I did it! And with time to spare?

So this is the bottle of champagne my insanely amazing husband popped last night (and beside it a gift my insanely amazing husband bought me one time when I was sad).  Why the champagne?

 Around 11:30 PST on April 1, I finished a novel.  What?  No, this isn't an April Fool's joke.  I actually finished a novel, from start to finish, in three months!

This is a huge accomplishment for me.  I've written two novels before this one.  The first (which will never see the light of day) took me a year to write.  The second, (Book 1 in the series I'm now writing) took about 10 months to write the first draft.  And then I spent another five years (yes you read that right) rewriting that first draft.

Okay, so I had a full time-job then and I lived close to my large family and decent sized group of friends, which meant the distractions were endless and the time was more limited, but still.

THREE MONTHS!?!?  Honestly I didn't think I was capable of doing it.  Now through the ROW80 writing challenge I participated in, from January to the end of March, I realize with just hitting a smallish word count goal per day I can do a lot more much quicker!

I also have to say, in my last week of writing away, coffee was a big help.  I never drink coffee.  It usually makes me crazy.  But I sacrificed the crazies (well, I didn't actually go crazy this time) to help fuel some serious speed writing, especially near the end.

Is the book good?  No, it's probably terrible.  There are holes, and weird plot things going on and some overall bad prose.  But it's a first draft.  And what's my new motto for a first draft?

Get it written.  Then get it right!  (I read that recently in this book).

And there you have it.

Now I am officially taking a bit of a break, which also means a bit of a break from blogging.

During this break I plan to just feel the joy and gratitude of making it to this accomplishment, because despite the worry that I'm wasting my life on something that may never become what I hope it will be, I'm grateful I get to try.

And to all of you out there — most of whom I know personally and perhaps a few that I don't — thank you for your support.  Thank you for your love.  And thank you for helping me hold on to this dream of mine, regardless of how many years go by.

Great big love to you all xx

Making the final check-in

Wait! #ROW80...I'm here.  Out of breath and panting but I'm here to deliver my final check-in.

I've been off the blogging grid for almost three weeks now....first because I had a number of visitors and then because I opted for working on my writing goals instead of blogging about them in the last hours of the first round of #ROW80.

But before this round ends I wanted to just put in how far I made it with my goals, and to send so much gratitude out to Kait Nolan and this writing challenge and as well to the sponsors and every other ROWer who came to encourage and visit my blog.  It was also fun getting to visit some of yours!

So, for a recap of my goals:

Through Kait's advice, I started out by chopping my original goal in half.  I know I can write between 2,000 and 3,000 words when I'm trying, so doing as Kait said, I made my #ROW80 goal to write 1,000/day, five days a week, and have this also translate into 5,000 words/week.

It didn't take me long to realize that this was the best goal I ever set for myself.  Through the first two months of #ROW80 I was meeting or surpassing this goal every week — and sometimes only writing four days instead of five.

It's been SUCH an eye-opener for me.  Before this, I would set these massive goals for myself and I would never accomplish them and there would be a lot of self-hate involved and defeatism.  Then, along came #ROW80 to show me that I can actually set smaller goals for myself (and this was MUCH smaller by my standards) and then...I would actually end up getting MORE done than with any of the big goals I've ever set for myself!

I had to take a week and a bit off in February to go see family in Vancouver, and then I had some visitors, but by the time I came back to write I looked at how much I had done so far for #ROW80 and saw that I had written 35,000 words in 6 weeks!!  Now, add this to the 5,000 words I'd already had before the writing challenge started and that put me at 40k!

I realized then, that if I worked hard, if I played my cards right, I could actually finish this novel!!!

So I upped my goals.  2,000 words/day, five days a week — translating into 10,000 words per week.

Now, this goal, I learned quickly was much harder for me to achieve.  I felt burnt out by the end of the week and if I missed a day it was much harder to make up the extra word count if I fell behind.  Still, I made it to 9,800 words the first week and 9,000 words the second.

Something I also started doing through this challenge is keeping track of my daily word count on an excel file — and I highly recommend this.

Then I reached 60,000 words and I just said $%^$ it...now I've just go to get through these last chapters and get this thing done.  So I've been writing day and night — as much as I can.

