Word count update

I am now up to 54710! That is only up to chapter 16 typed, I have a long way to go typing and a lot of editing to do!

Crazed week

Well I haven’t been updating much on the blog (like that’s anything new right?) because a lot o stuff has been going on lately making it very hard for me to focus period. I have not even touched the edits for Americoma for several days now, almost a week in fact. I hope to work on that later tonight or maybe over the weekend.
What I have worked on is the short story named “Coming Undone” which is based in the Indigo Nation Universe, which already has one short story in it called “One of a Kind” and can be found on my other blog.

The nice thing about working on the short stories is that I get a little bit of a boost out of finishing an actual project. Dave Ramsey refers these as “at-a-boy” feelings and they actually do make a huge difference. I am over 5,000 words in that newest story and I hope to finish it so I can post it and go back to work on the novel.

The last thing I have been working I can’t exactly say yet but it is not another novel but something more in the art category. Hopefully I will be able to say more on that later.

The issues I have been dealing with come from work, I don’t know how much I can and should say other then I believe that things have finally worked themselves out and life should be going back to normal.

Update on word count and progress

So remember that green note book I was using awhile ago? The one that contained part of chapter 3 - part of chapter 16? Well I finished typing that out last night! That's right, I managed to type all of that out finally. In the note book I have 33,792 words hand written and at this point typed out I have 45,256 . . . which is a significant increase in between drafts.

One of the other projects I have been working hard on is a short story collection set in a super hero universe I'm calling the "Indigo Nation Universe". I refereed to it, when talking to a friend, is superheros without all the BS. The first story "One of a Kind" cane be found here. The second one, "Coming Undone" should be done in the next couple of days and I will post on the Indigo Nation blog.

Catch me on Twitter: @ARLivingston where I post all major updates.

Americoma book completion interview

Update... and a Twitter?!?!?!

Alright so I made a video and Youtube killed it. I am going to have to re-edit the footage and post it again.

I am done with the book but I am not done typing it out so that is one of the project I am working on as well as starting a short story collection to get me ready for NaNoWriMo in November. Other then that not much is new... oh! Yes I have signed up for Twitter! I am not the happiest about using it, I do not think I and vane enough for it, but I think it will have it's uses.

Update*
The Americoma word count is up to 54339 and still going (in case you can not see that number in the twitter box => )

A quick post before bed.

So, it has been awhile (yet again) since I posted last.

I am so close to finishing the book it is unbelievable! All I have left to do is finish the epilogue and then I am done. That is right! I have to "finish" the epilogue, I already have several hundred words written for it. I am hoping that by the end of the week I will be done with the book over 20 days ahead of the due date.

In other news: I have managed to set up my office finally, the sad thing is that as I write this I am still writing from the couch. I do end up doing most of the work now in the office and it really cuts down on my distractions. I have a large table in there, my computer chair, several milk crates for storage and hopefully a desktop server computer will soon be in there.

If you get a chance check out Judah Lamey's website, it has the first chapter of his novel (link) and I had the privileged of reading this chapter before it was posted and really liked it.

Work Post!

I am blogging at work! How crazy is that?

So I ended having a creative issue today that I was unable to get around. I had several options on where I could take the book and no clue where any of those would have lead. I happen to be, or at least I think I am, a discovery writer. This means that I do not always have an outline ready to go off of when I sit down to write.

I have several people in my life who are very creative and I sent a message to two of these people with no answer back. I ended up talking to my wife (who claims to be not creative at all) and she helped me find the path that would work best with my book in no time at all. In a way, this post is for those people who think they have no creativity. I am told that I am pretty creative and I ended up being completely lost on my own.

Thanks Aaronne!

Hermes

So I have not mentioned my writing buddy, Hermes the plant, in awhile so I figured I would give a small update on him! For those who do know know Hermes is an orchid that I rescued from work, they stopped watering and let bugs infest it, and nursed back to health. In a couple of weeks he lost his flowers and no new growth was visible. The long thin stock was suppose to die and a new one would grow but in this case this did not happen.


Apparently he is just as unusual as his owner...

A thought came to me...

and I just realized that I have made it to my word count goal way ahead of schedule. I had given myself until the end of July so I had 39 days left. Now i just have to finish the story with no worries where my word count is.

My dilemma now is what to do with this blog. The original thought behind this blog was to keep myself accountable and let people know how I was doing on this project. Now that I am just about done I am going to have to change direction on here. Maybe I should let people know how my edits are coming or post where I have tried to sell my novel (and any rejections I might received). The last idea I have is to turn the novel into serialized fiction, both written on here and audio podcast, and put that on here.

