Who wants to join me in starting to write a novel in 2013?

[milk]

As subject says: Who wants to join me in starting to write a novel in 2013?

I thought we could push each other on to get it finished :) Similar to a losing weight thread, except it would be for gaining words

icepole, I think there's only so much you can read about writing before you end up going in circles. Best just to get on & get it down

Icepole, I agree with Tilly. Write the first draft - the thing you want to write - without worrying about it, then go back to the 'how to write' books when you come to revise. You will get far more out of them that way than you will reading them without anything to key onto.

Hi, I always fall down on word counts - I want to write a childrens book, and just get sidetracked trying to categorise age ranges and word counts, getting half way thro a chapter and then veering off to Google again.
No, dd book not published, but inspired to rewrite and resubmit.

979 words today (that's all my wordcount for the week). Not part of the story, though. Just character development. Anyway, made me feel a bit proud :)

Hope you are all getting some writing done.

Ds2 not very well this week so have not written much but have managed to do a little bit more research for my story so that's something!

So what is this week's activity?

Which day of thr week is the 'accountability day'?

Just marking my place do I can come back and read the whole thread properly later.
I've got loads of snippets of story written in various notebooks and bits of paper stuffed in a cupboard. I'm determined to dig it all out and Make sense of it this year.

schroedingersdodo How is Sunday night for everyone?

By this Sunday night, I want to have written at least 5000 words (at the moment I have written 2155).

milk Sunday sounds great! What are you writing about? Is it a novel?

I've written 650 words today. Still character development... I'm not confident in my outline yet, so I must improve characters, plot... Everything :)

To be honest I'm not sure what it is at the moment... I just write and it flows out... we shall see in due course :) At the moment I'd say I'm more writing for fun :)

milk that sounds interesting, hope the writing is taking you in a good direction :)

i've decided to plan everything in advance this time, that's why I'm putting so much energy on the characters...

I have two almost finished first drafts of books that I intend to finish and self publish this year.
Can I join in even though I'm late?

This word-goal thing is helping. I'm at 3,000 over the last two weeks - so right on target. I find that even if I don't love what I've written, it works me through plot or character, and I can go back and improve on it. Had what felt like a crappy session on Tuesday, but today I look back and there's a lot to work with there.

FiveHoursSleep - that sounds great. Are you going to pick one to finish off and try first??

I'm going to finish the most recent one first-almost there, maybe another 6K words to go. Then go back to the first one and try and remember what the 'perfect' ending I had planned for it was!

Not much done here as DH is (still) away and I'm struggling to get through all my 'keep busy' tasks but want to give myself some time this weekend when my sister comes to stay and can help out with DD.

Five, just out of interest, what made you decide to self publish as opposed to going for the traditional method?

Disappointed . I entered a short story competition and didn't make it to the short list. Silly really to expect I would as only my first competition entry.

Bookwise unfortunately my story seemed to come to an end at 34000 words but I need 50,000. I need to go back to it and try to add something more

Rookie, it is disappointing but at least you did it and tried

I read an interesting article about self-publishing for Kindle, will see if I can dig it out

Thanks tilly, I know I just need to keep going.

Opps should clarify, when I say self publish- I mean to epublish, not self publish to paper.
Anyone can self publish, you don't have to hunt around for a publisher. One of my books would never get published traditionally, the market just isn't there for the genre- it's a 'Are we there yet?' style non-fiction account about dragging 4 children around Namibia on Safari when they'd rather have just gone to the beach for the summer.
The other is a YA story which could possibly get published with a lot of effort, but where's the point?
I have a reasonably busy blog that I can use to publicise my books, I use social media quite a lot, most people have kindles these day and both books are going to be on the short side for a traditionally published book ( 50-60K words) . E publishing removes a lot of obstacles and just because you self publish this way, it doesn't mean you can't publish traditionally later on.

Rookie - the time to get disappointed is when you've entered every competition you can find for several years and not been shortlisted.
I don't know much about short story comps (have entered a few in the past and never won) but I imagine with each competition the judges will be looking for something slightly different, so your story might well be good enough to win one but not catch anyone's attention in another. Keep trying!

Thanks for the encouragement turnip, fingers crossed for the next one.
Tilly I'd be interested in a self publishing for the Kindle, its one of the avenues I am looking at