I'm very close to the end of this book and can see everything else that happens so at this point I'm almost on autopilot. What's strange is, I wrote a lot of words today (6,250) but now that feels like chump change because I'm comparing it to what I've done on other days this week. 6,000 plus words is really good and instead of feeling ho-hum about it (funny how quickly we get used to things), I should keep in mind the long game.
If I wrote 6,000 words a day, 5 days a week, that would be 1,560,000 words per year. Novel lengths vary by genre, but let's say on average my books will be 75,000 words long.
That's 21 novels a year, rounding up.
This weekend will prove challenging. I won't have any large blocks of time to work and pretty much will only be able to write after the kiddies go to bed. So I am not going in to the next 48 hours with any expectations. I hope I can write another 10k -15k over two days and finish the book off, but realistically the first draft won't be done until Monday night. That would only give me 6 days to edit my first heroic fantasy novel, which sounds really daunting.
But hey, I got myself into this mess so I can't really complain.
And tonight's winning numbers in the Pennsylvania Lottery are:
Drafting: 4.5 hours
Daily Word Count: 6,250
Total Word Count: 86,186
Friday, September 29, 2017
Thursday, September 28, 2017
HF Novel Update - 9/28/17 (Day 12)
Too tired to type much here, cumulative fatigue just catching up with me. I've been putting in a lot of hours, about 50% of them coming after the kiddies go to bed so I'm averaging about 5-6 hours of sleep per night. When I was in college that was par for the course, but these days that just ain't enough.
Here are the numbers:
Drafting: 6 hours
Daily Word Count: 9,900
Total Word Count: 79,936
I've got about 10k - 15k words left to write leading up to the climax, and the big finale itself will probably run about 5k. So this first draft is trending toward 100k, which is good. After a tight edit, I'll probably chop off about 5k, I'm guessing. I can already think of a couple things I planted earlier in the story that never came back up later (and I don't really need them to at this point).
Gentlemen, to bed! And sleep the sleep of a thousand martyrs!
Here are the numbers:
Drafting: 6 hours
Daily Word Count: 9,900
Total Word Count: 79,936
I've got about 10k - 15k words left to write leading up to the climax, and the big finale itself will probably run about 5k. So this first draft is trending toward 100k, which is good. After a tight edit, I'll probably chop off about 5k, I'm guessing. I can already think of a couple things I planted earlier in the story that never came back up later (and I don't really need them to at this point).
Gentlemen, to bed! And sleep the sleep of a thousand martyrs!
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
HF Novel Update 9/27/17 (Day 11)
Another huge day.
My good friend and fellow author Nate Green has a saying, "Writing is inertial."
Truer words were never spoken.
Today I wrote over 14k words! That's ridiculous but it didn't feel unusual to me while it was happening. It just flowed.
Here's why I think this happened. I've moved into the final third-ish of the book. The end of the dreaded 2nd act is close. Everything is coming together, and at this point I understand the characters much better than I did at the beginning of the story. I know what they're going to say and how they're going to react to situations without having to think about it too too much.
At the same time, I got to introduce two new characters who are a lot of fun to write and who added fresh conflicts to the story. So at this point, I can see the ending, I know how I'm going to get there, and all the characters in the story are on a collision course that will culminate in the climax. I feel like I've crested the hill of this story and now am running downhill as fast as I can, almost out of control. At this point I can't write quickly enough and, as long as I stay out of my own way, this first draft will be done very soon.
To my buddy Nate's point, WRITING IS INERTIAL.
The more you do it, the more you do it. The less you do it, the less you do it.
Now, that's an oversimplification of course. I don't know if I could maintain this pace for an extended period of time, though if you believe the stories this is what many pulp writers did in the early to mid 20th century. And I happen to know that many indie authors (who tend to be the more successful ones) do this as well. So it's been done before and it's still being done now.
Here are the numbers:
Drafting: 9 hours (three big chunks of writing time)
Daily Word Count: 14,029
Total Word Count: 70,036
My good friend and fellow author Nate Green has a saying, "Writing is inertial."
Truer words were never spoken.
