Much of today was spent either working on the rough draft of “Listening Post” or coming up with a new schedule for writing that should be of great benefit:

Several writers I follow all say that it’s best to work on multiple projects at once, and I agree with that.  It’s something I’ve done as a tactic rather than a long-term strategy.  I would write until stuck on something, then switch to something else, then go back to the first item, so on so forth.  There was never a plan involved.  It was just something that happened on the spur of the moment.

Starting Monday the plan is to have a rough draft to work on, a revision to work on, a research/outline project to work on, and my novel “Into the Wastes” to work on, with a set amount of hours devoted to each as the day progresses.  I’m not entirely sure which hours will be devoted to what yet, but for now the rough draft will be worked on first, followed by the revision of something previously written, then on to the novel work, and finishing with researching the next project.  I’m hoping to have a flow that will eventually go like so:

Short Story Writing:

Day One:

• Rough Draft: Story 1 (In this case, the already planned “A Gentle Breeze”)
• Revision: Story 0 (A previously written tale, such as “Ninja Mama”)
• Research/Outline: Story 2

Day Two:

• Rough Draft: Story 2 (Planned the day before)
• Revision: Story 1 (Rough draft written the day before)
• Research/Outline: Story 3

And so on, so forth.  Will it always work out like this?  Probably not.  Some rough drafts and revisions will take longer than a day to work on, especially tales in excess of 5,000 words.  It’ll be an interesting experiment, in any event.

Anyway, on to the numbers.  Hopefully early next week we’ll start seeing some “salable” numbers as revisions from this past week get finished:

• Nonfiction: 315
• Planning and outlining: 250
• Fiction: 900
• Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 4,368

Total Salable for Month: 000