I must say I'm also motivated by the fact I'm going to Toronto for two weeks, leaving April 3.  So the deadline I've given myself for finishing this novel is actually April 2 (after ROW).  So I am still writing away...

But where am I on this last day? 72k baby!  And I've got about five or six chapters left to write....in 6 days.  Can I make it?  Maybe?

I'm not putting too much pressure on myself.  I haven't been feeling that great this last week or so, so even though I'm working, it's not as easily as I would like.....but I'm just going to keep going and hope I make it — if I don't, I don't.  I'll be pretty much done anyways and I'll only have a chapter or two to write when I get back if I don't make it.

All I can say now is how grateful I am that I found this challenge.  Kait Nolan, I am so grateful to you for creating a challenge for writers who have a life. Thank you!  I'm grateful for the lesson you taught me that just doing a bit each day can actually bring me further in the end than going after a huge goal.

Thank you ROWers for all your support and for sharing your own writing challenges and goals with me.  In these past three months I've pretty much written a novel and I'm smiling from ear to ear, looking at the writing world a little differently (in a good way) and so excited for how this challenge will shape my productivity in the future.

Alas, I cannot join #ROW80 for the second round....I'll be travelling too much in April and May.

I leave you then, with IMMENSE gratitude, the possibility of knowing that I may join ROW80 again in the future, and an almost-written-novel I shall now return to.

Good luck everyone participating in the second round, and good luck to all writers, everywhere, near and far.

So far so good

I ended up with a total of 9,818 words, written over four days for my first week of upping my goals.  That's 182 words away from my new weekly goal of 10,000 words, and I accomplished this writing over just four days instead of five.

Can't say I'm disappointed with it.

If I can keep going like this until I leave for my trip to Toronto, April 3, I will have written a novel in three months!  I want to reach this goal.  It would be absolutely stupendous if I reach this goal.  I'm hopeful I can get there but I don't want to say I will for sure.

For one this is because it was a lot harder for me to write 10,000 words this week then my ROW80 average of about 6,000 words/week.  The second reason is we've got visitors coming, two sets — arriving Wednesday and leaving Sunday, so this will make reaching word count a little more difficult with only three weeks and a few days left to reach my goal.

But what I promise myself is that, to the very best of my ability, I am going to work towards my 2,000 words per day, five days a week goal.  I'm going to treat each day as a new day and each day I'm just going to do what I can to get to where I want to go.  If it happens, awesome.  If it doesn't,  I'm going to try not to be too hard on myself and the next day I'm going to try again.

Last week I ended up doing no writing on Tuesday and so added to my word count goals for the rest of the week.  This works, but as I've learned it makes each writing day a little harder.  If I have to do this I will, but again it's not ideal.

Still if I am able to accomplish this goal and finish this novel by April 2, that will be such a HUGE accomplishment for me.  I've written two novels before this one, the first took me a year.  The second took me, well, let's just say YEARS.  Granted I was working longer hours then (and not on a freelance basis), but still, if I do this it will be such an awesome improvement.

And even if I only almost make it there it will still be a huge improvement.  But I can taste the end of this frist draft and boy do I want to devour the whole thing!!!

Good luck all you fellow ROW80ers this week!  Happy writing. 

Stepping it up

There is a possibility that if I up my word count by 1,000 words/day to 2,000 words/day, five days a week, I will finish the first draft of this novel by the end of the first round of ROW80 (the end of this month), or shortly thereafter.

I've got some travelling to do in April and most likely again in May, so finishing before my travelling starts would be ideal.

So what am I doing?  I'm stepping it up.

Starting tomorrow I am upping my daily word count to 2,000 words/day, five days a week.

Now, increasing my word count will be a challenge but I definitely know it's doable because I've often written at least 500 words above my word count most days so far during this challenge.  I know this novel will be short and should be sitting at about 80,000 words when all is said and done, and right now I'm just under 40,000.  So the only thing left for me to do now is get to it.

Again, what I've learned is to not put pressure on myself to "finish the novel."  I've learned I get A LOT more done when I just focus on my word count each day and nothing else.

So from here we'll just see what happens.

And in the meantime, as I like to do, some gratitude...

