Day 29 - Almost over now

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm. - Victor Hugo

We're almost finished, and I couldn't have wished for a month filled with more enthusiasm from all you wonderful writers who have participated. Tomorrow I will start updating your word counters on this blog for the last time this challenge, and hopefully we can all have a couple of days off before we need to get into the editing sprints that are already on everybody's minds.

A few people have said they would like to continue the sprints on some sort of regular basis. If you'd be keen to be in on that action, leave a message below and we'll see what can be set up!

Meet up again in November, anyone? ^_^

Day 28 - Why are we doing this again?

No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.        - Max Beerbohm

There are only a couple of nights left to go, and you might be saying to yourself something like the following: "I'm finished my goal! That's June done!" or "I'm never going to make it. I'll just stop here and call it over." or "Wimbeldon!! Wimbeldonnnnn!!!"

That last one might be just me.

I'd like to encourage you to just put in a little bit more. If you want to and if you can - you know yourself best. But if you can, write something. Even if you scale down to 100 words a night for the last three nights. Even if you just bash out a couple of risque limericks and add them to your word count. Even if you write a short story about your characters 10 years after the end of your novel.

Because the more you do now, the less you have to do later. Your 30 days isn't quite up yet. (Which is probably a relief to those of you like me who were counting on a sprint on the final day to boost your word count ^_^) Make every second of this month count.

And if you do write a limerick, please feel free to post it in the comments below.

Day 26 - LAST Sunday Check-In!

Oh wow, this month has just flown by! Some of us have already blown our goals out of the water. Others of us, myself included, realised a while back we weren't going to reach our goals and have lowered our sights.

No matter which boat you're in, don't stop yet! You still have a few more days before the challenge ends, and the more you do this month, the less you have to do next month. The more words you write in this challenge, the more you know about your capabilities and your limits. If anything, work as hard as you can for the last few days. After all, you can see the end from here. The time is coming when you can lie back, relax and watch all the TV shows you missed over June.

But that time is not yet. Make every single day count. Go write!

Day 24 - A really long quote

"If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world." - Ray Bradbury 

Day 23 - Doing Something New

You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.- Christopher Columbus

Your challenge for tonight is do something you know you're not good at. If you avoid dialogue because it always comes out stilted, tonight your characters are going to have a long conversation. If you have problems with action, someone's just thrown a fight. Personally, I suck at description. So there's a grand panorama out there just waiting for me to tell people what it looks like.

Let's go get away from the shore.

Day 22 - If music be the food of love...

When I'm really inspiration-light, there are a couple of songs I know I can always listen to and they are going to push me on to be better, to do more with my time and my life. The Climb by Miley Cyrus is one of them, and I don't care how uncool that makes me ^_^

When I'm feeling really, truly sorry for myself, and that writing is too hard and I should just put if off until I have time (when my son's grown up, left home, we've paid off the house, I've retired) I know it's starting to get serious and I pull out the big guns - rap and hip hop.
(I'm going to put links to the songs below, but I feel I should note that while none of the quotes below contain swear words, I can't say the same for the rest of the tracks) 

This isn't an attack or a lack of compassion
But you gotta get yourself back in the action
Tap into your passion and follow it up
Either that or let the madness swallow you up
How full is your cup, half-full or half-empty
You're the envy of plenty, tread gently
Apathy is deadly and if you've got seeds of doubt
With means to sprout, you need to weed them out

(Butterfingers - Get Up Outta The Dirt)

I don't normally like the genre, but they get where I'm coming from. They talk about how hard it is to break in to an industry, how difficult it can be to push yourself to be all you can be - even when you've already got the bling and the fans.  It's inspiring to hear of these men who have been dealt a really raw hand by life who manage to succeed through sheer hard work, skill and determination.

The moment you own it you better never let it go, oh
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
'cos this opportunity comes once in a lifetime 

I was playin' in the beginnin', the mood all changed
I've been chewed up and spit out and booed off stage
But I kept rhymin' and stepped writin' the next cipher
Best believe somebody's payin' the pied piper

(Eminem - Lose Yourself)

And moving away from rap, one of my favourite songs to belt out in the car -

What about you? What song do you play to keep you moving when you're starting to feel a little hopeless?

Day 17 - Guest Post by Leah Ashton

Leah Ashton won Mills & Boon's 'New Voices' competition in 2010 and her book 'Secrets & Speed Dating' debuts in October 2011. During 50/30 she'll be busy writing the second book in her contract.

