Wordage Report

Whose idea was it to make my wordage report on Sunday?? Oh, yeah. That would be me. :-D

The spirit was willing, even eager, this week, but the writing time was a little hard to come by. Part of this was the 3500 word letter I wrote to my sister and a couple of insanely long emails. These words are not included in my report because they’re private words, not public ones. Nor did I include my journal entries for the same reason, and I had a couple of long ones there, too. But I’m not displeased with last week’s word count by any means.

Blog Posts (not counting this one)
2,309 words total
I debated about included blog posts in my word count, but despite the fact they’re non-fiction, they are new words and they’re shared with the public so I think they should count. I think what impressed me most about my blog words this week is that I got them done. Both of my new features were a tad more time-consuming than I’d counted on, so it led to a couple of late nights. But I got the posts up and on time, so that’s the main thing.

New Ideas
I’m including this as a category because if I take the time to write down new ideas so I can get them out of my head, they’re new words. I always have ideas running amok through my brain. Usually I go over and over (and over) them in my mind, refining them before I’m ready to commit them to paper. I did get a rather good idea last week, but I didn’t get it down on paper and now it’s gone. Poof! I don’t really need another idea for my files, so I'm not real worried about it, but I’ll be sure to write it down if it does return.

Editing
27 pages
While editing isn’t always a lot of new words, it is work and thus should be included in my creative endeavours. Currently I’m editing the fourth book in my elemental series, An Elemental Earth. I’ve been hanging onto this book for far too long. It needed to be done like yesterday, so I’m pleased to have found the time to get 20 pages done.

Like it says in my “about me,” I also edit for other authors and I managed 7 pages on a really great adventure/mystery targeted towards a younger audience. It would have been more if it hadn’t been poor planning on my part. Actually, the planning was pretty good, it’s just every time I try to plan for things, life starts tossing monkey wrenches my way. I get a fair amount of editing done after my granddaughter goes down for her nap (I babysit for a few hours every day) so this week should be a good one in that department because I have three days of extended nap time.

New Words
@ 3,000
Okay, here’s the thing. I’ve got two WIPs on the go: Wandering Wizards (book 3 of the Moonstone Chronicles) and An Elemental Spirit (book 5 of the Ardraci Elementals), but unless I’m struck by a sudden inspiration, I’ll be focusing most of my attention on Wandering Wizards.

I have learned the hard way that it’s never a good idea to try writing the next book in a series before the previous one is finished. Book 2 of the Moonstone Chronicles was a NaNo Novel. At least the first 50K words were. Then I kind of set it aside for a while and before I knew it, it was NaNo time again. So I wrote the first 50K words on the next book of the series and now I’m paying the price. Until I reach that 50K mark, what I’m doing isn’t so much writing as re-writing. Things happened in the latter half of Lucky Dog that changes what I had going on in Wandering Wizards drastically. So, while I added 7,284 words, only about 2 or 3,000 were actually new.

Here’s an excerpt from this week's words:

Ellen could feel the sun’s warmth beating down on her, which was very strange because she couldn’t remember going outside. But she must have at some point, she could hear birds chirping and the rustling of leaves somewhere above her. She really needed to open her eyes to check things out, but there was a big part of her that was afraid she knew what had happened and she didn’t want confirmation.

“Please let Howard have blown the roof off of the house,” she prayed. Opening her eyes she sat up. “Holy freaking crap!”

She appeared to be in a small glade surrounded by tall, leafy trees. The scent of flowers wafted up to her and she realized the glade was carpeted in an abundance of wildflowers, none of which were familiar to her. Climbing to her feet she turned in a circle but all there was to see were trees, the flowers, and a few bushes. There was no road, no path, no indication of civilization.

“I don’t freaking believe this!”

Don’t forget to come back Friday for Fun With Quotes!