Category Archives: The Writing Life

A guest post by James Wharton.

2148. That’s the number of words I wrote yesterday. If I can do that every day for a week—let’s see, that’s 15,036 words. If I do that four weeks in a row, that’s 60,144 words, almost enough for a novel. So there you have it, a short course in how to set goals.

The catch is I neglected to tell you I only wrote 300 words the day before. And the day before that, I produced only 100 or so words. So what is the total word count for the last three days? 2548. That equates to 849 words per day. That’s still a lot, or is it? How many words should I write every day? And, oh by the way, how many will I write today since I have what I refer to as a “work hangover,” a yucky, listless, energy-devoid state from working too hard the previous day. Of course, I must write this article as I committed to a deadline, but usually, one of those “days after” means I will get little to nothing written that day. You see the problem. In four days, I will have written at a rate of 637 words per day. Is that enough?

So what should I have done? How many words should I write a day? How many days a week should I write? How many books per year should I produce? Welcome to the tricky world of goal setting. It is world many of us inhabit. We must complete X-number of tasks by a certain time, get so many sales each month, drive so many miles per day and so on. For most of our lives, we are in some sort of goal-based environment.

Several years ago I participated in NaNoWriMo, the quest to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. I did it. I learned that I could indeed write that many words, but also learned that is not the way I want to write. Yes, it was grueling but fun, and I felt good about hitting the 50,000 word goal, but not so proud of what I produced. I spent the next eight months completely re-writing it. Out of that exercise came The Destiny Project, the novel that is my best-seller.

Depending on who you listen to, it seems that the general consensus is that 1500 words a day is a respectable amount. Of course that comes with a ton of provisos. Stephen King may write 15,000 words a day or more for all I know. John Banville, one of my favorite authors, says he writes 1500 words per day on his Benjamin Black series, however, not nearly as many on his regular novels. If you’ve ever read a Banville novel, you know better than to sit down and get comfortable without a dictionary at your side. His regular novels are truly works of art and I can’t imagine Banville crafting such a book without many hours laboring over the dictionary and thesaurus. I have no idea how many words per day he grinds out on one those masterpieces, but I can’t imagine it is more than a few hundred.

Stephen King seems to have the ability to write spontaneously without the need for a lot of re-writes, but in view of his mammoth size books, I can’t believe he works anywhere near as hard as I must to produce half or probably even less the number of words he does. And there’s another proviso to the 1500 word per day goal. 1500 words is a gross amount. It’s what you put down before you revise, rewrite, delete paragraphs or pages, etc. etc. Personally, I do a lot of rewrites and revisions. Every time I re-read my draft, I find things I need to change or could have written better. Although my publisher did edit my two published books, I don’t use an editor on my self-published books because of the prohibitive cost. But let me tell you, editing your own work is difficult if not impossible.

The point is, after the revising, rewriting and editing is completed, your net words per day will drop dramatically, perhaps to only a few hundred.

Another proviso is the amount of uninterrupted private time you devote to writing. Writing is a time-intensive, energy demanding, solitary activity. Do you have a space where you write? Do you have a regular time when you write? I am fortunate to have a studio where I can cut off the world and its noises and other interruptions. Whatever you may have available, make it as “private” as possible and write at a regular time on writing days. Interruptions dramatically impact your productivity.

Another proviso is how far along you are in the writing experience. That also impacts your productivity. Your ability and speed will differ substantially if you’ve written fifty thousand words, two hundred and fifty thousand words, or a million words.

When I write a novel, I set my goal at 1500 words per day and 5 days per week. Obviously, from my opening paragraph, I don’t necessarily achieve that goal every day or week. But I consider it a good day if I produce 1500 words that, while still needing revision and editing, are probably solid enough to work as part of the book. That doesn’t mean they absolutely will. I’ve cut complete sections (1500 or more words) many times. It’s not right until it’s right, and you can only hope the reader will feel that way too.

