30,000 words!!!

Yay!!! So as of now I have 30,000 words written for my WIP!!! I still have a long way to go, but still, 30,000 is an accomplishment! Where are all you in your WIP or if you're editing one what edit number are you on?

Heyyy! Congrats! That's awesome!

I'm at 1,845 words exactly. Still the first chapter. But it's a start!

That is still awesome! I love watching the word count go up!! I'm one of those people who obsessively checks it so I get excited every time I realize I wrote a thousand words lol

Sarah wrote:That is still awesome! I love watching the word count go up!! I'm one of those people who obsessively checks it so I get excited every time I realize I wrote a thousand words lol

Me too! I use Scrivener and the word count is right on the bottom and I watch it go up.

Lucky! I use Pages and I have to click a lot of buttons for the word count to show up. I've had to limit myself, I'm only allowed to look at it a few times while writing. So, you said you're on chapter one of the new book you're writing, so you just finished a book right? Or are you putting a project aside for this new one?

Yay for 30,000 words! Hope it's going smoothly.

Congrats on almost hitting 2K, Lizzy!

I'm currently editing the first chapter of the novel I wrote during NaNo last year. It's 57K+ words so there's a lot to be done. :/

It's actually going really well, it's just finding time to write that's the hard part! Out of the 30,000 words I wrote about 15,000 were written in one week over winter break *smiles proudly* but then after that it's been so crazy with school that I haven't been able to write much *hangs head in shame*

Wow! That is a lot of words! But you must have had so much fun writing it last year! (or, well, four months ago lol) whats it about? if you can tell me, I totally understand if you can't! (there should be a button for that phrase lol)

Yay for you! I'm editing my first novel, and it's at about 75,000 right now. (I have other documents with chapters written that I haven't added yet, but once I do that, it'll probably be back at 90k.

Whoo! Congrats to all! How long do you plan on having your WIPs?

AWriterGoneMad wrote:Yay for you! I'm editing my first novel, and it's at about 75,000 right now. (I have other documents with chapters written that I haven't added yet, but once I do that, it'll probably be back at 90k.

90k! Oh my gosh. I struggled to finish my last novel at 70k...and I was proud of that! I just run out of story to tell.

LOL. 90k is the industry standard for adult thrillers. I have to do it.

@Sarah Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm on page 4 of 118ish of editing...&I've been done with the first draft of the novel since the second week of December haha. I took some time off..&got lazy in between. But now I seriously need to get stuff done. :/

NaNoWriMo was SO much fun. Of course I was brain dead by the end of it but definitely worth the crazyness.

My novel is a YA paranormal about a girl who, after her mom dies, moves to a new town with her father. That's where she meets a boy who ends up being anything but normal. That &a load of other stuff goes down.

Shahira wrote:@Sarah Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm on page 4 of 118ish of editing...&I've been done with the first draft of the novel since the second week of December haha. I took some time off..&got lazy in between. But now I seriously need to get stuff done. :/

NaNoWriMo was SO much fun. Of course I was brain dead by the end of it but definitely worth the crazyness.

My novel is a YA paranormal about a girl who, after her mom dies, moves to a new town with her father. That's where she meets a boy who ends up being anything but normal. That &a load of other stuff goes down.

Oh wow, I feel for you, edits are not fun! Did you start a new story while that one was on the shelve or did you take a break from everything all together?

I can't wait until NaNoWriMo now! This is going to be the first year I participate in it and I'm sure it's going to be crazy!

Your novel sounds good! Definetly sounds like something I would read! And yay for hot mysterious boys (I'm just gonna assume he's hot Lol) I'm writing a YA paranormal too!

AWriterGoneMad wrote:Yay for you! I'm editing my first novel, and it's at about 75,000 right now. (I have other documents with chapters written that I haven't added yet, but once I do that, it'll probably be back at 90k.

Wow! Great Job!!!! I couldn't imagine having to edit a 90,000 word MS, I think it's hard just at 60,000!

