FebNoWriMo Week 1

Day 1

I have re-typed roughly 14,000 words of Souls Unknowing so far, and I think I will type up another 3K-5K before I go to bed. This is not going to be a NaNo like my usual ones. Typically I am aiming for 50,000 words in a novel that I haven't started. But, since this isn't an official NaNo, I feel that I can alter the expectations just a little bit.

When I originally wrote Souls Unknowing I think it was something like 54,000 words or so. I need to get all of that typed back up and then I am in full-on edit mode. I have seen a couple spots where I need to clean things up. One of the things I noticed was that I have a group of something like seven girls and I probably only really need around three since they aren't exactly major parts of the story. They are really the people my main character spends time with when she is trying to convince herself that she is not a freak and that she is going to ignore the spirit world.

What I would like to do in the editing/expanding is to add about 30,000 words or so. I'm hoping that I'll be able to do that in the month of February and then I can start from the top again and read through for any glaring errors and such. Then I have a couple people who are going to do a read-through for me and give their own feedback.

After that, I will go through one last time and fix anything my readers have pointed out. Then it will just be a matter of making sure the formatting is all good to go before I finish everything up on CreateSpace.

Day 2

Okay, so I didn't really do a lot of typing today, which kind of sucks, but at the same time I have made progress on the overall story for my Souls trilogy. After I finished Souls Unknowing in 2006 I immediately started working on the sequel Souls Abandoned. However, much like I did with the first book, I wrote several chapters and then pushed the book aside. Here it is at the start of 2012 and I still only have 10 chapters of book two written and the only thing I really have down for book three is the title: Souls Crossing.

So, instead of writing, today I spent time with one of my biggest fans for these books. She was the main reason I finished writing Souls Unknowing in the first place because she constantly asked me when I was going to get back to it and when the next chapter would be ready, etc.

Back in 2006 I knew how I wanted Souls Abandoned to go and at the time I really liked the idea, but now as I'm coming back to these stories and re-reading everything I have discovered a better path for the story and I like it much better than the original plot points. Of course, now I just have to figure out how the changes in Abandoned will affect Crossing. But that is really a problem for another day.

So...I guess what I'm saying here is that not only am I working on re-typing up Unknowing and then editing it, but I am also working on finishing Abandoned so I can start on Crossing. I have a feeling that it is going to be quite an interesting month (and probably the same can be said for the next couple months as well).

Day 3

I'll admit it: I didn't really write like at all today. But, I did think about the Souls trilogy, particularly Abandoned and I definitely have some new plot points that I didn't have when I was originally working on the story back in 2006-2008.

Also, I have the next two days off work so hopefully I'll be able to make the best of that time. Though tomorrow my family is going down to see my grandma to celebrate her 85th birthday. However, what that means is around 5 hours (round-trip) in the car...and I won't be the one driving. I can definitely work on some more of Abandoned then. I won't be able to work on Unknowing since I have to finish re-typing that first and I'm not taking my computer with me.

Instead I'll work on writing Chapter 11 and see how far I get with everything.

Day 4

I did a little writing today for Abandoned but as I suspected, more time was spent with my grandma celebrating her birthday. The trip home was basically after dark so there was no chance for writing and I couldn't really do much on the way there because I can really only tune my family out by reading.

So, not a lot of writing, but I did read 2.5 books today so at least that is something.

I plan on doing some more writing before bed and then I'm off work tomorrow so I can hopefully get quite a bit of work done then.

Days 5 & 6
I feel like a bad writer. I haven't done any writing the past couple days. So, I need to work on that. And I will work on it because I have a lot of work to get done before I can use my CreateSpace coupon. Hopefully on my next day off from work I can make some progress.

Day 7

Okay, so after work I didn't do a little work on the Souls trilogy like I planned. Instead I had this urge to do a little work on this idea I have had on the back burner for six years now. On fictionpress I run a Role Playing forum set in the 1920s and with all of the characters and the setting and the stories that I had created, I always thought it would be cool to actually write something other than just RPing. But I could never decide if I wanted to write just one novel, a series of short stories, or what.

After work I just sat there thinking about Speak Easy, and it hit me: a series of novellas. I'm just not that good with short stories. Even when I try to keep them short they typically end up with at least 15,000 words or more, so short stories wouldn't really work for this project. And the more I thought about it, the more I came to think that one novel just wouldn't do this world justice, and I don't really want to try and do a series of novels with this.

So...a compromise...longer than short stories, but shorter than novels...novellas. Depending on the final word count after I've finished the novellas, it might just be one collection of all of the stories, or maybe two. Anyway, right now I have the titles and loose ideas for 10 different novellas.

Now, that does not mean that I am throwing the Souls trilogy aside to work on Speak Easy. I just had to get it all down before I forgot about it. Perhaps working on Speak Easy will be my project for Camp NaNoWriMo or maybe NaNoWriMo. Heck, since I'm planning on 10 different novellas maybe it will take both sessions of Camp NaNoWriMo as well as NaNoWriMo to write them all.