Writing Life This Week

Hey everyone!

I'm trying to update on a regular basis, so this is my update for this week. So far my writing is going okay. I've been keeping a notebook by bed to write in every night. However, I am not the best at this. I have recently discovered something else that will keep me away from my writing: Castle the T.V. show. Then I found out that they are books. I have been watching the tv show pretty much all week right before I go to bed. As a result, not too much writing has been done. Also this weekend I went on a trip to Chattanooga. It was pretty fun. We just kind of hung out and went shopping and site seeing. It was a nice little get away. I did do some writing by the pool, but it wasn't a whole lot. The main thing that I have been trying to do with my writing is to type what I have written into Scrivener. I love Scrivener! It makes everything so much easier to organize!

So here is the plan for this week:
-Write 500 words daily (For my WriteChain Challenge)
-Type everything into Scrivener over the weekend
-Begin to carry around my idea book once more.

I'm getting to the climax in my novel now. I'm so excited to be nearing the end, but I am also nervous. I want to make sure that I don't end it in a cheesy way or completely ruin the book with the ending. Seeing as this is the first major piece of work that I will actually finish, I want the ending to be awesome! Any advice on how endings should be? I don't want the stereotypical Happily Ever After. I'll take any advice you have! Thanks!

-Lizzy

I'm Back!

Hey everyone!

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back on here. I am going to try to make it a habit to post something at least once a week. I have just been so busy with school. However I have finally graduated from college, so I am sure that I will have a lot of free time now to work on my novel and write more in general. I'm excited for that! I want to expand my horizons more so while I will be looking for a better job than Starbucks (which is where I currently work), I will also try to finish my novel and look into self publishing. Things are looking pretty good right now and I am really excited! I think that I will start by setting some goals for myself, since that is where I left off in the last post. We will continue with the one month goal setting. Sure the first of June is still a few days away, but I feel like I can get a jump start on it.

Goals for June:
-Finish my novel (500 words Daily-Write Chain)
-Write one blog post a week, update on life and novel
-Write a poem once a week
-Figure out how to copyright my work
-Look into self-publishing

So, those are the goals for now. I figure that I should start small. I don't want to overwhelm myself. Anyways, I just wanted to say that it is good to be back and I'll be seeing more of you now that school is over!

-Lizzy

GSWC- Day 31

Hey everyone!

I considered grouping this with the last post, but I felt like as the end of the Get Started Write Challenge, it deserved it's own post. As the end to a great month spent on trying to better my writing and knowledge of the writing world, I feel like it's ending should be a good one. I just want to start off by saying that this month of daily challenges has helped me out in so many ways. It has helped me see that all it takes to get a lot accomplished is to sit down and write for just a little bit each day. It has helped me to learn about the things that I will need to do when my book is ready for publishing, and the ways to go about getting them ready. In fact, some of the things that he has had us do, I want to go back and begin working on for my novel (even though it is not done yet). That is how excited I am about all of this! With that being said, I'm on to the next- and last- prompt of the Get Started Write Challenge (My February Edition).

Day 31-
Today's Prompt: For today’s task, sit down and make a list of next steps. How are you going to make next month as successful as this month? How are you going to make it even more successful?

Alright... So I think that a good idea would be to sit down and do one of these for each month. I think if I just take things by each month, I will end up accomplishing so much more! So, I'm going to start with the writing things that I want to work on for March.

March:

• Write at least 1 blog post/update a week
• Finish writing my novel (Write at least 250 words daily)
• Find people to read and help me edit my novel
• Prepare a book proposal for the aforementioned novel
• Come up with an idea for a new novel and begin writing
• Write a poem once a week (start a poetry binder)
• Figure out how to copyright my work
• Work on building my writer platform

I found a post on Robert Brewer's blog (He is the person who did the whole Get Started Write Challenge) and he has a whole other list of daily to-dos that are dedicated to boosting your Writing Platform. It's 30 days, but I feel like it is going to help me immensely and it's something that I am thinking of doing for next month.

Here is the link if you want to look into it: http://robertleebrewer.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-to-build-or-improve-your-writer.html 

So there you have it. These are my goals for March, they may change, but there they are for now. I'm hoping that I can keep up with this, because I really feel like it is going to help me so much on my writing if I can. 

-Lizzy

GSWC Day 29 & 30

Hey everyone!

Seeing as it is near the end of February, I am going to jam these last 3 entries into one day so that I am done at the end of February. I'm really excited that I have done all of these. I think it has been a great experience this month for me to have a challenge like this for every day. I feel like I have learned a lot, and there is still a lot that I need to work on. That being said... Let's get down to work.

Day 29-
Today's Prompt: For today’s task, define the unique selling point of your book. If you want to impress publishing folk, let them know that you know what your USP (unique selling point) is.

He offers advice on using the competitive and comparative books to find the unique thing about your own. He also suggest somehow incorporating that into your book title. As I have already come up with a title for my novel, I'm not exactly sure about this. I'll have to go back and do this on my own time when I go to compare the books. I have a feeling that there is going to be a lot out there. As stated in my last post, I will update on that one I find more info about it.

