Hello, writers. As has been our tradition for lo, these almost-five years, there will be no Write On! on Thanksgiving, which is next Thursday. So we'll meet again on December 5, when hopefully everyone will have met their NaNoWriMo writing goals.
If you're shooting for 50,000 words, you're in good shape if you've hit 35k by midnight tonight.
These are the dkos writers who have stated their intentions of going for the gold this month, along with some progress reports as of last Thursday, November 14. The figure in italics is their last reported word count/accomplishment:
terrypinder 25,400
archer070 (goal is 100k)
WiseFerret 14,189
Emmet all but ch 1 of ms revised (goal is revise ms, plus 15k, plus query 20 agents)
Diana in NoVa
Orinoco 26,747
True North (goal is 20k)
wonderful world about 11,000
NonEuclidian about 31k
Write on!
One disadvantage to the writing-flat-out approach, at least for some of us, is that it doesn't reward editing as you go. And I think most of us edit as we go. Anyway, I do. Do you?
I tend to start out each day's writing (usually, not always) by rereading the previous day's drivel, and making some changes. Sometimes this results in a cut of a couple hundred words. It seldom results in anything being added.
Somewhere around the 25,000 to 35,000 word mark, I usually stop, print the whole thing out, reread, and make plans for the remainder of the book. More often than not, these new plans result in cutting the last two or three thousand words, because the book was heading off in the wrong direction when I stopped. (That's why I stopped.)
I don't think I knew this until somewhere around my 8th or 9th completed manuscript, though. (Yeah, I've completed about as many manuscripts as I've sold. Ouch. Let's not think about that. YMMV.)
So, yeah, as ever: It's all about learning your own process. And then relearning it with each manuscript.
Tonight's totally random challenge:
Write a scene. Any scene. Set anywhere, about anything. But:
- it must include a phone booth (the old-fashioned kind)
- it must contain the line “The lard works in mysterious ways.”
Try to limit yourself to 100 words.
Write On! will be a regular weekly diary (Thurs 8 pm ET) until it isn't.
Before signing a contract with any agent or publisher, please be sure to check them out on Preditors and Editors, Absolute Write and/or Writer Beware.