Wishing I could write again, but feeling my creative wheels spinning against the muddy ground of de-inspiration, I decided to update my yearly word counts. What this is is an Excel workbook with a worksheet listing every writing project I've undertaken in any fashion or form this year. This includes novels (attempts at), poetry, short stories, writing exercises for other blogs, plays, and my own blogs.
I was surprised at the quantity of things I've tried to write thus far in 2010. Forty projects started. Most fall into the poetry-blog categories, so I guess that's kind of cheating. The word count for all of this is 20,000-words for the Month of January. What a far cry from the 60,000-word novel started and finished months of past September, October and November. And only about a tenth of the way toward my one-time goal of a million words for 2010. I don't think so anymore. I would really have to go on a writing spree to catch up. I'm a complete epic novel behind. [smiles]
Part of my problem is that my mind moves on to something else before I can settle down and begin writing what I've been thinking about. My creative thoughts are like a butterfly which cannot make up its mind where the best pollen is. No story thought seems to stick around long. I've been trying to corral a certain one, but it's proving elusive.
Sailors on the Sea
Showing posts with label Word Counts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Word Counts. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Monday, November 30, 2009
Byproducts of Writing: Honey or Crap
So today is the final day of NaNoWriMo. A good many people who's blogs I visit have participated. I am aware of two who have announced they achieved their goal: fairyhedgehog did; and so did T.Anne. Congratulations to both of them.
There are others who, for this reason and for that, weren't able to get the time. I know how that goes. Sometimes it's there and sometimes it isn't. And just because one has the time it doesn't mean they know what to write.
I, of course, was not officially part of NaNoWriMo. I was part of a blog started by Writtenwyrdd which was like NaNo, but I bailed on that a couple of weeks ago. The idea of having to write was too distressing. That constraint made me want to do anything but write. So I bailed and finished up my word count in short order.
My November word count was a little on the low side. I attribute this to the holiday, which resulted in less alone time. But I got a lot done.
Overall, I wrote more then 64,000-words. I tallied this up by using the Word Count on the eight things I wrote in November. The biggie was Summer Shade. That's over 50,000-words, but I only wrote 45,000+ in November. Summer Shade was begun in October. White Wolves was begun in September, and I added another 5,700+-words to it, before setting it aside in favor of Summer Shade. I began a new novel, Hexagon, but soon set that aside, too, so I could rewrite Swords of Fire. That will probably pick up the pace in early December, only to stall for the Christmas holiday. And I wrote some short pieces, including one of the more erotic things I've ever put to pen or computer. That was a sudden inspiration.
In all, I worked on eight November projects, finishing five. This makes three months in a row that I have finished a novel. I am not writing as many words as I have ever written in a short burst (that was 30,000-words in a single day), but I seem to be writing more consistently. It's a pity the stories aren't being shared. Nobody except me has read Shadow People or The Sweet Girl. Part of Summer Shade was read by others, but not the whole story.
It's funny, storywriting. Some of the things I am writing now I thought about forty years ago but never got around to writing. Back then I wasn't able to. There are things a ten-year-old just doesn't understand. But the stories were there. They never go away. They just continue to cook.
Anyway, if you participated in NaNoWriMo I hope you achieved your goal. If you haven't then I hope you are within range. You have the rest of today. If not, I hope you don't become so discouraged as to give up. Perhaps these kinds of deadline things don't work for you. They don't for me. If you never seem to be able to make NaNo, then why not try this?
EVERY month is a kind of NaNo month. But there are different rules. Write what you want. When you can. As much as you can. There are no word limits or requirements. Write when you can. That's all there is to it. Just write. Oh, and don't give a damn about whether anything is well written, or even makes sense. Just write. Tell the story. Get it out there. Once you've done that you can always change it. If you feel like it.
Good luck.
There are others who, for this reason and for that, weren't able to get the time. I know how that goes. Sometimes it's there and sometimes it isn't. And just because one has the time it doesn't mean they know what to write.
I, of course, was not officially part of NaNoWriMo. I was part of a blog started by Writtenwyrdd which was like NaNo, but I bailed on that a couple of weeks ago. The idea of having to write was too distressing. That constraint made me want to do anything but write. So I bailed and finished up my word count in short order.
My November word count was a little on the low side. I attribute this to the holiday, which resulted in less alone time. But I got a lot done.