Today I wrote over 14k words! That's ridiculous but it didn't feel unusual to me while it was happening. It just flowed.
Here's why I think this happened. I've moved into the final third-ish of the book. The end of the dreaded 2nd act is close. Everything is coming together, and at this point I understand the characters much better than I did at the beginning of the story. I know what they're going to say and how they're going to react to situations without having to think about it too too much.
At the same time, I got to introduce two new characters who are a lot of fun to write and who added fresh conflicts to the story. So at this point, I can see the ending, I know how I'm going to get there, and all the characters in the story are on a collision course that will culminate in the climax. I feel like I've crested the hill of this story and now am running downhill as fast as I can, almost out of control. At this point I can't write quickly enough and, as long as I stay out of my own way, this first draft will be done very soon.
To my buddy Nate's point, WRITING IS INERTIAL.
The more you do it, the more you do it. The less you do it, the less you do it.
Now, that's an oversimplification of course. I don't know if I could maintain this pace for an extended period of time, though if you believe the stories this is what many pulp writers did in the early to mid 20th century. And I happen to know that many indie authors (who tend to be the more successful ones) do this as well. So it's been done before and it's still being done now.
Here are the numbers:
Drafting: 9 hours (three big chunks of writing time)
Daily Word Count: 14,029
Total Word Count: 70,036
New Thriller Coming This Week!
I talk about The Board, in my latest YouTube video. I'll hit publish on that book tonight, and then Amazon will do its thing behind the scenes, which usually takes a day or two before the book is live in their store.
Here's the cover for The Board:
Writing this book was such a great, fun experience for me, because I got to co-author the novel with Jim Gott, a good friend and former work colleague. The oh-my-god-why-isn't-this-already-a-movie premise was Jim's fabulous idea. It's high concept and we feel has the potential to really break out.
Here's the cover for The Board:
Writing this book was such a great, fun experience for me, because I got to co-author the novel with Jim Gott, a good friend and former work colleague. The oh-my-god-why-isn't-this-already-a-movie premise was Jim's fabulous idea. It's high concept and we feel has the potential to really break out.
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
HF Novel Update - 9/26/17
Monster day today.
After deciding to scrap PLOT DEVELOPMENT yesterday, I was freed up to get on with the story. I managed to write my way through two set pieces and am now halfway through the 2nd act of the story. Our hero has made some mistakes and has grown, and I just gave him his first mini-victory.
Now the story gets really interesting. We meet new characters and the overwhelming force of the enemy is closing in. Hero has to assume a larger and larger role among the people he's protecting, and I'm chomping at the bit to get to his Cave Moment, where he confronts a mythical monster. All of this is leading me to the end, which I can almost see now. I don't have all the details yet, but I can feel the general way to get there.
Here are the numbers:
Drafting: 6 hours
Daily Word Count: 9,007
Total Word Count: 56,007
After deciding to scrap PLOT DEVELOPMENT yesterday, I was freed up to get on with the story. I managed to write my way through two set pieces and am now halfway through the 2nd act of the story. Our hero has made some mistakes and has grown, and I just gave him his first mini-victory.
Now the story gets really interesting. We meet new characters and the overwhelming force of the enemy is closing in. Hero has to assume a larger and larger role among the people he's protecting, and I'm chomping at the bit to get to his Cave Moment, where he confronts a mythical monster. All of this is leading me to the end, which I can almost see now. I don't have all the details yet, but I can feel the general way to get there.
Here are the numbers:
Drafting: 6 hours
Daily Word Count: 9,007
Total Word Count: 56,007
Monday, September 25, 2017
HF Novel Update 9/25/17
So I ended up deciding to scrap PLOT DEVELOPMENT. After re-outlining the remainder of the book, I realized how much story there was left to tell and that PLOT DEVELOPMENT wasn't adding much, didn't factor as much into the larger story as I had previously thought, and was just slowing me down. Put another way, I'd invented a problem in the story that didn't need to be there.
The deadliest trap is the one we set for ourselves, as Raymond Chandler once quipped.
