S.L. Madden's Blog

I know it’s been awhile since I updated the word count on the contest between my mother and I. That’s because I haven’t really had much of anything to report. Unfortunately, due to some unforeseen circumstances, my writing has fallen off over the last several days. I already knew I wasn’t on track to hit the 50K, but now I can say with certainty I won’t be finishing AfterLife by the end of tomorrow.

While I’m bummed I failed to hit my goal, I am happy with the progress I made. I still have roughly a chapter and a half left to go, but the process of writing has made some previously dry and brittle parts of my brain juicy once again. As a result, the ideas are flowing and I have a clearer picture than ever of what comes next.

Despite failing, I remain dedicated to getting this rough draft done by the end of the year at the absolute latest. I have no doubt that is possible and if I don’t manage to do that, I’ll consider that by biggest failure.

So, unless I manage to get more done today or tomorrow, I’m posting the following as our final word count for the month:

Steve 17,189

Mickee 2454

Thanks for reading!

S.L. Madden

Apologies I fell off for a few days. My weekend was more hectic than I imagined and I’ve been hurting since. Just as I started to feel kind of like myself after this surgery, I think I overdid it and backslid a bit on the recovery. Nothing major, but sitting at the laptop writing isn’t high on my list of ways to feel better. That being said, I’ve managed to get a bit more written, as has my mom, Mickee Madden (who’s recovering from her own bout of not feeling 100%).

To be honest, at this rate I doubt either of will get to 50K, but I’ve sure written a lot more than I usually would. In fact, I currently have 1.5 chapters left to write, and a short epilogue. I do believe I’ll at least be able to finish those by the end of the month.

Steve: 14,735 words

Mickee: 3839 words

Thanks for reading!

S.L. Madden

Greetings, fellow travellers!

First, I apologize for missing a few days of updates. At least it wasn’t because I hadn’t written anything this time.

Second, I’m changing the format up a bit for this post. Instead of putting down our totals for yesterday, I’m going to list them for today. This is because I have the current numbers for both my mom and I, and I don’t believe either of us are going to write anymore today.

We’re both behind in our total word count from where we should be, but we are making progress! I just finished another chapter (one more after this, then the epilogue!) and my mom wrote her prologue this morning. We’re just getting started!

Steve: 13118

Mickee: 2780

Thanks for reading!

S.L. Madden

Greetings, fellow travellers! As you may have noticed, I skipped a few days worth of updates. That’s because there was nothing to update. That’s because there was nothing of note to update. The weekend proved to be a busy one, despite the fact I’m still very much in the recovery phase after my surgery. So I thought it best to not do an update until there was something to actually report.

Most importantly, my mother, Mickee Madden, is now officially on the board. Let the competition begin, for real!

Steve: 8761

Mickee: 625

Thanks for reading!

S.L. Madden

Day four of my competition with my mom has come and gone. Fortunately, I had another good day, because there’s a decent chance I won’t have an opportunity to write today. I can pretend I’m doing it altruistically since my mom won’t be able to start until Monday, but really, it’s just a busy day. If I can, I definitely will. Otherwise, I’m glad I’m a little ahead of my goals.

Most importantly, I finished the chapter I’ve been stuck on for awhile. I had written several pages, restarted, written several more, restarted again. When I started this on October 1, I scrapped what I had written and started over from the beginning. So the fact I’m only a few days in and I’ve finished a chapter has me excited. At this point, I have three chapters and an epilogue and it’ll finally be finished!

And then it’s onto rewrites.

Current standing is:

Steve: 7871 (wrote 1877 yesterday)

Mickee: 7 (wrote 0 yesterday)

Thanks for reading,

S.L. Madden

Yesterday was a good day for me, at so far as word count goes. I managed to get ahead of my required daily count of 1613, which is good because I feel like this is going to be a relatively busy weekend. Of course, I’m still very much in the recovery phase since my surgery, so I won’t be too active, but I’ll try to help around the house as much as I’m able.

Again, this is a reminder that my mom (who some of you may know as author Mickee Madden), went into this knowing she wouldn’t really be able to get started until Monday. I mean, I’m not really competitive or anything, but I’m totally owning her right now! Who gave birth to whom?

Okay, maybe that’s a bit much. Anyway, current numbers are as follows:

Steve 5994 (wrote 2465 day three)

Mickee 7 words (wrote 0 day three)

Thanks for reading!

S.L. Madden

Day two of the NaNo competition between my mother and I was a bit more fruitful for me than the first. Not by terribly much, but I still beat my goal for the day. I’m sure as the competition goes on, I’ll have much better days and much worse. At this point, I’m happy to be making the minimum 1613 words per day to reach the 50K goal at the end of the month.

