Tag: Writing

Short Story Progress

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

On the nights I work in the office, it’s difficult for me to write as I’m usually in a lot of pain so not a lot of movement over the last couple nights. I hoped to get more done tonight but I got side tracked (more on this later).

As I was talking with my youngest daughter today, I came up with an idea for the ending of this short story. I was telling her about the story and asking her about scary things. Ideas started popping in my head. I’ve jotted down a few – we’ll see how many actually make it into the story.

It was after 11:30 tonight when I started writing. The story is flowing now which is fantastic. So I look at my clock on my computer and say – What? When did it get to be 1:00 am? Doesn’t matter really.

The nice thing though is I got 1500 words done on the story. I’m at almost 9300 so halfway done with the story. I’m not sure I can write the rest in 10K so I might have to check with the organizer to see if she’s okay if I go over.

Sidetracked – well I joined Discord and have created a server on there. Tonight I worked on building the channels on the server. If you want to join me, I’m here – https://discord.gg/MQbG7UEZ

I’m still working on the channels but it’s coming along. On my website I have a page for stand alone novels, so I may create a list from there.

I’m not working for five days! On Asana I have a ton of tasks I want to work on. I actually hope to make at the very least a good dent into those before she’s done with me. I need to finish this story and start checking off items from my to do list.

Tomorrow we’re processing food from the gardens and farmer’s market. This will likely take up most of the day. I hope to write in the evening though.

Tiny Steps

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

Last night I got sucked into a non-writing project and spent my evening fussing with it and not writing. This was disappointing. I also didn’t sleep last night.

Tonight, well I had a rough day and I’m super tired (bad night isn’t helping). So I thought this won’t be a writing night – I’m too tired. But people left me alone, even the cat went away. So I wrote for a bit and got distracted by messages on messenger and conversations with my daughters (always a highlight in my day).

So officially I wrote just under 1000 words tonight bringing my total to 7800. It’s progress but I’m a little disappointed with how little I’ve progressed. The story is there. I need to just focus.

Part of my problem is it’s set in locations I know and other people will know so I want the description of them to be right. Tonight I spent a bit of time looking at pictures of a museum I plan to have as a setting instead of writing the setting. From the pictures, I think I can do a decent job describing it but it took time away from writing.

So tiny steps in my progress to finish this story….

20,000 Words or Less

by eileentroemel, posted in Writing

While on vacation, I spoke with the organizer of some anthologies. I have certain ones I always look at and then try to determine if I have time and energy to come up with something. This organizer posted her 2024 anthology topics and I can’t think that far in advance. So I found her 2023 and 2022 lists. For 2022 she has a Halloween anthology and in my head pops – oh, I could do the next Paranormal Investigators story.

Oh my head gets me in trouble sometimes. I reached out and asked if she still had rooms. She said yes. I said – hold don’t add me yet. My fear was I’d sit down to write and zero would come to me. I didn’t want to let her down. So I started writing – as I’ve said previously.

Tonight I was doing research and getting distracted but I sat down to write. I thought… not sure this is going well but I did a map of locations and more came to me. Then I researched a location which sidetracked me. But eventually I got down to writing. I brought in characters from the first story. I love the scene at the sister’s home.

However, I knew I had to get into another ghost scene and I had NO idea whatsoever of what I wanted to do. I literally have the characters standing backstage and no clue what to do next. I could almost hear Harper (my main female character) sighing about the delays.

Now I’m done for the night – it’s late and I have to work tomorrow. But I’ve managed to write 2111 words tonight and my story is now around 6800 words. I can have 20K so I’m not worried at this point but I still have several ghosts and locations to get to before I land on the finale.

Progress is good but I have a deadline of September 2. It needs to be written, edited and ready for the organizer. My day job gets busy (or in my case busier) at the end of August so I need to stay on top of this one. Lets not forget I have book releasing this month too. Solana comes out on August 20 so I need to prep for that as well. I’m trying not to think about this too much – I just need to write for now.

Fruits displaying in the stall of a market

Summer Vacation is Done

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Uncategorized

Since it’s 1 am it’s technically Monday so my vacation ended yesterday. I’d like to say I spent a leisurely day writing and being a bum. Instead we worked on cutting up watermelon, musk melon, pineapple, strawberries, cherries, peaches, and cucumbers.

The cucumbers became relish but we added too much salt so we’ll label it as salty and see if we can make tarter sauce with it. The fruits we froze a number of them so we can have them in winter for smoothies / slushies. Some were just cut up to have for nibbling on all week.

We picked from our herbs again. This time we managed to actually get them chopped up and put into ice cube trays to freeze. Those will go into ziplock bags for use over the winter as well.