Thank you for the financial means to be able to fly places to visit family and friends.  Thank you for the time to be able to do so as well.  Thank you for an increasing income.  Thank you for the way life moves on and up and backwards and forwards all at once so that there is always so much to be in awe of, to be inspired by, and thank you for how it all culminates into moments of transformation — blessings that stretch beyond my fondest dreams.  Thank you for old friends and new love and how the two can find each other.  Thank you for every single moment that I feel more and more connected to myself, that I can feel truth filling me up so that as I move through space and time, I do so from a place that is authentic.  Thank you for anyone and everyone who accepts me for who I am.  Thank you for my growing acceptance of myself.

Thank you for dreams, BIG dreams.  And thank you for the opportunity to be able to go for them.

Now that I've got a moment...

Hello!  Long time no blogging! And guess what, no writing either...

As you may have known from my last post from the week before last, I was in Vancouver visiting this beautiful face (my darling niece) all of last week.

And let's face it,

 who can get writing done when she's the distraction?

Then on the day we flew home (by the seat of our pants may I add as we very nearly missed our flight) we drove back to the airport three hours after getting home to go pick up our friends from Toronto who came to visit for the week.  Hence, writing/blogging became further delayed.

This is us waiting to attend a tapping of the Conan O'brien Show.

And me and my dear friend Meghan (we've been friends since we were 13) hanging in Santa Monica

I haven't had a moment to myself these last two weeks and now that I finally do I'm spending today catching up!  If all goes as planned I'll be back to writing tomorrow.  And I seriously can't wait!  I want to try and step up my game for March (minus a week when I have two other sets of friends/family coming to visit).  

You see, I'm above word count for the first part of my ROW80 goals and am now officially half way through my novel!!  In my wildest dreams I will finish this thing by the end of the first round of ROW80 or shortly thereafter.  I'm going to try my best to get there but what I've learned is that I am most productive when I just keep to my word count goals and don't set bigger goals for myself like that....so in other words...stay tuned and we'll all see what happens!

Happy writing to all for the rest of this week!

The space between

One challenge I've always faced writing novels is knowing what to do with the space in between plot points.  For example when you've hit Plot Point A and know you now need to get to Plot Point B but there's no roadmap to get you there.

Sure, sometimes you strike gold and the novel progresses at one certain point to another with relative ease (for me especially if I have an idea of what I want to hit in the middle). But more often than not I go through this elation of reaching a specific place, the joy of writing a scene that's been bubbling in my mind for weeks (or much longer) only to be followed by a "uh...now what?"

I know where I want to go from here but I also know there needs to be some space between.  It's a pacing thing right?  This is where I try to use my instinct. I have a feeling of how much writing needs to pass between A and B.  At the same time, not knowing what this writing will be has before caused me to ramble on and veer down roads that lead me anywhere but where I want to go.

True, sometimes this is where the magic of writing happens, where an unexpected turn helps me figure out things I wasn't sure about or add in an aspect when something had been missing.

On the other hand, if the veering and the rambling doesn't pan out I end up making the space between A and B or B and C (or whatever) much longer than I want it to be and often it's filled with "stuff" that isn't driving the story.

I'm about to approach "a space between" very shortly.  It's making me a tad worried actually because up until now I've been on quite the roll.  So here's my question to you ROWers: How do you manage the space between?  Do you have any tactics?  Any suggestions?

I know we all have different writing process and some of us write such detailed outlines that we don't have "space" to deal with.  Me, on the other hand, I like to write fairly loose outlines because I have better luck getting the story to show itself to me this way (if that makes any sense).  The downside of this of course is that I think it takes me longer to write a novel than it would for authors who know exactly where they're going all the time.  But that's my process *shrugs. And I believe writers need to do things differently.  Different means specific to you and without that you're taking away any hope of originality.  Do you think?

As far as my ROW80 goals go — I'm still on track for this week (kind of).  I need to bang out 2,000 words before the end of the day today, which is shortened by the fact I have visitors coming.

Then on Friday I fly to Vancouver so will definitely be on a writing hiatus — perhaps won't even have time to check-in.  But such is life.

And if there's one thing I feel, it's that you've got to be grateful for it.  Truly, everyday I focus on gratitude I just feel it in my bones more and more.

I thought what I would do today is leave everyone with this video.  I'm a bit into Oprah, so sorry if this ain't your thing.  Also, I couldn't get the video to embed properly because of the size of my blog page, so if you want to see the video in full screen, click here.

