Writing Status

I don’t know why, though I am sure a psychiatrist could lay it out for me, but I get more writing done when I report my status on my blog. Lord knows, I am reasonably sure that those of your reading don’t care about my current words count but it makes me feel weirdly accountable so I am going to keep doing it if its OK with you.

Unfortunately, though, while NaNoWriMo gave me a simple measure of how much I had completed, there is no good way to report editing other than from me to just say, “Finished Chapters x thru k today” or whatever so I think that is what I will do. I am really eager to stop mucking with it and just hand it over to my readers to start moving the thing towards a done state.

Yes I am a control freak and yes this is my baby but enough is enough. Let’s finish this thing.

Here is the wall I have hit with my book. This book is huge, the biggest thing that I have ever written. This is causing me massive problems because whenever I get interrupted and have to take a week or two off of writing, I totally forget where I am. It’s not just a matter of “Did I stop at Chapter 10 or 11?” It’s an issue where I don’t know which draft is newest or don’t remember whether I explained such and such. Exposition has been a huge problem because I end up explaining things multiple times or not at all because I forget if I already explained it.

I know what I need to do. I need to be able to sit down and work non-stop on the book for a good chunk of time and then I would be able to knock the whole thing off. Unfortunately, time is something I don’t really have an abundance of.

No one has just a solid amount of time to work on one thing (be it their book or whatever) in real life, however. Even professional writers have a million other things on their plate including raising their families and whatnot. If I am going to do this for real, I need to just figure out a way to keep track of all the balls I have in the air at the same time as doing everything else. I don’t see myself ever having the luxery of working on nothing but my book.

So I am creating a new spreadsheet. I am hoping that if I have a little chapter summary of each chapter and other info, it will be easier for me to pick the book up mid way rather than having to go back and re-map out. Anyone have a better idea, please feel free to share it.

I am going to work for a little right now on it using my new system. Let’s see how well it works!