(I almost always have trouble figuring out titles for these blogs posts. I mean, my writing life isn’t all that exciting–I just write. Check out my study abroad blog from last year for true (if old) excitement).
I broke 90k words in Bringing Stella Home today. According to my goal of 120k, that’s the 3/4 mark. Yay! I’m happy to say I’m going strong, and will probably “finish” this thing in a couple of weeks.
I say “finish” because it needs a LOT of work. Oh yeah. Not even ready for the alpha readers yet.
But I’m excited for the story. Dave Wolverton at CONduit this past weekend suggested full and complete immersion as a way to write well. I think that applies here: without school or a job, I basically write all day.
Speaking of which, I haven’t quite gotten up to doing 4k words steadily each day. Right now, I’m hovering at around 3k, which is twice as much as my daily wordcount during the school year, but not yet up to where I want it to be.
However, getting up to that level is like training your muscles. Through a number of small, intangible things, I feel that I’m working myself up to the 4k/day level.
For example, I’ve been opening my word document and plugging out the first few hundred words BEFORE I open a web browser and waste an hour of time checking out my favorite blogs and websites. That’s progress.
I’ve also started writing more in the time that I set aside to write. These days, I usually write for a couple hours from 11pm to 2pm, take lunch and do something to recharge my creative batteries, do some more writing in the midafternoon (usually not too much), then take dinner, head out to the library (because the parking gate opens at 7pm) and write until about 11:30pm when the LRC closes.
In each of those three blocks of time, I used to be getting around 800 to 1,200 words done. Today, from 11am to 1pm I wrote about 1,500. Progress.
The bar says that I only did about 2,9k today, but that was because a good friend of mine is going active duty in the Air Force and his farewell party was tonight. Also, Leading Edge took up the 7pm to 9pm slot. So, without those things, it probably would have been 4k.
However, I’ve noticed something interesting: doing the math, 4k/day equates to just over 120k per month. 120k is a freaking novel! Taking out Sundays, that’s still over 100k, which is also an acceptable novel length.
So…if I were really doing 4k/day, would I be writing a rough draft of a novel each month? Or are most published writers doing less than 4k words of new material each day? I wouldn’t be surprised–this is not a business you get into because of your glowing math skills.
Regardless, 4k/day is still my goal. Heck, if I get used to writing that much and find that the practice improve my craft, I might even go up to 6k/day.
Oh, and one more mundane excitement: Charlie got freaked out by a spider today and had me come over to hunt it down. After sprawling out on her bathroom floor and looking under all the appliances, I didn’t find it–but I did find the hole that it probably escaped through. I didn’t think it was much of a deal, until I read this post from Miss Snark’s archives. So…I may start making it a practice to shake out my shoes from now on, especially since my room in my sister’s apartment is slightly buggy.
Fortunately, I usually wear my old pair of Birkenstocks these days. Awesome footwear. I quite literally love them to pieces.
