I am nearing the end of my current book, the 4th in the WebMage series. The contract calls for a novel of 90,000 words and I hit 70,001 today. From past experience I can say that it is very likely that the next 19,999 words will be done in 5-8 writing days. Loosely, the middle of next week. I feel light and free and happy.
Yesterday I did not. That's because I had more than 20,000 words left to go, and that made me feel heavy and bound and bummed, because the book was taking forever to write. 69,999 to 70,001 is a two word difference. It's also a waypoint and a benchmark and the difference between almost done and never going to get there.
Assuming that I finish before the end of February this novel will have taken me 6 months to write. Three years ago that would have seemed blazingly fast to me because it was taking me about a year to draft a novel at the time. Today it feels slow. My last four books took 7 months, 6 months, 5 months, and 6 months (with almost 2 months off in the middle) respectively. I was shooting for 4 months on this one and taking half again that long feels like a small failure.
Those are my numbers games for the week*. What numbers games are you playing?
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Those and the little mental ticker that's counting how long it's been since I said I'd get the next installment of the research post written...bleah.
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Wow, that sounds familiar. I just hit 76,000 words for my first novel with a goal of 90,000-100,000. A part of me was jumping up and down since that’s the most I’ve ever written. Another part of me was swearing because I still had so much left to do. It does look like It will take me about 10 months from the conception of the idea to a revised draft.
I guess that’s not bad for writing part-time, but another part of me reads Jay Lake’s blog and freaks out that I can’t write that much in a couple of weeks. It’s hard to remember that every writer has his or her own process, and that there isn’t a “right” way to do this.
For the love of the FSM, don't compare your wordcount to Jay's. He's way the hell out at the end of the bell curve on production. Heck, I'm pretty far out on the bell curve and I can barely even see Jay from where I sit.
I just hit 52k for the year. I'm behind. I feel horrible. :(
52k in 6 weeks is nothing to sneeze at. What matters is that they're 52k good words. :)
I know that I shouldn't worry about how productive other authors are. I just get frustrated when other life things get in the way of writing time. I get jealous of other writers who can pump out that many words and still take care of everything else in their lives.
Michael, I keep telling myself that very same thing. Now, honestly, what I wrote yesterday deserves to be thrown into an incinerator...The rest I'm happy with.
My goal for the year is same as last year - 150k. Last year I made 130k.
My goal is a novel written and revised per year until my daughter is in school full time. Then I would like to increase that a bit. Of course, it also depends on how many non-fiction books I'm working on that year.
Michael, it's not so much that you absolutely shouldn't compare yourself to other authors in terms of production, that can actually be an effective way of keeping yourself motivated. It's just that you should be very careful which authors you compare yourself to. Jay is an outlier in terms of production. So is Elizabeth Bear. So am I.
One novel every 10-15 months seems to be pretty close to the standard, and it often takes longer than that for people with other day jobs, like being the at home parent.
Kelly,
Thanks. I’m usually fine. It was just hard reading about super-productive authors while I was having trouble getting writing time. Lucky for me, I have a smart wife who reminds me that raising a child with disabilities, planning a conference, belonging to multiple organizations for people with disabilities, taking care of the house, and co-writing a nonfiction book might make it difficult at times to produce huge word counts on a novel. :)
Of course, Bear also beats herself up about not being productive enough.
I was counting by pages. I reached page 400 when I realized something was drastically wrong.
The fix needed to start at page 250.
I was not a happy bunny.
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