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Writing in Public: Day 09, Month 01

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The rough draft of “Sublease” is finished!  It took a few more hours, but with around 5,100 words put in today the total is right at 10,000 words, which was on the low end of my estimate.  Once I begin the rewriting phase of it, I imagine this story will actually grow a little bit longer.  Working through the rough draft gave me several ideas that should help make the plot and overall theme more coherent, and the pacing should be better.  This is a story that I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years now, so it’s exciting to see it finally getting done.

I didn’t meet any of my other goals for the day, unfortunately.  But, 5,100 words for a single day is not bad.  Not quite what I wanted, but infinitely better than the first few days of this “Writing in Public” challenge.

Tomorrow the focus will be on revisions for some other stories, so hopefully the “salable” number will be on the rise, especially considering there are a few deadlines that have to be met by the 28th of the month.

  • Nonfiction: 000
  • Planning and outlining: 000
  • Fiction: 5,100
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 24,219

Total Salable for Month: 968

Writing in Public: Day 08, Month 01

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Today was another good day, although I’m still not meeting all four goals.  On the rough draft side of things, I met my goal of getting the first half of “Sublease” written.  The story is now at its midpoint, and I plan to write through to the ending tomorrow.  This rough draft is about as rough as it gets, to the point it’ll have to be rewritten entirely.  But, it’s helping me see what will work, what won’t work, and what sort of pacing the story will have.  That alone makes it worth my while.

I wanted to edit the flash fiction piece “Alien Concept”, but wasn’t able to.  Instead, I shifted focus back onto “Ninja Mama” (Henceforth referred to as “A Mother’s Duty”) and reworked the final draft a bit.  There’s still a tiny amount of work I want to do on it, but it will be going out this week for sure.

That’s all for today.  We’ll see what tomorrow holds!

  • Nonfiction: 178
  • Planning and outlining: 1,000
  • Fiction: 5,300
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 19,119

Total Salable for Month: 968

Writing in Public: Day 07, Month 01 (Attack of Ninja Mama)

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Day one into the new plan, and already things have been derailed!  Well, not quite.  There is a good reason for a couple of things not being completed.

First order of business was to work on the rough draft for “A Gentle Breeze”, which turned out great.  A 3,900 word rough draft was finished in just over two hours, right before lunch.  Following lunch I got to work on the revision for “Ninja Mama”, which is a horrible name and not the final product name by any stretch of the imagination.  Of course, with that said, a quick Google search game up with this gem of an ad from Nissin as the first image hit:

Who needs swords when you have dual rolling pin action?

Who needs swords when you have dual rolling pin action?

Ok, moving on… “Ninja Mama” has been completed.  It took a few revisions, but the final product has come in at 968 words.  I want to read over it one more time and will probably do that tomorrow, but then it’s out the door into the submission pile.

On the research and outline front I went back over my notes for “Sublease” and have a pretty good feel for the going into the rough draft writing tomorrow morning.  “Sublease” is going to be anywhere from 9,000 to 10,000 words, so I assume that will take two days to accomplish.  Tomorrow I’ll work on it until I get at least 5,000 words finished, and the rest will follow Wednesday.

My task for the “Into the Wastes” today was to read over my first chapter, analyze it, and compare it with the opening chapters to some of my favorite epic fantasy books.  I have postponed this until tomorrow afternoon, and there is good reason for this.  We’re due up to six inches of snow tonight, so shoveling is in the cards for tomorrow at some point.  Odds are good I won’t be in much of a writing mood after completing that task, so a relaxing late afternoon of reading should fit the bill.

Anyway, on to the numbers!  With this one day I’ve effectively doubled my fiction output for the month.  Here’s hoping tomorrow is equally productive, if not more so:

  • Nonfiction: 675
  • Planning and outlining: 000
  • Fiction: 6,451
  • Salable words: 968

Total Fiction for Month: 13,819

Total Salable for Month: 968

Writing in Public: Day 06, Month 01

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Today was a very productive day for fiction writing.  I finished up with the “Listening Post” short story.  The rough draft, anyway.  The revision will be complete before the week is out, and hopefully it will be submitted by the weekend along with a few other tales.

Tomorrow begins a new week and a new experiment in writing that was outlined in this yesterday’s Writing in Public.  Expect the numbers in all four categories to rise on a (hopefully) daily basis!  I also want to start posting some snippets of the different stories as they are worked on, specifically to show the evolution from rough draft to final product.  To use a movie industry term, a lot gets left on the cutting room floor.

On to the numbers!

  • Nonfiction: 516
  • Planning and outlining: 000
  • Fiction: 3,000
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 7,368

Total Salable for Month: 000

Writing in Public: Day 05, Month 01

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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

Writing in Public: Day 04, Month 01

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Today was another day marked with more planning, outlining, and research than with actual writing.  I was able to begin the rough draft of “Listening Post.”  The first page is written, and I have a pretty good idea of where I want to go with the tale, at least from the perspective of the first draft.  Revision is where the story’s framework really coalesces for me, so I’m looking forward to getting started on that as soon as possible.

