Authors, what are you working on? (Part II)

Apparently it is time to start a new thread for this discussion. :) The link at the top takes you back to the previous thread.

I'm responding to
LeonStevens, in message 153 :
"I'm a slow writer or I write in sprints. I'm creeping up to 30000 words."

My instinct is to sprint, but I've discovered it isn't actually all that good for my overall production. :(

I have apparently reached 157 000 words on the current WIP, but I started it a couple years back. I'm nowhere near 30K for this year yet.

But I made my writing goal for the week, so I'm happy. :)

I've found that I can do sprints when I translate, but *not* when I'm writing my own stuff.

The problem with sprints is that they can break my flow. If I'm particularly inspired, I have to keep writing no matter what. So usually what works best for me is to do a full chapter/scene in one sitting. This might take me 20 minutes like it might take me 45 minutes, depending on length. But since I can't guess this in advance, I don't do a sprint.

I type pretty fast though. I usually can do 6 to 7000 words a day, though more than half of those are on translations, so I suppose those don't fully count ;)

I recently started to just write the dialogue, when I feel blocked, and then go back to fill in the other parts.

>2 slarken: "I type pretty fast though. I usually can do 6 to 7000 words a day..."

Yeah. I can do 6 too. 😉

>3 LeonStevens: "Yeah. I can do 6 too."

Not me. I definitely have days where six words is six words more than I am up for. At least, I can write the six words, but when I come back later, I will invariably decide that they are the wrong six words and delete them.

But I made my writing goal for the week again, so hurray for that!

... Too bad I got absolutely nothing else done all week. No art, no music, no blog, and no coding. :(

I finished the 30 poems in 30 days (plus 1 for my mom's birthday). I tried to commit to getting up, reading the prompt, then getting it written and posted within an hour. The longest it took was about 3, so that's good. I thought that it may make my poems sub-par, but when I looked back at them there were none that I was unhappy with.

Now back to the novel.

They are all here: http://linesbyleon.com/national-poetry-writing-month/

>5 LeonStevens:
Congrats! I bet your mom was happy!

That was a delightful read.

... And apropos of not very much, like your Dad I can also recite "The Cremation of Sam McGee." I memorized it as a jr. high-school student, and when my English teacher found out I had done so she had me recite it not only to my own class but the other class in the same grade.

My next challenge to myself was to memorize Rudyard Kipling's "The Ballad of Boh Da Thone" but that one hasn't stuck quite as well, and I can only do bits and pieces of it now.

...No English teacher has ever evidenced any desire to have me recite that one in class. Why not? A story about somone sending someone else a severed head COD isn't suitable for school?

>6 LShelby: "Congrats! I bet your mom was happy!" - Yeah. when she called me I could tell she was teary.

"...isn't suitable for school?" - Oh, there are so many things that use to be...

Glad you enjoyed the poems. I'm going to put them into a ebook.

Thanks for the random emails!

A story inspired by alice in wonderland, and try to type up all my poetry. the world building is what is the hard part as i have to build multiple.

>8 vegetarianveggie: Worldbuilding is always one of my favorite parts, but yes it can be work intensive.

I coded a basic version of a new game. (At least, I've only tested it in a couple browsers, but it works in both of those.)

I also made my writing goal for the week. :)

I've been reading books and writing reviews. I have a talk to give in June (by telepresence) on fiction and occultism, so I'm writing that also.

My "front burner" book projects are pretty much at a standstill.

>10 paradoxosalpha:

Sometimes more time sensitive projects have to take priority.

...I don't really have that excuse -- it's just that I started the other project when I did have a reason, and now that I don't really have a reason anymore, there's this thing called momentum. I just started 'Episode 12' (out of 16). According to my theory that I will eventually write it up as four books, I am almost done the third book. But, the four books are all really the same story, so when I get to the end of this segment, I'm going to be three quarters of the way through the story.

It's going to be really hard for me to convince myself to stop there. I might just have to complete the entire thing before I can get back to my own "front burner" projects.

The early months of the pandemic gave me some focus I'm really missing now for book production. Not that I'd rather have that back for the price.

I don't think I'll manage to do much catching up here today, but I wanted to at least post something.

Today for the first time in far too long I wrote a normal-for-me amount of words, instead of probably far too many words, or no words at all. (We were just discussing how sprinting isn't always good for me, weren't we? It leaves me exhausted and drained for a couple days, and makes it hard for me to get anything else done.)

