Sunday Evening
Apr. 25th, 2010 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuI didn't write anything on Thursday, but Friday saw not quite 3400 words. Not my best day, certainly, but as my lovely and talented wife pointed out to me when I said as much, time was--a year or so ago when I started writing seriously--3400 words would have been a very good day. So I'm progressing even when it doesn't feel like it.
That said, I'm still in the "I'm not sure this is working" doldrums with regard to the novel. That's not going to stop me from continuing to work on it, but it certainly makes it less fun. On the gripping hand, the unproductive time I spent on Thursday did give me breathing room to come up with a plot twist that allowed me to get back to writing on Friday. That twist may mean some revisions later on, to make sure everything hangs together, but that's okay.
One of the lessons I've had, and sometimes remember but which slipped my mind recently, is that it's often a good idea to have two or more projects lined up at any given time. Then, if you find yourself blocked on one, you can switch to the other and keep working. (The legend of Isaac Asimov and his several typewriters, with a different story in progress on each one, so he could switch stories anytime he hit a stumbling block, is instructive here.) I didn't have a backup project in mind this past week, so I wasted a couple of days. This week, I'll have some other projects lined up in case of trouble with the novel.
My most recent (and last) Cobblestone story, The Wild One, just went live on Friday. There are no more in the pipeline at the moment, so I'll probably try to produce one periodically to submit. It's a good way to keep my pen name out there, and maybe I'll figure out this self-promo thing and the stories will sell better. Plus, the more stories I have out, the better the odds that someone who likes one will buy others. But as the Cobblestone experience has been less lucrative than I'd hoped, it's a lower priority than it was when I started. I also intend to target other short story markets when I'm not working on the novel.
Something I read today (on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
benjamintate's livejournal) struck me as very useful info for would-be writers:
I wouldn't say that "nearly all" of my ideas come to me while I'm actually writing, or even most of them. But I find it indisputably true that a a lot of them do. Partly, I'm sure, that's because I'm a seat-of-my-pants writer. I don't plot out stories; I've tried it repeatedly and it never works for me. I start with a character or a scene and just start writing--and then it goes pretty much as he describes it. New ideas occur to me and get incorporated or, sometimes, saved for another story. But it's true that I might never have had those ideas if I weren't already writing.
I sometimes (secretly) worry that I'll run out of ideas. Or at least, ideas I can turn into stories. Reading that post, though, made me realize that I only feel that way when I'm thinking about writing; when I'm lying in bed at night toying with ideas, or sitting around with a notebook trying to come up with ideas. When I'm actually standing at my computer (I use a standing desk) writing, that isn't an issue. To the extent that I can successfully stifle my inner critic, the ideas just flow.
Anyhow, tomorrow I climb back up onto the horse. I'm already past the halfway mark on the 90,000 word goal, and less than 2000 words from the 50K mark that represented the finish line on my first novel last November. I'll probably end up writing rather more than 90,000 words before I'm done, since I expect I'll have to do some redrafting afterward. But that's for later. Tomorrow I just have to have Devin and company deal with the armed mercenary company who are cooperating with them--for the moment--to escape their mutual enemy. Then they can fight over who gets to keep the ship....
Stories in Circulation: 11
Rejections: 36
Stories Accepted: SEVEN
Stories to Resubmit: 0
Novel Queries: 1 Novel, 5 queries out
Novel Rejections: 5
Project 1: Space Opera (Title TBD)
Words Written: 48,969
Project 2: Urban Fantasy (Title TBD)
Words Written: 0
That said, I'm still in the "I'm not sure this is working" doldrums with regard to the novel. That's not going to stop me from continuing to work on it, but it certainly makes it less fun. On the gripping hand, the unproductive time I spent on Thursday did give me breathing room to come up with a plot twist that allowed me to get back to writing on Friday. That twist may mean some revisions later on, to make sure everything hangs together, but that's okay.
One of the lessons I've had, and sometimes remember but which slipped my mind recently, is that it's often a good idea to have two or more projects lined up at any given time. Then, if you find yourself blocked on one, you can switch to the other and keep working. (The legend of Isaac Asimov and his several typewriters, with a different story in progress on each one, so he could switch stories anytime he hit a stumbling block, is instructive here.) I didn't have a backup project in mind this past week, so I wasted a couple of days. This week, I'll have some other projects lined up in case of trouble with the novel.
My most recent (and last) Cobblestone story, The Wild One, just went live on Friday. There are no more in the pipeline at the moment, so I'll probably try to produce one periodically to submit. It's a good way to keep my pen name out there, and maybe I'll figure out this self-promo thing and the stories will sell better. Plus, the more stories I have out, the better the odds that someone who likes one will buy others. But as the Cobblestone experience has been less lucrative than I'd hoped, it's a lower priority than it was when I started. I also intend to target other short story markets when I'm not working on the novel.
Something I read today (on
benjamintate's livejournal) struck me as very useful info for would-be writers:I don't know about other writers out there, but nearly all of my ideas come to me while I'm actually writing. Something strikes me, or the characters do something interesting or unexpected, or the story is moving along and some connection I hadn't thought of before hits me, etc. Sometimes the idea that arises is perfect for the current situation and it gets melded into what I already knew was happening in that scene. Sometimes, the new idea supplants what I thought was going to happen. And sometimes the idea doesn't work for that particular book or set of characters and it gets filed away for potential use elsewhere. But in the end, nearly all of my ideas come to me while I'm actually physically writing something else.
So how do I suggest you come up with good ideas? Write. Even if it isn't something interesting, once you kick your brain on and start writing, your brain is going to want to WRITE something interesting, so it's going to come up with a cool idea.
So how do I suggest you come up with good ideas? Write. Even if it isn't something interesting, once you kick your brain on and start writing, your brain is going to want to WRITE something interesting, so it's going to come up with a cool idea.
I wouldn't say that "nearly all" of my ideas come to me while I'm actually writing, or even most of them. But I find it indisputably true that a a lot of them do. Partly, I'm sure, that's because I'm a seat-of-my-pants writer. I don't plot out stories; I've tried it repeatedly and it never works for me. I start with a character or a scene and just start writing--and then it goes pretty much as he describes it. New ideas occur to me and get incorporated or, sometimes, saved for another story. But it's true that I might never have had those ideas if I weren't already writing.
I sometimes (secretly) worry that I'll run out of ideas. Or at least, ideas I can turn into stories. Reading that post, though, made me realize that I only feel that way when I'm thinking about writing; when I'm lying in bed at night toying with ideas, or sitting around with a notebook trying to come up with ideas. When I'm actually standing at my computer (I use a standing desk) writing, that isn't an issue. To the extent that I can successfully stifle my inner critic, the ideas just flow.
Anyhow, tomorrow I climb back up onto the horse. I'm already past the halfway mark on the 90,000 word goal, and less than 2000 words from the 50K mark that represented the finish line on my first novel last November. I'll probably end up writing rather more than 90,000 words before I'm done, since I expect I'll have to do some redrafting afterward. But that's for later. Tomorrow I just have to have Devin and company deal with the armed mercenary company who are cooperating with them--for the moment--to escape their mutual enemy. Then they can fight over who gets to keep the ship....
Stories in Circulation: 11
Rejections: 36
Stories Accepted: SEVEN
Stories to Resubmit: 0
Novel Queries: 1 Novel, 5 queries out
Novel Rejections: 5
Project 1: Space Opera (Title TBD)
Words Written: 48,969
Project 2: Urban Fantasy (Title TBD)
Words Written: 0