The Finish the Damn Book Challenge

[David Poellot]

Originally Posted by French Maiden

my characters seem to be taking over and telling me they don't want it to end the way I had planned for them.
They are becoming m uch more alive than anticipated.

I LOVE when they do that.

[Lizardmaker]

Good for you, French Maiden. Always smart to listen to your characters.

Commutinggirl, I hope things pick up for you soon.

I've finished 28 of Green Light's 30 chapters and added 780 words to the MG novel.

[Tepelus]

2536 words today to finally finish chapter 6 that I've been putting off. It has a sex scene in it I had been avoiding because I'm not that good at writing them, but decided to bite the bullet and get it written, no matter how crappy. I can always fix it later. The sex scene was about 700 words (the portion I wrote of it today anyway, the main portion, the rest was written yesterday) of that 2500, and took me a good deal of the day to write. The rest after the scene flew by in a couple of hours.

[Monkey]

Congrats on getting over 2 and a half thousand words today!

And you can ask a mod for the password to the erotica SYW board...lots of great sex-scene advice there.

[Tepelus]

Thanks, Monkey. I'm afraid to post it just yet. I want to go back to it later and mess around with it and try to make it less cheesy. I don't want to subject the peeps in erotica SYW with the tripe I've written as is.

[Monkey]

You can learn from what others have done, even if you're not ready to post your own stuff, yet. Go for it!

[Monkey]

Okay, so this isn't writing related, but it's come up in this thread, so I figured I'd tell you guys: I am now officially sponsored by Texas Parkour!!! WOOT!

[Lizardmaker]

Congrats on the sponsor, Monkey. That's great! So, do you compete or perform, or is making the films the major focus of it?

I've got good news: I finished the Green Light Delivery revisions early. Now I can take my time and read them over a few times before I send them to the editor, and still make the deadline easily. I think they turned out pretty well!

[FranOnTheEdge]

Originally Posted by Monkey

A challenge born out of frustration.

The Rules:

1) You must do something to your novel before you can log onto the internet. You can add a single sentence or edit your last one, but it has to be something, and you have to do it every time.

2) You can't start any other projects until your current one is finished. This includes outlining. (You can jot down ideas, but that's it, Bucko!)

3) You must have a daily, weekly, or monthly goal that is absolutely doable for you, in your current situation, right now. It doesn't matter how small it is. That self-imposed goal should be your absolute minimum number of words for the time period specified.

4) You must post your working title, word count, goal, and updates here so that you can be cheered on.


Any takers?

Okay...
Working Title: The Body In The Cake
Current Word Count: 34,812
Goal: To finish it.

I am working on it, but feel I need feedback, which I can't get yet.
The good news is I wrote an outline for the scene that started this story last night.
Now that may sound weird with 34,800 words already written, but that scene will not be in the final manuscript, so I really only needed it for myself, to be sure I know where this all came from and why.
So I was just making sure I understood the jumping off point, especially as I've now got to the point in the actual story where I need to know this sort of stuff, for clues and red herrings etc.
I have known about it pretty much from the beginning, this has just formalised it. I'm quite pleased with it as it's cleared up a couple of things nicely.

[Monkey]

LizardMaker: A little of both, plus blogging and showing up to certain events.

Fran: Welcome to the challenge! 36 thousand words is a rollicking good start!

[EclipsesMuse]

Congratulations on the sponsorship Monkey. Lizardmaker, grats on finishing those revisions. Welcome Fran!

So far I've written 500 words today. It's kind of become my minimum. I do plan On writing more tonight. I want to finish the current scene.

[Lizardmaker]

Welcome, Fran!

[FranOnTheEdge]

Thanks for the welcome, it looks like this challenge might be a good idea, I just wrote a new 551 words this evening. Solved a section where I wanted a quarrel, and my first attempt got the quarrel solved before it had begun... well he just walked out of the house - with the quarrel unresolved and burning resentment in the air - lovely!

[Monkey]

Originally Posted by EclipsesMuse

So far I've written 00 words today. It's kind of become my minimum.

That should definitely be the minimum.

[EclipsesMuse]

Originally Posted by Monkey

That should definitely be the minimum.

Yeah it should. Fixed it. It was supposed to be 500.

Ok, I got another 900 words. Total for today was 1400.

[French Maiden]

2080 words in 2 hours.
Finished chapter 7 and passed 20,000 words total. What an awesome night it has turned out to be

Awesome work everyone. Keep it up. Whoop whoop, go us!

[Commutinggirl]

Congrats on passing the 20000 mark French Maiden :-) and Eclipsemuses: wow for reaching 1400 words while your daily goal is 500!

