Adventures in Writing: Progress Journal

Awhile back I tweeted out that I was going to #5SecondRule myself a novella and started writing a super hot story about a sexy lady and her man. Since then, I’ve written 6,765 words in the same story.

It has been a few weeks since I started and I honestly thought I would be further along than I am. However, I’m also proud of how far I’ve gotten because I’m still excited about the story. Which is huge. My goal isn’t technically a fixed word count of 25,000 words even though I keep saying how many words out of 25,000 I have yet to go when I tweet about it. 

I’m planning to submit this story, once I’ve ran it through my beta readers and it’s been edited to be as perfect as possible, to Carina Press for the Dirty Bits line. The word count is 25,000. So I’m aiming towards the higher end. I want to give readers enough character background to make them love this couple as much as I do but I also want to tease them and keep them on the edge like I do with my other stories.

Inspirational Peoples

I feel like John Brownstone is a big influence on my writing when it comes to edging. I could totally see us giggling and sipping coffee (or better yet, some Jack Daniels) as we watch people squirm and beg for more. Then we’d come up with another push to the edge, only to yank it away. Again and again.

Begging for more and making someone wait for release is a huge love of mine. I enjoy keeping you right there on the edge, biting your lip, squirming in your seat, or adjusting yourself for as long as possible. Knowing you want more is my squee moment. Seeing you beg for more in the comments, or on social media gives me a rush. And it doesn’t go straight to my head – it makes me squirm in my seat the way you do when you’re reading my stories.

Back to the Story

The original goal with the new story was to write 500 words a day until it was complete. Unfortunately, there have been a few setbacks. First, I started out writing in one first person pov only to switch to another first person pov. I switched to present tense somewhere along the lines and I always do that. It’s one of my pet peeves about myself. I do tend to write in FPOV Present to give you a sense of being in the MC’s skin, but I did not want to go that route this time. I plan to have someone catch all of those switches that I don’t, so no worries.

Second, being stung by a bee when you haven’t been stung in 30+ years is no picnic. I am still tending to that issue. Benadryl tends to knock me loopy. I hate taking it, but my normal allergy med was not helpful. Third, I’ve been fighting fatigue again. I haven’t been walking, and then with the bee sting on my ankle, causing my foot to swell… let’s just say I haven’t made my normal quota of 5000 steps per day in about three weeks now.

39×500=19,500

If my laptop is correct, I started writing the story on July 6th. I’m honestly not sure about that. It may be incorrect. However, if it is right, then writing 500 words per day would have meant I’d be over 19,000 words in. Am I upset with myself? Yes and No.

Yes, because there are plenty of days that I could’ve written where I was having internet/hotspot issues on my break and flubbed it later in the day after getting home. No, because between the Benadryl making me loopy and the itching driving me very close to madness (sometimes even with the cortisone cream applied) my words would have been complete and utter shit.

Sure, my first draft is a total shitty first draft with comments to myself of {name this character!} and {verify} and so forth, I really didn’t want it to be full of loopy drivel. I’m sure that would’ve made it more difficult not just for me to edit but for my writer tribe members reading it would have been like ‘uhh, wtf happened here? you totally went off into the wilderness and got lost.’ and I’d have earned such remarks.

Now, if I could just get them to hate the bad guy in the suit instead of drooling all over him. Le Sigh.

What are you working on? What are the challenges you’ve been facing?

Hey, I did this entire post in the new Gutenberg Editor. How’s it look? (To me it looks like all of my other posts and that makes me happy.)