Good Article

A friend pointed me towards this Huffington Post article by Gretchen Rubin. If this is exemplary of her other writing, you should all go over to her site and ignore mine for at least five years. Really. I should be this mature.

This week was a near-total bust in terms of my word count. I went through my old copy of the Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, looking up small circulation fantasy magazines, and marking the ones that are still in business. I got a little farther with a short story I’ve had in a notebook since last summer or so. I hauled myself back on the time management wagon. I read in my genre. All in all, a good week, but low on writing output. So I’m going back to Gretchen’s article to see what I can absorb.

Reading List

Remember reading lists? I loved them. One teacher dug up a huge one, just because she knew I would happily plow through the whole thing. Here’s my current list. I’m also looking at the site’s top ten picks for narrower audiences.

Happy Tuesday

I hope you all had as much fun this weekend as I did.

The teenaged writer I’m coaching told me he was thinking about self-publishing his short stories. I told him that the next step is not so much publishing a collection as it is submitting his best stories to genre magazines. I said that real-world feedback is important to his development as an author.

Or, really, into an author. I realized that I give this kid pretty good advice, and I should follow it myself.

Sea Change

6763 total, with 1169 fiction. Abysmal. I have been busy this week. I’ve also started …writing. As in, my characters are doing things and talking to each other. Their actions and interactions are clearly The Story, and not just me illustrating what they’re like and outlining what they’ll do. This process is slower than what I do when I’m trying to hit a quota. I’d still like to bump it up a level, but I have just enough sense to let myself feel my way into the new process, for once. I think being busy helped; charging the fences is more my usual style.

I have also started reading fantasy again. I know, what a great idea for a would-be fantasy author. You couldn’t keep me away from that section of the library when I was a kid and teenager, but then I went to college and got introduced to the textbook. Needy critters, them. I think my natural interest in reading has just about recovered. Again, I eased into it: I just finished a new one by one of my favorite YA fantasy authors, Robin McKinley. I liked it so much I wondered if I shouldn’t be aiming for that age level. Maybe. I may feel differently in a few months, or if, say, George R.R. Martin ever finishes the next installment in his Song of Ice and Fire series. No plug for you, George. I [SPOILERS] still don’t know how Dany’s doing, or what really happened to the Onion Knight (that wasn’t really his hand, was it?), or whether Tyrion has any hope of finding Tysha. I assume Jon Snow is fine, but I wouldn’t put anything past you, and it would still be nice to know what’s going on up at the Wall. Until I do, my crabbiness is the only endorsement you’ll get from me. [END SPOILERS]

Not that he’s reading this. Okay, everyone go out and find a copy of A Game of Thrones. Unless you’re easily made queasy, you’ll be glad you did.

Midweek

The midweek count is not looking good. I have done some useful things, and I have begun writing actual story text. I’m going to keep that up, and we’ll see where I am on Friday.

Goals and Groceries

I didn’t want to post today. I’m irritated with myself for coming so close and not quite getting there. I’m ready to be done with this very simple series of goals, so I can move on to something more interesting. My week is going to busy, so my fantasy of knocking it all out in one day is a tad unrealistic, but I’ll see what I can do. Right after I get back from the grocery store…

Close, but No Seegar

…not that I wanted a cigar, anyway. 12,291 is my word count total for the week, and 4,351 of that was background, character bios and scenes for my novel. So close. Not quite there, though, so I’ll give it one more week.

After that, I may try a story goal instead of word count. For example: a scene, one chapter of the novel, or a complete short story.

Genre Writer’s Resource

Someone in the Shelfari group turned me on to this site. There’s a hard edged, “this is how it is, kids,” feel to it. Works for me.

Motion; No Rudder

I’m having doubts about whether beating myself with the word count stick over and over is the best way to produce a novel. I’m not going cop out on the current goal, but I might just prove that one week (or two, I guess) really is all it takes. Meanwhile, I’m considering alternatives. My Shelfari writer’s group is still offering suggestions, and no one seems to think that discipline is a problem.

This morning, I started writing at 9:00, and let the cats out just an hour later. The destructive one distracted me several times, but I still hit my target by 11:30. So that wasn’t really a problem, either.

Figuring out how to direct my newly established productivity is going to take some thought. I suspect that I’ll experiment with several ideas before I find a groove that works for me. This will be fun; I’ll find out what kind of writer I am.

Friday Update

Total word count: 5,947. Fiction: 2,055. To meet the new goals, it would have to have been 10,000/5,000. So I’m about halfway there.

I’ve learned a couple things from comparing last week’s success with this week’s non-success: I really need to work in the mornings. For the past three days I’ve done something else first, and my subsequent performance has been awful. Also, I can’t let the cats out until I’ve finished. One of them is in training, and it takes about an hour of vigilance with the spray bottle before he’ll leave the curtains alone.  Destruction of home decor is distracting.