Lizzy wrote:

AWriterGoneMad wrote:Yay for you! I'm editing my first novel, and it's at about 75,000 right now. (I have other documents with chapters written that I haven't added yet, but once I do that, it'll probably be back at 90k.

90k! Oh my gosh. I struggled to finish my last novel at 70k...and I was proud of that! I just run out of story to tell.

Me too Lizzy!! I reached 60,000 and was like YAY!! I couldn't imagine writing 90,000! I eventually just run out of story to tell too, or if I have more it really should be a sequel and not part of the original book

I'm at about 83k in my rewrites--I've got about 30k left. It's a lot better than my first draft, though, which was 140k(eek). Hopefully I can cut another 5k during edits, before I start the quest for an agent.

Sarah wrote:

Shahira wrote:@Sarah Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm on page 4 of 118ish of editing...&I've been done with the first draft of the novel since the second week of December haha. I took some time off..&got lazy in between. But now I seriously need to get stuff done. :/

NaNoWriMo was SO much fun. Of course I was brain dead by the end of it but definitely worth the crazyness.

My novel is a YA paranormal about a girl who, after her mom dies, moves to a new town with her father. That's where she meets a boy who ends up being anything but normal. That &a load of other stuff goes down.

Oh wow, I feel for you, edits are not fun! Did you start a new story while that one was on the shelve or did you take a break from everything all together?

I can't wait until NaNoWriMo now! This is going to be the first year I participate in it and I'm sure it's going to be crazy!

Your novel sounds good! Definetly sounds like something I would read! And yay for hot mysterious boys (I'm just gonna assume he's hot Lol) I'm writing a YA paranormal too!

I actually took a break from everything but now I'm thinking that was a total waste of time lol. I probably should have worked on something else.

I think you're going to love it. Especially since we're all doing it together.

Of course he's hot!! haha. But the problem is, I keep getting these crazy ideas for other books so I keep putting this one on hold. I need to stick to just one but my attention span is that of a two year old. :-D

That's great that you're also doing YA Paranormal. Can you tell a little bit about yours? If not, I understand!

Shahira wrote:

Sarah wrote:

Shahira wrote:@Sarah Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm on page 4 of 118ish of editing...&I've been done with the first draft of the novel since the second week of December haha. I took some time off..&got lazy in between. But now I seriously need to get stuff done. :/

NaNoWriMo was SO much fun. Of course I was brain dead by the end of it but definitely worth the crazyness.

My novel is a YA paranormal about a girl who, after her mom dies, moves to a new town with her father. That's where she meets a boy who ends up being anything but normal. That &a load of other stuff goes down.

Oh wow, I feel for you, edits are not fun! Did you start a new story while that one was on the shelve or did you take a break from everything all together?

I can't wait until NaNoWriMo now! This is going to be the first year I participate in it and I'm sure it's going to be crazy!

Your novel sounds good! Definetly sounds like something I would read! And yay for hot mysterious boys (I'm just gonna assume he's hot Lol) I'm writing a YA paranormal too!

I actually took a break from everything but now I'm thinking that was a total waste of time lol. I probably should have worked on something else.

I think you're going to love it. Especially since we're all doing it together.

Of course he's hot!! haha. But the problem is, I keep getting these crazy ideas for other books so I keep putting this one on hold. I need to stick to just one but my attention span is that of a two year old. :-D

That's great that you're also doing YA Paranormal. Can you tell a little bit about yours? If not, I understand!

Well, it's good to give yourself a breather! I took a long break from writing and of course after I start writing again I thought it was a waste of time but I sort of needed that break because once I started writing again my work was ten times better than it was before, I think it gives you some perspective

I'm so happy we're doing it all together! For something as huge as that I need a lot of awesome people keeping me on track and cheering me on! And, I like being able to support everyone else too!