The bottom line is that writing is a creative process and setting an absolute word per day goal, (the best measure of productivity) is probably impossible. That is why goal setting with writing is an art, not a science. So here is what I suggest:

Have a specific place to write-one that is quiet and where you won’t be interrupted for a reasonable span of time. And turn off the cell phone.
Set a daily word per day goal that is reasonable (achievable) for you. Decide how many days a week can you will work? Five days a week may or may not be realistic, but that is the number I use. That goal should be a comfortable number dependent on how well and how fast you write and what you feel works for you. This is a gross number as you will need to revise, rewrite and do a final edit later. The important point is to be faithful to your words per day and work days per week goals. If you don’t reach the words per day goal today, don’t try to do more tomorrow to catch up with your overall five day goal.
Set a time for completion of your overall project. I find that my novels generally take a year to write (Approximately 75,000-85,000 words.) Obviously I don’t achieve a gross word per day goal of 1500 words per day. Life has its interruptions. I began writing The Destiny Project II early last year when my mother became seriously ill. I spent a lot of time visiting her out of state and her illness was so disruptive I couldn’t go on with writing that particular book. (I am again working on it.) However, I began writing another book to fill my idle hours. Out of that came Delirium, my newest novel.

Life and disruptions happen, but always stay focused on achieving your daily and weekly writing goals. Execution is the most important part of goal setting—SO DO IT!!

The main thing about writing is to have as much fun as you can and work at a pace that is comfortable and pleasant. Set your word per day and days per week goals and then a completion date for your project. Above all, adhere to a regular schedule and then judge your performance. How many words did I write this week? My goal was 1,000 words per day at five days per week. Did I write 5,000 gross words this week? Did I write 20,000 gross words this month?

After several months working your established schedule, you will have structure and discipline and be able to predict when your project will be complete–assuming no outside interference.

James Wharton’s Bio:
James Wharton is a full time writer with two published and eight self-published books. His most recent novel, Delirium, was published in February and his coming novel, The Destiny Project II, is due out in the Fall of 2014.

Web site: jameswharton.net

Email: jameswharton1@aol.com

Meeting Summer Goals (or Not)

June 16, 2014

fictorians

First Drafts Guest Posts Motivation Writing Tools No Comments

Lou's kink-tailed cat — Lou’s kink-tailed cat

A guest post by Lou Berger.

Summer is a fantastic time, depending on your particular situation, to knock out some writing assignments. I set goals, myself, that are frequently too aggressive. “If I can write 5,000 words per day, I can have this middle grade novel knocked out in TWELVE DAYS!”

I then hop about, making fist pumps and hooting, which frequently frightens the kink-tailed cat into yawning and turning over.

Then I sit at the computer and open up my manuscript to the place I left it: the blank screen, the header, the ominous “about xxx words” at the top.

Then I check Facebook. I mean, seriously, one has to make sure nobody is in need of witty retorts before settling down to some AWESOME writing, right? I whip through the latest posts, make my snarky comments, then, with a flourish, close out the Facebook application entirely.

WTF?! That took TWO hours?!

Fine. Log out of the Internet, open up the manuscript again, stare at the xxx word count.

In a flurry of activity, I bang out the opening paragraph, putting in that necessary “hook” to grab the reader, maybe a multi-armed alien wielding a blaster in each six-fingered hand, complicated technology spilling around its green, malformed body. Strike that. Two arms (we have human readers, after all, and we can’t be TOO weird) and a six-gun in each hand, mowing down the inbred members of Black Bart’s gang. Dammit! That’s a Western!

Delete. Delete…delete.

Grr. Another wasted hour.

Hitting your goals requires focus and discipline. Try different times of the day for your writing until you strike one that fits your circadian rhythm. Some people can only write when the day’s chores are done and silence descends upon the world in the late evening darkness. Some can only write early, when everybody else is asleep, in the pre-dawn darkness, when the remnants of sleep haven’t quite left our brains and our internal editor is still slumbering, damn his scaly hide. Others need the noise and bustle of a coffee shop and the myriad of goings-on to provide a white-noise-esque background to settle down the creative parts of the writing brain.

Choose your best time and location, and make it a goal to be consistent. 100 words a day, every day, beats the guy who writes 2,000 words in one sitting once every month. Consistency is key, and giving yourself permission to write utter crap as a first draft is one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn in my long journey to becoming an author. Letting your editor mumble into your ear while you write is certain death and doom to any project you embark upon. She (he) is not cognizant of the freedom required to write down utter dreck, but wants it picture-perfect on the FIRST try!