That being said, I had to spend a significant chunk of time figuring out what had to go earlier in the story, what had to be rewritten, and where I could pick up from. The numbers below are broad estimates of how I spent my time today in the overall creative process. They're probably not even close to matching the reality, because rewrites bled over into new content, which bled over back into outlining, which ... you get the idea.
And, because I was both cutting words and writing new ones today, I'm ballparking my daily word count. The total word count is an approximation also, because there are still things to fix, rearrange, and probably cut.
Okay, disclaimers out of the way, here are the numbers:
Pre-Production: 1 hour
Rewrites: 2 hours
Drafting: 2.5 hours
Daily Word Count: ~5,000
Total Word Count: ~47,000
The deadliest trap is the one we set for ourselves, as Raymond Chandler once quipped.
That being said, I had to spend a significant chunk of time figuring out what had to go earlier in the story, what had to be rewritten, and where I could pick up from. The numbers below are broad estimates of how I spent my time today in the overall creative process. They're probably not even close to matching the reality, because rewrites bled over into new content, which bled over back into outlining, which ... you get the idea.
And, because I was both cutting words and writing new ones today, I'm ballparking my daily word count. The total word count is an approximation also, because there are still things to fix, rearrange, and probably cut.
Okay, disclaimers out of the way, here are the numbers:
Pre-Production: 1 hour
Rewrites: 2 hours
Drafting: 2.5 hours
Daily Word Count: ~5,000
Total Word Count: ~47,000
HF Novel Update - 9/24/17
Yesterday I got some words in but I'm not sure I'll keep any of them.
As my characters headed to PLOT DEVELOPMENT, I began to question my decision to send them there. I felt the story was losing momentum and that I was also putting an unnecessary complication in front of them - since there was still plenty of story left to tell, jam-packed with more and more conflict.
Even worse? The obstacle they were about to face was shaping up to be very similar to the NEXT PLOT DEVELOPMENT, so everything ground to a halt as I struggled to come up with ways to make THIS THING different from THAT LATER THING.
I couldn't come up with a solution yesterday. After I woke up this morning, while engaged in some mindless activity (why does it always happen like this) I think I figured out what I'm going to do, and it will allow me to keep most of what I wrote yesterday but damn I hate this feeling. I'm getting to the dreaded halfway point of the story, that strange and daunting space where I know how I want the last quarter of the book to go but don't yet have all the answers for how I'm going to get there.
Here are the numbers. Hopefully I keep most of these words so the day isn't a total write-off.
Pre-Production: 0
Drafting: 3.5 hours
Daily Word Count: 4,636
Total Word Count: 42,007
When it felt like I was just spinning my wheels last night, I shifted gears to something else. Rather than just get frustrated without little to show for all the hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing, I focused on editing The Stalked Girl, the second book in my new mystery series. The great news? That one's ready to go now and I don't have to think about it. It's up for pre-order now on Zon.
As my characters headed to PLOT DEVELOPMENT, I began to question my decision to send them there. I felt the story was losing momentum and that I was also putting an unnecessary complication in front of them - since there was still plenty of story left to tell, jam-packed with more and more conflict.
Even worse? The obstacle they were about to face was shaping up to be very similar to the NEXT PLOT DEVELOPMENT, so everything ground to a halt as I struggled to come up with ways to make THIS THING different from THAT LATER THING.
I couldn't come up with a solution yesterday. After I woke up this morning, while engaged in some mindless activity (why does it always happen like this) I think I figured out what I'm going to do, and it will allow me to keep most of what I wrote yesterday but damn I hate this feeling. I'm getting to the dreaded halfway point of the story, that strange and daunting space where I know how I want the last quarter of the book to go but don't yet have all the answers for how I'm going to get there.
Here are the numbers. Hopefully I keep most of these words so the day isn't a total write-off.
Pre-Production: 0
Drafting: 3.5 hours
Daily Word Count: 4,636
Total Word Count: 42,007
***
When it felt like I was just spinning my wheels last night, I shifted gears to something else. Rather than just get frustrated without little to show for all the hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing, I focused on editing The Stalked Girl, the second book in my new mystery series. The great news? That one's ready to go now and I don't have to think about it. It's up for pre-order now on Zon.
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