Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Some days, I require a word count because the muses are behaving like children. The words won’t come. A thousand pounds of pressure is required to press the computer keys. It is exhausting. Computer games call, sunshine beckons, books that I want to read whisper, “Come here,” and to-do lists acquire enormous importance. The word count is necessary to get some frigging work done. That’s in the writing process stage.
In the editing and revising stage, the muses are generally mute. Their work, they tell me, is done. Chapters are the masters. X number of chapters must be completed today. Sometimes the muses show up and start talking about another project. Other projects, with the glorious feeling of creation that they impart, are always seductive. I beat the muses back with sticks. “Not today, damn it. You know that I need to finish this first.” They don’t care. Muses are self-centered. They run with their own agendas.
There’s always a stick for the days when it’s needed. But some days, the muses are waiting, tapping their little feet or fingers, eager to begin. Just give them a sip of coffee, and off we go. I don’t always know if I’m going in the right direction and harbor this terrible fantasy that I’m a football player in a tight game, running with the ball toward the wrong goal.
A table full of muses are here today. Each is learning forward, ready to feed me their input. Got my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
I’ve mentioned before that in writing Incomplete States that I’ve written over one million words.
Thinking about that today as I’m almost finished with editing the fifth novel in the series, I decided to do more quantifying about it. I began writing the series in July, 2016, and completed it in July, 2018. I write almost every day, often even when on vacation and traveling. While it’s not exact, I guessed that I wrote about seven hundred twenty days since I began writing the series.
Dividing one million by seven hundred twenty, I estimate that I wrote less than fourteen hundred words a day.
That’s not a huge word count, but it shows what can happen by just keeping at it.
words
dollars
wins
losses
hours
minutes
days
calories
grams
thoughts
It all counts,
one way or another.
Don’t you love it when you’re writing, and lightning strikes?
Yeah, me, too.
Happened yesterday. A writing lightning strike is when I assume the position to write, and dictation begins. My job is only to keep up with the typing.
I track word counts as an incidental measure of progress. These are *almost* like the miles being traveled while on a trip. In a car, I generally know exactly where I’m going and how much I have left because I travel across a well-measured and documented region. Detailed maps are available. I know how far I’ve gone, and what distance remains.
I’d love to have such a map for my novel writing. I don’t. Word counts present an idea of how far I’ve gone, but little idea of how much further I must travel in the novel. In the end, all that matters I’ve typed and written until I finally type “The End”.
Word counts help me gauge what’s normal and inject some minor reward and satisfaction. Yesterday, I ended up with twenty-six hundred more words on my novel journey. Some writers may poo-poo that amount – and I’m not pursuing N2WM – but it’s higher than my average. Best, though, I completed three chapters being concurrently developed. In essence, they were part of a sequence of events. I wrote them in order, but as details developed, I backtracked to modify and align details and the timeline. Best, number two, is that completing them left me with a starting location for today. Best, number three, is that satisfaction of bringing more to the story and moving toward the novel’s completion.
Will lightning strike twice? I offer the late Roy Sullivan as evidence it could. Roy, a park ranger, was struck by lightning and lived seven times, and is the Guinness World Records official record-holder for those categories.
Time to write like crazy, at least one…more…time.
I’m always questioning if one thousand words a day is sufficient for my writing output, whether I should be writing every day, and if my writing process of a few hours each day is sufficient. A few other bloggers have addressed the question and basically decided one to two thousand words a day is their normal output.
But restless last night and this morning, I searched for other writers’ opinions about these matters.
Isaac Asimov, author of over five hundred books, wrote every day. He used a simple writing style, and he didn’t care about critics. Those were essentially his three rules, according to the post.
So there you have it. Write every day. Thank you, Isaac.
Now Novel had some information from J.K. Rowling. “One of J.K. Rowling’s most famous quotes is: “Sometimes you have to get your writing done in spare moments here and there.”” That’s a good reminder for how fortunate I am to be able to carve out and dedicate time to novel writing. My wife is very supportive in this, and that helps a helluva lot.
Aerogramme’s Writers’ Studios offer thirteen quotes on writing from Octavia Butler. My favorite:
“And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write – every day, no excuses. It’s so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they’d rather clean the toilet than do the writing.”
Every day! Thank you, Ms Butler. She’s one of my favorite authors. Selfishly, I wished she’d not died so young (fifty-four) and suddenly, because I want to read more from her. I’m thankful that she wrote and published what she did.
In Diane Prokop’s post about Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon, she includes this quote from him:
“I work roughly five or six hours a day, five to six days a week, and I try to get a thousand words per session, a thousand new words. I don’t count rewrites.”
Rewrites and editing count against my time slot. I’m beginning to suspect that’s a problem, that I should be setting aside another period to do these matters. I like the way Chabon puts this, “I try to get a thousand words per session.” That leaves some latitude.
From this search born of angst and self-examination, I returned to my touchstone of belief about writing: find what works for you and do it. That means that I write almost every day, probably not writing a week to ten days a year due to illness, travel or interruptions, like power outages and snow storms. I try to get over a thousand words per session. I don’t use word counts as the whip to keep going any longer. They worked well in the beginning but I discarded them. But if I’m thinking about quitting on a day because I don’t seem to be getting anything done, I’ll undertake a word count. If it’s below nine hundred, I order myself to go on.
Usually.
Smile.
Time to write drink a four shot mocha and write like crazy, at least one more time.
Into the madness!
Michael Seidel, writer 