I am also happy to say that I wrote 650 words today (my original goal being 300 :-)) It is a return on investment :-) I am not ready to officially up my goals yet but maybe in a few weeks...

Keep on going everybody *cheers from my living room*

[joeyc]

Working on chapter 30 (out of 50 right now).

67,000 words in, 500-ish words today.

And I have to say, I love where the main character's arc is going. He's not going to a very good place.

[Lizardmaker]

Wrote 685 words on the MG novel, but not feeling very good about the whole thing at the moment. Since I'm over half done, I guess I should just soldier on as best I can, and see what the complete draft looks like. Can't quite tell what the problems are yet, but I sure know there are problems.

[Monkey]

You've also reached the point where middle-of-the-book-slump sometimes kicks in, Lizardmaker.

You might consider taking a day or two off, then rereading and fixing as you go. By the time you get back to where you left off, you might know exactly where you need to go next.

Or you could just soldier on, as you say. That works, too.

ETA: Chapter and a half edited today.

[ShamanDrum]

Back when I was writing a Novella, I created my own little "Finish the Damn Book Challenge."

I pledged to write a minimum of a page a day. That is, a standard size word document of font size 12, single spaced.

Of course, on days when I felt lazy, I found myself injecting more conversations into the story as that ate through the line count really fast :P

Anyway, it worked; I finished it. Next time I'll probably do a word count.

Also, I have this problem that if I set myself a minimum amount a day to write, I'll never go over, even if I'm in the zone, cos I always reason: Well, I passed my quota. Now time for some R&R.

[Margarita Skies]

I've done too many words this past weekend, from Saturday to Monday, for me to keep exact track of. I am working on simultaneous series at once, three that I can think of off the top of my head.


All Our Children
Superstars
and
Christian's Doppelganger.


Crying Angels, at least the first part is finished at 155k words.
The second part of the story set in 1985 is almost done at 103,000/130,000 words but I have to integrate a whole book into the middle of that because there are some events that are crucial to the whole series that take place in the year 1981 alone, and one novel is not enough to cover events that take place in a lapse of one year, at least for a massive writer like me. That's why this series is experimentation, meant to be shelved, saved as something special I busted my ass working on and not to be submitted, ever, because of the gargantuan word counts. And LMFAO. Not because of anything else because with erotica publishers going around publishing all kinds of dark stuff, including what Shaldna loves, and everyone that knows Shaldna knows what I am talking about...OK? Well, my stories don't have the following things:


Incest
Pedophilia
Necrophilia
Bestiality
Age Play
Extreme acts of humiliation in the act of sex, and I am not going into details because for some of you that's TMI.


My stories do however have rape, coercion, and murder, but the characters that commit those acts end up screwed up in the you know what, and torn into a thousand pieces, so no, I do not glorify that, and I learned my lesson because a publisher rejected an MS from me 4 years ago because I justified a rape from a character against another and got the victim to forgive the abuser, and they saw that as presenting rape in a positive light, so now, I am going all the way toward the other direction. Rapists end up dead, crazy, mutilated, eaten by beasts...any punishment you can think of. People who manipulate others into making love to them when it's totally wrong, and they persuade those characters, those pay duly too. I am not nice to my rapist characters. Murderers do get a break if they repent, but characters that commit sex crimes are screwed with me. When I finish Superstars which currently stands at 20k out of 120k intended words, I will post the final WC on that. I just do too many words to count.


Cheers
Margarita.

[AndreaGS]

Monkey, congrats on the sponsor! That's awesome!

Lizardmaker, keep truckin'! I felt like my entire draft was crap about 1/2-way through, but I think it turned out ok in the end. Congrats on finishing those revisions though!

Welcome, Fran!

And wooo! You go, Margarita!

I haven't been around lately, because I've been too busy finishing the damn book! I took this week off from work with the sole purpose of getting 'er done, and ended up writing 5,000 words today to bring it to a conclusion.

Lestoor's Chosen
150,600/120,000

I'm going to take a break from it for a bit before revisions, and work on my next one!

Thanks for all the encouragement and support! This thread is amazing!

[EclipsesMuse]

Another 1400 words and 2 scenes finished, including the climax. I just have one last scene to write and I'll be finished with the first draft. It's shorter than i wanted but, I already know of parts i need to add in revisions.

Congratulations to everyone on the awesome progress.

[Tepelus]

Congrats Andrea for finishing the damn book. Congrats to everyone else with your accomplishments. Today I'm going to work on Vlad meeting his future in-laws, and possibly his wedding.