Second Chapter

So I've been slowly plugging away at chapter two, but haven't been feeling super inspired to write. In the meantime I have been working on creating my own homemade soap line for personal use and possibly sale on Etsy. My scrubs and candles have turned out good so far. I tried my hand at liquid soap making on Friday with semi-disastrous results. I think, having now read more recipes, that I figured out the problem and will be able to try again this Friday. I will update again this evening with my most recent word count, as I don't have it on me. I will try to write and post more later this week, but we'll see how it goes, as it's my birthday! :)

First Chapter Done!

So, it's been a while since I blogged, but I finally have a real, tangible bench mark hit. I finished the first chapter! I was so excited that I have kind of slacked off since starting the second chapter, but hope to get some work done on it this week.

Total Word Count: 3143

Writing has been happening

So I have been writing some lately, but mostly in my journals so it's harder to keep a word count going. I have gotten a little more into the computer though so I have made some progress there as well. I have also hit the point where I need to do a little research, so I've been spending my spare time reading up. I'm hoping to take this week to get all of my journal writing into the computer so I can have a more accurate (and much higher, thus happier) word count. So I will get off here and get back to it.

Current Word Count: 2519

Finally started working on the novel again

OK, so it's not 3 times a week, but it's waay sooner than normal so it's an improvement. Plus the biggest news is that I have actually started working on my novel again. I enjoy working on it once I get started, it's the getting started that is hard. I'm also enjoying taking the several starts and offshoots I have worked on and bringing them to one cohesive story. I will update again once I'm a little further. In the meantime I will start posting weekly word counts to encourage me to keep going. :)

Word Count: 1,139

So let's try this again...

Obviously I am a terrible blogger. Wedding and holidays finally aside. I'm hoping to start back up on transferring more of my book from paper to computer tonight. Hopefully :) I'll post another update tonight on my progress.

Blogging Fail

Apparently I am a once a month kind of blogger. I finally uploaded my art from my 30 day art challenge. You can check it out at www.flickr.com/zoiesmurf. I have both this year and last year's art up.

I didn't end up finishing this year's NaNoWriMo, but I did make some headway on the novel. Hopefully once the wedding and holiday season are past I'll be able to get farther. Wedding planning for the middle of the holiday season was not smart, but only one more week to go!

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and a fantastic New Year.

Art and Novel Writing

Apparently I am a terrible blogger as it has officially taken me weeks to update this...

I recently completed the 30 day art challenge and will hopefully get around to uploading the pictures soon... I decided to do mostly photography this year. It was a lot of fun, and I got some really cool shots. It was almost more fun though to see the photos afterwards and get to play with them with a photo editor.

I have discovered there is a big difference in the photo paper you buy to print your own photos at home. I started out with matte photo paper, which is basically like construction paper for printing photos. Unfortunately most of the photos I tried to print on that came out streaky, so I quickly gave in and found other paper. I tried buying Target brand photo paper, which served it's purpose. The photos printed on it and most didn't streak. When I ran out of that I bought some Kodak photo paper, and it is by far the best quality of any of the options I've tried. The photos printed, none with streaks, and all with much better color quality than the Target brand paper. /end photo paper rant

I decided to try NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year, knowing full well that I probably wouldn't finish, but thinking it would help jumpstart my novel writing. Deciding to give it a try the month before my wedding was probably a bad idea, but oh well. Now that I know about it, I will make it my goal to try to participate in it every year. So far I have just under 1,100 words consecutively in one document with many more in journals that I need to transcribe to a document that will count them for me.

So far I have been using Word to write with, but am looking into getting Scrivner as I've been told it's much better for this kind of writing. I'll post an update once I've had time to play around with it.