Tagged: Ember

Why I’ve Been So Quiet Lately

I know what you’re thinking.

You’ve been dropping by my Web page off and on since December and wondering the same thing each time you visit. Why has it been so long since Craig’s updated his blog, and why on earth is that Hanukkah post still at the top of his page?

I’ll admit, I’ve been letting things slide a bit here on the old website. But for a reason. Or two, actually.

I am gearing up to deliver to you, my readers and friends, a great 2012. The recent facelift on the website here is only a preparatory step. Believe me, a lot more is on the way.

I still know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking, “Yeah, I’ve heard that sort of thing before, but man, you haven’t just gone silent for a while, it’s like you dropped off the face of the planet.”

True.

But believe it or not, it’s because I’ve been busy. I’ve been writing. And 2012 is going to see the fruits of all that effort. Efforts that are still ongoing, but will start to show up, well… I won’t promise when just yet. But trust me, things are brewing.

Like what?

EMBER

First of all, let’s talk about the long-awaited, long-promised, long-in-development sequel to SHADA, known as EMBER. That’s coming. I’m making progress and if you thought SHADA was fun, believe me, the next adventure awaiting Ember Cole is even more fun. But it’s a longer tale, and these things take time. So thank you, dear readers, for bearing with me while I craft Ember’s next adventure to get it just right for you.

Sure, I could be like a lot of other indie authors, rushing things out the door, not striving to get them “just right” before release. But that’s not me. If you know me, you know that about me. And if you’ve read my work, you should know that much about me.

I’d love to tell you more about EMBER, but I don’t want to spoil one second of the fun. For now, let’s just say that some of the hints that were dropped at the end of SHADA will pay off in a big way in EMBER. Others? Well, others might have to wait for another book, but there’s so much going on in Book Two that you won’t really notice.

But one thing I will promise you is this: you will find out what happens to Willow. Ember might not, at least not right away. But you will, dear reader. You will.

So if you haven’t done so already, go to your favorite eBook retailer and grab a copy of SHADA now, just to get yourself warmed up and ready.

EyeCU

This is the other project I’m working on. Simultaneously with EMBER, I might add. But it’s for a slightly different audience.

You see, SHADA and EMBER are books that are aimed at a young adult audience, primarily. But Hope, Wisconsin has a lot of stories swirling around inside it, and some are, shall we say, a bit more intense than others?

That’s what EyeCU is all about. It’s a more intense story for a slightly older audience. That’s not to say it’s nasty, full of cussing and sex and such. But it is more intense. Perhaps more disturbing.

So what’s it about?

Well, I don’t want to give away too much, but for now let me tell you a familiar tale.

Long ago, and not so long ago, Hollywood loved to make movies and TV episodes and such revolving around a now-cliche plot. The tale of the innocent young man or woman who becomes the recipient of a revolutionary new form of eye surgery that just might restore their sight. They get the surgery, learn to deal with the world as a sighted person, but then the other shoe drops: either they start seeing ghosts, or they have visions of crimes or something else disturbing.

They ultimately find out that the eyes they received came from someone sitting on death row. Then they either end up solving one of that prisoner’s unsolved crimes, or they turn evil themselves and pick up where he left off.

It’s a familiar tale.

EyeCU’s not like that at all. In fact, it could almost be said EyeCU is the opposite of that sort of tale.

Kind of.

Interested?

Good. Because that’s the other big project I’m working on. And if all goes well, both of these tales will see release in 2012.

That’s the plan, anyway.

And now, dear reader, you know what I’m working on and why I’ve been so quiet lately. Are you excited yet?

What constitutes a story?

Over at KindleBoards.com, there was a recent discussion thread where a fellow author wondered about whether he should publish his novel as a novel, or as three shorts novellas. He was concerned because he knew of a reader who had read an eBook and expressed a preference for reading a complete novel, rather than, “a one-act novella.”

He asked for feedback and I posted my response before reading what anyone else wrote. I’ve adapted it here for my writer’s blog because I think it’s an important question to consider.

You see, I think novellas are a wonderful thing.

But only if a complete story is being told; something with a beginning, a middle, and a satisfying resolution. A one-act story that’s obviously part of a longer work, where there’s not much middle and no resolution/end, is not, to me, satisfying.

I think of some of the short novels and novellas I’ve read and loved over time.