Overall, I wrote more then 64,000-words. I tallied this up by using the Word Count on the eight things I wrote in November. The biggie was Summer Shade. That's over 50,000-words, but I only wrote 45,000+ in November. Summer Shade was begun in October. White Wolves was begun in September, and I added another 5,700+-words to it, before setting it aside in favor of Summer Shade. I began a new novel, Hexagon, but soon set that aside, too, so I could rewrite Swords of Fire. That will probably pick up the pace in early December, only to stall for the Christmas holiday. And I wrote some short pieces, including one of the more erotic things I've ever put to pen or computer. That was a sudden inspiration.
In all, I worked on eight November projects, finishing five. This makes three months in a row that I have finished a novel. I am not writing as many words as I have ever written in a short burst (that was 30,000-words in a single day), but I seem to be writing more consistently. It's a pity the stories aren't being shared. Nobody except me has read Shadow People or The Sweet Girl. Part of Summer Shade was read by others, but not the whole story.
It's funny, storywriting. Some of the things I am writing now I thought about forty years ago but never got around to writing. Back then I wasn't able to. There are things a ten-year-old just doesn't understand. But the stories were there. They never go away. They just continue to cook.
Anyway, if you participated in NaNoWriMo I hope you achieved your goal. If you haven't then I hope you are within range. You have the rest of today. If not, I hope you don't become so discouraged as to give up. Perhaps these kinds of deadline things don't work for you. They don't for me. If you never seem to be able to make NaNo, then why not try this?
EVERY month is a kind of NaNo month. But there are different rules. Write what you want. When you can. As much as you can. There are no word limits or requirements. Write when you can. That's all there is to it. Just write. Oh, and don't give a damn about whether anything is well written, or even makes sense. Just write. Tell the story. Get it out there. Once you've done that you can always change it. If you feel like it.
Good luck.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Summer's End
Well, I did it. I finished the first draft of Summer Shade this morning. Or was it early afternoon? Whichever. It's done.
I did it by writing over 30,000-words in the last six days, including more than 9,600-words in the last two.
Even with leaving out a whole lot of pieces I forgot to include early on it came in at 50,800-words. That's a bit light for what I had wanted, but I let myself get distracted by the NaNo thing and lost a lot of focus. That's how I wound up leaving out so much. Ultimately I just wanted to get it done. But once I quit Nano the words began to flow and I did over twenty thousand words in four days.
Of course the story is crap. That's the way first drafts are, you see. And this one is particularly crap because of all I left out. But it's done. For now. Some day I may return to it and add in the things I forgot. I may smooth out the rough edges and better explain why certain things had to be the way they were. Ultimately, I need to find a way to make it interesting to readers.
Unfortunately, I do not have the power for the last. I can only write what I like, and that does not seem to conform to the modern reader. Ceste la vie.
I will continue creating my legacy. I have now completed three novels in three months. I wonder if I can write another one before Christmas. Well, that's easy to answer. Of course I can. I wonder if I will. That is an entirely different question.
Oh, and I just checked. Between Summer Shade and White Wolves of Dawn I have written 58,491-words in sixteen days. A pity I quit NaNo. I would have made it.
I did it by writing over 30,000-words in the last six days, including more than 9,600-words in the last two.
Even with leaving out a whole lot of pieces I forgot to include early on it came in at 50,800-words. That's a bit light for what I had wanted, but I let myself get distracted by the NaNo thing and lost a lot of focus. That's how I wound up leaving out so much. Ultimately I just wanted to get it done. But once I quit Nano the words began to flow and I did over twenty thousand words in four days.
Of course the story is crap. That's the way first drafts are, you see. And this one is particularly crap because of all I left out. But it's done. For now. Some day I may return to it and add in the things I forgot. I may smooth out the rough edges and better explain why certain things had to be the way they were. Ultimately, I need to find a way to make it interesting to readers.
Unfortunately, I do not have the power for the last. I can only write what I like, and that does not seem to conform to the modern reader. Ceste la vie.
I will continue creating my legacy. I have now completed three novels in three months. I wonder if I can write another one before Christmas. Well, that's easy to answer. Of course I can. I wonder if I will. That is an entirely different question.
Oh, and I just checked. Between Summer Shade and White Wolves of Dawn I have written 58,491-words in sixteen days. A pity I quit NaNo. I would have made it.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
NaNo Ends Early For Me
So it's been a slow week for writing. I've completely set White Wolves aside and have no plans to continue it until after I finish the other story, which I'm calling Summer Shade right now.