Lol, well it wouldn't be any fun writing about unhot guys! When I was writing the book I just finished, I kept getting amazing ideas for new books. I finally made myself a deal that if I get an new idea for a book I'm allowed to wright 1-2 pages of it and then I have to leave it alone until my original WIP is done. That way I have the idea down, but I still get things finished. Maybe you can try it, though I know in the writing world what works for one person a lot of times doesn't work for others. I just that makes us super unique!

I'm glad you understand! Really, mine is hard to explain, I still can't believe how I wrote query letter on it lol. It's got a complex world sort of (not Harry Potter complex though) I was thinking about letting you all critique my query letter since I want to submit soon *gets an idea about that* hmm.

Amanda wrote:I'm at about 83k in my rewrites--I've got about 30k left. It's a lot better than my first draft, though, which was 140k(eek). Hopefully I can cut another 5k during edits, before I start the quest for an agent.

Omg Amanda!!!! How do you write 140k?!?!? *gets out not pad and tape recorder* So what's the secret of writing that much? How can you stay interested in a book that long? Did you want to cry when you cut out all those words or did you realize it was for the best? (hehe, my own personal experience during edits. It was says, I wanted to cry even though I knew it was for the best) What genre is the book going to be?

Alright, interviews over (you see I couldn't even think of more questions!) You sound so hopeful to find 5k go cut out! I cringe when I have to cut out 1k!! I bet your doing a happy dance since you only havd 30k left to edit, um, which btw is the word count for HALF the novel I just finished lol. Wow, that's all I have to say to this!

Sarah wrote:Omg Amanda!!!! How do you write 140k?!?!? *gets out not pad and tape recorder* So what's the secret of writing that much? How can you stay interested in a book that long? Did you want to cry when you cut out all those words or did you realize it was for the best? (hehe, my own personal experience during edits. It was says, I wanted to cry even though I knew it was for the best) What genre is the book going to be?

Alright, interviews over (you see I couldn't even think of more questions!) You sound so hopeful to find 5k go cut out! I cringe when I have to cut out 1k!! I bet your doing a happy dance since you only havd 30k left to edit, um, which btw is the word count for HALF the novel I just finished lol. Wow, that's all I have to say to this!

Well, to start, it's a complicated story, so there's a lot of content--it's the first book in an epic fantasy series, with all that world building and character development and magic/other powers to describe. So having enough stuff to get to 140k wasn't all that difficult. Getting there, however...I started this novel in seventh grade, around Christmas, if that gives you any ideas about how long this took. Well, in the first two years, I went for several months at a time without doing much, but it's not an easy task, regardless.

I finally buckled down and finished it right before sophomore year. You could say that I lost interest a lot, hence how long it took. But I loved the world I'd created so much, I couldn't stay away forever, so I always came back to it. When I first finished it, I was super proud of all those words--I was under the impression that bigger was better. But a lot of research later, and it turns out that this is simply not the case. So I cut as much as I could, and got down to 130k.

I was trying to foist it into publishing at this point, and gathering a lot of rejections. I finally realized that I wasn't ready near the end of sophomore year, and I let it sit. During this time, I had numerous epiphanies(with help from my sister) about how to fix the logical problems, and make it several times better/more awesome(which means I got really excited about it). But it meant a complete rewrite.

I was behind in a lot of classes, so I focused on catching up, but starting at the beginning of this school year, I really got going on this rewriting thing, and I'm now about 70% done. All those rejections helped me to look at my work from a publishing standpoint, to realize that less is more, and cutting words, even just one here or one there, brings me one step closer to my goal.

Wow, that got really long...I hope I answered your questions.

@Amanda, yay thank you lol, interviewing you was fun!

Haha, thanks for having me.

Anytime! Lol, give it a year or so and we'll all be begging you to come do an interveiw on here

Haha, that would be so cool! lol.

Amanda wrote:Haha, that would be so cool! lol.

It would wouldn't it?! Y'all better remember the little people lol