I read a great post by Elizabeth S. Craig yesterday about word count in which she says, “I set myself a daily goal, but for others a weekly goal might work better. If you have a chaotic schedule, setting a weekly goal can give you a chance to make your goal by either spreading your goal out each day or having a marathon writing session all at once to catch up.”
Okay, my goal has simply been to write every day and make some progress on one of my writing projects. It seriously has never occurred to me to set a number for pages or words to be completed in a day or a week. The only time I’ve ever done this is when I did NaNoWriMo. My focus has mostly been on simply finding the time to write. I think I am definitely missing something here. I love seeing the word count go up, but I’ve never worried about whether it went up by 500 or 1500 words, as long as the number increased. I’ve decided that I want to get the draft of the sequel to The Dragon’s Pearl done before the middle of August, but when I think about it, I could get it done sooner if I changed my approach, and then have time to write other things, too.
I work to deadline and word count all the time in my freelancing life, but even then I don’t set myself a daily number of words to produce. I just get the work done.
This is going to take some thinking about. How do you work on large projects? Do you set daily word or page counts? I feel like I’ve been on another planet or something when it comes to this. Hmmm. Time for me to get in gear.
There are two links in Elizabeth’s blog post that I’m going to add below. They really are compelling reading, though Elizabeth added a justified caution about the strong language in Chuck Wendig’s post.
I revisited this blog post from 2010 as I was thinking about the next phase of my current writing project. I still have a few thousand words to go and a major plot point to figure out, but I’m eagerly awaiting typing “The End” and finally getting to the fun stuff. I love revising and editing my work. It means the tough part is over, and now I get to create the story I had in mind when I started. My first hurl of words onto the page is always a struggle. I feel set free once the words are finally down, and I get to play. Below are some self-editing questions that I will ask myself as I go through my work. Maybe some of them will help you, too.
1. Where does the story really begin?
Reread the first two to three pages of your story very carefully. When does the action really start? A major fault with many first drafts (mine, included!) is too much background material at the beginning before the conflict is introduced and the characters finally take over the story. In my case, I can almost bet that my story doesn’t really begin until about half-way down page three, so out go the first two pages. If the material I have cut is essential for the reader to know, I find ways later, through dialogue or thoughts of my characters, to get the information to the reader. My later insertions are never as long as those original two and a half pages and the pace of the story gains needed speed.
2. Is this adverb necessary?
Chances are, if you are using a lot of adverbs, you are telling and not showing. Think about the character that has just won the lottery. Rather than have her yell hurray ‘joyfully’, why not have her jump up and down screaming so loudly that her cat runs under the bed in terror and it takes her twenty minutes to get it out. Maybe she runs to her closet and throws all of her old clothes in the garbage while “If I Had a Million Dollars” blasts in her iPod. Both of those pictures show how the character reacts instead of telling and are certainly livelier than the word ‘joyfully’.
3. Is this adjective doing its job?
Look for those empty adjectives and replace them. ‘Amazing’, ‘interesting’, ‘exciting’, ‘awful’, ‘ugly’, ‘beautiful’, ‘nice’, ‘scary’, and other adjectives like them need to be replaced with sensory details that bring to life what you are describing. Find places to get the readers’ senses working; it means you are making the story real for them.
4. Whose problem is it?
Your main character has the problem; the main character needs to solve it. Make sure that your protagonist remains the chief actor in the story and doesn’t become solely the reactor to another character’s influence. Sometimes in longer pieces, characters other than your lead can start to steal your attention and your imagination; this can be especially true of villains and ‘comic sidekicks’. Be careful that these characters don’t become so charming that they threaten to steal the book from your hero or heroine. (I speak from some experience here. I created a villain in an historical romance that I liked so much, he eventually got his own book!)
