Sadie Jay

The week started strong but then I lost some momentum as I switched computers. I figure I have another week or two before I get everything set up the way I want it. On the word-count front, I ended up with 3833 words- a little lower than I wanted but I'll get there. Ideally, I would like to get in a minimum of 5K a week. After I hit my CampNaNo goal, I set a new one for the month of July, working towards 20K. Of course, I then looked at the calendar wrong and thought I had until tomorrow! I may not meet it today, but I'll be close. Goal for August? Another 20K to finish on my current WIP. And then the edits begin! This week's excerpt: He sat with his head down, staring into what was left of his beer, when an arm was thrown over his shoulders and a voice he hadn’t heard in over a year was whispering into his ear. “Hey, baby boy, fancy meeting you here.”  He tensed, refusing to turn his head. “What are you doing here?” “You don’t call, you don’t text. Why...

This last week went much better at 6311 words. I'm not sure if it was because it was too hot to be outside much, or if I just made some decisions about the plot line. Like normal, it always hits me just as I go to bed, so I make barely legible scratches on my note pad and try to figure it out the next morning! Since I kept my CampNaNo goal low this time, I should easily make it within the next day or two. I had thought about setting it aside after I hit goal and start editing Embers And Flame, but I think since I've got this one in my head fairly firmly now, I'm going to try and finish it. Then I'll probably stay away from anything original for the rest of the year and work on sentence by sentence edits of my small collection, plus the Headphones rewrites. I keep pushing that one aside, and I really want to dive back into it. With any luck, by the end of the year, I'll have 4 stand-alones and a 3-book series to start seriously querying. Fingers crossed! This week...

At 3527 my word count was better than I expected, considering I had company all week. I guess the fact that I took time off work and spent time with my laptop while she was still in bed really helped! Anyway, my CampNaNo project is progressing. I'm really thinking this is going to be Novella with a 40K word goal, but considering I started it with the vaguest idea of a plot and no outline, who knows where it's going to go! At this point, I'm trying to assert that Jordan is a bit of a lost boy/punk and Reese is an all around good guy. This week's excerpt: Reese ran through the last strip of unmowed grass just as Jordan pulled up. With any luck, the nights would stay cool and it wouldn’t need to be mowed again. He watched as the car pulled up on the gravel drive and in the light of day, he could see that the old Ford had been well cared for, but the door squealed as it was opened and he doubted even a shot of WD40 was going to help. He pushed the mower into the shed an...

    Camp is well under way. This is something different for me, going into writing something after only thinking about it for a week. Usually, I give myself months to develop the characters and let the story grow before I start typing, but this one is happening in a whole different way. I'm letting it happen as I type, except I'm seeing flashes of what's coming and I'm taking lots of notes. Unfortunately, my writing time is limited for at least another week because of Real Life. I'm tracking okay, but I purposely kept my Camp goal low for that very reason. I'm definitely feeling more of a connection with Reese and Jordan than I did Cherry and Ben, and I still wonder if it's because I did it in dual 1st person. I really felt like it bogged me down. This one is dual 3rd person and it's moving smoother. Anyway, I'm tracking and last week's word count was 3585 (still not where I would like it to be, but I'll get there!)   Excerpt from this week...

New project! I usually don't start a new story until I have a good idea of who, what, why--the first pages are usually fairly solid in my mind before I start plotting.  For my July CampNaNo challenge, I'm basically putting together an outline. No first page! I wrote the first couple of pages, but they feel like a prologue.  I prefer to start stories with some kind of action or dialogue so I jumped in a few days after Jordan gets his first look at the trailer. How about some opinions, please. Start in New Orleans as Chapter 1 or a prologue, or start when Jordan meets Reese and then use narrative throughout the story to explain how and why he's there? 1/ Jordan grinned as he laid his cards on the table. Full house against a trio of Aces. Now to collect his winnings and get the hell out of this dark cave of a bar. The zydeco was giving him a headache and his nose burned from the cigar smoke that the other players were blowing his way. He watched as the guy si...

At the last minute, I decided to do July's CampNaNo. The threads of a new story began to wave around in my head, a barely there idea that I thought I might develop--later. Because I needed to finish Embers and Flame --which was going slowly, and even though I kept thinking I was inches away from the end, it wasn't quite there yet-- and then I planned to start the rewrite of Headphones. Plus, I'm going to be on vacation for a few days. So I decided to skip Camp, even though I really enjoy doing it. But there was this idea, just the seed of an idea, actually. And then someone I follow on Twitter asked if anyone wanted to be in her cabin. And before I knew it, I'd signed up. With my seed of an idea. I have no plot or outline. I set my goal low and gave myself until July 4th to finish E & F.  And then this thing happened. I decided to do sprints over the weekend, and I was making good progress Saturday. 1800 words-- the most I've done in one day for awhile....