This was a month of editing: totally rewrote one story and started a simpler revision on a second. Editing drove my words/hours down, but I did achieve the mythical hour a day on average, although I didn’t quite succeed at writing every day. How was your January?
WORDS WRITTEN: 4371
HOURS SPENT WRITING: 32
WORDS/HOUR: 136.6
Here along the Gulf Coast, it doesn’t freeze very often, so when it does, we all run outside with our cameras to document the rare event. I’ve discovered that icicles make a really nice subject. The last time we had icicles, what caught my attention was the reflection of the trees inside the drops at the ends of the icicles. This time, finding the reflections didn’t interest me. What caught my attention instead was the rim of ice along the roofline.
To some extent, I think that writing is the same way. Even if two writers (or one writer at different times) started with the same story plot, characters, and theme, what catches their attention would be different, and they’d produce two different stories.
What caught your attention today?
I am very pleased that Perihelion Science Fiction has published my story “Clever Bubble.” You can find it here:
One of the fun bits of writing this story was designing the game that the aliens play with Will. I wanted to have something like soccer, but with four teams and played in three dimensions. (Actually, I had originally considered having eight teams, but it got too complicated.) Each team has their own goal (the arrows’ mouths) at one corner of a vertical square, and each team has their own ball (Will is the ball for his team). After each time a team scores by getting its ball into another team’s goal, the goals can be re-arranged to make it more difficult for a team to score where they need to. In order to win, a team has to have scored on all the other teams more recently than they have scored on it. So it’s a game of strategy as well as motion. Will, as an intelligent soccer ball, only figures out how to score and not how to keep score. But now you know how to do both!
I hope you enjoyed the story.
Words/hour was way up this month; I think that was due to writing a novel instead of short stories. I was doing a good job keeping up my writing streak until Christmas hit. I’m ready to start a new streak with the new year! How about you?
WORDS WRITTEN: 4823
HOURS SPENT WRITING: 12
WORDS/HOUR: 401.9
Although I did not participate in NaNoWriMo, I did start a new novel and write two and a half chapters this month. I’m pretty pleased with my stats, where I wrote every day, averaged more than an hour a day, and wrote at a pace that suggests I could write a novel a year.
WORDS WRITTEN: 8489
HOURS SPENT WRITING: 33.1
WORDS/HOUR: 256.5
To all those participating in National Novel Writing Month: good luck!
In spite of having a novel-length project ready to start, I will not be participating this year. This year is the first year I’ve tracked both words and hours, so I know that writing the 1700 words a day required for NaNo would be a full time job for me, and I already have a full time job [1]. Further, I know that I have never written that many words in a day, even when I was deeply involved in a project. So reaching the goal would require a radical change in my writing process, and it’s not a change that I either need or desire to make.
However, since it is National Novel Writing Month, I will be working on the novel-length project, plodding along at my 250 word/hour pace. I won’t be crossing the finish line with all the NaNo hares, but I hope to cross it eventually, turtle-style.
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[1] And I am very relieved that the government reopened so I could keep my job. If the government had stayed closed, I was planning on making NaNo my full time job and seeing how that worked out. I’m glad to not be doing that experiment.
I finished the first draft of the story I started last month and started editing it. I had hoped to be finished editing it by now; hopefully that will be done today.
WORDS WRITTEN: 2860
HOURS SPENT WRITING: 11.7
WORDS/HOUR: 244.4
I am very pleased that Goldfish Grimm’s Spicy Fiction Sushi has published a story of mine called “Have You Looked in a Mirror Lately?”. You can find it here:
http://www.goldfishgrimm.com/back-issues/issue-11-secrets-connections/looked-mirror-lately/
“Goldfish Grimm’s Spicy Fiction Sushi” is an awesome name for a magazine, don’t you think?
I hate it when this happens: My inner editor escaped from its box and started editing my current short work in progress … before my inner writer finished writing the darn thing.
Does this happen to anyone else?
I started a new short story, and the stats show it.
WORDS WRITTEN: 3735
HOURS SPENT WRITING: 13.3
WORDS/HOUR: 280.8
Space&Aliens 