Nathan Bransford - The Forums

For those of us who have chatted about keeping up the momentum of November--at more of a 1k words a day, 30K a month pace--I'm starting this thread. For the sake of organization, I'm going to suggest just one post per person, and we can edit our message to include updates. Make sense? People can do daily updates or weekly updates, whatever.

Here goes:

12/01/11 4200
12/02/11 200 (too tired)
12/03/11 3500
12/04/11 1700
12/05/11 2500
12/06/11 2100
12/07/11 2600
12/08/11 4200
12/09/11 0 (took a day to relax!)
12/10/11 0 (business to attend to today)
12/11/11 700
12/12/11 1500
12/13/11 3700
12/14/11 2500
12/15/11 2400
12/16/11 100
12/17/11 700
12/18/11 900
12/19/11 600
12/20/11 1600
12/21/11 3400
12/22/11 3200
12/23/11 0 (took day off)
12/24/11 1500
12/25/11 0 (small press business)
12/26/11 0 (one more day of rest, back to writing and editing tomorrow)
12/27/11 0 (business to attend to)
12/28/11 0 (more business)
12/29/11 3800
12/30/11 0 (editing)
12/31/11 0 (still editing...these people write too fast. lol)

December Total: 47,600

EDIT: Don't worry about slow starts, guys. There will be days of nothing and very productive days.
Edit Again: I see some nice updates! Way to go, guys.
Edit for 12/15: Nice progress, guys. Keep pushing, even if it's a little bit at a time. WAY TO GO, Claudie! Go, Cookie! Write write write!
Edit for 12/21: Shout out to writersink and AMSchilling for milestones! Go go go!
Edit for 1/1/12: Well, I made the 30k mark, but this was a first time in three months I didn't quite make the 50k mark. Onward!

Hahahahaha. Haha, oh. Margo. You will kill me. There is no way in Hell I can write 30k in addition to classes and all. BUT! I had planned on restarting editing, namely 30 pages. So that'd be 1 page a day? I can do that. It is likely I work in small bursts, especially after the 20th, but there is no sense in not trying.

Thus, here is the update!
Dec 1st: 0 pages, 2117 words written
Dec 2nd : 0 pages (because I know I won't get time to do it today)
Dec 3rd: 0 pages
Dec 4th: 0 pages, 546 words written
Dec 5th: 0 pages, 0 words written.
Dec 6th: 0 pages, 693 words written.
Dec 7th: 0 pages, 0 words written
Dec 8th, 2 pages, 1072 words written.
Dec 9th: 7 pages edited, 0 words written, one fricking awesome news.
Dec 10th: 0 pages, 0 words written. Taking a Weekend Day off.
Dec 11th: 0 pages, 250 words
Dec 12th: 0 pages, 0 words.
Dec 13th: 0 page edited, 386 words written.
Dec 12th: 0 pages, 0 words
Dec 13: 0 pages, 0 words (uuuugh, exams)
Dec 14th: 6 pages edited, 327 words rewritten
Dec 15th: 4 pages edited, 0 words written
Dec 16th: 0 pages, 0 words
Dec 17th: 0 pages, 0 words
Dec 18th: 0 pages, 0 words, one relationship anniversary!
Dec 19th: 0 pages, 0 words.
Dec 20th: 0 pages, 362 words rewritten, one biochemistry major. Oh yes, baby.
Dec 21th: 4 pages edited, 235 words rewritten.
Dec 22nd: 0 pages edited, 1667 words rewritten
Dec 23rd: 0 pages edited, 573 words rewritten.
Dec 24th: 2 pages edited, 339 words rewritten.
Dec 25th: 0 pages edited, 622 words rewritten!
Dec 26th: 0 pages edited, 182 words rewritten.
Dec 27th: 0 pages edited, 0 words
Dec 28th: 0 pages edited, 350 words rewritten
Dec 29th: 0 pages, 0 words
Dec 30th: 0 pages, 534 words rewritten
Dec 31th: 0 pages, 400 words rewritten

