Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Another chapter down

Another little chapter bites the dust!

Polished off (see that says polished off not polished) chapter ten. I am not sure I liked the way it ended. Did not end with a bang nor even a crackle. More like a fizzle. But that is okay. I will fix it later, it was just important that I finished it. At this point I am wishing all I had to do was the novel. I would focus and finish that this week, but alas, tiz not to be (Forgive me, I was chanelling some dead writer) And you can't finish much by averaging 600 words a day. Snort. A chapter a week maybe which is about what I've been doing.

How many words do you average a day?

Didn't finish the flu article yesterday so must finish that up. Sort of ironic to be writing about colds and flues when I have one. Hee.

I keep thinking I should get a job. A writing job of some sort. I know, it's seems like I have enough on my plate and I do, but I need more money. The NWW doesn't pay a lot yet, the writing pays well, but frankly, I need something steadier. Hard to tell dh that I may or may not get a check this week. Or I may or may not get one next week either. Of course, if I sell a couple of fiction books it would be different. The old DH would know that every quarter I will get a bit of something.

I should sell another one to WD. One of the three I have sold to them, has been used three different times. I get money every time they use it. Nice, eh?

Okay, must run and get something done. Boy volunteers at zoo today.

3 comments:

Rachel Vincent said...
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Rachel Vincent said...

Let's try that again. Sorry.

How many words do we average per day? That question haunts me, because I keep thinking that I'd be a lot happier with myself if I were even a little bit consistent. During my first few rough drafts, I aimed for a chapter a day (3,000-4,000 words). But I can't do that seven days a week. Some days I can't get a thing done.

In my rush to finish my last rough draft, I actually wrote over 4,000-5,000 words a day for four straight days. I still don't know if they're any good, though, because I haven't looked at it since I finished it. I'm dreading that part.

As for rewriting? I'm slow. Waaaay too slow. Just a couple of chapters a day, because I agonize over it. I analyze my rhythm, exchanging words for synonyms I think flow better in the sentence.

The thing that's so fascinating about a writer's output is that the figures vary drastically from person to person, even among full-time, published authors. Some can really crank it out for months at a time, then have to take a month-long breather. Then others are slow and steady, but need far less rest.

And then there's Gena. I'm sure flames spout from the tip of her pencil as she hand-writes all those stories. And I bet she doesn't even notice. Or smell the smoke.

Cherlyn Michaels said...

I think that's truly admirable that you can do more than one writing project at a time. Maybe because I haven't had to do it (yet), it seems to me like it would be difficult to focus on more than one writing project. On the other hand, maybe it's like being in school and having 5 different subjects with 5 different papers to write, huh?