RITA HAYWORTH AND THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION by Stephen King:

This short novel by King contained more plot, detail, story and memorable characters than many authors offer up using twice the number of words. It wasn’t part of a series, though; King resolved everything that needed to be resolved within that form.

THE BODY by Stephen King

Again, a short novel by King that offers a complete reading experience, in and of itself. And one of the most influential novels on MY life that I’ve ever read.

These are a handy pair that leap to mind immediately.

What is less satisfying is when one is offered a short novel, but all it does is introduce and establish the cast and the basic conflict, without really telling any story. That’s a sin that, I contend, is exactly what the first two books of Stephanie Meyer’s TWILIGHT series do. There’s really nothing in those first two novels.

And a lot of paranormal romances are like TWILIGHT.

Now, I’m all about writing novels that are part of a series. It can be a fun thing to do. They can even be a pleasure to read. But each installment must have a sense of something happening, and something being resolved by the end of it, even if more story lay ahead.

Think of it this way: The Hardy Boys Mysteries by Franklin W. Dixon were a very popular series from the 1930s on. Each novel followed Jim Shooter’s rules for storytelling (even though they were written before Shooter was born).

Introducing characters, establishing conflict, building suspense, and reaching a resolution to… something! That’s not the complete list, but that’s the essence of it.

Would the Hardy Boys have been as good a series, as popular with readers, if it were structured like modern-day paranormal roamnces? Here’s how that might look.

MURDER AT BLACK ROCK: Book 1

Joe and Frank go to Black Rock Summer Camp and find themselves … accused of the murder of nerdy science geek and fellow camper, Brad Brent!

MURDER AT BLACK ROCK: Book 2

Joe and Frank escape from police custody and are on the run from the law as they seek to discover the identity of the real killer of Brad Brent before he strikes again. But then another camper shows up dead: head counselor and Joe and Frank’s main suspect, Robert Worrell!

MURDER AT BLACK ROCK: Book 3

Accused of both the murder of Brad Brent and Robert Worrell, Joe and Frank call their police-chief father to come to summer camp and help them solve the murder. On the drive up, he pulls to the side of the road and takes a nap. When he wakes up, he’s being held captive by… Camp Founder Nathan Vean!

MURDER AT BLACK ROCK: Book 4

Joe and Frank elude capture as their father fights for his life against Camp Founder Nathan Vean. They stumble upon the cabin Vean is holding their father in, overcome Vean, and expose him as the culprit of the crime. END OF MURDER AT BLACK ROCK.

Be sure to buy our next Hardy Boys Saga, A SERIOUS EYE INFECTION… a mystery in SIX PARTS!

Would that have led to success for The Hardy Boys?

No. Of course not. Readers would have been ticked off.

We need, as writers, to realize that novels are NOT episodic television. What works for DOCTOR WHO or THE KILLING does not work in novel form. And the fact that DOCTOR WHO novelizations gather the old Tom Baker serials (and the serials of other Doctors, too, of course) into one novel per story, instead of taking a seven-episode story and making it seven short novels, should tell us something.

I have an interest in how to approach this sort of conundrum.

I am working on a series next myself. The EMBER series of novels. There are certain character arc elements to my series that will carry over from novel to novel.

But one thing I won’t be doing with EMBER is telling an incomplete story and calling it a novel, or even a short novel.

I’m working on the first installment, SHADA, which is a prequel of sorts to EMBER. Call it “Ember, Book Zero” if you wish.

It’s already over 25,000 words and will go at least 30,000, maybe even 35,000. It’ll go as long as it goes, I guess.

Why?

Because as much as I want SHADA to be a short novel, I want even more for SHADA to be a complete reading experience in and of itself. Some of the characters will move on to the next book. Others may fade out.

New characters definitely pop up as the series goes on. But the main story of SHADA is the story of a camping trip these four friends go on and their adventures during it. When the words THE END appear at the conclusion of SHADA, that camping experience that the novel is about is done, over, told.

The ramifications of it may ripple into future novels, sure. That’s fair. But that particular adventure is complete.

So, these are my thoughts.

I love short novels.

I love series.

I don’t love incomplete reading experiences, though. So if something needs to be novel-length to be complete, make it novel-length. If something’s a short novel length and is complete, let it be a short novel.

GOLDEN RULE: Short stories, novelettes, short novels and novels are not episodic television. Each story needs a beginning, middle and resolution/end. Anything less, and whatever it is, it’s not a story.