Decembre total: 25 pages edited, 10655 words written. "Good" pages: 17.5/30

EDIT Dec. 4: I am off to an EPIC start, haha! At least it looks better when I add the words written for class.
EDIT Dec 6th: Funny how I keep writing instead of editing, which I was supposed to do. Oh well.
EDIT Dec 14th: Look at that! I am halfway through the pages. Although some of these will need to be rewritten entirely. >.< Positive of the day: I'm way better after the first semester of Creative Writing than before!
EDIT Dec 18th: Good lord, I can't wait for my last exam to be done! Then it'll be all writing.
EDIT Dec 22nd: I'm having a good day. Added a new stats to the total. When I started this month I wanted 30 edited pages. I found shortly after I'd need to rewrite most of it, and the "# of good pages" is a marker of how far along into the rewriting I am. Also, they're end product pages, because I've cut about 800 words from the other draft so far. I take that as a good sign.
EDIT: Dec 31st: I think I'm done for the year but boy, that's more than I expected I'd do. It should be noted that anything written since Dec 27th was done while being in the family for the holidays. I sneak in time when I can ^^

Count me in! What a great idea Margo!

I'm still working on the Superhero WIP. I'd really like it if I can come up with a title this month, but I'm not holding my breath. Titles are the absolute worst for me. At home I've been calling it Heroes and Villains when I refer to it with my husband so I don't have to keep calling it "My WIP about superheroes and supervillains." But that is the title at all.

Anyway, here's how my month has shaped up so far:

12/1/2011: Edited 39 pages, wrote 240 words
12/2/2011: Edited 12 pages, wrote 300 words
12/3/2011: Edited 2 pages, wrote 800 words
12/4/2011: Nothing! Sad face.
12/5/2011: Deleted a lot of words. Like 1100?
12/6/2011: 0
12/7/2011: 0
12/8/2011: 1316
12/9/2011: Ugh.
12/10/2011: More deletions. I don't know how many words. A lot.
12/11/2011: 0
12/12/2011: Editing 2 chapters and added about 500 words
12/13/2011: TBD


OMG I need Cybils to be over so I can get back to writing for real. The editing is the only thing keeping me sane.

I'm in too. I need to finish the edits my TLF ms. I'm wading through the middle right now. there are so many changes I have to make.

12/1/11: Edited 9 pages. Wrote about 1000 words (I don't know the exact count, because Scrivener will subtract any words you delete from your goal)
12/2/11: Edited 35 pages
12/3/11: Edited 28 pages. Wrote 200 words
12/4/11: Edited 19 pages. Wrote 550 words
12/5/11: Edited 34 pages. Wrote 50 words.
12/6/11: Edited 0. Wrote 0
12/7/11: Edited 0. Wrote 0 (I was working on artistic things)
12/8/11: Deathly ill, but still managed to edit about 18 pages. Wrote 0
12/9/11: Edited 4 pages. Wrote 550 words
12/10/11: I wrote a bunch, but didn't keep track. XD
12/11/11: transferred all of my edits over to the computer, so nothing.
12/12/11: Edited 22 pages. Wrote 1441 words.
12/13/11: Edited 9 pages. Wrote 2299. Oh Yea.
12/14/11: Wrote 1125 pages
12/15/11: 169 words
12/16/11: 0 words (painting)
12/17/11: 910 words
12/18/11: 0 words
12/19/11: 167 words
12/20/11- 12/27/11: 2800 words.

Dec. Word total: 9461

Edit: 12/15: I'm done editing, so now I can write. Yay!

Okay, here goes...

1/12/11- 0
2/12/11- N/A
3/12/11 - 500
From the 4th until the 16th, nothing, but I blame that on an upsurge in the amount of school work I've had to do.
17/12/11- 1000
18/12/11- Finished editing a chapter
19/12/11- Finished editing another chapter... 2 MORE CHAPTERS AND I WILL HAVE FINISHED MY 3RD DRAFT!!!!!!

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury

I really like this idea! However, I'm off to a slow start. Hopefully this forum topic will be a motivation for me.