I've posted this because, as far as us writers go, I think we're in the business of dreaming big.  So it's on that note, I leave you this:

    

6 Lessons Oprah Learned from the World's Biggest Dreamers

They set their goals high and now live the lives they dreamed about. Find out the greatest lessons Oprah learned from Ted Turner, Laird Hamilton, Pastor Joel Osteen, Iyanla Vanzant, Jennifer Hudson and Paula Deen.

Just enough energy left for a little check-in

I have had another BUSY week.  Great, but busy.  I've been skipping the Wednesday check-in and now that I've made it to the Sunday I have almost nothing left to write a blog post.  Phew! It was a busy yoga weekend and now it's 6:35 and I'm about ready for bed.

Even though I was so busy though, goals wise it was a stellar week.  My best yet actually.  This is mostly because I was able to bang out 3,000 words on Friday.  That's 2,000 words more than my daily goal and so all together I reached a total of 7,500 words this week.  Hooray!

I still only managed to write four days instead of five but I have no complaints.

Now I've got a few more days before I run into a bit of a challenge.  Next Friday I fly to Vancouver to visit my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and niece, which is awesome — but it will mean a week without writing.  Maybe I can double my goals for this week?  I'm going to try but at the same time not put too much pressure on myself if I can't do it.

The day we get back from Vancouver we also then have visitors coming...so getting to writing is still going to be a challenge for me even then.

Still, this is the writing challenge that knows you have a life and all in all I think I'm pretty proud of what I've accomplished so far.  I've met or exceeded my goals every week since we started so if there's a time that takes me away from writing and there's nothing that can be done about it — then there's nothing that can be done.

I hope to write a check-in on Wednesday that actually has some other substance besides a ROW80 check-in.  For now, hope everyone's week went great!  Did you make your goals?  Is life getting in the way?  Sending vibes of clarity, motivation and inspiration to you all!

It's not midnight yet on the West Coast!

Phew! It's been a busy week and I feel like I'm juggling a lot of things, several balls in the air, but still I'm keeping up with my goals as much as I can so I've got to be happy with that and I am.

I wanted to write a post that spoke about more than just my ROW80 goals but we had some folks over today for the Super Bowl and it was fun that meant being away from the computer...but fun is never a bad thing, right?  Especially when you've still made your gaols.

I wrote a total of 6,413 words this week — 1,413 words over my weekly goal.  Woohoo!

I did only write four days instead of five though.  Since I'm now assisting with the yoga teacher training this takes another day away from me so if I'm busy with other work during the week I don't have as much time on the weekend to make it up.

But I'm perfectly okay with that, especially if I'm still making (and sometimes surpassing) my word count goal.

It's also been great to visit some of your blogs and see what you're up to and learning about the lessons and adventures we're going through thanks to ROW80 and writing and life!


Wishing you all a great week ahead!

Just close enough

It's been a busy week.  A great week, but a busy one.  I received a really nice surprise in that my yoga studio (where I just finished the in-class portion of my teacher training) asked me to assit the next round of teacher training — which started this Friday.  So I'm back in the classroom!  This time it's a bit different because I'm helping out but I'm also learning in a new way and I truly couldn't be more grateful.

Needless to say though, I've had to add on to the hours away from my writing project, with yoga and also with my freelance work.  I won't complain about that either though because this is how I get paid at the moment and I am so eternally grateful for every bit of income that comes my way!

Still, despite how busy my week was, I managed to end it only three hundred words short of my weekly writing goal!  I didn't write as many days (four instead of five) but I had one good session on Thursday that allowed me to make up for time lost doing other things that needed to get done.

Seriously, ROW80 has been life-changing for me even in just these first three weeks.  I can't express how much it's EXACTLY what I need/have needed.  Just in these three weeks it's made me learn that I can actually get more done with smaller goals and just doing a little bit but more often, than having huge sweeping goals and trying to work furiously in big chunks of time to complete them.  Doing things this new way just works for me.  It just does.

Oh, I have made myself a new ROW80 rule though!  That rule is that I am not allowed to use word count that is in excess of my 5,000 words/week goal for the following week.  So if I write 7,000 words one week, that does not mean it's okay for me to then write 3,000 words the following (because I  wrote an extra 2k from the week before).  I came really close to doing that this week but my instinct is telling me that's just a bad habit I shouldn't keep.

