A Week of Mondays – Week 1 Round-Up #BehindtheBook

Week 1 COMPLETE! Hoorah! This post will double as Day 7’s post AND my first Weekly Roundup post, where I’ll summarize my progress and thoughts for the entire first week. Did someone say “summarize?” Oh yeah, that was me. And you know what THAT means!??? GRAPHS and CHARTS!!!

This is what happens when you let a former financial analyst loose in the author world.

Here’s my week 1 Cumulative Word Count vs. Mood Chart! (Nerd Alert!)

This is so you (and I!) can visually see how my mood about the book changed as my word count increased. As you’ll see, I took a little dip around the 9,000 word count mark, rebounded at 11,000 words and then slumped a bit more nearing 12,000 words. Trust me, these graphs get much more interesting the further you get into the book, especially when you start approaching the middle of the book. It’s like playing chutes and ladders with my emotions in that noxious wasteland we call the Middle.

(Hint: Click the graph to see it bigger)

And now…onto the stats!

Day 7 Stats:

Date: 9/9/14

Words Written: 1,356

Total Words to Date: 11,888

Pages Written: 5

Total Pages To Date: 48

Chapters Completed: 1

Total Chapters to Date: 11

Time Elapsed: 1.5 hours

General Mood (1-10): 7

Day 7 Notes:

I was hoping to get a BIT more on my word count scale today but I had to wrap up another project (which will soon be revealed!) so I had to punch my card early today on the book. However, I did layout most of what will happen in the next chapter. Sometimes I’ll do that. If I’m excited about what’s next or it’s just very clear in my mind, I’ll lay it out in bullet points and choppy dialogue pieces just to give Future Jessica a head start (and make sure she doesn’t totally screw it up!)

The physical comedy scene I wrote today didn’t come out QUITE as well as I’d hoped. Which just means that I have some revision work to do on this chapter. But I’m moving on!

Week 1 Stats:

Date: 9/3/14 – 9/9/14

Weekly Words Written: 11,888

Total Words to Date: 11,888

Average Daily Words: 1,698

Weekly Pages Written: 48

Total Pages To Date: 48

Average Daily Pages: 7

Weekly Chapters Completed: 11

Total Chapters to Date: 11

Average Mood (1-10): 8

Week 1 Notes:

Week 1 was a solid start. I’m not QUITE as pleased with the first 10,000 words as I expected to be but since I’m restraining myself from editing as I go, that’s not a huge surprise. If I allowed myself to go back and tweak the chapters to death, I may feel better about them now, but I wouldn’t be nearly as far as I am in my word count progress. So I’ve been continually reminding myself that I will revise later. In the (modified) words of our good friend Dory, the fish: “Just keep writing! Just keep writing!”

I’m still on the first Monday, before the character wakes up to realize she’s reliving the same day over and over so it’s a lot of groundwork to lay to make the other days work. But I’m anxious to get to the second day and start the FUN Groundhog Day stuff. I was feeling a little worried that the first day was dragging on and was too long. But a close writer friend reminded me yesterday that Day 1 in Groundhog Day, the movie, is the longest day of the film. It’s kind of how this concept has to work. The first day has to be solidly set up so the rest of the days pay off. Plus, I can always cut later! Cutting is easier than adding (at least for me!)

In case you missed the first post, I’m live blogging (diary style) the progress of writing my new manuscript, A WEEK OF MONDAYS (which will be released by FSG/Macmillan in Spring 2016), to give fellow writers (and readers) an inside look into my writing process. And maybe give me a little insight as well!

Click here to read the first post or you can follow all the posts by clicking here.