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How I did

August 28, 2009 //
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As with yesterday, this is a scheduled post because I’ve been away on holiday since Tuesday. So I can only give a report for the first few days of the week. I can say I was doing pretty well on Monday but then was plunged into the depths of despair because of distribution problems and the overwhelming nature of trying to market fiction.

But as I have said over and over (and over and over) again on this blog, measuring yourself by sales is dispiriting, even for mainstream authors with physical books in a bookstore. That’s why I’ve always been wary of getting involved too much in marketing. Certainly it has had a damaging effect on my writing and my motivation this week.

Anyway, after a nice break away, back to it next week, keeping firmly to the forefront that I have never written with a big audience in mind, and certainly not with sales in mind.

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How I did

August 21, 2009 //
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This week, fiction had to take a back seat to other projects; I did not work on either WIP. I always feel bad when this happens, especially when, as has been happening recently, I have been struggling to maintain discipline. Paradoxically, this time I don’t feel bad – I had fallen so far behind on other projects that I feel very accomplished and pleased with myself for clearing off my backlist and overdue items. Some of it was even related to fiction, so it wasn’t a dead loss.

I’ll try to do a little this weekend, and get back to it next week, but I’m not sure that’ll happen either. At the rate I’m going, I might have to cut my losses until October…I really don’t know how people manage to write a book while spending the time promoting their currently published ones, and also hold down a paying job. Maybe my trouble comes from trying to do those three things AND start up a small business…where does the time go?

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How I did

August 14, 2009 //
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Moving slowly forward on both works. I’m at just over 29,000 words on the Augusta work, and wrote a pretty satisfactory scene within that 2,500 words – I also impatiently skipped a couple of scenes just to get to that one, so next week I’ll go back and fill in the missing scenes.

I don’t think there’s a huge problem writing out of order – I do it sometimes when I need to get a particular scene down on paper, to stop thinking about it and turning it over in my head – but I tend to like to write consecutively so I can keep better track of where the character development is at. Since I don’t really plot beyond a vague idea of what I think will happen, it’s vital I keep track of where characters and events are at, and writing in order helps with that.

The Rana work is only at 48,000, but there’s been deleting and re-arranging this week, so the advance of 1,500 words is not reflective of the steady daily word count I managed to produce.

I’m pleased with both the product this week and with being able to work around my other commitments and get my targets achieved. Slow progress is still progress. I’ll have at least the Rana book done this year, and be at least halfway to next year’s draft (the Augusta work) before next year even starts…

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How I did

August 7, 2009 //
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You can get my latest book, The Frog Prince’s Daughters, for only $1 until mid-August. After that, it still costs less than $4. And it’s DRM-free. Check it out.
***shameless self-promotion***

I managed the 500 words a day for the Rana sequel, so that’s at 46,500. It’s crawling in painful page-length graduations into worse and worse territory. I know I forget how bad (and difficult) first drafts are, but this must be far and away the worst I’ve written.

Meanwhile, the continuation of the 195,000 Augusta/Simon/Hal story from last year is chugging along happily, at 27,000 words. The only way I could force myself to work on the Rana one was by not allowing myself to work on this one until I fell over the 500-word line on the Rana one.

I wrote last week about the need for discipline. It is essential. Discipline is what gets me to open the file and start typing even though I’d rather go read on the couch. However, when, week after week, I’m finding no inspiration in the story, I can’t see how it supposed to get where I want it to go, the characters are not acting like themselves…well, that’s when I know I’m on the wrong path.

It takes experience to know when the little blocking voice in your head is just being lazy and can’t be bothered, and when it’s actually got a point. Today I admitted it has a point – nothing could bring that home to me more than how easily the Augusta work is going compared to the Rana work. I start off lazily reluctant to do either (that’s discipline’s job) but once I start on Augusta, it flies along. Once I start on Rana, I pull the words like I’m pulling teeth.

I’m not going to abandon it. It’s just that things have gone very badly wrong somewhere. And I think that somewhere is with Rana herself. Her strength is in action, and she can’t take any in the current storyline. I’ve also divided her attention between two major problems, when she only has the time to tackle one. So I need to decide which is the more important problem. Jannin can deal with the other problem – which has the bonus of giving him more to do than just completely and utterly fail at everything he’s meant to be doing. It will also let them interact a little more, because at the moment they are almost entirely separate for three full days, which makes no sense and also loses the charm of their flirty interactions.

As my new starting point, I’m going to stop trying to make Rana fit in around what Jannin was doing during his three days (their stories run parallel during this time while they work on their separate goals) and just write whatver she tells me she would actually be doing. If she crosses paths with Jannin or takes longer than she should or whatever, then I can re-write Jannin’s half to better account for that.