Ken picked tomatoes and peas. Vicki picked potatoes. Can’t wait to enjoy all of those. We also have a lot more growing. It was a busy morning with all of us working to get the food processed and either in the freezer for winter or mixed into what we wanted for consumption this week.

We made homemade pizza for supper with leftovers for lunch this week. It was delicious. It was also the first time we made pizza dough in the breadmaker which was much easier on my hands.

Now all of that took me to about supper time. I spent a little time playing on my phone and being mindless. But after supper, everyone left me alone and I was supposed to write but an author friend sent me her book. I started it last night and instead of writing I had to finish the book. It was delightful. So I didn’t start writing until 10 pm.

Very unusual for me, I have an outline (very rough and only ideas jotted down) of how this short story should go. I had around 3100 yesterday when I finished writing. Tonight I managed to add an additional 1500. Now I’m being cautious because I think this will go into an anthology but there’s a short deadline. I think If I can get through a few more scenes by Friday I will commit to being in the anthology. But I want to see how far I get in the story before I give a firm yes to the organizer. I don’t want her to do more work if I can’t get it written by the deadline.

Overall, I had a good vacation. It was relaxing but I still accomplished tasks. I finished off manuscripts and got most of them to my formatter. She’s gotten them back to me. So I can upload as I need to and set up preorders.

I’ve got a story in my head which keeps returning so I may be starting a new one soon but we’ll see. I’d much rather finish off a couple of works in process.

Later today, I’ll be catching up on a week’s worth of emails and dealing with the demands of my job. The nice thing is, I feel relaxed and refreshed from having time off.

writing text, random text, text, paper, notebook, pen.

Summer Vacation Part 3

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

Yesterday I worked on getting Solana into blogs. Having different bloggers post about my books helps different people see my book. It also means I have to write something to go with. It might be a character interview or to answer specific questions. These take time to write so I got several done.

Then I worked on getting my books set up in Asana. Now I use this to schedule the different tasks I need to accomplish between now and the release date like editing steps, ordering graphics (or creating them) and marketing steps. I had seven books to set up. The nice thing is I lumped a number of those tasks on the same day despite the later release dates.

It makes it easier to do all the books at once like researching keywords rather than scattering those tasks over multiple days for the next year. This means I need to look at my calendar so I keep track of what’s on the agenda.

I planned to write last night but I had people around me until late. I read a book instead. I was up until about 1 am and enjoyed getting lost in the story. When it was done, I wanted to keep reading but of course the book was done.

My daughter has started making fruit smoothies in the morning. We’ve had a mix of cherries, strawberries, peaches, blueberries, banana. This is how we’ve been starting our day and it’s delicious and filling. We will probably put the fruits we need for smoothies into one freezer bag so we can grab and make very easily.

Today is a lot of meetings for me. I do an author talk in my Facebook and then a group of authors get together and chat about writing stuff after that. In between today, I need to peel and halve peaches so they can go in the freezer.

After dinner, I plan to send people off to their own spaces so I can write. Yesterday while having a conversation with someone I came up with a plot for the short story I am working on. It all just fell into place. I have an idea of what I want to write and how to solve the issues. It just clicked which is heavenly!

Writing sample created using the Mechanical substitute for the arms, United Kingdom, 1919 (writing sample)

More on Summer Vacation!

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

Four manuscripts later, I’ve started a short story I wasn’t planning on writing this year. I saw an anthology which this story will fit into nicely. I talked to the organizer and if I can get it written in under a month I’ll be able to join the anthology.

Last night I worked on the short story and got almost 1200 words written. It was an odd day for me yesterday. I had lots of distractions for finishing the fourth manuscript I was editing. Also I found places to add in things my beta readers wanted. I’m pleased with the results and hope my beta readers will be as well.

Last night I also started some client work. This is on my schedule for today. My plan – very loose and adjustable plan – is to switch off from writing to editing as I get tired of one or the other. With any luck (and hopefully few interruptions) I can make a dent in both of these projects.

Homonyms

by eileentroemel, posted in Writing

I know you’re groaning because I’m using grammatical terms. We know what this is – it’s words that sounds the same but have different meanings.

Are you saying Huh? I hope not but if you are…

Question Mark On Colorful Paper

Here’s a few examples

You’re / Your

Its / It’s

There / They’re / Their

Now I can tell you when I write, these mess with me all the time. So I’m doing what I do best – writing about them. Doesn’t mean I’ll mess up less but I’ll at least share with others.

There are so many of these I cannot even begin to tell you them all. The three above are commonly done incorrectly as are many many more.

In the Wayfarer series for some reason I could not come up with console – meaning a scientific instrument consisting of displays and an input device. I came up with council, counsel and I’m sure there were other iterations. But not console. I knew what I wanted and I was pretty sure of the word but the correct spelling eluded me.

