Results of Ruminations

New Goal I had a week off from the story last week by helping a kid in the ward with his Eagle Project. This week, even though that was going on again, I totally spaced it until I was at UVU to start writing for the day. I will confess, I barely had a twinge of regret. In selfish disclosure, I felt like I had helped him a great deal the week before, and I couldn't countenance going another week without some time at the keyboard. I don't regret it, though I do regret not being able to do two things at once. (Of course, if I could do two things at once, I would have so many books written and read it isn't even funny.) Anyway, I decided that, by the time my birthday rolls around in April, I'd like to have 250,000 words in the book--or to have finished it. So that's my new goal, and I took a pretty large chunk out of it today: Over 5,000 words done. Today I wrote a chapter from Saldrae's point of view and then Olvia, a new character who may or may not show up aga...

What you see there, in all its poor resolution glory, is my victory over the 200,000 word mark. Note the beautiful red letters there? Word count achieved. You can also see the beginning and ending dates for the goal, there, as well as the number of days left. I have almost 50 days between now and the end of the year, and I've already hit that goal that I, frankly, thought was rather impossible to get, what with all of the work I have to do instead of writing. I'm absolutely thrilled. Thanks to the sacrifice of my wife, I've managed to get deep into this book--spending more time than just a hobby probably ought to take. And I feel really good about it. Like, really, really good. I know it's just an arbitrary number, but it's one that has taken a lot of effort and ought to be memorialized somehow. Anyway, I think I'll lay off the goals for the rest of 2011 (though I'll continue to write each week, as usual), and, starting in January, try to figure out wha...

Goal Making So, I did really, really well today. I had about 10,000 words left in my 'goal' for this year (I want 200,000 words in the book by 31 Dec) when I sat down. Now, I'm looking at about 2,800 to get that. I wrote over 7,000 words in the book today, which is an unbelievable amount of productivity. Not only that, but the stuff that I put in felt like I'll keep it, for the most part. Obviously, there will be some things that will have to be changed (I'm not looking forward to the editing of this behemoth, I'll be honest), but, for the most part, what happens in this chapter has to stay. It's really powerful (I think), and I really like it. Before I hit the topic, I just want to document what I did today: I put in a flashback of Calistar (who, despite the fact he isn't the 'main character' in my mind, has the most flashbacks of all the protagonists, clocking in at 15 as of right now, and needing at least two more before his back story is...