In today’s Journal
* Yesterday
* An Epiphany from a Friend
* Topic: On Writing “Fast”
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Well, yesterday morning I started writing Terra 2. But it still has to do with the future of humanity, so Terra 2 will be Book 10 in the FOH series.
The covers going forward will be different, of course, depicting some view of the planet, but that’s all to worry about in the future. This book won’t go ‘live’ until July 15. (I’m releasing one novel every two weeks from now through then.)
An Epiphany from a Friend
A friend sent me another one of those ‘thank God the disruption of our lives is almost over’ pandemic-update emails.
In my typically flippant style I wrote back, “What is this ‘pandemic’ that you speak of? (grin) Yesterday I finished my 60th novel and the 9th in a series and the 6th in the past 95 days. And this morning I started novel #61. Pandemic? I don’t need no stinkin’ pandemic.”
But as a good friend often will, he brought me back to Earth. Actually he called me a “writing machine,” and said that’s “the only exlanation for an output that in a scant 95 days rivals the lifetime total of many (most?) human authors.”
And that did it. That put my feet back on the ground.
Because the only difference between me and those other authors is Heinlein’s Rules, specifically Rule 1. I actually write.
I am blessed that I can put as much time in the chair as I want. Writing fiction has become my day job.
Still, if you do the math, over the first 90 days of this year, I’ve only written, on average, less than 3200 words of fiction per day. I write about 1000 words per hour (a ‘blazing-fast’ 17 words per minute) so I ‘work’ about three hours a day. Tough gig, ain’t it?
And that was my epiphany: My output as a writer isn’t unusual because I show up and write every day. My output is only unusual because others don’t.
Topic: On Writing “Fast”
I revisited the Kill Zone blog this morning to glance over comments from others on Garry’s post re WITD. To one, who wondered about the “secret” to writing so “fast,” I responded with this:
Debbie, I type about 1000 words per hour on average, or a “blazing fast” 17 words per minute. Over the first 90 days of this year, I wrote an average of 3 hours per day. Not a bad gig. 🙂
What makes my production unusual is not that I show up and put time in the chair, but that so many others do not.
I agree with Terry [Odell] and Jim [James Scott Bell] that story and structure are important. But the characters are actually living the story. We only have to trust them. I would personally no more tell my characters how to live their lives than I would tell my neighbors how to live theirs.
And our creative subconscious has been absorbing story structure all our lives from film, books, and television, since before we even knew there was an alphabet. Again, we only have to trust the subconscious to know what it knows. Study, yes. Learn more, absorb it, yes. But then trust it. That’s the secret.
Of course, this incredibly freeing process is what works for me. I never have and never will say it’s the “only way” to write, only that if you’re able to pull the trigger on it, it’s incredibly freeing.
And the thing is, we always have a safety net. If we try it and don’t like it, we can always go back to the way we were doing things before.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “I Am Mayhem Excerpt [Video]” at https://www.suecoletta.com/i-am-mayhem-excerpt-video/.
See “A Dip Into the Past…” at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/a-dip-into-the-past/.
See “What’s the Difference Between a Thriller and a Mystery? Pacing.” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/whats-the-difference-between-a-thriller-and-a-mystery-pacing/. A pretty good article, minus the suggestion that you can too often have a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 660 words
Writing of Terra 2 (novel)
Day 1…… 3535 words. Total words to date…… 3535
Total fiction words for April……… 3535
Total fiction words for the year………… 290612
Total nonfiction words for April… 1370
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 68770
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 359382
Calendar Year 2021 Novels to Date…………………… 6
Calendar Year 2021 Novellas to Date……………… X
Calendar Year 2021 Short Stories to Date… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 60
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: In this blog, I provide advice on writing fiction. I advocate a technique called Writing Into the Dark. To be crystal clear, WITD is not “the only way” to write, nor will I ever say it is. However, as I am the only writer who advocates WITD both publicly and regularly, I will continue to do so, among myriad other topics.