The problem is that by the time I had got recovered enough to write anything much, I had dragged myself into the story's "end game". It's normal for my daily word counts to go up at this point in a story. But it doesn't combine very well with me trying to put my affairs back together after a crash. :(

Also normal, but unfortunate timing-wise, is that the intricacies of bringing all the plot threads together in a satisfying way keeps taking over my brain even when I am supposed to be thinking about other things...
...like my daughter getting married in less than two months. Eep!

But at least I'm having fun: My second female lead just got captured by pirates, and the second male lead is in the process of being sold to the enemy, meanwhile my hero and heroine are both about to get engaged to the wrong people, (as part of the hero's final gambit to bring down the evil mastermind -- but my poor heroine doesn't know that!) >:)

Also: my wordcount just passed 200 000 words.
That's a first.

>13 LShelby: "My second female lead just got captured by pirates, and the second male lead is in the process of being sold to the enemy, meanwhile my hero and heroine are both about to get engaged to the wrong people, (as part of the hero's final gambit to bring down the evil mastermind -- but my poor heroine doesn't know that!)

Gee, spoiler alert...

I decided to give Wattpad a second chance and I uploaded my NaPoWriMo collection, 30 Poems/30 Days there, as well as on Inkitt. I will probably turn that into another reader magnet.

I finally broke the 30k word barrier on my novel. I'm at the point where I'm filling in more details and descriptions.

>14 LeonStevens: "Gee, spoiler alert..."

At my current rate of publication, nobody will be seeing this particular story for almost a decade. I figure by that time, they will have forgotten any details I have posted here. But I can try to be more careful if people want.

"I decided to give Wattpad a second chance"
I'm interested in knowing how that goes.

"I finally broke the 30k word barrier on my novel."
Woot!

My writing mentor said that usually when writers have trouble getting beyond the first 30K words its because that's where they run out of their initial situation and have to start knowing how to plot. One of my daughters had this difficulty. But one of my other daughters apparently can't get past it, because her stories just don't have enough details in them, so they read more like... traditional fairy-tales? (I say apparently, because that particular daughter is too self-conscious to let me read her work.)

>15 LShelby: Since when I read, I tend to skim over parts that are too detailed, or lack relevance to the story (yeah, sometimes I have to go back), which probably makes me write the same way. I don't want to add words for the sake of words, which tends to limit my writing to short stories.

As for Wattpad (and Inkitt, and Medium...), unless you are constantly promoting your works on social media, I think it is difficult to get a lot of readers there, but it may be a way to get new readers, or they might just stick around for your free stuff.

So I finally make a reappearance.

I haven't had a chance to get caught up on everything I missed yet, but in the time I was gone two of my daughters were married, my father was buried, every window in our house was replaced, one of my teeth was crowned, and I travelled back home to Canada to catch up with as much of my family as I could. Most of the rest of the time was spent recovering from the above mentioned happenings.

I did also manage to add 10K+ words to my WIP.

This is the last day of NaNoWriMo. any one else take on this challenge? I'm not a fast writer, so I go into this for motivation to write a little more than I usually would. Last year I got a novella out of it (it took and extra 6 months), so if I do the same this year, it is a success.

I'm at just over 18 000 words and my goal tracker tells me I need to write 32 000 more...Yikes!

>18 LeonStevens:

I hadn't given NaNoWriMo any thought this year, but I did write a few paragraphs of my languishing fiction book yesterday!

>18 LeonStevens:
I wrote about 20 000 words during November.

I ended up taking a very long break over Thanksgiving, but I'm okay with that. 20 000 words a month would get me about two books a year if I could keep that up all year round. :)

>20 LShelby: That's that plan.

I have finished "episode" 15 (out of sixteen) for my WIP, and have started the finale. I might actually get this done by the end of the year. Only 13 000 words to go. (At least, that's the theory.)

>21 LeonStevens:
I know, I know, I have yet to keep up that kind of wordage all year round. But it is theoretically possible. It might happen... next year! Who knows?

Sorry that I haven't been responding, but I wrote ~20 000 words in this past week, and now I'm done, Done, DONE!

(With the first draft of the script version. Please don't point out to me that it will still take a lot of work to get this story into a publishable form -- I'm trying not to go there.)

The final wordcount weighed in at just shy of 260 000 words.

I'm now officially declaring myself exhausted.

*applause*

I'm Mark P. Bromley. I'm new to the Author world and this Library Thingy. Although I have been friends of the Library for a long time in many different cities like Moab for one and Anythink for another and even Libraries overseas. I'm just going to start off with a bang.

I have one book listed as an ebook called Yoranthium. Since then I started ,"New art concepts in support of my book series," Kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yoranthium/new-art-concepts-in-support-of-m...

