21 Day Novel Challenge

Today and yesterday were serious tests of the whole “Coffee Break Novelist” theory of writing. When I wrote that book, the tl;dr of the idea (although of course I think it IS worth reading!) was that writing ISN’T something that requires huge blocks of time to accomplish. You can slip bits of writing in between the rest of your life and be a productive novelist. Even a highly productive one. Chris Fox – the inspiration for the whole 21-day novel challenge – might be a full-time writer now. But he wasn’t always. He used to slip his writing in during …

21-Day Novel: Day 5 Read More »

Day 4 was one of those days that was all about “writing the novel you want in the time you have”, folks. Today I really WAS a “Coffee Break Novelist”. I was up a few minutes after 6am. Got dressed, made coffee, grabbed a Kind bar and was off to work. At work at 7am, and left a few minutes before midnight. It was a LONG day. I knew going into this challenge that getting any words in on Thursdays was going to be tough, which is why when I did my daily plan I set the word goal for …

21-Day Novel: Day 4 Read More »

Theme music for the day: Avatar (go James Horner!) Word count for today: 6370 words in roughly three hours of typing (not including breaks between sprints). No dictation today. I didn’t really get going until almost 11, and then spent several hours doing sprint – break – sprint – break. The trick, of course, is to keep the sprints longer and the breaks shorter. It’s something I am still working on…! I write about 700-800 words in a 20-25 minute sprint. In theory, if I could get in two such sprints an hour and keep it up for four hours …

21-Day Novel Day 3: The myth of the first draft Read More »

Today began with a long series of frustrations. I’m trying to learn to use Dragon Dictate (for Mac) as I go here. My words per hour (WPH) on Dragon have only been about 1400-1600 so far, or about 450-550 words per 20 minute sprint. Those are CLEAN words though – I have been dictating into my Macbook, so I clean up the text as I go. It’s still much slower than I type, which is about 2000 WPH, sometimes as high as 2500 WPH (in 20-30 minute sprints). But I am working on it. If I can get clean Dragon …

21-Day Novel: Day 2 Read More »

I knew today was going to be a slow start, and – no shock – it was. I’ve only finished 2000 words so far today. Mondays are my “kids day” – the day my children and I spend hanging out and having fun. Today consisted of: going with the kids to look at my new apartment together; playing with them in the playground down the street from the new apartment; lunch and Supergirl episodes (the twin girls, both 9, especially adore the show); then an afternoon of D&D with them. Yup, raising them right: outdoor play, superheroes, and fantasy roleplay! …

21-Day Novel: Day 1 Read More »