Day 30-
Today's Prompt: For today’s task, assemble your book proposal. This will require getting everything together from earlier.

Cover (or query) letter. This better include the proposed title, unique selling point(s), and very brief bio.
Book overview. This breaks down the important parts of the book.
Book outline. Outlines are often done in paragraph form and provide all the major elements of the book.
Author bio. Unlike the bio in a query/cover letter, provide everything that might help your publisher help you sell books.
Sample chapters. Some publishers may request 2-3 chapters, others may want 40-50 pages. Make these sample pages exceptional.
Marketing info. This is where you define your target audience and ways to reach them.
Competitive title analysis. This is where you identify successful books that are comparable and competitive with yours. Remember to identify how your title differs from each.

After the assignment, he talks about how different publishers will want different things for their submissions and to just follow their directions. If you can't follow the directions for the submission guidelines, it makes it hard for them to choose your work because it says you might not be able to follow directions on other things either.

As far as this task goes for me, I am still in the drafting and editing mode of my novel. But I know that this will come in handy for when I am getting ready to submit my book proposal to publishers.

-Lizzy

GSWC- Day 27 & 28

Hey everyone!

The prompt for Day 27 of the Get Started Write Challenge is to write another blog post, and I feel like I can just kill 2 birds with 1 stone and jump on ahead to challenge for Day 28. Since there are fewer days in February, I feel like merging the challenges into a few days is a good and reasonable idea. So here is the challenge for Day 28.

Day 28- The prompt: Our task for today is to take your book idea and find comparative and competitive titles. While books have a better chance of getting published when they’re unique, they also need already existing titles around to show there’s a market for this sort of book.

Book title.
Author(s).
Publisher.
Publication date.
Amazon sales rank.
Similarities in this book with mine.
Differences.

So the task involves hitting up amazon or the local bookstores for books that are like mine. Someone mentioned some Chapters thing... I'll have to look into that too. Though, I think this is something that I will have to do when I have more time, and I will definitely do it in comparison to my own novel. I'm sure there will be a lot of similar ones due to the genre, and that makes me a little nervous. I guess I will just have to wait and see. I'll post an update about this when I have completed the task.

-Lizzy

GSWC- Day 25 & 26

Hey everyone!

Day 25- Today's writing challenge is based on assembling a book proposal. I have to say that this makes me a little nervous, but I realize that it is something that I will probably need to do for my novel once it is done. The exact prompt is: For today’s task, spend the day brainstorming book ideas. Consider your experience, expertise, interests, etc. Look at books on your topics and other topics that might not be related to see if there are treatments that haven’t been applied to your topic. 

For this, I am not sure if I should just go ahead with the novel idea that I have already written and in place, or if I should try to come up with something new. It is a little confusing for me. I think I'm going to stick with my novel idea for now though, I think that will make it easier? I have no idea.

Day 26-  Today's writing challenge is to figure out who your book is geared towards.

The exact prompt:  For today’s task, take your book idea from yesterday and start fleshing out who your target audience is for the book. Age range? Gender? Profession? Hobbies? Etc. Try quantifying, if possible, through organization memberships, magazine circs, etc.

So here is what I think my target audience and everything would be for my book that I am still working on.

Target Audience: 
Age Range: 17-50 yrs. I feel like because of the genre of the novel, many people would be able to read it.
Gender: Female 
Profession: I have no idea... I don't think it really matters in my case, it is more for enjoyment purposes.
Hobbies: Obviously people who like to read. Beyond that, no clue.

I think that I could probably narrow this down more, but I'm not exactly sure how. I guess once I start looking for a publisher and stuff, they'll be able to help me narrow it down... We'll just have to wait and see.

That's pretty much it for that, but on a side, I just wanted to let you know how I did on the writing 500 a day for the last few days... I did 


-Lizzy

GSWC- Day 21, 22, 23, & 24

Hey everyone!

Once again, I am here writing about the Get Started Write Challenge. I know what most of you are thinking: "Oh my gosh... doesn't this girl blog about anything else?" Well at the moment? No. This challenge is pretty much consuming my entire month, aside from my working on my novel. I want to jump-start my writing and I think that this is a good way to do it, even if I am a month late to the show. As a result- lots of blog posts dedicated to getting this done. I can't wait to see where I am at when this is all over! :D

Day 21- The challenge for today is to interview your characters. Start by asking their names, what they were doing right before the interview, favorite movie, favorite song, happiest moment, saddest moment, love interests (if any), associations, etc. Be thorough.

This sounds really interesting to me and I'm looking forward to going and doing this on my novel. I think that it will help me go back and edit it once I am done, and it will make them seem more human. I also will want to do this for the idea that I came up with a few days ago for one of the other challenges. I think that it will help me in the future to flesh out my characters more, however I am not going to post it on here for obvious reasons.

Days 22-24- The task for these days are to write 500 words a day, which will total to 1,500 in 3 days. I am already in the process of trying to write this many words on my novel each day, but it might be fun to try and write it on a new story. However, I am determined to finish this novel first. Then I will go back and edit it. I'm really excited about it all.  I'll let you know how it all goes in the next post!

-Lizzy