White Wolves, which was started in September, is in Chapter Eight and at 23,920-words. Just over half of those words have been written in November.
Summer Shade was started in October. It is in Chapter Nine now and sitting at 28,593-words. Nearly all of those words have been written in November.
This is the third time White Wolves is being set aside so I can write something else. The first time was when I wrote Shadow People. I was greatly inspired and wrote the whole thing in less than two weeks.
Shadow People was followed by The Sweet Girl, another spur of the moment inspiration. I began it in the last week of September and finished it in about two weeks. Then I worked on a rewrite for Apprentice. I've got another rewrite scheduled, but I'm waiting on the chance one of my readers will send a critique after NaNoWriMo.
FollowingApprentice I started a novel I'm still calling My Life as Charise. Only got a few hundred words into it, though, before I was struck with a new inspiration: Summer Shade.
Before Charise I had already committed myself to finishing White Wolves of Dawn in November as part of the NaNo blog thing. But I have run into something I knew was a very real possibility: I hate the commitment thing and regret agreeing to it. In fact, I hate it so much that I have consciously decided NOT to finish White Wolves of Dawn in November.
I guess it's my non-conformist, childish rebellion, streak surfacing.
Since November has begun all I have thought about is word counts. The result is that I have not enjoyed writing White Wolves of Dawn or Summer Shade. A very good friend of mine suggested I just bail on the whole NaNo thing. And so I kind of have.
White Wolves of Dawn is set aside. I intend to push forward with Summer Shade and finish that. Assuming I can recapture the inspiration I can be finished quickly - also assuming I can consistently get time to write. I haven't been. This week has been horrible. I have not had a single morning to myself. Morning has become my writing time. But I know if I could just get four or five days in a row I could finish Summer Shade. And once Summer Shade is finished I just might return to White Wolves of Dawn. But I won't be giving any word count updates after today until Summer Shade is finished. Then I'll give you the final first draft word count.
But I am counter-inspired by the "write so many words in a day/week/month" pressure. It makes me NOT want to write. For me, writing is 100% inspiration. Word counts are NOT inspiring. Not to me.
In a way I feel like I'm letting down other writers who are feeling the pressure of word counts and trying to achieve the 50,000-words in November goal. But I don't need that kind of encouragment/pressure. I wrote two 60,000-word novels in just over four weeks. So I have no real need - or motivation - to participate in things like this. I joined because I wanted to belong to a group of people I greatly respect. Only I still don't feel like I belong with them. The truth is, they're better writers, better educated, better read, and generally better people. So I'm bailing. It's the only way I can write and enjoy it.
Sorry.
White Wolves, which was started in September, is in Chapter Eight and at 23,920-words. Just over half of those words have been written in November.
Summer Shade was started in October. It is in Chapter Nine now and sitting at 28,593-words. Nearly all of those words have been written in November.
This is the third time White Wolves is being set aside so I can write something else. The first time was when I wrote Shadow People. I was greatly inspired and wrote the whole thing in less than two weeks.
Shadow People was followed by The Sweet Girl, another spur of the moment inspiration. I began it in the last week of September and finished it in about two weeks. Then I worked on a rewrite for Apprentice. I've got another rewrite scheduled, but I'm waiting on the chance one of my readers will send a critique after NaNoWriMo.
FollowingApprentice I started a novel I'm still calling My Life as Charise. Only got a few hundred words into it, though, before I was struck with a new inspiration: Summer Shade.
Before Charise I had already committed myself to finishing White Wolves of Dawn in November as part of the NaNo blog thing. But I have run into something I knew was a very real possibility: I hate the commitment thing and regret agreeing to it. In fact, I hate it so much that I have consciously decided NOT to finish White Wolves of Dawn in November.
I guess it's my non-conformist, childish rebellion, streak surfacing.
Since November has begun all I have thought about is word counts. The result is that I have not enjoyed writing White Wolves of Dawn or Summer Shade. A very good friend of mine suggested I just bail on the whole NaNo thing. And so I kind of have.
