Tuesday, February 10, 2009
February 2009 archive
Hey everyone!
If you’re just discovering me at my new .com, welcome. As you can tell (if you can read), I’m all about writing. Love it, can’t get enough of it. I’ve had a writing blog of some type for the last four years and have finally gotten my own place to bring it all together.
I won’t be posting a whole lot here yet until I get the fine details ironed out with WordPress, templates, graphics…all the good stuff…but be sure to check out my older posts either in the sidebar or at http://www.writer-in-progress.blogspot.com.
Hope to be up and running by April 1st (no fooling!) In the meantime, pour a cup of coffee and read on!
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Cool Word Secret
I may be showing my true nerdiness in this post but I don’t care!
I just finished my 1-K-Words for the day…a funny little short story about an incident from kindergarten. But I got weary of typing like a madwoman then having to use the Word menu to look up my word count. There had to be an easier way…
By mistake, I right-clicked on “Tools” and got a drop-down menu with check-boxes. Curious, I clicked in the “word count” box. To my amazement, a mini-menu bar popped up on my WIP and gave me a count of my words to that point. This mini-bar (oh, I wish LOL) has a “recount” button that will instantly recount my words so that I never need to use the toolbar again. How cool is that?
Check it out. I’m so addicted to those crazy word counts that it made my day. Let me know what you think & I’d love to hear other Word shortcuts you might know. Now…back to the writing!
Sunday, February 1, 2009
February’s 1K-A-Day Challenge
I read a lot of writing ezines, blogs, websites, books & such, looking for ideas to help my own writing and to share with you 
Recently I read an author briefly mention that (she? he?) shoots for writing a minimum of 2K words a day. (2K=approximately 8 ds pages in Word). Some days are easier than others, and for some, 2K is just a launching point.
It got me to thinking…how much do I write in a day? I know I write more on the weekends (and snow days, as of late). When I work on a novel, I have days of 4K words and weeks of 500 words. Nonfiction seems to go a bit easier, depending on subject and publication.
Ever in the mode of re-inventing those New Year’s goals (which I did not set this year!) I’ve decided to challenge myself to do 1K-A-Day for the month of February. This might prove to be my downfall–February is one of my busiest (with life) months, despite its brevity.
I have a great word tracker I downloaded from Kresley Cole’s website eons ago (I can’t find a link for it anywhere on the web or I’d share it) and will pull it out and put it to good use for this. Rather than work by chapter (I’m almost all freelance this month), I’ll just set the final goal as 28K and plug in my daily totals as I go along.
Wow, 28K seems like a lot! I’ll be spreading it across a series of 6 articles for writers I’ve got started (brainstorming) and a new nonfiction project for writers.
Anyone want to join me? I’d love to have some company (or comisseration, however you look at it!). You can write whatever you want as long as you’re writing. Drop me a note or comment if you like. And don’t forget to pick a goal to shoot toward. Those 28K words are a fabulous reward in and of themselves, but give yourself license to pick something fun to get you going. I’m thinking about mine…
It's pretty simple, really. I'm a writer who loves writing about writing, and sharing all the tricks of the trade with other writers. And when I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing. I have a hunch you know what I mean :)