In today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Spreading the Word
* Memes
* Of Interest
Quote of the Day (maybe even the year)
“You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.” Carrie Fisher
What excellent advice!
Spreading the Word
In reply to my comment on Garry Rodgers’ TKZ post yesterday, Garry wrote, “I checked your math and it works. BTW, WTF do you do in your spare time?”
I couldn’t pass up an invitation like that:
“In my spare time I do things I enjoy, of course. Like writing. 🙂 But seriously, I write only three to four hours per day, depending on what else is going on, in one-hour sessions. I start each session by reading over what I wrote in the previous session and allowing my characters to touch it as I read. When I’ve finished I send it to my first reader (an avid reader, but not a writer) for whatever wrong words or inconsistencies pop out at him. I make the corrections I agree with, and then publish it and start the next story.
“I think most writers write at about 1000 words per hour. That’s a blazing fast 🙂 17 words per minute. That’s why the math works. So a 60,000 word novel takes about 60 hours to write. Whether I spread that 60 hours over 2 weeks or a month or a year is up to me. Some folks lose time in second-guessing. I don’t do that. I’m not trying for The Great American Novel. I just enjoy telling stories.”
Memes
My wife told me yesterday she saw this on Facebook in a meme:
I wrote a 60,000 word novel on cats.
It would have been a lot easier if I’d used paper.
And then there’s this:
To which one of my sons replied, “If they’d cut out all the walking, it would have been a pamphlet.” 🙂
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “5 Do’s and 5 Don’ts For Fiction Writers…” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/5-does-and-5-donts-for-fiction-writers/. Great stuff. Read it, learn it, do it.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 340 words
Writing of The Stirchians (novel, tentative title)
Day 1…… 4106 words. Total words to date…… 4106
Day 2…… 3505 words. Total words to date…… 7611
Day 3…… 2392 words. Total words to date…… 10366
Day 4…… 3336 words. Total words to date…… 13339
Day 5…… 3227 words. Total words to date…… 16566
Day 6…… 2821 words. Total words to date…… 19387
Day 7…… 2900 words. Total words to date…… 22287
Day 8…… 1288 words. Total words to date…… 23575
Total fiction words for October……… 31777
Total fiction words for the year………… 152159
Total nonfiction words for October… 14470
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 167690
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 319849
Calendar Year 2022 Novels to Date…………………… 2
Calendar Year 2022 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2022 Short Stories to Date… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 68
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: In this Journal, among many other things, I teach a Zen-like non-process called Writing Into the Dark. It greatly increases productivity and practice, and thereby provides a rapid ascension along the learning curve of Craft. This is not opinion. It is all numbers and facts.