First Round 3 Check-In for Craig Hansen

Okay, so when I started ROW80 Round 3, I was approximately 10,000 words into my EMBER prequel, the short novel I’ve decided to call SHADA. SHADA is a short novel is feels like it’ll wrap up somewhere between 25,000 to 35,000 words. That’s a decent length for a short novel.

As of check-in time tonight, I’m at 13,811 words, which is pretty close to reaching 2,000 words a day, which is what I’ve set my copy of FocusWriter 1.3.3 to track me at. I’m hoping to grow that total be leaps and bounds this week and be in a position to ship the tale off to my beta readers early next week.

I’d write about more than just this, but for the moment I’m in a good groove writing-wise and I also have some contract work I need to make progress on, so forgive me if I keep this brief. See you all Sunday, by which time I should be at around … 21,000 words or so and closing in on the resolution of SHADA.

Progress on many fronts

Well, folks, for this mid-week check in, I’ve been making progress on many fronts.

As May closed out, I sold my fifth copy of MOST LIKELY on Amazon… just enough to get paid for May. Not bad for a book that was released only eight days and with very little PR. I also sold one copy on Nook and gave away five copies on Smashwords.

So I’m hoping June will be even better. Naturally. And to that end, I’ve been generating some PR that is going to slowly build over the next couple months. I’ve already had a couple opportunities pop up, in fact. The Aussie book blog Indie eBooks featured an interview and excerpt with me on Wednesday, and has been generating a lot of traffic. The site owner, Nadine, is peachy; a very pleasant host and easy to work with. I sponsored her site for June 1.

A day earlier, I was featured on the exciting new book blog, Indie Snippets as well. And the host of that site, Bryan Dennis, is a helpful and enthusiastic sort, as well. Check him out!

I am also working a little every day on lining up book bloggers, who are the lifeblood of us indie authors, in terms of connecting us with readers. Those opps will unfold over the next couple months, so hopefully the momentum will be going up from here as things roll out.

In the meantime, on the writing front, I finally have a handle on my Ember prequel and have begun writing it. Not a ton of progress in terms of words yet, but I have my characters figured out. I’m writing it from a different perspective than the novel, to give it its own voice and character. Hopefully people will like it; it’ll run between 20K to 30K words and be a nice $0.99 intro to the series!

Lots of busy-work

I’ve been dealing with lots of busy work the first part of this week.

For example, I took on a couple of eBook cover jobs (yay!), plus I did some spot-editing that’ll bring in some extra income (yay!), and I worked on a subcontractor assignment (yay!) that’ll lead to even more paying gigs. It’s all fun, but have I written anything new lately?

Not yet.

And the truth is, I could have. The only thing really holding me back is selecting what assignment I want to tackle next.

Do I go with the non-YA thriller short novel, Idea Warehouse, just because it’s a change of pace and loads of fun to write? Yes, as a project it holds a lot of appeal.

Do I go with my Ember prequel, which tells the tale of Ember’s summer adventure that took place before the first novel begins? It’s a short novel, too, and so would be a 99-cent entry into the series.

Do I go with Ember since that’s already about half-done and I should just forge ahead? I’ve been itching to get back to it.

Do I go out of fiction for a while and work on my first theological book, Dating The Messiah? I need to get that out before the year is out, anyway.

I also have a sermon and a Torah commentary to write within the next week, too, and that’s a priority.

What a wonder it is to be a full-time writer! I thought I’d be hard-up for things to do, and I’m busier than ever… even though my bank account isn’t necessarily proving it just yet. That’ll come in time, though.

One bit of great news: my editor told me she’d have MOST LIKELY back to me either today or tomorrow, which is awesome news. If all goes well, MOST LIKELY will at least be up on Amazon and Barnes and Noble by this time next week, if I apply myself this weekend! CreateSpace will take more time.

Thrilling times!

Solo check-in

Well, ROW80 might be on hiatus, but as a full-time writer (if I don’t write, we starve) I have to keep rolling on, except on the Sabbath. So since ROW80 ceased for a nice little respite, I thought I’d still do a check-in of sorts for those who keep an eye on me. (And thanks for the accountability, folks. It helps!)

When last I checked in, it was late Thursday night and I’d reached 40,592 words on MOST LIKELY…, a work that remains my sole focus for now. I haven’t had a ton of writing time since then, but here’s what I’ve accomplished.

On Friday, I put in a good day right up until 6 PM, when I stopped for the Sabbath. On Saturday night, after the Sabbath was over and after a pleasant date night with my wife, I felt over-tired and didn’t do anything. Zip, nada, nothing.