It's about my two next books in my Yorantium series of books. My first book and my Art book some of my early stuff can be seen at https://www.Travalionhold.weebly.com. I'm trying to raise funds to stop from indie publishing ebooks with my book series and get the real ISBN soft cover and hard cover books published. So I'm selling them via the Kickstarter.

I'll have three books by the end of December 2022 ready to go of the Yoranthium series.
Book One: Lost Hope is now available on ebook.
Book Two: The Book of Jintru. Unpublished but being edited for publishing.
Book Three: The Land of the Potentate. Unpublished and getting ready for editing and publishing.

I'm also in the planning stage of...
Book Four: The isle of Forumpth
Book Five: Incursion 2.x

These books are available now for preorder via the Kickstarter. I need your help and you can join my Yoranthium Supporters page that was once a guild. It has ranks and supporters go up in rank by your support of my projects and you get listed in the books on the supporter page. I thought ranks would be more meaningful for those who wanted to become the Fan Club president aka Heir of the Hold. It's a fan club of Yornathium. Or to be a little cheeky you can claim you have the ground floor chance to join Yoranthium Travalion Hold the cult.

Support my book join a cult, LOL. The Cult of Yoranthium. You can be a kickstarter supporter and tell your partner and friends what you decided to do today. "I'm joining a cult." You say with some humor and a smile as you purchase the three current books of Yoranthium. With proof of your name and paid membership on the Yoranthium supporters page updated upon each new book that is published. Hooray!!!

Anyway if you could help me start my publishing business and aid me in acquiring a means to more future projects of the series like a video game or movies. This would be great and the Fan Club, Guild, cult thing needs you!!!!

While I work on some of my own ideas, I feel like I can also generate an audience through postmodern reboots of public domain stories. I've got a few ideas prepared, but my most important one now is a retelling of several Greek Myths pertaining to Daedalus, Thesus, the Minotaur, etc. I don't usually reveal what I'm working on, but since there are as many adaptations of Greek Myths as stars in the sky, I don't really mind. Plus, the sequel for Wings of Nialoca is going to need more careful planning, so I don't mind working on other projects too as I have the free time.

Don't everyone laugh too hard...

...I have started pulling apart and rebuilding the ending of the 260k word script I said was done in >23 LShelby:

I also wrote a plot outline for something that will probably never see the light of day.
Does that count as working?

...And in coding news I have now used the css grid system to do a web layout for the first time ever. (Because I was waiting for it to be more widely supported, not because I'm falling behind the times, of course. I know you all believe me.)

>27 LShelby: If you ain't happy with the ending, you ain't happy with the ending. Besides, if kids are reading Harry Potter 5, nobody gets to complain about 260K scripts.

Hi! New to this site and I think I posted but was not a member which I am now. So if this is repeat information I apologize. My first book is now published in a series of three "In Search of New Hope". It is Christian Science Fiction and has sold a bit so far.
Question any ideas out there to promote a book. My self-publishing package does not include promoting. In one way it really does not matter as I am now retired and loving life and writing gives me joy. Thanks for any responses. Sue

>27 LShelby:
The ending was okay, but I think I came up with an idea to make it better. :crosses fingers:: Getting all the bits and pieces to line back up is proving challenging, however.

(Darn story has way too many important characters. Pulling them all together for the finale would be ideal, but I can't seem to arrange it. My new idea allows me to have all but one central character and my favorite band of minor characters at the big finale. I am hoping that if I give that set of people a fun action scene, which we leave on a cliff-hanger while we do the big finale, and then reveal the conclusion of their after the big finale, that will hold everything together and have enough *POW!!!* to make me happy.)

Hi Sue!
You have found the right group but possibly not the right thread. So I think I will hop over to your Profile and see if I can help you out. :)

In the meantime, here's a toast to writing bringing us joy!

>32 ajcameron_author:
A picturebook sounds fun. Are you doing your own art?

Today I started transcribing a novel I wrote out longhand back in 2017. It makes me feel awesomely productive: 3772 words in one day, woot!

Unfortunately I haven't been typing that much recently, and my arms are now complaining at me. :(

I am working on my first full length novel. I have about 33,000 words and about 2/3's through the story. This is a bit disconcerting because I was targeting 60,000 words. I won't make it on the first go through. I will have to see in editing if I need to add additional material or just leave it as a shorter book. I have been working on the novel a long time but keep going back and editing. It has been suggested by another author that I stop doing that and write it down straight to the end and then go back and edit. He said that if I keep going the way I have been I will never get it done. I have made a lot of progress since then, 3 months ago.