Maybe I will just do all of the above... I have plenty of time to think about it.

P.S.
Check out the trailer to Scott Sigler's new novel Ancestor, in stores now! I already have my copy and started to read it. To get some of his work as a free audio podcast visit his site here!

50,000

Quick update

Word count: 47947
Pages typed out: 179 (this does not count any handwritten pages)

It is a really bad idea trying to write and watch mythbusters... just saying.

Thursday Morning

Well just giving the word count update (47610). The writing is going a little slower then I want but I have been a little distracted lately with some stuff that is going on. Between some family drama, golfing Tuesday, work and then some extra work on my next project my time is disappearing quickly.

I guess I will just have to suck it up and finish...

A typed update? No way...

So I ended up doing some video updates and a small plug here and there but I have not done any real post lately and I thought that should change. I have been working on the novel as well as planning a few ideas out for a couple of other projects out. Cannot say much on those right at this moment other then I still plan on working 95% of the time on Americoma.

As far as the novel goes, I have managed to finish writing chapter 17 and I have close to 200 words for chapter 18. I am also hoping to have the 50,000 words by the end of the week.

That is all I really have for right now!

Updated word count

46909

Video Update #3

Hoodwink Chronicles

I have mentioned this comic at least once on the blog before but this week I was asked to do a short video introduction for the comic! Come check it out here and tell Judah you want to see me in the comic!

Video Update #2

Tuesday Night

Well, I have been working hard on the novel, I am close to 42.5 thousand words right now and I have managed to finish my typed word count for the rest of the month, not that I will stop typing it out. I am hoping to get to 50 thousand by the end of three weeks, but I have been derailed a lot the last couple of weeks.

I ended up working in a quarantine zone that made my job more difficult due to having to disinfect everything, plus not feeling very well myself. My right wrist has been acting up either form an old injury or from the beginnings of carpel tunnel. Very fun week over all I would say…

Tired but updating

So I have not updated in a little while due to working hard on the novel and having some issues with work. A resident at my work (I work in an assisted living and independent living facility) developed whooping cough, which is a pretty nasty disease. I happen to be one of the only people in the whole building who is naturally immune to it since I had it when I was 6 years old. So that has been fun… O.K. not really.

The book, on the other hand, has been going great. I am over 41,000 words, which means I am over 4/5th the way through the originally word count! I have 73 days left to finish the novel so I can have a decent amount of time off before NaNoWriMo. I am hoping to plan a lot of the novel out so it is more like filling in the blanks instead of plowing through 1667 words a day.

Well it is mad late here and I have work tomorrow so it is time to go to bed.

Inspiration for the week: 2 Corinthians 4:8
"We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair."

Jank

So i have not been feeling all that great lately so I not make my word count tonight but I plan on trying... maybe. I have been having some nasty headaches and feeling sluggish. It would be nice if I felt better so I can focus on writing instead of wanting to sit in my recliner and do nothing like I pretty much am right now.

Edit as of 1:44 the next morning

So I missed my word count for the day but I made up for it already and managed to finish the typed word count for today as well. I have added another 300-400 words (i have not counted them yet but it is several pages) to chapter 15 where the protagonist is meeting with my version of the Mad Hatter who is nothing like the one released with Johnny Depp. Hopefully I will like the ending of this part of the book as much as i have been so far but we will see, my guess is this will be the most bizarre section of the book.

Over 38,000!

Updated word count

37267(ish) which means that I am close to being 4/5 the way through my original word count! Now the question is just how long is this thing going to end up being? I am only half way through the story I want to write, if that, so maybe 60,000 to 70,000 is a much more realistic number. I was really hoping to take August off from writing but that might not be the case if this ends up being a longer book.

Either way 37,000+ is an amazing word count for me! I am excited and very tired at the same time... hopefully falling asleep will not be as hard as I think.

Up again

All day my brain has hurt from staying up all night and writing. Now I am up, yet again, after 2am and my brain will not shut off. I do not know what the deal is but now I am ready to start writing again but I need sleep. On top of that I am taking a few days off of creating new content for the novel, I might do a little planning and outlining but that will be all.

Judah's webcomic has a video up talking about the post that he made and he said I should try it and I just might. Maybe the next time I need to rant or ramble I just might do it.

This is not so much of a blog about the book but one born of hearing stupid things. When I hear certain things it just sticks in my head and after awhile I HAVE to brain vomit it out. Its like a sickness I have.