Today (Sunday), I got up and corrected/reviewed a couple papers for my wife. After that, I worked on MOST LIKELY… for a bit, then succumbed to stomach cramps and a case of the drowsies, so I napped most of the afternoon away, though I got a little more writing done after my wife woke me up to remind me we’d be taking Dad out soon. We took my Dad to Don Pablo’s for supper. Then I came back, spent time with my wife, and came into the “office” here to catch up on things in Kindleboards and get set for an evening writing session.

I haven’t started that just yet; I’m posting before I begin.

At the moment, MOST LIKELY… stands at 44,936 for a total of 4,344 words since Friday morning. I’m nearly done entering chapter 5. I want to at least get that much done before I hit the sheets tonight, so that all I have left is the 40-some pages that make up chapter 6, the final chapter of MOST LIKELY…

On Monday, I have a meeting and a check-up scheduled, so I won’t be around from about 2:30 PM to 8 PM. But that only loses me a couple hours, because I typically take a break from 4 or 5 PM through about 10 PM, so that I don’t neglect my family in the evenings.

All the same, my goal is to complete entering Chapter 6 of MOST LIKELY… no later than Wednesday, and preferably by Tuesday night. It’s about 40 pages, or roughly 15,000 words, give or take. Wednesday is for sure, barring the unforeseen. Tuesday is a hoped-for achievement.

Once the re-entering is done, I’ll move MOST LIKELY… from FocusWriter into MS Word and begin the revision process. Here are some of my priorities for the first round of revisions:

1) Break the six chapters up into smaller, more manageable chapters. Modern readers don’t like chapters that are longer than many short novels.

2) Relocate the novel from fictional River Bend, MN (an allegory to Mankato, MN, where I spent my college years) to Hope, WI (an allegory to Burnett and Polk County, WI, where I spent five years as a journalist). The fictional setting of Hope, WI, is where EMBER will also take place, as well as many other novels I am planning. This relocation goes beyond changing the name of the town, but includes recasting some minor roles, as well as changing some descriptive passages. (River Bend is more of a town set in a river valley sort of area… Hope is more of a deep woods setting.)

3) Be alert for passive voice overuse and revise as necessary.

4) Keep an eye out for formatting changes. (I use italics to indicate characters’ inner thoughts, but I foolishly set FocusWriter to .txt instead of .rtf, so none of that is present in the manuscript as-is.)

5) Also make sure I maintain “third-person close” perspective and don’t head-jump willy-nilly.

Those five items are the major tasks for the first-pass revision. Which may take more than one pass to accomplish. Once that’s done, I’ll either develop a list of second-pass priorities, or perhaps determine it’s ready to send out to betas.

Once I get MOST LIKELY… off to my beta readers, I’m going to go back to first-draft concerns, but not immediately to EMBER. I have a couple short novels I want to get out there because they’ll come together quickly.

One is an EMBER prequel. I’m seeing it as something that will add to the EMBER experience, and that I can offer for $0.99 because it’ll be a shorter adventure, about 10,000 to 25,000 words, but a full, complete, and satisfying story.

The other short novel I want to work on, at around the same length range, is a project that for now, I’m going to code-name IDEA WAREHOUSE. It’s a nice thriller-chiller that should please folks who kinda liked the subtle touch I brought to my short story (free for reading on this site), SHALL ARISE FIRST, which originally appeared on Amanda Hocking’s Web site for her Zombiepalooza event.

So the priority list is now: MOST LIKELY… typing and revision, IDEA WAREHOUSE and EMBER PREQUEL, then back to EMBER. Somewhere in there, MOST LIKELY… will come back from my betas, and I’ll go through more revisions before sending it off to my editor. Then final revisions and uploading.

With some good fortune (and swift beta-readers and editor) I hope to release MOST LIKELY… in April, as well as perhaps one of my short novels. Another short novel will follow in May, and then, with some hard work, maybe I’ll get the first full-length EMBER novel out in July as I originally hoped for.

MOST LIKELY reaches over 40K

Well, I certainly can’t complain with how I finished out ROW 80.

At the last check-in, I set a very ambitious goal of 5,000 words a day for the last four days of Round 1. On Sunday night when I did my check-in, my word count on MOST LIKELY… stood at 25,742 words. Tonight, as I pen this final ROW 80, Round 1 check-in post, my MOST LIKELY… word count stands at 40,592 words. That’s a total of 14,850 words of new progress since Sunday night. And to be honest, I gave myself the entire afternoon off today.

