GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!!!

Gaidhlig Phrase of the Day: Tapadh leat/Tapadh leibh. "Thank you." (singular, informal/plural or singular, formal)

Forgive the subject line, I was channeling the soccer announcers you hear on matches televised in Mexico...

Anyway, yeah, I reached my goal! So woo for that. I am now, the observant among you will note, at 7,300 words. I had hoped to reach an even 7,000 by the end of August, but I got on a roll today and now I think I'll try to stick another grand on there for a total of 8,000 by Thursday. In my current mood, it seems doable.

Why all the sudden progress? Well, aside from being very busy at the day job and at home, the past few weeks have really been spent in research and contemplation. All the necessary stuff before a story can really take off. I'm finally to a point where I can start writing and just go again, because I know the general direction I want to actually go.

The first couple of weeks after I decided to write this book, I kind of sat around and played with ideas, waiting for inspiration. Then inspiration struck! and I had the basis for my storyline. I wrote a few scenes, got a feel for the characters and got an idea of what I needed to know before I went on.

At that point, a few weeks ago, I started researching in earnest. I narrowed down a time frame, found a historical location and bad guy, got a feel for the cultural and historical setting, and refined my story idea. There were some things I couldn't go forward without knowing, and I had to figure those out.

Then last week I sat down to write an outline. I started off this project as a "chunker," and I have a feeling I will write large parts of it in that fashion. But at heart I am a listmaker, and I love to have things laid out and organized. So once I thought I knew what my plot was going to be, I decided to jot it down for future reference and revision. That quickly turned into 3 hand-written notebook pages, front and back, that mapped out most of the story and actually led to some more brainstorming and ideas for plot elements (such as the time travel mechanism).

I didn't get much time over the weekend, but today was a fresh start and I did have a goal to meet. I went in to tweak/update the scenes I wrote originally in light of what I had decided through the research, and while I was updating my opening scene, the words just kept coming.

So I've made quite a bit of progess, and for the moment I'm writing linearly. Other scenes are percolating in my head, though, and when they decide to pop up I'll get them "on paper" (which is funny, 'cause this is all on the computer - there is no paper yet).

One frustrating thing is that I can't log into the Compuserve forum from home, because the login is wonky. But I can't access the ForumsAmerica workshop at work, because the Powers That Be in IT have blocked the domain. So my ability to interact with my writing friends is hampered no matter where I go. I think I'm going to have to do all my crits for the workshop over weekends, and save the weeknights for writing.

Another dilemma - now that I have a decent chunk of the first chapter, and a query letter draft (see yesterday's post) I'm trying to decide whether to submit for Miss Snark's crapometer. She said she doesn't usually do romance, but she'll accept submissions for such in the crapometer contest. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment, since I submitted my (original) opening to Evil Editor. We'll see. Even if I do submit, it might not get chosen. Again, with only 7,300 words, I'm really putting the cart before the horse here, but I think that constructive criticism this early on is helpful so I don't get too set in erroneous ways. *grin*

Anyway, it grows late and if I'm going to keep up my creativity, I do need to sleep every now and then.