A reminder, my mom hasn’t had much chance to start and doesn’t think she’ll have any time to write until Monday, October 7th, when she promises she’ll kick my butt. Personally, I believe her and hope she does. I’m looking forward to reading her new book.

So as of day two, the standings are thus:

Steve: 3529 (wrote 1916 day two)

Mickee: 7 (wrote 0 day two)

Thanks for reading!

S.L. Madden

It’s October and as promised, I’m here to provide an update on the word count for my mother and myself, as we’re hosting our own personal NaNo this month. As a reminder, the goal is for us to reach 50K words by the end of the month. This works out to roughly 1613 words per day.

I barely managed to hit the word count for day one. In my defense, I’m still recovering from the surgery I had a few weeks ago, and I’m stuck writing on a laptop that insists on jumping all over the page (I’m making sure I’m not hitting the touchpad, but it’s still doing some funky things). My mom barely got started and told me she was going to be unavailable to start writing until this upcoming Monday, when she promises she’s going to start kicking my butt in word count.

Excuses aside, the results for day one are:

Steve: 1613

Mickee: 7

NaNoWriMo is a subject I’ve brought up often over the years. For those who don’t know, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, and is an annual exercise to write 50,000 words in the month of November. I’ve participated many times but have only succeeded once. However, even those years I failed resulted in a lot of extra writing.

This year, I’ve decided to do my own version of it, with a few changes. Instead of November, I picked October. It has one extra day and no major holiday during it (though I would argue Halloween should be a national holiday celebrated for a week). Also, instead of working on a new book during this time, I’m going to use this opportunity to finally, finally finish AfterLife.

As of this writing, I have far less than 50k words left, even if I include rewriting some chapters that desperately need it. Once I finish AfterLife, I believe I’ll have enough time and word count left to put the finishing touches on the third Unseen Things book. It’s been mostly complete for quite awhile now, and if I push myself, I believe it’s not unreasonable to finish both of these books so I can finally move onto new material.

To keep myself honest and make it more interesting, I challenged my mom, author Mickee Madden, to participate with me. She has a new novel she’s been looking forward to working on so we figured this would be an opportune time to support and challenge one another. We plan to send each other our progress nightly and I’ll keep it updated here.

One potential bane or boon is that I’m scheduled for surgery later today. It was rather unexpected and came about after I made this agreement with my mom. It could work to my advantage since I’ll be home for a few weeks recovering. However, I don’t know how easy it’ll be for me to sit at a computer for any length of time. I had the same idea after my surgery last year and found it uncomfortable. This year, I’m going to have to figure a system out. I’m determined to let nothing stop me.

Thanks for reading,

S.L. Madden

In addition to writing (yes, I still do that, albeit very slowly these days), I like to spend my creative juices working on music. I’ve been writing songs since I was a teenager (yes, music existed way back then) but never saw fit to unleash them upon the masses.

In recent years, I’ve been working on music and themes for audiobooks and it occurred to me that I’m at an age now where having shame in what I’ve made is pointless. So I decided to make a soundcloud account and share some of it with anyone who is interested in listening. I welcome any and all comments, criticisms and concerns. I’m not a professional by any stretch of the imagination and this is just something I do for fun. I have plenty of other songs I’ll upload at another time. This is just my first batch.

First up, is the theme for Everlastin’, my mom’s Scottish romance novel now available in audiobook format through audible (here).

This theme for Post 60 was written for my friend’s book of the same name. He passed away shortly after I started working on this, and I’ve left it in this format for the time being. I still hope to someday make the audiobook a reality, but for now, the book is available in print and Kindle (here).

The last three are more traditional songs, and feature me singing on them. You have been warned!

Tapestry is a sort of ponderance over fluidity of existence as you transition from one phase of your life to another. Or something like that.

Hive Mind is a letter from one friend to another trying to help them through depression, while also acknowledging how ineffective platitudes and encouragement can be. This song is also one of what I refer to as my “Lost Ones,” a collection of songs I was working on when my computer decided to die. Me, in all my failing wisdom, hadn’t backed up several of my projects at that time, so now they exist only as mixed down MP3s. Some, I may rerecord at some point. This one, with all its flaws, I think will likely stay in this form.

Lastly (for now), After This is a song about moving forward. I started working on an album entitled 40 about 10 years ago when I was going through a divorce. The general idea of it was this man was turning 40 and losing everything he had built over the years. At the halfway mark of his life, he wasn’t sure he wanted to start over from the beginning. This song was supposed to be the end of his philosophical journey, the decision that he didn’t want to stay mired in the pain and loss of his past and present, but to see what the future might hold for him. And though I can’t say it’s entirely autobiographical, I’m glad I made the decision along with that character to see what yet awaited me.

That’s it for this round. As stated above, feel free to leave whatever comments you want. I respect all opinions Thanks for listening.

S.L. Madden travellerzero