White Wolves of Dawn is set aside. I intend to push forward with Summer Shade and finish that. Assuming I can recapture the inspiration I can be finished quickly - also assuming I can consistently get time to write. I haven't been. This week has been horrible. I have not had a single morning to myself. Morning has become my writing time. But I know if I could just get four or five days in a row I could finish Summer Shade. And once Summer Shade is finished I just might return to White Wolves of Dawn. But I won't be giving any word count updates after today until Summer Shade is finished. Then I'll give you the final first draft word count.
But I am counter-inspired by the "write so many words in a day/week/month" pressure. It makes me NOT want to write. For me, writing is 100% inspiration. Word counts are NOT inspiring. Not to me.
In a way I feel like I'm letting down other writers who are feeling the pressure of word counts and trying to achieve the 50,000-words in November goal. But I don't need that kind of encouragment/pressure. I wrote two 60,000-word novels in just over four weeks. So I have no real need - or motivation - to participate in things like this. I joined because I wanted to belong to a group of people I greatly respect. Only I still don't feel like I belong with them. The truth is, they're better writers, better educated, better read, and generally better people. So I'm bailing. It's the only way I can write and enjoy it.
Sorry.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
NaNo Blog Day 1
I woke early and thought I might get a couple of hours without interruption so I could write for the NaNo blog. Unfortunately, that was not to be the case. Spouse was up right behind me and Son soon after that. The entire day has been one interruption followed by another.
I am working on two stories simultaneously. Later, I may add a short story or two.
In any case, this all I managed to accomplish today.
White Wolves of Dawn: 771 words
The Other Story: 475 words
Total words for the day: 1,246 words
That's less than half my normal daily average. Maybe tomorrow will be better. It's unlikely I will write anymore today.
Oh, and Writtenwyrdd's Halloween Contest is ready for judging. Follow this link to read the entries and register your vote.
I am working on two stories simultaneously. Later, I may add a short story or two.
In any case, this all I managed to accomplish today.
White Wolves of Dawn: 771 words
The Other Story: 475 words
Total words for the day: 1,246 words
That's less than half my normal daily average. Maybe tomorrow will be better. It's unlikely I will write anymore today.
Oh, and Writtenwyrdd's Halloween Contest is ready for judging. Follow this link to read the entries and register your vote.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
After a Slow Start
NoNoWriMo begins in twelve days. I won't be part of it because I don't (officially) have a 50,000-word novel to write. I have begun another story. And it's a safe bet it will make 50,000-words. But I've begun it already and it's a safe bet I will either finish it before the end of November, or I will abandon it in favor of another story.
Out of curiosity I just did a search through the computer to see what all I have written since the first of September. I have two active stories (both novels) and 13 finished works, which include two novels. Total word count over the past 50 days: 150,036-words.
Maybe I should sign up for McKoala's Smackdown Challenge. Nah.
My average daily output has been around 3,000-words. That seems low to me, until I consider days like the past four, when I don't think I have 3,000-words to show for the lot.
When I'm writing - on a roll, as I like to put it - I can easily pump out five or ten thousand words in a day. I've done more, but that's usually on days when I put in more than eight hours. Generally, I only put in a few hours every day. That's the up side of being unemployed.
I understand that my writing isn't the greatest, and I don't edit everything I write. Shadow People has only been through one edit pass and The Sweet Girl hasn't gone beyond the first draft. Those two books make up 129,000-words. My poems I seldom edit after I finish. I do that while I write. But those are nearly always less than 200-words.
My Evil Editor exercises (of which I have one in the past 50 days) do get a kind of edit. Mainly I'm looking for spelling errors and making sure I haven't exceeded the word limit.
Few of my short stories get edited much. The exception to this rule is Apprentice, which merits the effort. Apprentice, by the way, does NOT count toward my recent activity totals, so the four days I spent thus far on that can be deducted from the fifty.
With the exception of Apprentice, I'm not really in an editing mode right now. Right now I'm pumping out ideas and stories and not worrying too much about their quality. Editing will come later. Fall is when I seem to write the most. The ending of summer, green grass, and (supposedly) warm temperatures pushes me to nostalgia, which awakens my creative energies. Winter I edit. It's a dry time. Cold and stark. That's when I can rip apart what I've written and replace it with something supposedly better. Come spring new ideas spring to mind, but they're difficult to pin down and write. Summer is complete hard to write, but the story root systems are growing by leaps and bounds as my imagination works overtime without being encumbered by actual writing. Then comes fall again. Harvest time. Like the busy beaver I work like crazy to get as much done before the winter freeze puts a stop to all creative flow.
