If you're looking for something other than word counts, you've come to the wrong place...

The title of this post I hope will spare me the need to elaborate any further on the fact that I haven't done any book marketing. Let's cut straight to the word counts, shall we?

Monday 7th November 2016
1,241 words. It took quite a long time to get into it and I think the quality of my work suffered as a result but I kept going, determined to just keep writing and after a while, I loved it again.

Tuesday 8th November 2016
1,057 words.

Wednesday 9th November 2016
1,262 words. All week I struggled with my energy levels and because of that, my concentration suffered but I found that if I pushed through it, I was able to keep going and still managed to produce some work that I was happy with.

Thursday 10th November 2016
1,062 words. Today's scene was hard to write. Not because I was lost for words exactly, more that the subject matter was something I have never touched on before and found it hard to write about but if I want this book to be the best it can be, it was a scene that had to happen ... but if I could, I would have had my hands over my eyes as I wrote it.

Friday 11th November 2016
1,423 words. A great hour of writing to end the week.

Monday 14th November 2016
1,011 words. I wrote a scene that was pretty romantic which offered a stark contrast to the lack of it in my own life. Yay.

Tuesday 15th November 2016
1,055 words. It went well but I found the quality of my work wasn't as good.

Wednesday 16th November 2016
0 words. I just didn't feel like it.

Thursday 17th November 2016
907 words. I mentioned on Tuesday that I felt the quality of my work was a bit MEH and that positive vein continued on today which made me feel a little uninspired and overcritical. Halfway through writing though I then remembered that my period was due and I'm not sure if it was because I acknowledged it was that but my mindset changed and my writing suddenly improved. All the clumsy words I had written through the week were forgotten with one small paragraph that I was over the moon with. FABULOUS!

Friday 18th November 2016
1,179 words. For most of the time I was writing today I felt that everything I produced was so very BLAH (again!!!!) and I resisted roughly eight thousand attempts to throw my laptop out of the window and just give up. Suddenly something switched though and I really got into it. I have left it now in a place that has made me so excited to return to it on Monday.

The draft now stands at 90,272 words. WHAT?! Even though I know I am nearing the end of the story, I haven't got a bloody clue how long I will be writing it for. This draft has been with me through the best and worst times this year and no matter what becomes of it, I will forever be grateful as, at times, it's helped me stay afloat.

This Tuesday I celebrated (for want of a better word) my blog's 2 year anniversary. I have always used this tiny chunk of the internet as a sort of diary, documenting my journey as a writer and as you might be able to discern from my beautiful lack of book marketing, I've never done anything with it - but I'd like that to change over the next year. I don't know how yet as I'm still trying to work through my issues with self-promotion but hopefully on it's third birthday, it'll be something a little bigger than it is now.

Until next time.

Book marketing drowning in a sea of word counts

I haven't posted anything in a few weeks not because I haven't done any writing, quite the opposite in fact, but because I just didn't feel like blogging. I shall warn you in advance that this is yet another word count heavy post. We shall not talk about how the marketing is going ... because there is nothing to talk about. I have done NADA. Let's move on quickly and talk about word counts then, yeah?

Monday 17th October 2016
1,005 words. It was such a brilliant start to the week and I wrote a scene I hadn't planned on that I just loved. I'm very excited about where it is going and this time around, the characters feel deeper to me, realer.

Tuesday 18th October 2016
1,271 words. I found that I couldn't stop writing this morning and wrote for nearly an hour and a half and I loved every minute of it. Recently I have been sticking religiously to my original plan and plot, using bits and bobs from the old draft and as a result I have found at times that I haven't been able to let go and really write. This week I have and as a result it's taken a slightly different route that I think has really added something to the story.

Wednesday 19th October 2016
1,057 words. Another wonderful hour of writing. This week has been amazing. I think apart from deciding to let go a bit, I've generally been doing a lot of writing for other projects I am working on and regardless what the subject matter is, it's all practice and will help me in the long run be a better writer.

Thursday 20th October 2016
937 words.

Friday 21st October 2016
1,569 words. Oh be still my beating heart. Words cannot describe how much I loved writing today. I had to peel myself off the keyboard as I didn't want to stop and if I hadn't had too much else to do I would have just kept going.

Saturday 22nd October 2016
1,331 words. Because I had a bit more time this weekend, and as it's been such a wonderful week of writing, I did some writing today as well. It was wonderful. I wrote for about an hour and fifteen minutes and could have kept going but having this hour parameter really helps me not panic or feel under any pressure. I wanted to write the next day as well but I took the time away from it because it felt like the right thing to do.

Monday 24th October 2016
1,148 words. For the first ten minutes I had to warm up to writing again but after that it was amazing and I had an absolute ball. So much fun. It was an important scene too and I was very happy with what I wrote.

Tuesday 25th October 2016
1,316 words. Again I kept writing past the hour as I loved it so much. I wrote for about an hour and twenty minutes in total but in the end I had to stop as I had too much else to do.

Wednesday 26th October 2016
1,164 words.

Thursday 27th October 2016
1,000 words. L O V E D   I T.

Friday 28th October 2016
0 words. I didn't feel like doing anything, let alone writing. I was out until very late last night and could barely open my eyes I was so tired. Not fussed though as it's been such a fantastic couple of writing weeks.

Monday 31st October 2016
1,516 words. Again, like I tend to do if I take a gap from writing for a few days, I get a little nervous when I return to it. After approximately 30 seconds I was fine and had a FABULOUS time writing again.

Tuesday 1st November 2016
1,057 words.

Wednesday 2nd November 2016
1,334 words. Oh I loved today. I bloody loved it.

Thursday 3rd November 2016
1,278 words. I was a little distracted for maybe the first twenty minutes and used Instagram as the ultimate procrastination tool but then something changed and I was suddenly frantic and excited about writing once more.

Friday 4th November 2016
830 words. I basically wrote this as a zombie but kept going as I wanted to get up to 80,000 words just because - AND I DID.

Even though I still have a little way to go with it, it’s already much bigger than my original draft that was just over 71,319 words which either means I just have more to cut when I go to edit or I've managed to give my little story a bit more depth. I hope it's the latter as I have just had a ball writing it and it feels like I've written something I can work with.

The draft now stands at 80,076 words. It's November, which means NaNoWriMo is upon us and even though I'm obviously not taking part this year, I'd still like to give myself the goal of finishing my draft by the end of this month. Seeing as I am nearing the end of the story anyway, I don't think having that goal will put any added pressure on me. Knowing what I am like though, I'll probably have a freak out and purposefully not work on it again until December.

Until next time, when I will hopefully have done some marketing that I can talk about (not going to happen).