I have discovered the joys of having a Bluetooth headset for my phone this last week by having some really good conversations with my friend Judah (you can find his site here) who also wants to get into writing. Awhile ago both of us decided to do NaNoWriMo and have been very excited about it, then Judah went to a writing conference. One of the things this dude said is that his editor is against National Novel Writing Month because they get so many people sending them possible novels that they might want to publish.

This is the first retarded thing that annoyed me this week. How is it that you do not like people wanting to help you make money. One of these people might just be the next Stephanie Meyers, they might be crap but you do not really know until you go over them. Considering how many people in America are so stupid that they do not understand the value of a book you should be freaking ecstatic that people are writing novels at all.

To this guys credit if you do not take your time to edit your work them you are a moron that does not deserve an opportunity to have some sort of professional read your work. This is point #2 that annoyed the crap out of me. After I finish Americoma I plan on editing the crap out of it, giving it to people I trust and letting them edit it and then editing it again myself in order to catch as many issues as possible. If you send a un-edited novel then you deserve to get a rejected submission. Idiots…

In the end though I still think that authors should be more accepting of NaNoWriMo. I doubt anyone really cares about my feelings in this matter but being able to rant about this finally is making me feel better.


After ranting I feel like one happy panda...

Milestone

Well I have been putting off blogging the last couple of days in order to focus on my writing as much as I can. I have been spending several hours a night writing on top of my normal daily word count and I have now reached a new milestone for my novel. I am now 7/10th through the original word count goal. For those who do not remember my first goal was to finish around 50,000 words (similar to my NaNoWriMo goal this November) which means that I am currently at 35,000+

Time to take a break, watch some of “The Stand” and relax before starting back in on writing again.



Oh and this is my new writing buddy! I do not have a name for him yet, any ideas?

My workspace (@ home)

So, this is the work space i find myself using tonight. I swear all that junk food has not been consumed by me in one night, the popcorn was mine though. I just thought it would be an interesting picture to see all of the jargon i have laying around while i am trying to work.

Bam!

So my last post was not overly warm and fuzzy but I swear that this one is going to be different! Today I reached another milestone in the book which is I am 3/5th the way complete. That is right I have written over 30,000 words and plan to put a few more in there before I call it a night.

Perfection

Perfection is an interesting thing. I am by no means perfect, not in a single thing (unless you ask my wife). I never have pretended to be perfect and do not believe that any of my work, written or artistic, to be perfect.

Why am I writing this? Several comments have been made and this is my way of talking about it. I am working on finishing my first novel and a lot of edits will be needed. I have never tried to write anything like this before and I know I have many, many things to improve on. There is something that, I believe, that does not need a critique and that is the concept of what I want to do.

I am just a little upset…

The whole cast

Americoma Characters is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at 4.bp.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://hphotos-sjc1.fbcdn.net/hs513.snc3/26947_409854079051_555484051_5266802_5703233_n.jpg.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Venus

Venus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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Friday Update

So I am about to hit another milestone for the book. I am about to hit the 30,000 word count which would be 3/5th through the novel. I feel, and it might look, as I am working very slowly but with my current work schedule, schoolwork, and other things going on it is going to have to do.

Blogging while listening to some DIstorted Penguins

So I managed to update on time!

Not a huge amount of information to give right now but this is what I have going on in the world of “Americoma”. I have started typing out chapter 12 and am trying to finish writing it but that is coming a little slow at the moment. I blame school, mass effect 2 and the Nintendo DS…. Just saying…

I have managed to outline the rest of 12 and mostly likely a good chunk of 13. I am about to enter into another exciting part of the story so it should be easier to write. Maybe I should just skip all the character progression and just do action (just kidding). My word count, typed out, is 26040 and that is only a few hundred words into chapter 12. At size 12 courier new font, it comes to 109 pages of story so far!

On a sad note things have been rather tough with my family… several bad news updates from back east and it has made it rather hard to function but we all get through it right?



Listening to: Magic by Distorted Penguins
This is one of the best albums ever if you enjoy ska music. It never fails to put a smile on my face and no matter how hard I try, I end up singing to it most of the time

Post-Easter

I have been absolutely horrid about updating my blog but I think things are calming down so I should be able to get back on track. School is ending for me next week, which is very exciting because not only will I have more time to do the things that want to do but also I will not have to deal with his crap.

In other news, I have not been doing well this last week. I spent two days sick, got bad news from back east, had a huge amount of schoolwork to do but I still managed to stay on top of my daily word count. I am right on schedule with having the book done by August if the book ends around 50k words, if it is more then that then I might be in trouble with NaNoWriMo coming up in November. That might sounds crazy but it is going to be a huge project and I want to have this done before I going gun-ho on the next work.