[long pause while I tallied something]
I've written 89 new projects this year. By new this year I mean I started all 89 after January 1, 2009. Four novels and two short stories are NOT finished. Everything else has at least a first draft completed.
I have 12-exercises; 2 finished novels; 4 unfinished novels; 53 poems; 16 finished short stories; and 2 unfinished short stories.
Total word count for the year: 195, 674.
That's pretty bad when you consider 150,000 was done in the past seven weeks, and I wrote the 200,000-word version of Swords of Fire in a month.
If I could write every month the way I write in September I would easily write over one million words in a year.
But who would read them?
Out of curiosity I just did a search through the computer to see what all I have written since the first of September. I have two active stories (both novels) and 13 finished works, which include two novels. Total word count over the past 50 days: 150,036-words.
Maybe I should sign up for McKoala's Smackdown Challenge. Nah.
My average daily output has been around 3,000-words. That seems low to me, until I consider days like the past four, when I don't think I have 3,000-words to show for the lot.
When I'm writing - on a roll, as I like to put it - I can easily pump out five or ten thousand words in a day. I've done more, but that's usually on days when I put in more than eight hours. Generally, I only put in a few hours every day. That's the up side of being unemployed.
I understand that my writing isn't the greatest, and I don't edit everything I write. Shadow People has only been through one edit pass and The Sweet Girl hasn't gone beyond the first draft. Those two books make up 129,000-words. My poems I seldom edit after I finish. I do that while I write. But those are nearly always less than 200-words.
My Evil Editor exercises (of which I have one in the past 50 days) do get a kind of edit. Mainly I'm looking for spelling errors and making sure I haven't exceeded the word limit.
Few of my short stories get edited much. The exception to this rule is Apprentice, which merits the effort. Apprentice, by the way, does NOT count toward my recent activity totals, so the four days I spent thus far on that can be deducted from the fifty.
With the exception of Apprentice, I'm not really in an editing mode right now. Right now I'm pumping out ideas and stories and not worrying too much about their quality. Editing will come later. Fall is when I seem to write the most. The ending of summer, green grass, and (supposedly) warm temperatures pushes me to nostalgia, which awakens my creative energies. Winter I edit. It's a dry time. Cold and stark. That's when I can rip apart what I've written and replace it with something supposedly better. Come spring new ideas spring to mind, but they're difficult to pin down and write. Summer is complete hard to write, but the story root systems are growing by leaps and bounds as my imagination works overtime without being encumbered by actual writing. Then comes fall again. Harvest time. Like the busy beaver I work like crazy to get as much done before the winter freeze puts a stop to all creative flow.
[long pause while I tallied something]
I've written 89 new projects this year. By new this year I mean I started all 89 after January 1, 2009. Four novels and two short stories are NOT finished. Everything else has at least a first draft completed.
I have 12-exercises; 2 finished novels; 4 unfinished novels; 53 poems; 16 finished short stories; and 2 unfinished short stories.
Total word count for the year: 195, 674.
That's pretty bad when you consider 150,000 was done in the past seven weeks, and I wrote the 200,000-word version of Swords of Fire in a month.
If I could write every month the way I write in September I would easily write over one million words in a year.
But who would read them?
Saturday, October 10, 2009
How Sweet it Is
Okay, I have finished The Sweet Girl. Just over 64,000-words. I like it. It needs a major rewrite, but I like it anyway. However, I am going to set it aside for now and work on other things. Apprentice needs a major rewrite and so I'm going to be focusing my attention there for a while.
It's funny about writing a book. Like any project which lasts more than a few days there are high points and low points. The Sweet Girl took me a little less than a month to write. About three weeks. I suppose in the minds of some that discredits the quality. How could I possibly have written anything worth reading of that length in such a short amount of time? My only answer to that is that I had the time. For the most part, I have 24/7 to devote to my writing. The only forced breaks are when I take Son to school, bring Son home from School, and take Son to saxophone practice at Northwestern College. Other than that, I'm pretty much here.
But pumping out words has never been a real problem for me. And I don't think I'm horrible at it. I'm not as good as some I've read, and not at all worth comparing to the true literary masters. After all, I've never been able to get any of my work published, so the quality of my writing has to remain suspect.
But I tell good stories. Sometimes.
