Status: Sitting in my office, listening to Lionel Richie's new album of country duets, Tuskegee![]()
(it has Blake Shelton!), waiting for my oldest to fall asleep down the hall so I can creep down to the basement and do whatever I want.
I have a few minutes to spare, I've finished my writing for the day, and I'm always saying I should write more blog posts. This confluence of events leads me to a conclusion: I should write a blog post in these spare moments that I have.
So what's the topic? I'm glad you asked. It's about slow, steady, methodical, workmanlike progress on writing. If you think that sounds boring, this is your chance to bow out.
Still here, eh? Guess I'm going to have to write the whole post after all. Here's the gist of the point I'm going to make. I write about 5,000 words a day as a general rule. I've done as many as 16,000 (when I was a weaker writer and used some shortcuts on dialogue, attribution, description, etc.) and much, much less at times, but when I'm actively working on a book I try to make 5,000 the minimum number.
I've heard of authors who put pen to paper (or their fingers to the keys, nowadays) and they just blitz through an entire novel in a couple days. Kudos to those guys. I've done similar stuff, usually on shorter fiction, but I tried this recently and for a myriad of reasons, it didn't work out so well. I'll likely try again one of these days soon, but I much prefer to set a daily goal and just hit it like clockwork until the book is done. This week I've hammered out 25,439 words. I'll tack on a thousand or so over the next couple days and as I approach the end of the this book I'll do way more than 5,000 a day, but even if I didn't, that's writing 100,000 words per month - or essentially more than a complete novel (usually 60-90k words).
I've had a few people look at me funny or exclaim in surprise when I talk about writing and publishing 10 novels this year. I'm a full time writer, it feels like that's what I should be doing. I wish I could do more, but I want to leave time for editing because when I'm done with a first draft the book always ends up far, far different than what I thought it was going to be when I started and it requires some serious alignment. Also, I try to recharge a little here and there, taking a leisure day after finishing a big project. It keeps my brain in fighting shape.
The point to this whole post is that I don't feel like I'm straining that hard on any given day, even though I may be in the office until 8 or 9 because it's manageable chunks and I leave time to recharge. I don't presume to speak for anyone else, I'm just talking about what works for me. If you can't do more than a thousand words or five hundred per day, by all means do that. If, on the other hand you write in a furious fire of inspiration and pound out a novel in three days without sleep or food, good for you. Rock on.
But if you're a person who has a desire to write something and you've never figured out how to do so, I offer these suggestions:
1. Do it a little bit every day. Slow and steady wins the race is a cliche, but it carries a grain of truth. Steady, consistent effort and output often trumps hare-like race and rest strategies.
2. Don't hesitate to write crap. It doesn't have to be perfect the first time around. Do the best you can, but if you hit a wall, just focus on getting past that point and on to the next segment of the story. You can fix any parts you're unsatisfied with in post (production) as they say in the movie business. In writing we call it a second draft. And you get as many as you need to take.
Finishing something, even if you don't feel like it's very good, can be just the confidence builder you need. Actually, if you finish something and you don't have reservations about it, you might as well go ahead and chuck it in the garbage, because it's probably really awful.
That's about all I've got on this topic. Like I said, this is my process. Let me know what you think in the comments.
(it has Blake Shelton!), waiting for my oldest to fall asleep down the hall so I can creep down to the basement and do whatever I want. I have a few minutes to spare, I've finished my writing for the day, and I'm always saying I should write more blog posts. This confluence of events leads me to a conclusion: I should write a blog post in these spare moments that I have.
So what's the topic? I'm glad you asked. It's about slow, steady, methodical, workmanlike progress on writing. If you think that sounds boring, this is your chance to bow out.
Still here, eh? Guess I'm going to have to write the whole post after all. Here's the gist of the point I'm going to make. I write about 5,000 words a day as a general rule. I've done as many as 16,000 (when I was a weaker writer and used some shortcuts on dialogue, attribution, description, etc.) and much, much less at times, but when I'm actively working on a book I try to make 5,000 the minimum number.
I've heard of authors who put pen to paper (or their fingers to the keys, nowadays) and they just blitz through an entire novel in a couple days. Kudos to those guys. I've done similar stuff, usually on shorter fiction, but I tried this recently and for a myriad of reasons, it didn't work out so well. I'll likely try again one of these days soon, but I much prefer to set a daily goal and just hit it like clockwork until the book is done. This week I've hammered out 25,439 words. I'll tack on a thousand or so over the next couple days and as I approach the end of the this book I'll do way more than 5,000 a day, but even if I didn't, that's writing 100,000 words per month - or essentially more than a complete novel (usually 60-90k words).
I've had a few people look at me funny or exclaim in surprise when I talk about writing and publishing 10 novels this year. I'm a full time writer, it feels like that's what I should be doing. I wish I could do more, but I want to leave time for editing because when I'm done with a first draft the book always ends up far, far different than what I thought it was going to be when I started and it requires some serious alignment. Also, I try to recharge a little here and there, taking a leisure day after finishing a big project. It keeps my brain in fighting shape.
The point to this whole post is that I don't feel like I'm straining that hard on any given day, even though I may be in the office until 8 or 9 because it's manageable chunks and I leave time to recharge. I don't presume to speak for anyone else, I'm just talking about what works for me. If you can't do more than a thousand words or five hundred per day, by all means do that. If, on the other hand you write in a furious fire of inspiration and pound out a novel in three days without sleep or food, good for you. Rock on.
But if you're a person who has a desire to write something and you've never figured out how to do so, I offer these suggestions:
1. Do it a little bit every day. Slow and steady wins the race is a cliche, but it carries a grain of truth. Steady, consistent effort and output often trumps hare-like race and rest strategies.
2. Don't hesitate to write crap. It doesn't have to be perfect the first time around. Do the best you can, but if you hit a wall, just focus on getting past that point and on to the next segment of the story. You can fix any parts you're unsatisfied with in post (production) as they say in the movie business. In writing we call it a second draft. And you get as many as you need to take.
Finishing something, even if you don't feel like it's very good, can be just the confidence builder you need. Actually, if you finish something and you don't have reservations about it, you might as well go ahead and chuck it in the garbage, because it's probably really awful.
That's about all I've got on this topic. Like I said, this is my process. Let me know what you think in the comments.