Now, meeting that very ambitious 5,000 words per day goal in the final four days should have landed me around 45,000 words, not 40,000, but you know what? I’m still working out what I can realistically expect of myself on a full-time writing schedule, and nearly 15,000 words in four days is still excellent progress. I’m deep into a very long fifth chapter and once that’s entered, only another very long sixth chapter remains.

I think I’ve done quite well, to be honest.

When I started ROW 80, I had about 16,000 words done on EMBER that were keepable after my NaNoWriMo flame-out. In 80 days, I pushed that total to 36,210 words… over 20,000 words of new progress. And almost all of that came before I lost my day job and was writing only a few hours per evening, four or five nights a week.

Then, after losing my day-job in the last ten days of ROW 80, Round 1, I prioritized re-entering an old novel into a new word processing file so I could revise, update, and edit it for Kindle and Nook publication. I had, to that point, re-entered MOST LIKELY when I needed time away from EMBER, and had reached about 5,210 words on MOST LIKELY… before losing my day job. Since then, I’ve reentered another 35,000 words or so, making it my front-burner project because I know I can have it ready much sooner than EMBER.

So my final totals for ROW 80 Round 1 are 20,210 words on EMBER and 40,592 words on MOST LIKELY… for a grand total of 60,802 words in 80 days … and only 10 of those days included being a full-time writer. That’s an average of 760 words a day. So I expect my numbers to go way up for Round 2, when that gets underway April 4. But that is still the better part of a novel, if not a complete one, in 80 days.

All in all, it’s been a great experience and really helped me prepare for the shock of losing my day-job and becoming, by necessity, a full-time writer. Between now and Round 2, I’ll still post here at Craig-Hansen.com about my progress; when you’re full-time with no books out yet, you really can’t take a 10-day break. So I’ll keep you all posted on what I’m up to.

I fully expect to have the final 20,000 words of MOST LIKELY… entered and to have begun the revision process in earnest by the time Round 2 begins.

In the meantime, for the next 10 days, people… keep me accountable! See you all here and on Twitter in the interim, then see you for Round 2!

Penultimate ROW80 check-in

This is the second-to-last check-in for Session One of ROW80, the 80-day writing challenge marathon founded by Kait Nolan that has been the source of inspiration spurring me on to productivity in my writing since January. When ROW80 started, I was coming in fresh of a NaNoWriMo burnout experience and wasn’t sure I was ready for another “writing challenge.”

But ROW80 has been a different experience. The goals are our own, and changeable as life changes for us. And oh, how my life has changed in the past eighty days.

When I began ROW80, I was working full-time for my faith community, and writing was something I did late at night, robbing myself of sleep to accomplish. I began slow, then did better, then slowed again, then finished strong.

And five days ago, I lost my day-job and suddenly, after a long conversation with my wife, we have decided the time has come for me to take my writing seriously. As in, this is what I do now, full-time. No more filling up my weeks scraping for temp-job assignments to bring in some meager pay and rob myself of writing time.

I can think of no bigger change than that.

At my last Sunday check-in, I was still working full-time. I set a goal for my week: 5,000 words at least 1,500 of them coming from EMBER, and by Wednesday’s check-in I had pretty much already surpassed that goal, because I had lost my job one day before check-in.

So, with full-time writing now my main focus, I reset my goals for the second half of the week. EMBER became lower priority because I need to get something on the market as soon as possible, to start bringing in money. EMBER’s a first-draft project and MOST LIKELY…, but YA coming-of-age novel that served as my master’s thesis twenty years ago, only needs to be reentered, updated, revised and reviewed.

So I called for myself to finish out the second half of the week by re-entering at least 9,500 words on MOST LIKELY. The sooner it’s entered, after all, the sooner it can be revised. I’ve even started making mild revisions as I go, when I spot passive voice and other pet peeve flaws.

How did I do? Well, as of Wednesday’s check in, my word count on MOST LIKELY… stood at 7,388 words. As I enter this post tonight, my word count on MOST LIKELY stands at 25,742 words. That makes for a grand total, of 18,354 words entered since Wednesday’s check-in. So, for the week, my MOST LIKELY word could stands at 23,567 words on the week, plus 1,018 words of new progress on EMBER, written before I lost my day job and re-prioritized my WIPs.

