It's Wednesday!
May. 12th, 2010 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuI'm up to 73,000 words on the novel. I've added almost 8,000 words this week, and it's only Wednesday. On the other hand, I didn't write word one yesterday, and if I had it would be more. I had 60,000 words done as of the end of April, so this month my pace is almost exactly half of what it was last month. Boo! On the gripping hand, despite having a bad day yesterday and a slow start today, I'm still 8,000 words closer to the finish line at the moment, and that's something to be happy about.
Of course, I also moved the finish line. Regular readers may note that I've upped the word count for the novel from 90K to 100K. Mostly that's because I suspect I'm going to have to cut some of what I've written, so a higher goal means that when I've pared it down to something closer to the right words, it'll still be plenty long enough.
This week I've received two rejections, one on my first novel (Strange Attractors), and one on the short story, "In Adversity". I'll get them both back out soon, but I haven't done so yet.
I'm experimenting with a new mindset when I write. I'm trying to find the zone I wrote in when I was participating in some online games. I wrote many, many tens of thousands of words over the years in those games (which were closer to collaborative writing than gaming per se). And most of that I wrote on the fly. I wrote fast, I wrote without editing for the most part, and I didn't worry overmuch about anything but whether what I was writing was fun to write (and, I hoped, to read). I didn't think overmuch about the nuts and bolts of writing, I just trusted my process.
And I still like to go back and look at a lot of that stuff. I find a lot of stuff that's really fun to re-read. Could it be improved upon? Of course. But that attitude--writing the story I want to read without paying too much conscious attention to technique or salability or "what my mother will think"...that's something it's too easy to lose, and which I think is valuable.
I'm still using the 60-minute timer approach too. Start the timer. Write til it chirps. Take a few minutes away from the keyboard. Lather, rinse, repeat. It helps--especially on days like today, when I had a hard time starting. Start the timer and just WRITE. It helps to drown out the critical voice, 'cause I've got a goal to meet. Words to accumulate and only an hour to do it.
And I still find that nothing promotes creativity like wanting to abandon a project. My mind lights up with ideas for OTHER things I could be writing. So I take note of those ideas...and then I work on the current project. Those ideas will still be there later, when I'm ready to actually start something new. Take THAT, treacherous subconscious!
Stories in Circulation: 12
Rejections: 37
Stories Accepted: SEVEN
Stories to Resubmit: 0
Novel Queries: 1 Novel, 4 queries out
Novel Rejections: 6
Project 1: Starship Repo Man (Title TBD)
Words Written: 73,238
Of course, I also moved the finish line. Regular readers may note that I've upped the word count for the novel from 90K to 100K. Mostly that's because I suspect I'm going to have to cut some of what I've written, so a higher goal means that when I've pared it down to something closer to the right words, it'll still be plenty long enough.
This week I've received two rejections, one on my first novel (Strange Attractors), and one on the short story, "In Adversity". I'll get them both back out soon, but I haven't done so yet.
I'm experimenting with a new mindset when I write. I'm trying to find the zone I wrote in when I was participating in some online games. I wrote many, many tens of thousands of words over the years in those games (which were closer to collaborative writing than gaming per se). And most of that I wrote on the fly. I wrote fast, I wrote without editing for the most part, and I didn't worry overmuch about anything but whether what I was writing was fun to write (and, I hoped, to read). I didn't think overmuch about the nuts and bolts of writing, I just trusted my process.
And I still like to go back and look at a lot of that stuff. I find a lot of stuff that's really fun to re-read. Could it be improved upon? Of course. But that attitude--writing the story I want to read without paying too much conscious attention to technique or salability or "what my mother will think"...that's something it's too easy to lose, and which I think is valuable.
I'm still using the 60-minute timer approach too. Start the timer. Write til it chirps. Take a few minutes away from the keyboard. Lather, rinse, repeat. It helps--especially on days like today, when I had a hard time starting. Start the timer and just WRITE. It helps to drown out the critical voice, 'cause I've got a goal to meet. Words to accumulate and only an hour to do it.
And I still find that nothing promotes creativity like wanting to abandon a project. My mind lights up with ideas for OTHER things I could be writing. So I take note of those ideas...and then I work on the current project. Those ideas will still be there later, when I'm ready to actually start something new. Take THAT, treacherous subconscious!
Stories in Circulation: 12
Rejections: 37
Stories Accepted: SEVEN
Stories to Resubmit: 0
Novel Queries: 1 Novel, 4 queries out
Novel Rejections: 6
Project 1: Starship Repo Man (Title TBD)
Words Written: 73,238