Hey Folks,
Well, that was a short-lived experiment.
Embarrassment sometimes is the result (and is always the risk) of sharing one’s writing life. But that’s just the way it goes sometimes. If you’re going to be an open book, occasionally a reader will find a bug smashed between your pages.
A few days ago I announced my new daily word count goal. Then I announced I was going to see how long I could hit it in a row, day after day, to create a streak.
Then reality started to set in and I backed off on the streak aspect because Coming Soon (July or August) there will be a week or so when I won’t be able to do anything that causes my chest muscles to flex. Believe it or not, that includes activities as seemingly innocuous as typing.
And today, before I’ve even started, I feel overwhelmed. Today would be the first full day of attempting to hit my daily goal and work on a copyedit. I also wanted it to be the day I begin the next new book.
But it’s also the day when I have to do laundry, water the yard, pull some weeds and tend to some other household things.
Of course, the laundry does itself. Well, other than transferring things from the washer to the dryer, starting the next load, folding the former and putting it away, etc.
The yard takes care of itself too, except for periodically adjusting the sprinkler, individually watering the several trees and bushes in the yard, etc.
And pulling weeds is, well, pulling weeds. No way around that.
I could put off the edit a bit to make up for time lost to the other nonwriting activities, but that doesn’t seem fair to my client (because it isn’t) and it’s not something I would allow myself to do anyway.
So for the time being, I’m going to HOPE today I at least can write the thousand or so words that will finish my current WIP. At this point, frankly, it’s limping along so badly that if it were a horse I’d shoot it. I hate the end game of writing a book. When I know how it’s going to end, I just want to get there so I can move on to something new.
So just ignore all the rah-rah stuff I wrote about my new goals over the past week or so. I’m calling it off for the time being.
My priorities have changed somewhat. Honestly, I think it had something to do with publishing my 30th novel.
Sometime or other I got it into my head that many writers don’t write and/or publish 30 novels in their entire lifetime.
But I have, since October 19, 2014. And more importantly, my knowledge and practice of the craft has expanded pretty much exponentially.
There are still stories I want to tell and characters with whom I want to run through a story, so my journey is far from over. But as for concrete goals… well, if they matter at all at this point in my writing career, I need to give them a great deal more thought.
But please don’t get me wrong. I do stand firmly by the notion that a daily word count goal is a godsend for beginning writers.
A daily goal helps create discipline, and discipline results in more hours spent in the chair, which leads to more practice, improvement in craft and greater productivity. Which in turn leads to greater discoverability. (The more titles you have out there, the easier it is for readers to find you.)
***
Okay. As I suspected and hoped I might, I finished the WIP, which is renamed Stern Talbot, PI: The Case of the Bombed-Out Café. It’s a novella.
I’ll spend the balance of the day on the copyedit.
See you soon.
Of Interest
See Sue Coletta’s “6 Unusual Forensic Techniques” at https://killzoneblog.com/2018/07/6-unusual-forensic-techniques.html.
For any Hemingway buffs out there, see “The First Reviews of Every Ernest Hemingway Novel” at http://www.thepassivevoice.com/the-first-reviews-of-every-ernest-hemingway-novel/.
Fiction Words: 941
Nonfiction Words: 650 (Journal)
So total words for the day: 1591
Writing of Stern Talbot, PI: The Case of the Bombed-Out Café
Day 1…… 1926 words. Total words to date…… 1926
Day 2…… 2884 words. Total words to date…… 4810
Day 3…… 1874 words. Total words to date…… 6684
Day 4…… 1716 words. Total words to date…… 8500
Day 5…… 2107 words. Total words to date…… 10607
Day 6…… 2105 words. Total words to date…… 12712
Day 7…… 1491 words. Total words to date…… 14203
Day 8…… 2005 words. Total words to date…… 16208
Day 9…… 941 words. Total words to date…… 17149 (done)
Total fiction words for the month……… 2946
Total fiction words for the year………… 237162
Total nonfiction words for the month… 1820
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 80996
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 317908
Calendar Year 2018 Novels to Date………………………… 5
Calenday Year 2018 Novellas to Date…………………… 2
Calendar Year 2018 Short Stories to Date……… 11
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)………………………………………… 31
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)……………………………………… 6
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………………… 193