I think The Sweet Girl qualifies. It's my first serious effort at writing detective fiction. Detective fiction is not something I personally have been into much, so perhaps I failed to wholly capture the detective feeling. I wrote it like a fantasy. In fact, I set it in a fantasy place. The idea is that there is one Prime Reality and many created realities around it. These created realities are used for holidays, and transportation between realities is regulated and controlled, similar to our traveling from country to country. Of course, I have to confess I have not traveled to another country in years. And the only other country I have visited is Canada. And back when I visited it one could cross the border without any trouble at all. The Canadian border guards simply asked why I was going there and told me to have a good time. Getting back into the United States wasn't so easy. Nor as friendly. But no special papers or things were required. I understand that has changed.
I like writing stories and I like it that I wrote something different than I normally write. What I really like is that I'm finally making it a practice to finish things I start. My Archives are filled with half-begun stories and concepts. But just this year, what I have I finished?
Swords of Fire: Traitor (epic fantasy)
Apprentice (short story)
Quest (short story)
Sassy and Otio (2 short stories)
Mist Over Monticello (a Legion Blog story told in five parts)
Ekundayo (short story)
Shadow People (novel)
The Sweet Girl (novel)
Of course, Swords of Fire probably shouldn't count. I've "finished" that more times than I can remember over the past thirty-five years, so it hardly counts as a current project. But even removing Swords from the list I have accomplished a lot this year.
This has probably been my greatest year ever for inspiration. And Ekundayo, Shadow People, and The Sweet Girl have all been begun and finished within the past eight weeks.
When the year began I was convinced something great and wonderful was going to happen, and that it would happen just before, or around, the end of summer. I was convinced it had to do with finances. But maybe it was this. A breakout of writing like I've never experienced before in my life.
I owe a lot of thanks to those who have encouraged me. This is particularly true for fairyhedgehog, who has continued to visit my blog and encourage me despite my manic moods. Thanks, Fairy.
Anyway, I've got another story. Some day I may actually get paid for all this creativity.
It's funny about writing a book. Like any project which lasts more than a few days there are high points and low points. The Sweet Girl took me a little less than a month to write. About three weeks. I suppose in the minds of some that discredits the quality. How could I possibly have written anything worth reading of that length in such a short amount of time? My only answer to that is that I had the time. For the most part, I have 24/7 to devote to my writing. The only forced breaks are when I take Son to school, bring Son home from School, and take Son to saxophone practice at Northwestern College. Other than that, I'm pretty much here.
But pumping out words has never been a real problem for me. And I don't think I'm horrible at it. I'm not as good as some I've read, and not at all worth comparing to the true literary masters. After all, I've never been able to get any of my work published, so the quality of my writing has to remain suspect.
But I tell good stories. Sometimes.
I think The Sweet Girl qualifies. It's my first serious effort at writing detective fiction. Detective fiction is not something I personally have been into much, so perhaps I failed to wholly capture the detective feeling. I wrote it like a fantasy. In fact, I set it in a fantasy place. The idea is that there is one Prime Reality and many created realities around it. These created realities are used for holidays, and transportation between realities is regulated and controlled, similar to our traveling from country to country. Of course, I have to confess I have not traveled to another country in years. And the only other country I have visited is Canada. And back when I visited it one could cross the border without any trouble at all. The Canadian border guards simply asked why I was going there and told me to have a good time. Getting back into the United States wasn't so easy. Nor as friendly. But no special papers or things were required. I understand that has changed.
I like writing stories and I like it that I wrote something different than I normally write. What I really like is that I'm finally making it a practice to finish things I start. My Archives are filled with half-begun stories and concepts. But just this year, what I have I finished?
Swords of Fire: Traitor (epic fantasy)
Apprentice (short story)
Quest (short story)
Sassy and Otio (2 short stories)
Mist Over Monticello (a Legion Blog story told in five parts)
Ekundayo (short story)
Shadow People (novel)
The Sweet Girl (novel)
Of course, Swords of Fire probably shouldn't count. I've "finished" that more times than I can remember over the past thirty-five years, so it hardly counts as a current project. But even removing Swords from the list I have accomplished a lot this year.
This has probably been my greatest year ever for inspiration. And Ekundayo, Shadow People, and The Sweet Girl have all been begun and finished within the past eight weeks.
When the year began I was convinced something great and wonderful was going to happen, and that it would happen just before, or around, the end of summer. I was convinced it had to do with finances. But maybe it was this. A breakout of writing like I've never experienced before in my life.
