanted to finish my rough draft. I am disappointed...

That's about all I wanted to report. I got my words tonight. More than a thousand actually, but I'm too lazy to do the math again. WIP Total Word Count: 60,008 words Tonight's progress gave me a good start on Chapter 13. My heroine has just met the hero's ex. I thought the fireworks would be instantaneous, but so far they're more concerned with other things. I'm thinking the tension will appear a little later in the chapter when the ex has had time to process everything.

I managed to write over 1000 words tonight. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't terrible either. I'm actually looking forward to writing this next little bit. Here's the numbers: Last Night: 54,847 Tonight: 56,118 That's a total of 1, 271 new words. Not bad for a couple hours worth of "butt in the chair", especially when you consider I took time out to tuck the kidlets into bed. Now I'm off to do another load of laundry. Once I get that done, I'm going to read for a bit before heading off to bed. Sounds exciting, doesn't it?

I'm up to 54,331 words. My hero has just had sex with a succubus, something neither of us expected. He's been marked for death, but, right now, he's too drugged to realize it. Oh, how the guilt is going to eat at him! Don't worry though, I think I know how to save him. At least, I'm hoping my heroine knows how to save him. Of course, his sexual relations with another woman at this point in the story is going to cause havoc with their relationship. She's going to be PISSED.

Last week I got my hair cut. I wasn't thrilled when I left the salon, but I thought things might turn out okay once I'd washed and styled it myself. For a week I tried to convince my hair to do SOMETHING. I try not to be too uptight about my hair, but some bad haircuts are just beyond my coping skills. This happened to be one of those cuts. So tonight while the little man met with the tutor, I went back to the salon. The girl who ended up fixing my hair (she cut off 2 inches!) wouldn't even take a tip. She felt that bad. Of course I would have insisted on tipping if I had had any cash on me. (Who in the hell goes to get their hair cut without cash to tip their stylist? Apparently, I do because I am a dumb ass.) The short story here is that I got my hair cut off. It's short, but not too short. It's much better. Really. Maybe when I'm feeling a little more energetic I'll post a picture of the new do. Of course, it didn't take the entire hour and a half to ...

I have been writing. Not as much as I'd like, but sometimes RL has a way of interferring. We had to go to the in-laws' today to celebrate two birthdays and an anniversary. It was a very nice visit and I quite enjoyed myself, but I barely got 300 words after we got home tonight. The numbers below reflect the progress made since my July 25th post. Starting Word Count: 43,712 Ending Word Count: 46,372 Words Gained: 2660 Not good enough. Not by far. I really need to buckle down and get serious. My goal for this week is to break 60K.

Okay so I haven't made much progress since my last post on the subject. A week vacation and two nights of Harry Potter have thrown me off my stride. However, I did make a little bit of progress tonight. Starting Word Count: 43,143 Ending Word Count: 44,712 Words Gained: 1569 Hmm. That's more impressive than I thought it would be. Go me.

Total Word Count (as of right now): 43,143 Total Since Last Update: 1119 new words Total Since Beginning the 70 Days of Sweat: 5,481 new words!

I'm done for the night. Ready for bed. Here's the ending word count: 42,024. That's 1,636 new words since my last check-in. Not bad when you consider I went to the movies last night.