Upping That Word Count!

I'm getting there!

Can you BELIEVE it's the last day of May already? And for my regular blog readers, you know what that means.

Time for an update on my book progress from May and some info on my goals for June.

For you new folks, I'm working on a non-fiction book, tentatively titled Ailing Body, Nourished Soul, about God's work in our lives through my husband's serious health issues. I finished my rough draft a couple months ago, and have been working on fixing it up ever since (this was a VERY rough draft!).

Anyhow, I thought I'd just post my May goals directly from my last update post, then address how I did on each.

ANYhow - my goals for May are

1. Soaking in as much information from my Shirley Jump class as humanly possible, and APPLYING IT.
   
2. Finish up the verse/question/prayer stuff on my remaining eight chapters
3. Work on "noveling/"adding descriptions and such to the book, starting from the first chapter and working my way through the book.

Well, as far as #1, I'd have to call myself pretty much a FAILURE. Once I started getting ready for Orlando just a day or two into the month, I stopped reading the stuff in Shirley's class (but I DID save the handouts and much of the instruction posts!). I still have all the stuff I have yet to read, though, so I can still work on this.

#2 I DID accomplish - in fact, I got a fair amount of this done while I was in Orlando. (Didn't work EVERY day when I was there, but most days, at least for a little bit!)

And for my biggest project - the showing throughout the book - I'd say I'm making pretty good progress. I just finished the eighth chapter of my book (out of 34!), and I'm sure I'm beefing it up and making it more engaging and novel-like. I'm guessing that, once I'm through (WHO knows when, of course LOL), I will have added at least 10k to my current 50k+ manuscript. THEN I can go in and chop it back down to size LOL.

So, if that's what I accomplished in May, what are my goals for June, you may ask? Well, I'll tell ya!

For June I will strive to:

1. Work on my book every day of the month, if only for ten minutes (missed a few days in May - but that's okay!)
2. Continue to work on beefing up/showing better in my manuscript, working from where I left off and continuing through the chapters in order
   
3. Work through at least a few of the Shirley Jump worksheets

Another thing I've done is put up another ticker on my site here(those who have been here a while know I had one for several month regarding the writing of my rough draft) regarding my "beefing up word count." It's too complicated to give you a total word count, with changes in every chapter requiring me to recalculate. What I will do instead, however, is to give you a word count of the chapters I have finished beefing up (so, my ticker to the right shows how many words I have in the first eight chapters after adding my showing, etc.). I will update the count every time I finish a chapter. Hopefully that will get me motivated to plug along (and maybe you too!).

Thanks again for reading along - and for supporting me in my process. If you only knew how much you helped!

Blessings! And keep plugging on!