Thousand, that is, words a day.\u00a0\u00a0 Ritual disclaimer:\u00a0 what works for one writer is wrong for another.\u00a0\u00a0 Writing every day (or at least five days a week) works better than writing “when I feel the urge” but aside from that, writers’ clocks keep time right side up, sideways, upside down, and face down under the bed.<\/p>\n
But for me, what works to get the bulk of a book written is 2000 words a day.\u00a0\u00a0 There is wiggle room built into my schedule (as this year, when “medical” was the category eating wiggle room), also research days, revision days, other-writing-business days–not wiggle room at all, but other necessary time-eating work.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Still…2000 words\/day means serious progress, not being stuck, not having to rush.<\/p>\n
The whole medical\/family thing knocked me off that rate for over a month, but last week was a climb back toward it–came very close Friday and Saturday hit 2000 again.\u00a0 Sunday was a marker day, and Monday was “back on task.”\u00a0\u00a0 I had closed the books on last week on Friday, so Saturday work (which is either catch-up or get-ahead, depending) was a start on this week, and as of now that’s 10,000+ words, with another day to go.<\/p>\n
So: the book is now just over 110,000 words.\u00a0\u00a0 Last year on July 14, I was at 56,503.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m glad I pushed on earlier in the year.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m glad I opened the file and put something–if only a couple of paragraphs–in it almost every day.\u00a0\u00a0 It kept the world and this story alive for me (and it’s much easier to “revive” a story that’s been trickling along slowly than one that’s come to a complete stop…it’s that inertia thing dear Isaac [Newton, not Asimov] came up with.)<\/p>\n
Today’s 2000 words were split between various characters and once more I need to get out the timeline notebook and scribble with it.\u00a0\u00a0 A is here, B is there, C is somewhere else, and there are a couple of roving game-changers who are…somewhere.\u00a0\u00a0 When you see them, their appearance must be both surprising but–on second thought–understandable and even inevitable.\u00a0 Where else would they have been, and when else would they have come?<\/p>\n
There’s also a very interesting young person you haven’t met yet,\u00a0 who is insinuating himself into the story and may need to be pruned back.\u00a0\u00a0 The thing is, he’s fun to write.\u00a0\u00a0 The ones that are really fun to write are difficult to stuff back into their appointed roles.\u00a0\u00a0 When a difficulty comes up in the story, I’m tempted to find one of the characters who’s always fun to write and run with him\/her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thousand, that is, words a day.\u00a0\u00a0 Ritual disclaimer:\u00a0 what works for one writer is wrong for another.\u00a0\u00a0 Writing every day (or at least five days a week) works better than writing “when I feel the urge” but aside from that, writers’ clocks keep time right side up, sideways, upside down, and face down under the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[20,107],"class_list":["post-1270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-progress-report","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1270"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1272,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions\/1272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}