The Word Count Meter of Doom

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
13,555 / 100,000
(13.6%)

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

A Word about Word Counting

I went ahead and stole the word count meter from Jenny, but I should say that 100,000 is not my goal. I have no idea how long of a book that would be. It just sounded like a nice round number to shoot for. And the count that is displayed is not the actual word count. It's just the amount I've got since I started counting. When I get this stupid flash drive figured out, I'll start typing all the stuff I haven't counted yet and update it. But for now, for the last four days, that is what I've got. Not too bad. Or at least I don't think so.

Broke 1,000 words today. HUZZAH. I was very excited about that. And now I have officially finished an entire chapter. Plot-heavy chapter, but YAY WHOLE CHAPTER DONE WITH NO BREAKS! Go me!

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Word count vs. Characterization

So, today was completely wasted in terms of word countage. I spent the usual hour at work writing and only managed to bang out 630 words. Boo at that. However, I did spend a good chunk of that time in character development in the sense that I created seven new characters in about 15 minutes. Granted, most of them will be just names with occasional appearances until their plot-driven deaths, but still. So the day wasn't completely a waste, but I just don't feel productive if I don't have five pages of text to show for it. That's probably stupid, but who said I make sense?

On the flip side of the coin, I'm completely stuck with Antagonist Lite (henceforth to be called AL). I know exactly the kind of character I want him to be, but he's being stubborn. I can't get the voice right at all, and I worry about him turning out like every other character like him that's ever been written. He's massively important, or at least he will be when I get into the meat of the story, so it's important that he's just right. It's just about driving me mad. I thought describing him physically would be the hard part and that the rest would just come easily. Boy, was I wrong.

Either way, it was a slightly productive day. Tomorrow will be better!

Monday, September 10, 2007

Victory!

Today I worked on teh_book for roughly an hour at work, and BWUAHAHA, I came up with 978 words. w00t! I am very proud of that number, and I'm proud of the fact that the last 1500 words have been all in one continuous chapter. It's sort of a chapter that has no place just yet, but still. OMG! Go me!

All of this word counting is making me crazy to start typing up all the snippets and stuff I have to see just how many words I've written since I started this madness in the wee early morning hours of July 14th. I need to buy a compact flash drive, however, before I start that madness. I refuse to leave this just lying around for any randomite to just read.

Anyway, productive day. Huzzah and w00t again!

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Word count madness

So, today I started to keep track of how many words I'm writing, which is probably stupid because when I get around to typing it up, the thing will count it for me, but I'd like to at least get an idea of my progress. I'm hand-writing everything right now, which is slow-going, but I feel like the whole thing is more real if I have something I can touch and feel to prove that I've done it. Plus, I can work on it no matter where I am, and I don't have to worry about being near my computer to do it.

Anyway, I only worked on it for about a half hour today, and in that half hour, I got about 300 words down, which isn't too shabby, I guess, considering I'm writing it all out. I'm not sure how long a chapter should be, or how long the whole thing should be, but I'm not too concerned with that. I'm more worried about getting the chapters to flow right, and right now, I've just got a bunch of little things all spaced out with nothing tying together. At least not really. I need to get things organized somehow.

I have also been toying with this idea of setting this thing a little in the future so I can play with certain elements of the location. It takes place in Louisville, but to make it my own, I've altered the terrain a little in the form of a big ol' flood wall around the city. I need to find a good map of Lville and map out where it all lies just to give myself a better idea of it, if nothing else. It makes the location my own and also gives me a place for all this insanity to play out. The idea of a vampire/fairy war spilling out onto the streets doesn't make much sense to me. But if there was a place within the city where nobody would really notice that sort of thing going on, it just works better. More as that develops.

Anyway, yes. Mildly productive day. Yay me!

Friday, September 7, 2007

teh_synopsis

This is very rough and was written in five minutes, but it's a start.

Lilianna True is an average, ordinary girl, who finds herself divorced at 26 and moving back into her grandmother's house to start her life all over again after a disasterous marriage. After her grandmother's mysterious death, she finds a book that she can't open no matter what she tries and a piece of paper with a name written on it over and over in her grandmother's handwriting. The name is Tannenrue Blackblood, and after Lilianna tracks him down, she discovers a world full of secrets she never could have imagined. The biggest and most earth-shattering of these secrets is that she is the most recent in a long line of women in her family to possess a unique ability--the ability to touch a person and see into his future. This talent makes her a valuable asset, and consequently, the target of the two sides of a war that has been raging since the beginning of time--a war between the fairies and their natural enemies, the vampires, both of whom have claims on Lilianna and her new-found skill. Beside the fact that she has to deal with the idea that vampires and fairies are real and that she is a much-revered psychic, there is something else after Lilianna, an enemy that she does not know but one that knows her very well who will do anything to see her dead. She must trust a complete stranger who has secrets of his own, and in the end, learn to harness her new power and make a choice--vampires or fairies--if she can stay alive long enough to do either.

BWUAHA. So mysterious.

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Nicotine Withdrawal + Hunger = Creativity!

I was actually worried about how my trying to quit smoking would affect my writing, and so far, it's actually helping. I'm more focused on what I'm doing, even if it's just so I don't think about OMG NICOTINE MY LOVE I NEED YOU.

However, T became a smoker today, and Camel Non-Filters no less! That might change, I haven't decided yet.

To clarify:

L = main character, female
T = "love interest", male
D = antagonist-lite , male
S = antagonist supreme, male-ish

That is all I feel comfortable saying at this point. Though to give some peek into this madness, I spent the day describing a strip club. Huzzah!