So, overall? My combined goal for the week was 14,500 words and I actually produced 24,585 words.

That means this week was a no-holds-barred success, in terms of my productivity.

As we enter the final days of ROW 80, Session 1, I find I’m more energized than ever to write each and every day. Some of that is the necessity of no longer having a day job. But at least part of that is due to ROW80. Where NaNoWriMo left me drained and dispirited, ROW80 leaves me doubtful that I could take a 10-day break before ROW80 Session 2 begins on April 4.

Because, with its movable goals, ROW 80 isn’t a wind-sprint challenge; it’s a marathon. It’s a lifestyle. Quite simply, it’s what works for me.

So here are my goals for the final days of ROW 80, Session 1:

I am now just under halfway through MOST LIKELY… I need to press on and get the rest of the novel finished as soon as I possibly can, so that revisions can begin in earnest.

With four days left before the final check-in, I want to enter at least 5,000 words a day, and reach 45,000 words by Thursday. That would leave me 15,000 words or so left before MOST LIKELY… is complete, a goal I could reach while ROW80 is in recess. That would also allow me plenty of time to start revisions on MOST LIKELY… and I should be well into that process by the time ROW 80, Session 2 begins.

That’s my goal for the last four days. See you on Thursday. I’ll let you know how I did.

Change of pace

Hi there.

What a difference a few days can make. When I set my goals for this week, I was looking for progress of about 5,000 words for the week, with 1,500 words coming from EMBER at the minimum. What have I accomplished so far?

Well, on EMBER I have written 1,018 words of new progress, most of it on Sunday night. Since then, I’ve been working a lot on re-entering MOST LIKELY so that I can start revising that. At the last check-in, my word count on MOST LIKELY stood at 7,388 words. As I write this check-in, that count is now up to 11,870 words. That means I’ve re-entered 4,482 words in the last couple days.

So between EMBER and MOST LIKELY, I’ve written 5,500 words already this week. Goals blown out.

But it’s time to reset my goals for the week.

On Tuesday, I was let go from my day job. Downsized. And I’ve decided to really push myself to see if I can make a go at being a full-time writer, before panicking and looking for another cruddy day-job. Something my wife has urged me to do.

So, I say, goal met for the first half of the week. The goal for the second half of the week has to be an upgrade, though.

Here’s the new goal: at least 2,000 words yet tonight, at least 3,500 words on Thursday, at least 2,000 words on Friday before sundown, and at least 2,000 more words between Saturday night after sundown, until I do my Sunday check-in.

That would mean another 9,500 words, with at least 500 words coming from EMBER, so that I make good on that goal, between now and Sunday. Considering MOST LIKELY runs about 60,000 words, that’s the least I can do.

See, my priorities have changed. I need to get something out on the market, and while I refuse to rush things in a way that sacrifices quality, I also want to play it smart and get something done that can get to a “ready to publish” state quickly.

That makes MOST LIKELY the priority project right now. As a twenty-year-old novel and the creative thesis that earned me my master’s degree, MOST LIKELY is at least an “advanced draft” project.

That makes it a lot closer to “finished” than EMBER is right now.

Sure, I need to update the novel; I want to change the setting, repair the writing that I now know can be stronger, and bring the story into the present day setting.

But re-entering the novel can and should go quickly. Revisions, while detailed, won’t require major restructuring at this point. Updating, strengthening, but not major surgery. If all goes well, and my beta-readers are swift, I could get MOST LIKELY to market a lot sooner than July, my most optimistic estimate on EMBER. And I need to get something out there without sacrificing quality, so that’s the direction I need to go.

MOST LIKELY is now my top-priority project and EMBER the second-priority project. MOST LIKELY will hit the market before EMBER, but hopefully EMBER won’t experience a major delay as a result of this re-prioritization. EMBER should still come out in 2011. Maybe not in July, though.

I am also considering developing a couple short-novel projects that can also hit the market more quickly, due to their short length. One of these projects will be an EMBER prequel. A story from earlier in her life, something that takes place before the novel begins. It could be a good promotional tool for EMBER, and it’s another thing that I could put out there on the market more quickly.

I am also thinking of moving up the priority of some of my Messianic theological books, since I have rough drafts of those at hand, and just need to dig deeper, flesh them out, and write them for a general audience uninitiated to the Messianic movement. But that’s nonfiction work.