The Procrastinator’s Guide to 50ks in 30 Days

I am a terrible procrastinator. The worst, quite possibly. But I have written a 50K book in 30 days – and that book will be my debut novel for Harlequin Mills & Boon in September. And if I – a writer who will find absolutely anything to do, other than actually write – can do that, than other procrastinators can too. I promise!


I’ve attempted 50k30days before, and failed dismally. It even took me four years to finish my first manuscript! So what changed this time? How was I magically cured of this dreadful procrastination curse?


Well, sadly – I’m still a procrastinator. Procrastination, I’m pretty sure, is here to stay. But now I have tools to deal with it. I cannot promise that what worked for me will work for you, and I can promise that nothing I’m about to say is particularly ground breaking. But it worked for me, so well that the word count I’m capable of achieving when I follow these steps still shocks me.


So here it its…

Leah Ashton’s Anti-Procrastination Toolkit

1. Erase the guilt
So you’re a procrastinator. Everyone around you is more productive and diligent than you (or so it seems!). Cue hours of self-flagellation. Or – acknowledge that you are what you are, and find techniques that allow
you to up your word count regardless. Feeling guilty won’t put words onto paper – so what’s the point?

2. Give yourself a real deadline
I would love to be one of those people who can’t bear a day without writing, but…well… I’m not. So, I need a deadline to get my butt in the seat. And it needs to be a real one, not just “I will write 10K by the end of
the month”, it needs to be a deadline with consequences if I fail. Prior to publication, my deadlines were planned around writing competitions. So if I didn’t hit my deadline, I couldn’t enter.
So, give yourself a deadline, with a real consequence. Find a writing competition with an entry date in early July. Sign up for a pitch at the conference. Anything – but make sure there is a consequence other than, “oh well.”


3. Have a plan (or even a plot)
I used to think I was a seat-of-my-pantser, resulting in the euphoric dashing off of an effortless chapter one, and chapter two and… then……nothing. I know this will be controversial with confirmed pantsers, but I strongly recommend at least a sketch of your plot. Just a vague plan of where you’re going and the main turning points along the journey. Why?
Well, nothing triggers a serious procrastination session for me than a blank page and absolutely no idea where I’m going. Reduce the risk of finding yourself with terrifying nothingness ahead of you and plan. Your plan is your safety net – and besides, you can always ignore it!

4. Remove yourself from temptation
What do you do when you procrastinate? Do you read? Watch TV? Surf the Internet? Whatever it is, get yourself away from it. Be dramatic if you have to – go write at a café, have someone physically remove your TV from your house, give your modem to your husband and tell him he is not under any circumstances to give it back. You get the idea?
Obviously this is for confirmed procrastinators like me – if will power is enough for you, then that is awesome, but if not, do whatever you have to do. The Internet is my vice, and I’ve been known to lock my Internet dongle in my car, or alternatively I use a really nifty program called Freedom (www.macfreedom.com - available for Mac and PC), which cost $10 and will block the Internet for up to 8 hours – and the only way to get it back is to re-boot your computer. If it’s just some sites that suck the time out of your day, look into browser add-ons like Google Chrome’s StayFocusd or Firefox’s LeechBlock. Both will either block a site totally, or give you a maximum time limit per day.

5. Write with your friends
The discovery of sprints (where you write for 30 minutes or an hour with a friend, and then report back with your word count) was a breakthrough for me. I am a slow writer, so I never had super impressive word counts, but knowing I had to report in with my word count was super motivating.
Make sure you check into the Sprint Sessions in the RWA Chatroom throughout 50Ks in 30 Days, or follow along on Twitter. And if you can’t write with your friends? Well…

6. Sit down, and start typing
It’s hardly surprising, but the reality is if you sit down every day, without any distractions, and simply write a word, followed by another word, and then another – your word count will go up. Sometimes the idea of writing X number of words can be so overwhelming that starting seems impossible. But when you do start, and regardless if the words flow or are squeezed out painfully – as long as you’ll keep writing, you’ll hit your
word count. And once you start doing it day after day – well, before you know it – you would have written a book. Or 50Ks in 30 days!


There you have it – my procrastinator’s guide to 50Ks in 30 days. Please let me know if you reach into my toolkit – I’d love to know if it helps you, too. And as I’m also looking for new weapons to slay the procrastination beast – what tips have I missed that help you?