Ah the craziness of trying to be a writer, even if it is only for fun.

Happy Easter

I am really bad updating this, which is sad because this is supposed to be my accountability. So here we go again with my hopes in doing this the way I had originally planned.

I have not been doing as much work on the novel as I should but I am still pushing forward even if it is a little at a time. The plan is to have this finished by august and I think it will be done by then if not further. The biggest issue I am having right now is having to type out a certain amount everyday but also having to hand write the story out ahead of where I am typing. As I type I am making correction that is making it a great story so I feel that this 2-step process is helping a lot. This happened to be one of the hardest projects I have ever taken on and that says something!

Monday update on time!

So I have been really bad updating this lately. Things have been going rather smoothly lately. I am over 25k like the one I posted before with the due date at the end of July. I have not been working hard to finish earlier then that due to schoolwork and footbag training though I am getting at least 210 words typed a day and then some work in my notebook. I really do not know what else to say other then that…

Oh, I have been really enjoying Scott Sigler’s “Kissyman and the Gentleman” novella over at scottsigler.com

25,000+

That is all I had to say. I am celebrating tonight…

Americoma Characters 2.0 by Adam Livingston is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at 4.bp.blogspot.com.

Not titled because I'm tired

So, I really do not have much to write here about. I have been working on the book, I gave myself a deadline to finish the book (July 31) and have started using a new program to write my novel.

Tonight I finished typing out chapter 8 which turned out to be 1000 more words then I originally planned for. That helps a lot on the word count but I am going to have to plan the rest of the book carefully so that I get what I want in the book and not end up writing a juggernaut of a novel.

July first is the due date for the book, The next day I will be leaving for Oakland for the world footbag tournament and will be rather busy for that week so I need to get this finished by then. The new program I’m using, called Ywriter, even tells me how many words I have to write a day in order to finish by that date!

Wish me luck!

Late but what else is new?

I have not written much in this blog this month and hopefully that will be changed!

I have almost reached the half waypoint in the novel, word count wise, and I have a lot of story left to tell. The book has come a long way in the last month with several characters being introduced and several more to come rather quickly. I am having two people read over the typed chapters I finished (1-7) and have received positive feedback, a lot to fix and polish but still positive.

I also have been working on a few side projects and listening to many audio books lately. Finished possibly the worst story ever flowed by a close runner up…

A long time...

So I know it has been awhile since I updated and I am hoping to put forth a better effort in the future. I started school again, just one class but I started late and ended up doing nothing but schoolwork for two days straight. After doing this, I ended up not wanted to do anything including writing do I did not do much for about a week.

I started working on chapter 10 more; put some hard work into an actual outline, which has helped a lot. With this chapter came some medical research that hopefully is accurate. I also have another person who is willing to take a look at the book with their critical eye so things are back on the "up and up"

Update before midnight!

So this should be the second real post of the New Year. So far, this has been an interesting year and it has only just started.

I have decided that I will be doing NaNoWriMo this year, which is the national novel writing month. The month of November I will be starting and finishing my second book regardless if that one is finished or not. That decision is hard for me but I am committed to doing this with a few friends of mine, all of which are writing in different genres so it will be exciting.

The other thing is that I am starting to be more open with my writing and talking about it to others. I actually gave someone the first chapter and am waiting feedback from that while I will be sending about 45 pages of my first draft off to be checked over by another editor of mine.

I also worked on chapter 10, got just under 700 words so far. I am also typing out chapter 7 at this moment so a lot has been done and will be done provided my Xbox does not get in the way.

Not much to say really. Started chapter 10 but not much has been finished because I am really tired.

1st real post of the New Year

Well Happy Holidays.... Merry Christmas and New Years. If you celebrate something else then sorry but I do not.

I started working on the book more, planning to finish it this year so I have a long way to go. I just finished typing out chapter 6, which I thought I had finished earlier but I was wrong, and now at 11542 for a word count right now. I have to type out seven, eight and nine. This should put me up to about 3500+ words. I have that amount already written but I normally add a lot to those numbers when it is typed. With 6, I added about 1300 words when it was typed so I am expecting lot. First real typed draft I am hoping for about 50k and then edit it so I am over 80k.

Character art

(Bottom: Mana, Roy Meadows, Venus)
(2nd Row: Abbn, Edward)
(3rd Row: Billy Izzard)
(Top: Clooney Moss, Leana Deacon)


Americoma Character sketch 1.0 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at 2.bp.blogspot.com.