I’m also going to re-write the roles of some of the supporting characters, which will change the tenor of their interactions with the two mains and hopefully re-direct the plot. In particular, I’ve made Rana’s chief annoyance a smarmy and lecherous prince. But she’s dealt with open arseholes before, they don’t bother her – and they don’t fool her. If I make the prince a nice-guy-complex guy (you know, the type of guy who assumes women owe them something just because they’re “nice” and then they go out and shoot up a women’s aerobics class when women don’t fall over themselves to sleep with them), then I give her a different challenge and he will make the same point a different character I now need to eliminate was going to make.

That’s the plan. That’ll be a major leap back in the word count, but that’s OK. That word count wasn’t ever going to get anywhere…

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How I did

July 31, 2009 //
1

My discipline’s gone out the window. Any writer (who has managed to finish a book to publishable standards) will tell you that yeah, yeah, talent and wordcraft and story ideas and blah blah, but none of that’s any good unless you actually sit down and apply it in a sustained fashion. In the words of Eric, a tennis champion in Lionel Shriver‘s book Double Fault, “What you ‘could’ do is infinite. You’re capable of what you actually do.” Discipline is not the only thing needed for success in writing, but it is the only thing needed to finish writing.

Okay, so I didn’t have my laptop this week, and my limited, borrowed, computer time was focused on getting my paid non-fiction freelancing work done. But I did have a pen and paper. I had no excuse to lie around on the couch pretending I couldn’t keep writing fiction, just because I wanted to read and generally slack-off instead.

I don’t know what’s going on with me. I do know I found the reminder in this week’s Book Show’s segment on writing young adult fiction very helpful: first drafts are always crappy and need a lot of work to turn them into publishable material. I know this, but the reminder was helpful.

I think the problem is that my good habits have been broken. I am sitting here waiting for my good habits to reestablish themselves, when I should know better – bad habits establish themselves, insidiously. Good habits take concentration and work. I’ve fallen into the trap of wanting to have written, forgetting that means I have to write.

I’m taking a step back. I will stick with my 500 words a day goal, but now in ‘must do’ mode, not in, ‘oh it’ll happen I’m sure’ mode. That’s the only way to have written.

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How I did

July 24, 2009 //
0

***shameless self-promotion***
You can get my latest book for only $1 until mid-August. Check it out.
***shameless self-promotion***

An interesting week. 44,000 words on the Rana book…which is precisely 0 words more than when I stopped for my holiday, plus or minus 50 words or so. I did make progress though, I went back and fixed scenes and reordered and generally tinkered, while taking out the notes to myself, which is why any increase in the word count was promptly wiped out. The plot has not progressed from where it was sitting, so next week it has to be a concentrated effort on pushing forward. Character motivations are getting clearer.

Over on the other project, the one I shouldn’t be working on, I’m making a steady 500-1000 words a day, and am at 21,500 words. It’s a lot more fun than the Rana book (immoral characters are always more fun than the moral ones…)

Because the second project is going well, I’m not going to force myself to stop working on it. I don’t like dividing my attentions but I don’t like being too rigid, either, so I’m going to let it ride for a while. Therefore, my 2000 word a day target for the Rana book is unrealistic. I’m looking at doing a minumum of 500 words a day on each project. (I might adjust it upwards once other committments ease off). If I can manage something consistent, I’ll have two first drafts by the end of the year.

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How I did

July 3, 2009 //
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44,000 words. That’s not quite 2000 words a day – I did only 8000 words for the week, not 10,000. It wasn’t that I skipped a day, it was just that on a couple of days I didn’t quite manage 2000, and then couldn’t quite catch up for the rest of the week.

The writing itself began to improve later in the week, as plot lines and character motivations became clearer. Certainly, the instant I got to writing Rana’s first day (Jannin and Rana spend three days doing separate activities in the cursed palace before they reunite), I saw what Jannin was supposed to be doing on his own first day, and had to go back and fix that up.

This is by far the messiest first draft I’ve ever written, with notes to myself everywhere about changing scene order and deleting characters and switching outcomes. But then, I rather suspect I always forget how hard a first draft is, once I’ve done the second and then the last.

I also managed to write 6000 words on a different project. I don’t normally split my attention, but I figured if I wrote out what these other characters wanted to say, they would stop talking to me and let Rana and Jannin have a turn.

And my last writing-related activity for the week was doing the final edits to the first Rana book, to be published soon.

So in all, though I didn’t make my target word count, I had a pretty productive week. Next week, though, I’m looking forward to having a bit of a break.

