It's been exactly two months since my last writing update, so here's where things stand on Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the final title). Basically, I've produced nearly 19,000 additional words since then, huzzah!
Cranking the math and assuming sixty days since Sept 13, I've hit my personal 500-words-a-day quota 38 times. Actually, I know it's less than that, because I've had a lot of days when I've written more than 500 words, and there was one day where I cranked out more than 1500. I didn't get any work done during my vacation at the end of September, so I don't hold that against myself, but I do think I could have generally been more productive.
My problem tends to be, unfortunately, my tendency to time-waster addiction, which was bad enough before I added the Facebook Scrabble-game "Words With Friends" to my list of Things I Do When I Should Be Writing. But I've started the last week on a new way of doing things.
For years, I've been getting up on weekdays (unless I'm on vacation) at 6:00 am, because my shift at work starts at 7:30. Usually I'd take a leisurely time having breakfast, noodling about online, and then getting ready for work. What I'm doing now, though, is getting up at 6:00...and writing for at least half an hour. With that little distraction going on, I find that hitting my 500 words is, well, really easy.
Of course, the big lesson here is that productivity tends to soar when I finally close out the Web browser. Imagine that! The Internet can reduce productivity! Oh, well. I'm turning off the browser more consistently now. Next will be establishing a time limit for browsing at night.
As for the book itself, it's going pretty well. As far as I can tell, from the rough outline in my head, I'm about to enter the book's third (and final) act. I've got some revelations to drop, villains to unmask, and some set-up of future books in this series to do. Yes, I'm thinking 'series' here. The story I'm writing now implies a huge world -- a Galaxy, actually -- and years' worth of stories. I actually had a brainstorm the other day, one of those moments when The Muse decides that I've been behaving myself and thus decides to throw me a bone, in the form of a throwaway line that I immediately recognized as a possible key to the entire rest of the series. Those moments are gold, folks. Gold, Jerry, gold!!!
When this draft is done, my plan is to let it sit for a few months and not look at it, before I sit down to re-read it and start the editing process. The question I'm starting to wonder is, what do I do in the meantime? Not write anything? or go the Anthony Trollope route, and plow right into the next book? I've had an idea for a fantasy novel rattling about in my head for several years now...and in fact, the only reason I'm not writing that book is that the idea for this one has been rattling around my head longer.
Anyway, that's where I am. Back to Princesses In SPACE!!! (again, not the real title).
1 comment:
IMO, you should write the next book, or at least start it. If you get finished with it, or too stuck, then reread book 1 in its entirety, NOT editing it. Then start editing it.
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