Novel in a Month

Once again I am participating in Romance Writers of Australia's 50k in 30 Days. Like Nanowrimo, the object is to write 50,000 words in 30 days, except during the month of June.

I've got off to a dismal beginning. The starting gun went bang and I'm still lingering near the start line. It's not that I haven't tried writing, it's that my characters were hiding in the back room with the light turned off. I just couldn't see them. I knew a bit about my story and had worked out the conflicts, had an idea for the black moment... even so, I couldn't get a word down. Talk about pulling teeth!

Then, in one of those 3am epiphanies that have you reaching for pen and paper in the dark, it came to me. I needed to shift one little thing in my story and suddenly my characters were happy. It was like in the movie Labyrinth and I could suddenly move past the brick wall that was in my way.

The reason I hadn't been able to write was because subconsciously I knew what I was writing wasn't what my story needed. It really did feel like a wall inside me came crashing down. I feel calmer, enthused and excited - even though the daily word count I need is now a little scary.

Now my characters are happy to play and the words are flowing. I might be starting behind the eight ball with my word count, but my characters are as eager as me to get the words down. Who knows, I may make the 50k after all.

January Word Count

23,640 words.  In one month. Even after attempting Nanowrimo for the last 3 years I've never actually managed to write so many words in 4 weeks. I just hope I can keep the pace up...

New Year's Resolution

Yes, this is my New Year's Resolution... I'm aiming for 60 minutes of writing a day. I'm not sure I'll write every day (there will be days of plotting, editing - and life butting in) but I'm hoping the goal will drive me to do better than before. Guess time will tell :o)

So Slow

Having a bad week with my word count. Got my BICHOK (bum in chair, hands on keyboard), but countless interruptions are stopping the words from flowing. I guess it's that time of year: Christmas is looming, it's the last week of school and for me, my last week of work (my contract finishes today).

I wonder if Santa can bring me a few words?

50k in 30days Starts

Yes, it's that time of year again. 50k in 30days is run every June by RWA. Along the lines of Nanowrimo, we pledge a goal for the month and then write our socks off to meet it. There is plenty of support and sprints are run regularly (I lurv the sprints *grin* - and have blogged about them previously).

This year I'm going for broke and am aiming high. I don't think I'll get there (life invariably gets in the way) but I firmly believe the higher I aim the better the outcome. Besides, even if I don't reach my goal I will have a lot more words come the end of  June then I would have otherwise.

I'll be updating my word counter regularly throughout the month - nothing like keeping it in the public eye to feed my motivation *grin*.  Wish me luck!!

June 50k in 30 days

June is 50k in 30 days for RWA. So guess what I'm doing for the next few weeks!

As I 'only' need 25k to finish my wip, I'm aiming for that, then onto editing. Watch my wip graph to the right to see how I go.

writeinjune.blogspot.com

Eeeek 50%

Excuse my Happy Dance.

But I've cracked the 25k mark on my wip - 50% of the way there.

Just *slightly* excited.

Word Counts

50,000 words.

That is my goal. 50,000 words. My work in progress is aimed at Harlequin Mills and Boon Sweet so the size of my ms is already determined.

But how do I tell just how many words I've written?

I know there are two different ways of calculating word count.
1. The actual word count
2. The number of pages x 250 (when your page is set up to hold 25 lines).

Originally I'd been following the first method. But then I heard on the grapevine that publishers were more concerned with the number of pages in a book, so I switched to option 2.

Last night I celebrated breaking the 20,000 mark. But then I was told that Harlequin tend to just want the actual word count these days, back to 18,000. Bang. Just like that.

So how am I supposed to count my words?