The Journal: Standard Writer Think

In today’s Journal

* Quote of the Day
* Standard Writer Think
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

From The Passive Voice, “I try to write two pages a day, every single day until that first draft is done, no matter how terrible those pages are. I rarely use any of those pages later, but it feels good to fill up a blank page.” Author Anjali Enjeti

Yeah, I’m just gonna take off on that quote above. Because unfortunately, it’s Standard Writer Think. If you don’t believe me, look at some of the comments at “Reader Friday: Your First Novel.”

The link is to the actual “article,” because it’s only a paragraph. After you read James Scott Bell’s ridiculous quote and then the paragraph below it, you can click the little comment bubble to the right to read the comments.

But back to the quote above.

“[T]wo pages a day, every single day until that first draft is done, no matter how terrible those pages are.” Seriously?

Okay, first, is [preferred personal pronoun] Enjeti actually BRAGGING about writing two pages per day? That’s only about 500 words, about a half-hour’s work. And this successful author is bragging about that? All I can say is I sincerely hope s/he is lying.

Now don’t get me wrong. If you have a day job and kids and a life and two pages per day—around 500 words per day, a half-hour’s effort—is what you can manage, then do that. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you show up every day, or regularly, I applaud you.

But if you’re only going to write two pages a day, surely you could go ahead and make those two pages clean. Then you won’t have to “endeavor to persevere” through numerous rewrites, right?

Everyone knows I have a set daily word-count goal of 4,000 words per day. In “standard page” parlance that would be around 16 pages per day.

But more important than the word count is enjoying the story and writing cleanly as I go. I cycle back after every session to make sure the session is cleanly written.

And on days when I miss my goal (like yesterday) it’s usually because I read over one or more sessions more than one time. Maybe a sentence was bugging me, something about it was just not right. I go over each session until it not only reads the way I want it to, but until it conveys to the reader exactly what I want it to convey. All while keeping my conscious, critical mind out of it.

And “I rarely use any of those pages later.” Again, seriously? Then why write them? Simply because “it feels good to fill up a blank page”? Hell, I can fill up a blank page with gibberish like this.

By the way, I added this extra little paragraph just to bring the total of this post up to 500 words.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “In Praise of the Antikythera Mechanism!” at https://killzoneblog.com/2021/05/in-praise-of-the-antikythera-mechanism.html.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 500 words

Writing of Rider Jones and Wes Crowley (novella or novel)

Day 1…… 3288 words. Total words to date…… 3288
Day 2…… 5145 words. Total words to date…… 8433
Day 3…… 2732 words. Total words to date…… 11165

Total fiction words for April……… 84202
Total fiction words for the year………… 371279
Total nonfiction words for May… 500
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 85360
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 456639

Calendar Year 2021 Novels to Date…………………… 7
Calendar Year 2021 Novellas to Date……………… 1
Calendar Year 2021 Short Stories to Date… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 60
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 9
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.