Writing a Novel – Day 16
Wow, with all this novel-writing, I kind of skimped out on the blog updates!
Anyway, I’m still here and still going strong.
The targets I’ve had have helped me to ease into this nicely.
I will say that there are several tweaks and improvements I will be making to the ‘project’-type algorithms as a result of this extensive first hand testing. (While the standard habit curves have been tested and tweaked over years, these project algorithms were only added in version 2).
In short, the tweaks are mostly concerned with how the targets adjust to missed days. I missed my target two days out of the last 16, and I think I can improve on the way the rest of the targets adjusted to compensate.
More details on this after Nov 30.
Now, back to writing!
Writing a Novel – Day 4
I have just emerged from a battle with my inner critic. Victorious!
I usually would slowly write a paragraph, read over what I just wrote. Or read everything from page one. Then I would sit until I thought of how to phrase the next bit. But there was finally a distinct moment when I realized I should just write whatever came to mind.
And that’s the hardest part of getting a first draft down: “Shut up and Write!”.
Anyway, I’ve met the last four day’s targets without problems. I am currently at 4293 words, though I might get some more in today.
I should note that I am averaging 1073 words per day. This is 64% of the “standard” average of 1667=50000/30.
However, I am learning a lot as I go, and I am having no trouble meeting the increasing targets.
This is a lot of fun!
Writing a Novel – Day 1
As vowed, I have begun my novel today.
I had absolutely no plan until the day before.
But then, in a flash of inspiration, I came up with my plot.
It starts out shamelessly autobiographical (basically, it’s me and my current situation almost verbatim), but will slowly build up to some crazy science fiction occurrences.
Some notes about HabitShaper in regards to the writing process:
50,000 words in 30 days averages out to 1667 words per day. However, HS (as always) starts off with an easier target.
In this case, it was a mere 604 words.
I found that I hit that target within an hour. But once I did, I was much more at ease and the writing flowed more smoothly.
I am now at 1360 words. More importantly, I like where this is going!
Writing a Novel – In Practice
For a while now, HabitShaper has had a “Write a Novel” preset.
Yet I’ve never written one myself!
Time to put my money where my mouth is. I hereby declare that I will write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.
If this sounds crazy, then you’ve never heard of this lovely and crazy bunch of people: the National Novel Writing Month group!
There are currently 100,335 people signed up to do this. At least I’ve got company… (Hi fellow wrimos!)
New Site is Live!
The title says it all:
For now, it’s just a bare-bones transpose of the old site. But once all the ‘teething issues’ are sorted, I’ll be adding a lot of new content.
Enjoy!
New Site coming soon
Just a quick note: I’m working hard on a much-needed website upgrade.
My main goal with this new site is to add a lot more content.
Such as guides for using HS for particular goals.
Estimated time to launch: 3 days.