So my overall goals are still the same: 1,000 words a day, five days a week.  I'm okay with fudging on the number of days A BIT as long as I still make it to 5,000 words by the end of the week.  Now I've just added in my new rule, which I am calling no rollover words.

Now I'd like to end with some extra gratitude for the week:

Thank you for surprises. Thank you for the days people see potential in you.  Thank you more for the days you see, and feel it in yourself.  Thank you for how I am  integrating more and more everyday the idea that my body is a temple and one I want to take care of well, love and bless with all my heart.  Thank you for divine right action taking place in my life.  Thank you for how close I feel to my writing project, closer then ever before.  Thank you for the trust I'm gaining, in myself, in others, in the universe. Thank you for friends who are just plain old happy for you and remind you that when something nice happens you don't need to ask why, you just need to be thankful and go for it.

Thank you for the truth I feel in my heart.  Thank you for the breath within my breath.  

Freedom

I took a break Tuesday because I had an emotional day and was exhausted, but then because I had a less busy week freelance wise I was able to come back strong and knock out an extra 1,868 words above my weekly word count goal, for a total of 6,868 words (interesting number huh?) for the week.

Now that's out and I've got no complaints, so let's kick around with something I've been thinking about lately, shall we?  It's this very funny idea of control...

I'm one of those people who likes to pretend I have control over the way things turn out.  I think perhaps this might be one of the reasons I'm drawn to writing.  I'm in control when I'm writing.  Yes, I believe that inspiration can take you places you never expected but at the end of the day, it's my decision to sit in the chair and write the words.  It's my decision if I want to keep a paragraph or highlight and delete.  Easy as that.

I've been through a lesson recently that's shown me that what we are in control of in our lives is so, so very little, if, when you really think about it, we're actually in control of anything at all.

I know, I know...maybe you're saying, but we do have control over so many things!  We have the ability to make choices that shape our lives, from what food we decide to put in our bodies, to the ringtone we use to tell us our mother is calling.  For those of us living in Western society we have choice over heeps of things.

Except making those choices guarantees almost nothing.  Because no one, no matter where you're from, has true control over the way things go in his/her life.  We can make choices, work on building the life we want, get in the word count for the novel we're working on, and then the next day we're hit by a meteorite, or our computer crashes during that one week we forgot to back up.  We can get sick.  We can get tossed in another direction by a tornado of circumstance.

No one knows that more than someone who's lost someone or something very dear.

So what it comes down to for me is accepting, in my bones, my heart, the blood in my veins, that we have no control over anything beyond how we spend the present day, as long as we're breathing.

My wish is that one day I'll get to a place where accepting this truth frees me instead of sometimes filling me with dread for what may come.

Where do you stand on the spectrum of acceptance vs. dread?  Are you a control freak, worrying about the outcome of every action and even the outcome of things you have no control over whatsoever?  Or are you able to let go in your life, do the best you can everyday without stressing over how the future will turn out?  Are you somewhere in the middle?  Or are there any of you out there that feel completely free in the knowing that there is so much less you have control over than you previously thought?

Here we are again, so soon?

Another ROW80 check-in already?  Wow, I feel like these things are going to continue to sneak up on me pretty fast!

Last night was my first official, "that's it I'm not writing tonight day."  Only my second week, second day, and already I decided to take the night off.  I'm doing my best not to be hard on myself, for two reasons: First, I have a good chunk of time on my hands today so I plan to use it to make up for my word count goal of 1,000 words lost yesterday and write 2,000 words today.  It's not unheard of for me to write that in about three hours or so, so I should be okay.

Second (and here comes the excuses), I had a busy day yesterday and more than anything parts of it were emotionally draining for me.  I know one day I'll probably come clean and talk about exactly what this thing is — that has been so trying on me emotionally, spiritually and even physically — especially because since having gone through this thing I realize there's a lot of silence around it and that makes dealing with it even harder.

I know, I know, why am I being so elusive then?  It's because I'm just not ready to come out and talk about it all I guess.

So for the meantime, what you know is that I'm going through something and this something will sometimes take me away from my writing and I'm giving myself permission to go through all the emotions of it and if I need to, sit on my couch and watch the new episode of Downton Abbey instead of getting in a few hours of writing.