Now when I’m tooling along writing, I don’t always type the write word. I just get it down. I want to get the words on the page and get it out of my head.

How do I as an author fix this?

My first go to is spell check. I work in Word and the Editor they are now using gets its/it’s wrong all the time. It’s like it’s drunk. So you have to know your spell checker.

Read through. I do a read through of all my manuscripts as well as using the Editor / spell check.

If that doesn’t catch them, my beta and arc team will let me know if something is off.

Readers will also let an author know when something is wrong – my only hope is they let me know before they leave a review so I can correct it.

Balancing Act

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

With all the things going on in our house with the remodel, we’ve been discombobulated in the rest of the house. This means my crocheting has been stashed away. So I haven’t really been crocheting at all.

Love a great yarn sale…

Now there are two things which sooth me – crocheting and writing. There’s nothing better than having a movie weekend and working on a crochet project. Or to have a week off work and spend as much time as possible writing.

July I released Through Destiny’s Eyes. In August I was part of Into the Dark anthology and To the Moon and Back anthology. I loved both opportunities. They tapped into different writing challenges for me. Saturday I release Paranormal Investigator Files and I’ve been prepping for this event. I also have a release a month through February.

That’s a lot of marketing and promotional work. It’s detail work which is often repetitive. This is not my favorite thing to do but if I don’t then no sales. So it’s an essential activity I must do.

The opportunity to be part of another anthology came to me. Pushing myself to finish a short story in about a month made me realize how much I love writing. Pumping out anywhere from 2K to 5K or more in a night satisfies me in a way I don’t know that I can describe. It takes me to a place I rarely go. I feel fulfilled and satisfied with me. I get the same feeling when I crochet.

Clearly I need to find a balance. I’ve struggled with blurred and double vision and headaches because I’m spending so much time on the computer. So tonight instead of feverishly trying to get promotions done so I can squeak out some family and writing time, I spent tonight with family and not looking at my computer. I started designing a new pattern for crocheting and have really enjoyed crocheting – playing with colors and stitches and figuring out what works.

This was one of my best purchases

Tomorrow night, I’ll be working on the short story to edit, rewrite and see if I can squish it down to 15K. In my head, I’ve accepted I will end up publishing it myself. Don’t get me wrong – I want to be in the anthology. I just like a backup plan. So when I’m revising and editing, I’ll be looking at how to revamp it so I can expand it if I need to publish it myself if needed.

I need a little bit of all – practically I need to have time to promote my books, time to write and time to crochet and design. So I’m working on it. This weekend, a bit of promoting and crocheting. Then later this month I have a week off and I’ll spend those days juggling all three activities. My hope is I’ll be able to finish a project or two for writing. But also work on crocheting and designing. I have gifts to make for the holidays and biographies to watch (or movies or ???). Intertwined with those activities, I’ll work on promoting.

Short Story part 3

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

I realized last night when I couldn’t sleep I need to transition better for my third chapter. I thought about how I could transition and had no idea. It’s part of why I was up late late…

Today I got back into the story and created the transition I needed. It turned out beautifully and explained one of the key points in the story. Now I have to figure out what the key point will be for the other character. I’ve already hinted at it but I need to solidify her reasons.

I like the progress this is making. I like the characters and if it doesn’t get chosen, I’ve got a place for it. I’ve got a cover and I think it will make a nice holiday story to release on my own. I’d rather be part of the anthology but either way, the story won’t go to waste.

So progress and 1800 more words in the thing. I’m up to just over 7300 words. As I’m looking at it, I think I’ve got a sexy scene, an argument, and the make up scene and I’ll be done. Now that’s what I plan but my characters are frequently annoying and decide their own path. So if it truly is three scenes, each of those scenes can be right around 2500 and still stay under the 15K total. Only time will tell if I can actually do it.

Short Story Progress part 2

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

I had free time over the weekend. I should have been writing but the words just didn’t come. This happens to me when I finish things. I finished the other short story – alien prison planet. It’s so different from this short story, I think that’s why I’m hung up.

I made some progress today. I made myself do a schedule tonight. I have client work to get done. I spent an hour on that. I putzed around on social media for too long but still got stuff done. I answered emails.

Then I returned to my holiday romance. I finished writing a scene where I ran out of steam. I was thinking about how my couple could get closer… an idea just popped into my head. I’ll have to see how it pans out tomorrow because I’m trying to be responsible and it’s already midnight here.

I’m up to about 4500 words. I’m starting Chapter 3. And I just got an idea which has driven my words up to 5500. I like the scene. I might need to smooth it out a bit. Now – time for bed so I can do my day job.