Ain’t nobody got time fo’ that.

My goals are to write consistently this summer, to carve off reasonable chunks of word products in relaxed sittings that, hopefully, happen once or twice a day. To focus on ignoring the snarky comment quotient in my Facebook pages. And to get this damned middle-grade novel DONE, at least in first draft form, no later than 6/15. I have an editor who wants to see the whole manuscript and she’s been SO patient with me. She deserves better.

What about your goals? Write me and tell me what they are at Lou@LouJBerger.com.

Lou Berger Bio:
Lou Berger is a Denver writer who lives with three kids, three Sheltie dogs and a kink-tailed cat. He’s unsure of the cat’s motives but permits cohabitation. His blog can be found at www.LouJBerger.com.

1796 Days to Success

June 14, 2014

Quincy J. Allen

Business Motivation Publishing Quincy Allen Self-Awareness The Writing Life 1 Comment

It’s been 1796 days since I turned my back on Corporate America.

Okay, okay, so it turned its back on me. I got laid off from an IT job back on July 15^th, 2009. Some days later, I woke up with an epiphany: I could either A) go back to the corporate world and be miserable for the rest of my life or B) I could do what I always wanted with this existence and take a shot at a writing career, risking the very real possibility of dying as a starving artist, but a happy one.

This month, the Fictorians are doing a sort of mileage-check on the goals we set back in January. We’ll be doing a wrap-up in December (for which I’ll be the cat-herder), but I wanted to focus on what’s happening this June. It’s a HUGE month for me. In it, I got my first pro contract for a short story and I got back the edits from a publisher who has picked up Chemical Burn (my first novel and a finalist in the Colorado Good Fiction contest back in 2010). But the biggest news is that I had not one but two titles come out on June 11^th.

The big one for me is Out Through the Attic, a short story collection that includes some of the best stories I’ve had published since I set out on this journey almost five years ago. It’s a cross-genre smorgasbord of science fiction, steampunk, paranormal, and fantasy shorts that I hope people come to love. The folks over at 7DS Books were interested in picking it up, so now I have the opportunity to share it with the rest of you. They liked it so much that they asked me to write a novel for them, which should be out by late summer or early fall.

The big news for my imprint, RuneWright LLC, is the fourth volume of Penny Dread Tales, namely Perfidious and Paranormal Punkery of Steam. It’s a journey through the darker byways of steampunk, with a host of demons and necromancers, where heroes and villains get their hands—and even their souls—just a bit sullied. On top of the fourth installment coming out and because the PDT series has gone so well, K.J. Anderson over at WordFire Press wants to do a “Best of PDT,” which I hope to see in print by early fall.

And all of this in June.

So, how did this happen?

Ultimately, the answer isn’t an easy one. In order to get here, a writer has to be willing to sacrifice… at least most of us, anyway. Some get lucky and land a big book deal right out of the gate. But most writers, the ones you love, worked their fingers to the bone for years in order to put your favorite novel on your bookshelf. There’s the long hours, the working a day job (or two of them), with writing and editing and conventions and social media and everything else that goes with running a sole proprietorship as a writer.

That’s the answer, by the way. Every writer you know is running a business—often times all alone or with the support of a short list of people who believe in them (or at least tolerate the madness that is writing). I think that’s what you have to be prepared to do if you’re going to set your feet upon the path of “writer.” And I say the following with a great deal of humility and respect: if you’re not willing to sacrifice for years, you should save yourself the trouble and get out of this business now, because the odds are you have three or five or ten years of grinding away, day after day, in your future.

Either you’re in it for the long haul, or you’re losing time with your loved ones for little or no reason.

I can say this, however. Inertia is one of your best allies. If you keep grinding… keep writing… keep submitting… keep getting one rejection letter after another until things start to pop for you, then the odds are that you are going to make it… in one form or another. There are varying degrees of success, and I’ve set my sights upon snow-birding in a small home in an equatorial region, but the truth is that you just need to keep at it, every day like it’s your job… because it is your job.