5. Are the grammar and spelling perfect?
Yes, I mean perfect. The most that an editor needs to read of a short story in order to make a decision is approximately three paragraphs; a novel might get three pages. If that’s the only chance you have, don’t blow it by showing your lack of ability in spelling and grammar. Of course, publishers have people whose job it is to make sure that the copy they publish is correct in every way, but there’s no way they’re going to waste that person’s time on writers who haven’t bothered to do their best the first time. If you are self-publishing, correct grammar and spelling are key to your work being thought of as professional and being recommended by readers.
6. Have I read my story out loud?
One of your best proofreading tools is the sound of your own voice. Reading your story aloud is a great way to find awkward or incomplete sentences, clumsy phrasing, and inconsistencies in verb tenses and pronoun agreement. If you hesitate when you are reading or if you have to reread a sentence or phrase, then that’s a section of your story that needs a rewrite.
7. Have I applied the Stephen King rule?
Stephen King concludes his autobiography, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, with an editing exercise. He shows you the first draft of a story he has written and then shows it again full of his cross-outs, inserts and editing marks. He explains his edits and why he makes the choices he does. King’s revision rule is: “2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%.” We have a tendency, as writers, to believe that every word we write is precious and are very reluctant to cut our material–after all, we remember how hard it as to get it down on paper the first time. However, editing is about making our prose lean, and exciting, and compelling the reader to turn the page. See what you can do with ten per cent fewer words.
Consider revision a reward. Remember that if you are revising, you have finished a project–and how neat is that? Try these seven questions to kick-start your editing and begin your pursuit of a great final product. I can’t wait to start!
The cicadas are singing outside my window as I write and the fan is full in my face. Today, thankfully, there is a breeze, too–something that was sadly missing as I ran errands yesterday (in a none AC car) and caught up with a house and garden from which I’d been absent for ten days. In between, I spent chunks of time in front of the fan doing basically nothing or soaking my feet in cool water in an effort to feel more human. My son and his friend kept cool recording music in the basement. In the evening, I went to my last PWAC meeting—for a year.
I’ve been a member of the Professional Writers’ Association of Canada for over eight years now. I’ve served on local executives and was president when a few of us started our own branch in Kitchener. I’ve met amazing people and been able to grow my freelance business with their help and inspiration, but I’m taking a year off. This wasn’t an easy decision to make. Our monthly meetings are always energizing and the people in the group are just plain fun to hang out with. It was tough to say good-bye, but—
I’ve set some writing/publishing goals for myself this coming year, and I also want to take some time to do another thing that I love (take singing lessons) and, well, something had to go–for a year. I’ve set a time limit in order to keep pressure on the other things I want to do. I have one self-published middle readers book, and I know, from my reading, that for self-publishing to work you need several books out there. So, I need to finish the sequel to The Dragon’s Pearl and get back to work on a series of medieval mysteries for middle readers that I’ve been playing with for several years. Also, this fall, I will have three new courses to teach—-a lot of challenges ahead and lots of time needed to make everything work.
And I’m looking forward to all of it. I stewed about leaving PWAC for a long time, but once I made the decision, I knew it was the right one. So onward to lots of writing, lots of school work—and hopefully a break in the weather very soon!
Wherever you are, I hope you are having a cool and creative day!
Well, my strategy for leaving the laptop shut in order to get some writing done paid off. I’m over 2500 words further into the book today than I was when I wrote my blog on Wednesday. On top of that my journal now has several brainstormed plot notes that will keep me writing for a while. Whew! Now 2500 words in 3 days might not seem like a lot to some, but it’s a lot for me–especially considering my previous pace of glacial.
I was in one of those places where I was beginning to wonder whether anything would get me back to feeling like a writer again. Then, this morning I woke up with a scene in my head that I quickly wrote down before I went for my morning walk. I haven’t had that happen for a long time. So, yay! Feeling writerly.
Onward into the weekend, and some more writing (and some golf, too). Hope your next few days are creative and relaxing and full of reasons for you to feel like a writer.