I have 12 children's books I am currently working on that are in various stages of development but the one I worked on most recently is about women in the military. I want to outline the contributions of women of color in the armed forces starting as far back as Harriet Tubman who contributed the only written record of a volunteer nurse from that time. She was also unofficially made a General, but I feel when her story is told the narrative focuses predominantly on the Underground Railroad. I currently have a problem trying to focus on too many topics and so I am not making the necessary progress in my research. Last Thursday I was laid off from one of my two full-time jobs so I will probably have more dedicated time until I find a new position.

Currently focusing all of my energy on all of the behind the scenes prep to marketing my next book, which is coming out this fall. I have a blog as well, so I'm still writing! :)

I'm just working on a conference talk that will eventually appear in s proceedings book.

Working on a science fiction novel. Sort of Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibes, with the UK descending into Children of Men style tyranny as the alien invasion becomes more apparent. The whol plot is sketched out - now planning each chapter in detail. Should end up about 90k words.

I am plotting a romance set in my Belle Epoque that never was world. I was really feeling the need for something light after putting my protag through the wringer in my last book

I'm taking a break of editing my third book in my dark fantasy series since book two just released. I'm needing time to reset my mind, so I'm reading instead.

Co-author completed her eye operations recently (cataracts) and has been able to see well enough to do a complete reading of the first and second books in our series. (And find mistakes that I had missed!)

Book 4 is now at about 45000 words and my hope is to get the first draft finished by year's end. Of course, that will require doing more writing and less reading, so we will see how it goes.

It may or may not help the real writers out there, but my amended motto is "Write what you know... that you want to be IN the book." In other words, don't constrain yourself to "this is what has to come next," but instead, write the scenes or dialogue that have fired your imagination, and then figure out how to get there.

>12 paradoxosalpha: Same here!
The pandemic gave me a great jump start for writing. But now life has caught back up and it's a struggle to keep a truly productive rate of writing. Still, a little something in writing is better than nothing.

Dissertation writing takes up way too much of my life! But that is what consumes most of my time and brain space.
However, when I make time to clear my head and write for enjoyment, I am able to focus on short stories. I've written two sci fi short stories in the last few months and have submitted them for publication in a couple of journals. Fingers crossed they get picked up!

Holding a good thought for you to get published radiatedskull! Let us know when they hit the stands.

I just released my third book, Music Head - A Memoir of Purpose, and am in the thick of the marketing blaze, but will be returning to my next book when the tourism season slows down. The next book is actually a cook book with recipes from our Bed & Breakfast in the Finger Lakes wine district of NY, with wine pairings, suggestions, and a bit of history about the wineries in the area.

My next book Jackson Haines: The Skating King comes out on November 1 and I'm slowly making my way through a huge to-do list of marketing stuff! :) Cannot wait for people to learn this incredible story.

Hello! I've been away from LibraryThing for far too long. I hope it's okay to share that I have a new release coming out November 14, Rescued Hearts Anthology, which includes my novelette called Mercy's Wings. (All proceeds benefit a rescue agency in Georgia.) I'm currently writing a historical romance set in north Alabama in the 19th century, and also collaborating with another author on a contemporary romance. I've never collaborated before, so this is a brand new experience for us both. Glad to be back!

Cleaning up typos from Challenge Accepted, (thank you LT Early Reviewers!). Prepping "Separate Paths" (Book 2 of the Unnamed Saga) for December release. Writing and thinking about "Dark Visions" (Book 4 of the series)- currently at about 55k words.

>45 stuartperegrine: Thank you, stuartperegrine! I will be more than happy to let you guys know when the stories make it--though, I am unsure if I am supposed let you guys know in this forum or a different one... I'll figure it out when the time comes. I've gotten a few rejection letters already, but that's how the process goes, right? Get a rejection, scour over the story to see where it can be improved, then submit to another journal (rinse and repeat). It doesn't look like I will be getting another rejection or acceptance letter until after the new year. So, I'm hoping to be able to make time for writing one more short story over the holidays (fingers crossed)!

I've just received a printed proof of my forthcoming Poliphilo's Breakfast, and I'm going to see if I can get it out the door this month.

I'm working on marketing for Bio Marty Vita: Life Life Life and Sex with Jesus.

Poliphilo's Breakfast has been on sale at Amazon for a full month, a not a single copy has moved! I'll admit, it's my weakest book trailer ever. But I was emboldened to publish the thing because some of its contents got regular downloads from Academia.edu, so there's some mystery about how to connect with those readers.