Make that choice with both conviction and open eyes, and you almost can’t miss. I pretty much bet my house on it. I have a long way to go, and it’s my hope that more and more people buy the books that I put out there into the world. The more they do, the closer I get to my own dream, and the easier it will be for me to cut out the other two jobs I work and focus on my writing. I want to give you all two books a year, and twenty or thirty short stories on top of that. Each year, every year, for the rest of my life.

That’s what it is to be a writer… of hoping that your writing gets good enough and is well received enough to allow you to give everything you have to the people, the readers, who help you maintain the madness of writing.

Now go write something. Or read something. This is the best business in the world, and each and every one of you has your part to play in it.

7 Ways to Score with Your Goals

June 13, 2014

Ace Jordyn

Ace Jordyn Craft & Skills Goals Motivation Self-Awareness Self-Motivation The Writing Life No Comments

We all set writing goals, but being able to achieve them means we need to understand how we work and how to make our goals work. Here are seven things I find helpful:

1) dress properly
You don’t wear a winter parks in +40 weather so why would you wear the editor’s hat when creative juices are running high? Stay immersed in your world and tell the story. Story structure, world building issues, exposition issues, line edits – all these ‘imperfections’ should be dealt with in the revision and final editing stages.

2) flip flops or hiking boots?
Do you get a better work out strolling on a beach or hiking up a steep mountain? Or a little of both like setting a large goal of one novel a year with smaller goals of 2,000 words a week? Know what motivates you and know that there is much flexibility in how you reach your goals. For example, you may only be able to write a few hundred words a day but if you set aside a weekend every month or two as a writing weekend, you can more easily reach your goals.

3) befriend change
Life happens. Rethinking a concept happens. Writer’s block happens. We get thrown off our goals and every doubt we ever had about being a writer sets in. So never cower before change. Understand why the change has happened. If it’s writer’s block, perhaps there’s something you haven’t thought through well enough. Sometimes our characters take the story in a different direction and we must rethink it. Illness strikes, work changes, any number of things can happen to throw us off our goal. And as with point #2, you may need to decide if it’s time to wear flip flops or hiking boots for a while. But remember, befriending change isn’t permission to procrastinate because goals, like business plans, are moving targets.

4) become a guru
When you are at your paying job, you aren’t in a position to write your story. Conversely, teach yourself and others that your writing time is a job not to be interrupted. Eliminate distractions like phones, emails and social media. You need to focus and to be in your groove, so become your own guru and facilitate channeling your own creativity. Our brains like routine so find something that works for you: meditate, choose background music that inspires creativity, have a special cup of tea and set a specific time for writing.

5) even a sloth is accomplishes something
We write about life, not directly perhaps, but all we experience and observe is translated into our stories. The themes in our stories are our ruminations about how we see and understand things. When telling a story, we sometimes need to pause and to consciously or subconsciously think through those themes and their implications. Down time can be problem solving time and sometimes, it’s just a need to recharge your batteries for the next burst of creative energy.

6) let your fingers do the talking
Fingers on key board – need we say more? Yes for what happens when the fingers and brain aren’t quite connecting? Try it the old fashioned way for a bit and use a pen and paper. There is something to be said for the older, slower method of writing. The hand and brain connect at a different speed (generally slower) and there something more methodical, more organic about the process. Sometimes when I do this, I write about things unrelated to the story but which, on some level, I needed to say or think about. Free style writing, whether by hand or keyboard, can loosen writing blocks and free up creative energy. But truly, write your story one paragraph at a time, one chapter at a time and soon, you’ll have reached your goal. If you’re not trying, it isn’t happening.

7) go play!
Life happens and we need it to happen. We are complex creatures needing inspiration, family and friends. So make time to play with others – and to do the dishes! Never feel guilty about having to do so unless you let it shamelessly distract you from your goal. Writing time for many of us is a form of play time so embrace it as such. For many of us, writing is play time for our creative spirit. Embrace it. Love it. In doing so, you’ll make those around you understand how important it is for you, the creative artist, to have this time. Your writing goals will be more easily met if your family and your creative spirit in you aren’t neglected.

Permission to play! Now, that sounds like fun!