I also don’t want to juggle too many projects at once, though, so for right now I’m not going to worry too much about my nonfiction. Instead, I’ll work hard on my fiction. Priority one: MOST LIKELY. Priority two: EMBER. Priority three: A couple short novels, including an EMBER prequel.

Goal by Sunday check-in? Another 9,500 words or better. Time to get serious about my writing career. Seriously prolific.

At last, a 5K week!

Hey all.

I skipped out on the mid-week check-in this week. There’s a good reason, though; I stayed focused on forward progress this week, and I blew away my 5,000 word goal for Week 10. That makes this the most productive week of ROW80 that I’ve had during all of Session 1.

Unfortunately, all of my progress came this week on one project: re-typing MOST LIKELY into FocusWriter, so I can start revising it after I’m done with the first draft of EMBER. It’s not that I’m no longer interested in EMBER; in fact, I’m more enthusiastic about that novel than I’ve been in a while.

But it’s odd; I feel creatively odd because I know where the next 20,000 words or so will take me and as much as I’m anxious to get going on it, it feels, I don’t know… a bit too easy, while simultaneously feeling quite difficult. I’m at that, “the story is taking on a life of it’s own and should start coming quickly” point. And for some reason, it scares me a bit. I’m not sure why.

So this week, I spent all my writing time on re-typing MOST LIKELY. Last week, I reported I had retyped the first 2,175 words of Chapter One of MOST LIKELY into Focus Writer. As I write this post, I’ve completely re-typed in all of Chapter One and the first sentence of Chapter 2 and my word count stands at 7,388.

That means that in the past week, I’ve written 5,213 words on MOST LIKELY, even if it is just retyping. Of course, it’s a bit more than retyping. If it was purely and only that, I could have someone else retype it for me, far faster than I could pull off. But since this is a twenty-year-old novel, I need to retype it in myself to refamiliarize myself with this work, so that when it’s all retyped and time to revise comes around, I’ll go in with the story and its flaws fresh in my mind, ready to perform surgery on it, knowing where the problems are.

My goal for the week was to reach 5,000 words of forward progress, one way or another, on either EMBER or MOST LIKELY. And now I’ve done that, and even surpassed my weekly goal by almost five percent. So I’m happy about that, even if it was all just re-typing.

As predicted, blog assignment pressure was low this week, and since my wife completed her first semester of graduate school before this week began and had an off-week in between semesters, I haven’t had to correct any papers for her. That helped a lot.

This week, the blog pressure will come back. My wife’s starting her second semester of graduate school on Monday and is likely to have assignments for me to review come this weekend. That’s fine.

So my primary goal this week, I’m going to go ambitious on, even though I know I could be setting myself up for disappointment by the end of the week.

For week 11, I want to write another 5,000 words. And to make sure I don’t let the fear of finishing get to me too much, I’m going to add a stipulation: at least 1,500 words of that new progress must come from EMBER. Heck, it can all come from EMBER, really, but I don’t want to just retype an old novel for a second straight week.

So that’s my challenge for the week, even though it’s going to be a busier week: produce another 5,000-word week, with at least 1,500 words of that total spent on moving EMBER forward.

Plus, complete all my blog assignments by deadline, and help my wife out by reviewing any papers she needs a second set of eyes on.

That seems like a great Week 11 goal to me. Time to “close strong” as the first session of ROW 80 is soon coming to an end.

New tires, lots of exhaustion

So today, Monday, is a day where I usually get a lot done. And I did, but not much of it happened in front of a keyboard.

Today my wife and I took my father in to make sure a skin tag that had become irritated hadn’t developed into something worse. We won’t know for a while.

Then my wife and I took my car over to Discount Tire and we put four new tires on my beat up, old Chevy Lumina. We were expecting to put on only two, but it turns out all for were in pretty bad shape. One had threads showing. Two were on the verge of popping. I knew they were bad, and now everything’s peachy because I have brand new tires, but for some reason I’m more stressed out about it now than I was before we put the new tires on.

Maybe it’s because I have a history of cars dying on me shortly after I invest in new tires. It’s happened to me more than once and even more than twice. And I can’t afford to replace my car just now… or anytime soon, really.

Maybe it had something to do with the price tag, which was over $105 per tire after all the fees and taxes and such were added in. Yuck. Maybe it had something to do with finding out how close I’d come to a blow-out… in the winter, no less.