1 - 0
2 - 0
3 - 0 (again)
4 - 1007 (finally getting somewhere)
5 - 0 (maybe)
6 - 567
7 - edited 10 pages, wrote nothing
8 - edited 6 pages, wrote nothing
9 - edited 3 pages, wrote 219 words... better than nothing I guess.
10 - edited 10 pages, wrote 300 words (how is December a third of the way over already?!)
11 - wrote 1132 words (my goal for December definitely was not to write at 30k a month pace, and it's showing, but I wish I could get myself to start moving along with my WIP a little faster...)
12-22 - zip. got busy.
23 - wrote 360 some words. pretty sad. edited about 3. definitely gonna get cracking next week though!
24 - wrote 0. edited 3 pages.
25-28 - nothing.
29 - wrote 907 words. edited 5 pages.
30 -
31 -

total written: 4492 words
total edited: edited about 40 pages

Now this is what I need to keep going! I admit I work a lot better with deadlines, being a die-hard procrastinator. So yea!

Of course my word counts suck since Nano. I had a 5300k push on the last day to make it, which I did, but it also caused hallucinations, brain mush and hand cramps. I started up again yesterday, though, so let's see what happens.

Dec 1 - 0
Dec 2 - 0
Dec 3 - 820
Dec 4 - 1143
Dec 5 - 407
Dec 6 - 736 (Kind of depressing after the mass word counts I did for Nano, but better than 0. And the scene I'm on is a toughie so I'll cut myself some slack.)
Dec 7 - 430
Dec 8 - 754
Dec 9 - 1020
Dec 10 - 950 plus mapping out the remaining scenes.
Dec 11 - 691
Dec 20 - okay, I admit I lost track of my daily counts. All I know is what I'm at now and where I started, so I'm going to bump up the Dec total count to 8500. I'm okay with it. With family in town for the holidays and a 5 year old who's got the pre-Christmas crazies, I'm just lucky I got anything down.
Dec 21-25 - 1900
Dec 26 - 1100
Dec 27-28 - cut 1800 words (bye bye pointless scene!), wrote 1650. So -150 I guess.
Dec 29 - 31 - no new work count. Spent the three days editing a couple scenes for a plot change.

Words written in December: 11350

Edited 12/28 - thanks for the shout-out the other day, Margo! After my backwards word count today that cheerleading is much appreciated!

This is cool! Good luck, you guys!

BUMP so participants can find the post...

Also, again, really nice updates. Even if we're not making our targets yet, there's obvious effort here. I also think ppl will find that this can become a habit that feeds off itself. You get used to doing 1000 words a day. Then 1500 a day doesn't seem like so much. Then there are a couple of days a week at 2000-2500 words. Then...

Okay, I'm playing along, though I'm not planning on hitting 30K. That much I know is certain.

12/1 - 12/10:
0 pages edited
0 words written
1 book read--Beth Revis's Across the Universe

12/11 - 12/17: (will update at the end of the week)
4 pages edited
617 words written
currently reading 1 book

12/18-12/24
5 pages edited (using that term lightly)
1887 words written (including one amazing scene that made me cry)
Still reading Paranormalcy.

BUMP for participants...

Puuuuuuush, people! It will become a positive habit. (Although it looks like Claudie and I had a similar weekend. Writing? What is this thing you call writing?)

Hahaha! My last exam is tomorrow. I AM pushing, just not for the same thing. I need to nail this one, because after that, it's official: I'll have a Major in Biochemistry.

Watch Tuesday-Wednesday scores, though. Once I'm off school it's writing all the way to the holidays (at which point there will be lots of travelling, and thus lots of writing! ^^)

I've only got 10 days left of Cybils and then I can return to my manuscript. TEN MORE DAYS. I might not ever read another book again.

Just kidding.

3/4 of my Santa list were books. My husband said, "Didn't you get like, 60 books in the mail over the past month?" and I was like, "So? New books have come out since then. And these are them."

Sommer Leigh wrote:I've only got 10 days left of Cybils and then I can return to my manuscript.

So when I start the thread for National Novel Writing JANUARY, I'll see you there?

Margo wrote:

Sommer Leigh wrote:I've only got 10 days left of Cybils and then I can return to my manuscript.

So when I start the thread for National Novel Writing JANUARY, I'll see you there?

You'll see me there, that much is certain. I expect to have more time in January than I do in December.