Yesterday at Kristen Lamb’s Blog, Kristen listed 5 traits of the successful writer: passion, self-discipline, humility, healthy relationship with failure, and persistence. She states, “We can have all the talent in the world, but without these five ingredients, we will be hard-pressed to ever reach our dreams.”
Each of the five traits on the list can be a challenge for me at one time or another, but the most consistent challenge is self-discipline. I am constantly distracted by my laptop life: Facebook, email, checking my blog stats, Free Cell and Spider Solitaire, Ravelry (looking for my next knitting project), reading other people’s blog posts, etc.. The writing/working time slips away as I roam from one distraction to another. I’m not alone. People are actually writing about this phenomenon. Here are two links to articles about what is being called Internet ADD: http://zenhabits.net/8-practical-tips-to-cure-your-internet-add-attention-deficit-disorder/ and http://kristiholl.net/writers-blog/2013/01/internet-based-add-do-you-have-it/
I’ve decided that the only cure is abstinence. I have the luxury of a lot of writing time this week, and finally, yesterday, I figured out what I had to do to get anything accomplished–and did it. I closed the laptop, got out my journal, and worked my way through the next chapter of my book. Today I’m going to type up my notes–on my NEO (no internet, just a nice clicky keyboard and a small screen.) I have three more days to myself this week and a lot to accomplish. I’ll let you know how this strategy works.
Do you get distracted by your online life? How do you switch off and get the work done? What’s your biggest challenge among Kristen’s 5 traits? Love to hear your thoughts and solutions.
Hope you have a creative week and find your own way to carve out some creative time and make progress toward your writing goals.
I’m grabbing a few days away in Southampton–a town that inspires walking and stopping to smell the roses. Though I still have some work to do on a paid gig, I plan to commit a lot of time to working on the sequel to The Dragon’s Pearl–and walking.
I love looking at other people’s gardens. I’m no gardener myself, so it’s not envy, just simple admiration at the time people commit to creating beauty around them. I’m strictly a 1-large-pot-by-the-front-porch kind of person, and a lot of hostas, day lilies, and (sorry) goutweed to fill in the bits I don’t want to weed.
I hear that gardening is relaxing, but to me it’s just a battle that I wage with weeds when they’ve taken over too much of my turf. Last year was easy. We had no rain for months, so things stayed pretty tidy. This year, however, we have been blessed with lots of rain, and my weeds are in their happy place.
When I get back from my break, I’ll be digging and yanking and spraying (only the eco-friendly stuff, I promise) and then be able to relax for a while. That, of course, is the problem. I don’t go out there every day and do a little bit. I wait until I’m facing a weeding marathon. Not the best approach, I know.
In a Southampton garden
With my writing, I do a little better. Since March I’ve been trying to be a better gardener for my creative side–doing a little bit of writing every day instead of putting a lot of pressure on myself to clear a big chunk of time and then do a big push through a project. Even a few words a day means I’m making progress, and that’s my happy place.
How do you nurture your writing projects? A little bit every day or a massive write-a-thon?
I’ve found the perfect way to bring my writing to a complete halt. Lose confidence.
It was the right time to hear the right words.
I was working on the sequel to The Dragon’s Pearl, and I was about half way through the first draft when the gloom began. I started worrying about the first book. Was it really any good? Am I wasting my time writing another? And of course, those questions led to … Is anything that I’ve ever written any good? Can I even call myself a writer? Where is the chocolate? Is it time for a nap?
Yeah, well, you get the idea.
So, last week I passed the manuscript along to a friend who has children the same ages for which the book was written. Her son “liked it a lot.” She said a couple of other nice things, too, but I was so thrilled to read just those four words, I didn’t really need any more. A child liked my book. Wow. Could it get any better? Not for me. Not right now.
I’ve been working on some paid gigs this week, but this afternoon is set aside to get back to the manuscript. I hope that you find some creative time today, too, and that the right person at exactly the right time says that they like what you wrote.