Another thing: it’s been over two months since I last donated to the American Red Cross. For the last two years plus, I’ve done this twice a month, like clockwork. I donate platelets because I know they help a lot of people, and I can do it often. I started doing platelet aphoresis donations back in 2008, the summer I learned my mom had Stage 3 cancer. She died a few weeks later, but I’ve kept donating in memory of her ever since.

Before that, I would donate double-reds or a regular unit of blood once or twice a year, but that was it.

But back in late December, I went over to do my donation and for the first time ever, had problems. The needle didn’t get positioned quite right and there was trouble with the return and some fairly intense pain. The crook of my elbow bruised up pretty good, and it lasted for almost three weeks.

Because they weren’t able to return the blood already in the machine properly, I had to agree to take two months off. That’s over now, but I find myself hesitant to go back. There’s no good reason not to go back. I’m just not all that eager to return, and so I keep putting off making an appointment. Mondays are when I donate, so that’s been on my mind today, also.

After his minor procedure, we took Dad out to the casino… a weekly treat we do for him. He had a little luck but not a lot. I played on a “free” $5 credit the casino puts on my membership card each week, which is usually all I do, and today I won nearly $43, so I came home happy about that. I picked up a gift for my wife who completed her first semester of grad school this weekend, and got myself a goodie as well.

So, really, there’s a lot more going well right now than is going poorly. I really should be feeling pretty good about things.

But for some reason, I’m tense and I’m not sure quite why.

I did listen to a gloom-and-doom video online yesterday, some economist’s prediction about how the US dollar is about to lose it’s status as the world currency and how this will ruin our lives and create inflation unlike anything we’ve ever seen… and because I’ve heard news bits about places like Iran wanting to “go off the US dollar,” this seeped into my brain and so now I’m sitting here wondering when gas is going to suddenly be about $40 per gallon instead of $3.50 and how we’ll avoid ending up homeless and…

…and well, I think I just need to never listen to gloom-and-doom economists anymore, for one thing.

And maybe I need to spend more time writing EMBER and less time listening to the news of the day. Maybe.

A solid Week 9

I should probably feel a bigger sense of accomplishment than I do.

After all, I pretty much exceeded my goal for the week. My goal was either 2,500 words of progress on EMBER, or to try and get the first chapter of MOST LIKELY typed in, as well as to finish all of my paid blogging assignments.

And here’s my progress report.

On EMBER, I wrote 1,510 words of new progress on the novel. The narrative direction is really taking shape, too. I now know where the next 20,000 words or so will take me, more or less. It just needs to be written. I even bypassed my 35,000 word benchmark, meaning EMBER is far and away longer now than it was when I dropped out of NaNoWriMo. That’s satisfying, even if I feel like I should have spent more time writing EMBER. Next landmark: 40,000 words.

On MOST LIKELY, I didn’t get all of Chapter One typed in, but I did make decent progress. After checking with FocusWriter for an official word count, I typed in 2,175 words of my two-decades-old novel. I wrote in huge, 10,000-word chapters back in college, so that’s only about a fifth of the way, but what’s a person to do?

So, between EMBER and MOST LIKELY, I have forward progress of 3,685 words in Week 9, between the two projects. That’s far beyond the 2,500 word goal.

I also finished all my blog assignments (35 of them) so that counts for at least 3,500 words, too. But on those, I’m not concerned with word count so much as knocking them out so I get the income from doing them. It’s not a lot of money, but every little bit helps.

Plus, I proofed three papers for my wife this week; she’s in graduate school and this was finals week for her. Between the three papers she had me do, I probably proofed close to 4,000 words for her.

So, now that I am mentioning the “other things I do” that distract me from my novels, I don’t feel quite as unproductive.

This was an A-plus week all around.

So now we’re about to enter Week 10 of ROW80. The final stretch for this first session.

I want to be more aggressive this week. Blog pressure should be low, so I’m going to set a more ambitious goal: I want to complete 5,000 words of progress between either new progress on EMBER, or retyping MOST LIKELY. I’m going to strive for my first 5K week of ROW80 while the first session is still going on!

I started off ROW80 kind of slow, gained some great momentum, fell off again, and now I’m back to being pretty productive. So I want to finish this session strong, so that when ROW80 breaks for a while in a few weeks, I’ll feel like I’ve earned my time off between sessions.

Will I be back for the second session of ROW80? You bet I will. As I’ve said before, this is now my “way of life” from a writing perspective. So long as our fair organizer, Kait Nolan, keeps ROW80 going, I’ll be here.

Week 10, here I come!