I owe a lot of thanks to those who have encouraged me. This is particularly true for fairyhedgehog, who has continued to visit my blog and encourage me despite my manic moods. Thanks, Fairy.
Anyway, I've got another story. Some day I may actually get paid for all this creativity.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Belonging
NaNoWriMo is soon upon us. Thousands of people around the world are signing up to officially participate.
As I understand it, the idea is to write 50,000-words from November 1st through the 30th. Not sure if this is for one single story, or if a series of short stories would qualify.
To be honest, I'm not clear on what the appeal is. Writing 50,000-words in thirty days is hardly a problem for me - when I'm writing. I've done nearly three times that since the first of September. But then I will also go through a similar time when I don't get five or ten thousand words.
The word count doesn't really matter to me. I once puked out nearly 30,000-words in a single day. I had awakened in the middle of the night and had nothing better to do so I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. Dawn came and I said, "To hell with college. I'm an a roll." And so I just stayed home and wrote. And wrote. And wrote. I wrote fairly steady for about fifteen or sixteen hours straight. When I was finished, I had a ton of words. But put together as I had put them they were basically crap. I still have that manuscript, but it's in The Archives as a momento of something that didn't work. I rewrote the thing (it was a Swords of Fire effort) several times since. Very little of what I wrote that night-into-day remains.
I suppose it comes down to how different authors and writers are motivated to write. Many of the blogs I have visited show word count progress. I've used them myself, posting my editing progress on this blog. I have an Excel spreadsheet tracking my chapters for The Sweet Girl right now. I'm at 47,000-words and coming up fast on the climax and ending. I expect to be finished within the week. But my interest in word count stems more from having been told Swords of Fire is too long for a first book, so I'm kind of trying to limit myself. These artificial guidelines have nothing to do with creativity and, in fact (in my opinion), actually gets in the way of creative thought. But that's just me. I've known writers for whom such parameters are exactly what they need.
All that being said and done I am considering NaNoWriMo because my best friend is going to be part of it, as well as a lot of people I've met online. For me it's more about the 'herd sense', of belonging to a group of people with whom I wish to belong. But I probably won't actually 'sign up'. That will work against my creativity. It's not the way I write. And I don't need any recognition for writing the words. I've already given myself recognition for writing even more. For me, it isn't about recognition and it isn't about proving I can do it. It's just about belonging.
As I understand it, the idea is to write 50,000-words from November 1st through the 30th. Not sure if this is for one single story, or if a series of short stories would qualify.
To be honest, I'm not clear on what the appeal is. Writing 50,000-words in thirty days is hardly a problem for me - when I'm writing. I've done nearly three times that since the first of September. But then I will also go through a similar time when I don't get five or ten thousand words.
The word count doesn't really matter to me. I once puked out nearly 30,000-words in a single day. I had awakened in the middle of the night and had nothing better to do so I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. Dawn came and I said, "To hell with college. I'm an a roll." And so I just stayed home and wrote. And wrote. And wrote. I wrote fairly steady for about fifteen or sixteen hours straight. When I was finished, I had a ton of words. But put together as I had put them they were basically crap. I still have that manuscript, but it's in The Archives as a momento of something that didn't work. I rewrote the thing (it was a Swords of Fire effort) several times since. Very little of what I wrote that night-into-day remains.
I suppose it comes down to how different authors and writers are motivated to write. Many of the blogs I have visited show word count progress. I've used them myself, posting my editing progress on this blog. I have an Excel spreadsheet tracking my chapters for The Sweet Girl right now. I'm at 47,000-words and coming up fast on the climax and ending. I expect to be finished within the week. But my interest in word count stems more from having been told Swords of Fire is too long for a first book, so I'm kind of trying to limit myself. These artificial guidelines have nothing to do with creativity and, in fact (in my opinion), actually gets in the way of creative thought. But that's just me. I've known writers for whom such parameters are exactly what they need.
All that being said and done I am considering NaNoWriMo because my best friend is going to be part of it, as well as a lot of people I've met online. For me it's more about the 'herd sense', of belonging to a group of people with whom I wish to belong. But I probably won't actually 'sign up'. That will work against my creativity. It's not the way I write. And I don't need any recognition for writing the words. I've already given myself recognition for writing even more. For me, it isn't about recognition and it isn't about proving I can do it. It's just about belonging.
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