And so already we have a kink in the chain....but that's life right?  Isn't this the writing challenge that knows we've all got one?

I'm trying to believe, in spite of everything, that I'm still stepping up — because I haven't given up, because I'm still devoting time to what I love to do.

By the way, here's some inspiration from Alan Watts on that, in case you haven't seen this video already, thought I'd share:

Sunday Funday

Excuse the cliche please, but this is what my Sunday is today.  Why, you ask?  Because I've made my ROW80 goals for the week!

I only have one goal, and that's 1,000 words a day, five days a week.  When I made that goal I took Kait Nolan's advice and cut my original goal in half and posted that as my ROW80 challenge.  I have to say, I felt a tiny twinge of uncertainty for a goal of only 1,000 words per writing session but as I've said before, my issue in 2012 was setting this grand sweeping goal that became unattainable for me in light of the rest of my life that I have to (gladly) live and ultimately was a failure.

Now I am so over that tiny twinge.  In fact, it's turned into a warm glow.  Here's what I wrote for the week, copied from excel (I'm keeping track!).

07-Jan	1369
08-Jan	1200
09-Jan	1200
10-Jan	700
12-Jan	1132

So as you can see on January 10 I only got to 700 (I had a very busy day that day) BUT all the other days I went past my word count goal to reach a total of 5601 for the week — 600 words OVER my total word count goal for the week.

Ideally I'd like to write more, but I was super busy with work assignments and I can't complain about that.  Other weeks I won't be and on those weeks I hope to write more.

The point is that I can't be hard on myself, nor do I even feel like being.  I met my goal!  I made writing a priority for a length of time, five days a week and because of that I made headway on my WIP and that is what's most important to me.

So today I get to do some cooking for the week and just hang out — with my hubby, with a book (I'm reading The Hobbit for the very first time if anyone wants to comment on that), with some television, and doing some laid back Internet surfing (made it to yoga this morning too).

Also usually I like to do one gratitude blog post a week, so here's just a big old Thank You to ROW80 AND to the writers who have visited my blog this week and offered their stories and encouragement.  I cannot express how cool it is to all of sudden feel not so alone in my writerly pursuits.  So thank you!  I plan on continuing to check out other ROW80 folks and offering my support right back!

Happy Sunday people.  Hope you're enjoying yours! 

On Ganesha and how you handle an obstacle in your path

It's not even a week since New Years day and I'm feeling really good about things, really grateful.  I've had some good freelance work come in, my yoga practice feels great and I've been cooking delicious, healthy food and gobbling it up.

I know this is the easy part though.  I'm feeling motivated and things are organized — so checking off the things on the list is a joy and goes by in a breeze.

The challenge will really come when I'm not feeling motivated, when life throws something in my way.

Even though Ganesha (the dude in the picture) is known as the remover of obstacles, a yoga teacher said in an online class I took a few weeks ago that he actually likes to put something in your way when you're on the wrong path.

I like that idea.  It follows along with the "everything happens for a reason" motto.  So I'm putting the idea in the memory bank (and on this blog in case the memory bank teller goes on vacation) for the next time Ganesha — or the universe, or your dead uncle harry, or God (however you like to word it) — puts a big old bolder in my way, or a pebble in my shoe, or a bump in the sidewalk.

Because I know these things will happen.  It's part of life.

Still, I'm not sitting around waiting...

I've hit above my word count goals for the first two days of ROW80 and most likely will again tonight.  The writing is going pretty smoothly right now since I decided to begin Book 2 again from scratch after writing 20,000 words of it and feeling like something big just wasn't working.  Now that I've figured out what that something big is I feel a lot more comfortable going forward.

Have you ever had that feeling — when you've started something but you feel like something's not right?  And then instead of that feeling going away it just turns into neon flashing lights in your brain — often without a decipherable message?

That's always been a signal for me (not that it happens all the time) to turn around, go back the way I came, and figure out an alternate route.

Or maybe you're a plough on through person?  The kind that knows he/she may have made a couple of dents or blunders along the way but is perfectly content going back and fixing them, and then fixing everything else so the whole thing fits together.

I'm sure there's pluses or minuses to either approach.  Part of writing, part of life, is making mistakes and there's always more than one way to fix them, I think.  Don't you?

Just don't give up....as Kristen Cashore says, never surrender!