While out shoveling snow I spent a good bit of time thinking about “Listening Post” and “A Gentle Breeze” and I’ve come to the conclusion that “Listening Post” stands a better chance of fitting the more traditional superhero mold that I’m assuming Penumbra is looking for.  On the one hand the main character, Listener, is not going to be your typical superhero who’s capable of duking it out with a volcano despite never having been to the gym nor having any kind of flame retardant clothing.  He’s more of a desk jockey, his abilities tailored less to combat and more to behind-the-scenes intelligence gathering.  On the other hand, he is part of a team that does include the more rough-and-tough superheroes we all know and love, such as Pugilist and Shootist (He’s a John Wayne fan, as you can probably tell).

Anyway, on to the breakdown:

  • Nonfiction: 240
  • Planning and outlining: 825
  • Fiction: 300
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 3,468

Total Salable for Month: 000

Writing in Public: Day 03, Month 01

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Today was not very productive from an actual fiction-writing standpoint.  I spent a good bit of the day reading articles on writing technique from Superhero Nation, a website devoted to the writing of superhero novels, short stories, and comics, and also writing in general.  I had gone with the intent to look up some common tropes of superhero stories to either play off of or avoid entirely, and ended up reading a bunch of articles on general writing techniques.  It was well spent.

The reason for the superhero interest has to do with Penumbra‘s superhero theme this month.  There were a few different ideas floating around in my head, and two coalesced rather nicely today.  The outlining is ready to the point that I should be able to get rough drafts for both finished tomorrow.  They’ll be sloppy (Rough drafts always are for me), but they should be finished and ready for revision Saturday morning.

It’s obvious that all of my writing goals won’t be met for the week, but there should be five stories finished.  And the number of stories I wanted to write was five, so…

Anyway, today’s numbers:

 

  • Nonfiction: 206
  • Planning and outlining: 2,806
  • Fiction: 000
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 3,168

Total Salable for Month: 000

Writing in Public: Day 02, Month 01

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Started my writing at 12:00 PM today.  Normally I like to get writing started at 10:00, get a solid two or three hours in before lunch, and then hit it again until dinner.  The “hit it again until dinner” also didn’t happen.  With the bad weather rolling in, it’s been a busy day of running more errands and gathering firewood.  No excuse for someone trying to make a career of writing.  Writing time is something I need to guard jealously and insure that only writing is done during those specified blocks.  That is something I will implement first thing tomorrow.  10:00 – 12:00, then 1:00 – 5:00, or something to that effect.

With that said, there was some productivity.  The rough draft of “Alien Concept” is finished, clocking in at approximately 1,050 words.  The rough draft of the Kazka “Journeys” theme story is also finished.  It’s another flash fiction piece, and it will need quite a bit of work to get it up to where I’m satisfied with it.  On the planning and outlining front, I’ve figured out a starting point and protagonist for the “Songs of Fate” story that I’ll begin actually writing on Friday.  That is for the Crossed Genres‘ music themed issue.

  • Nonfiction: 211
  • Planning and outlining: 481
  • Fiction: 1,218
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 3,168

Total Salable for Month: 000

Writing in Public: Day 01, Month 01

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Well, today turned out to have less time devoted to writing than I had originally planned.  I started writing at around 10:00 AM, and at Noon I was slammed with a seemingly endless supply of errands that had to be run.  The good news is it has freed my day up for tomorrow.  Once I sit down at 10:00 AM tomorrow I should be clear to write well into the afternoon.

The other good news is the two hours I was writing fiction turned out to be fairly productive.  I finished the rough draft of “Fallout Ariel” and came up with a plot for another flash fiction piece with the working title of “Alien Concept.”  I’m hoping to get a rough draft of that out tomorrow.

Here is the breakdown for writing today.  Note that both the “Fiction” and “Planning and outlining” categories will likely be edited tomorrow, as I tend to write just before bed.

  • Nonfiction: 840
  • Planning and outlining: 353
  • Fiction: 1,950
  • Salable words: 0

Total Fiction for Month: 1,950

Total Salable for Month: 0

Update: Wrote another 300 or so words, the opening page of the “Alien Concept” rough draft.  It’s been added to the numbers above, bringing total fiction for the day up to approximately 1,950.  Note that these are estimates, as my rough drafts tend to be written by hand.  Once I get into the typed revisions and final drafts, the numbers will become more exact.

 

Writing in Public Challenge

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Dean Wesley Smith has taken on an interesting challenge that I will soon take up myself.  He is publicly displaying the amount of writing he does in a given day, with month-to-month totals given for fiction writing and non-fiction writing.

For me this challenge will be to hold myself accountable.  2013 was a productive (If not profitable) year for my writing, and my plan is for 2014 to be at least ten times more productive and, hopefully, profitable.  There are ambitious goals that must be met.

Expect my first post tonight!  I’ll probably break it up into three categories for word count: nonfiction, planning and outlining, fiction writing, and salable words:

  • Nonfiction: Posts here or anything else written that pertains to the business of writing, such as correspondence, query letters, submission letters, etc.
  • Planning and outlining: anything from simple, jotted-down notes to full-blown outlines.
  • Fiction writing: from rough draft to finished product.
  • Salable words: the finished product.

I have some numbers from January that I should post up that are pretty interesting.  With the six stories completed in January, the amount of total words written when compared with the amount of finished product was a ratio of roughly 3-to-1.  So, the next time I write out a 5,000 word story I should plan for 15,000 words to be written.

How does it work for you, as a writer?  Can you bang it all out in one go and send it off for acceptance, or do you need to get something – anything – written and then revise and rewrite?