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How I did

June 26, 2009 //
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I did my 2000 words a day this week, some days very easily, some days…not so much (wasn’t this meant to be fun?). I’m at 36,000 words and have moved into the second phase of the book, told from Rana’s POV. I was meant to get to 40,000 from Jannin’s POV before switching to Rana, but his part finished early. I’m not concerned – I skimped on some of his scenes (often because they were just going in very stupid directions), entirely skipped others as being too hard to write before I know Rana’s half of the story in detail, and also know there’s at least one more scene I have to add in, so he’ll easily make 40,000 on the second draft.

This is my first sustained experience in writing a sequel, and it’s been enlightening. I’m trying to keep developing characters but stay true to their personalities from the first book (due to be published in the next few months).

It’s been especially hard to do this with Jannin, who was the young wizard-villain in the first book. In the first book, he gets to literally pop in, flirt with our heroine Rana, say something enigmatic which not conincidentally moves the plot forward, and pop out. For a major character and plot-driver, he has little to say and little page time. As a POV character, he’s not nearly so much fun to write – turns out the guy’s got problems, who knew?

The other issue I’ve found has been in leaning too hard on the first book, especially in assuming knowledge of the relationship between Rana and Jannin. In this first draft for the second book, they barely interact, because, hey, the first book showed Jannin loves Rana and why, and her ambivalence about him, so no need to demonstrate it again…except for readers who won’t read that first book, of course! At the moment, they barely exchange two words before haring off to pursue their two different but intertwined narratives, so it would seem to new readers that a) Rana’s really mean to Jannin and b) she’s awfully keen to rescue him given how mean she is to him…

But that’s a goal for the second draft. For now, I’ve got another week coming up of 2000 words a day…

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How I did

June 20, 2009 //
2

Ah, the best laid plans…last week I blithely decided to do 2000 words a day and knock my first draft off by the end of July. This week, an unexpected technical writing contract popped up. Normally I am well able to fit the paying work into my day along with the fiction writing (which does pay, just not in still-able-to-eat amounts), but 1) it had an urgent deadline so required almost full-time attention, and 2) I had already made other commitments for the week. Therefore, the writing was sacrificed.

This is when my recent blatherings about how you can’t expect lots of money from writing fiction and anyway I don’t really want that for myself personally become a little thin. I’d love to be able to pick and choose my writing contracts, turn down these kind of high-stress but extremely boring jobs (it was more or less copy-and-paste work that had to be done for hours at a stretch to get it done on time) and accept only the ones which challenge me and bring me into researching a new area.

And if I’m dreaming along these lines, then why not say, I’d love to be able to stop the technical writing work altogther and concentrate solely on fiction (though, actually, I like doing technical writing and it gives me a break from fiction when fiction isn’t going well; it’s just these weeks, when the fiction writing gets completely shoved aside, that I dislike)? That’s not the way it works when you’re not an A-list writer – I don’t think it even works if you’re just a mid-list writer – and, hah, I’m not even on the list!

So anyway, I’ll try again next week, 2000 words a day. If something else unexpected pops up, I’ll still try for 500 words a day. I will get this bloody first draft (first! It’s freaking June and I haven’t finished the first!) done.

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How I did

June 12, 2009 //
1

I had a plodding week: pretty awful stuff that will need complete re-writing on the second draft, but I hit my word limit every day, for the first time in quite a while.

But I’m at 26,000 words. Keen regular eyes will note this is more than 500 words a day – yes, I’ve reverted back to the intensive 2000 words a day that worked so well for me last year. If I manage this rate, I’ll be done on this first draft by the end of July, including a week off for a visit home.

I decided to up my word target about mid-way through my working week. It wasn’t because I felt things were going well – as I said, I’m writing definite first draft garbage, just getting the shape of the story down on paper.

It was more because I felt that I had the time to do more than 500 words: after a very disruptive first half of the year, I was finally managing to sit down at my computer at 2pm for four hours of uninterrupted work.

[As followers of this chronicle will remember from last year, I am not a morning writer; I get errands, chores, and non-fiction work done in the morning, and then close the door and turn off the phone (and email) for the afternoon. I know loads of writers get up at the crack of dawn and plunge on in, but that doesn't work for me. You can pay attention to the way other writers write for clues on how to approach your own working habits, but that doesn't mean following the schedules that works for them will necessarily work for you.]

So I finally had the time, but I was not using that time; I was getting my minimum 500 words done and then giving up with a sigh of relief. But that’s not the way the word target works (again, for me; other writers do 500 polished words and can legitimately quit work for the day) – it’s supposed to be what I surpass, not what I aim for.

If I write only 500 words in four hours, they better damn well be final draft-quality words. On the other hand, if I’m producing first draft rubbish, I can push out 2000 words which are just as crappy as 500 words…

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