Last week I talked about how my writing had been rejuvenated and that I had made some changes in the way I approached my writing. That sense of progress and accomplishment is still with me though I think it has been tempered ever so slightly.
A little while ago I set a goal for myself beyond my 500 words per day. I want to have a book in print in time for me to warrant a vendor’s table at ConCarolinas in 2012. When I set that goal I was looking at my two major Works In Progress and seeing them as getting close to being ready for emitting…or at least they would be ready by the end of the year. Given where my writing has been leading me I’m not sure I’ll be finished by the end of the year with either of them.
So where does that leave me? I’ll keep on working my 500 word per day goal and I am still working toward my goal of finishing a book for editing by the end of the year, but I have tempered my excitement a little. Talking to other writers I talk with I see how minimal my volume really is, but I am working at it and I will hit my goals.
I have one story that is over 51,000 words and another at more than 42,000. When one of them hits 80,000 I will look at whether or not it is ready for an ending and some serious editing. I have a goal…and I am making progress…the future is mine to conquer.
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Paula Tohline Calhoun
Eric-I think you are doing a fantastic job. Just writing consistantly is a major accomplishment! Don’t let yourself get hemmed in and/or trapped by the man-made concept of “time.” Read my post/poem “On Lying Down.” I’m following your progress and wish you all the best. Tweet me when you need a pep talk!@TheosTrek
Eric Swett
Thank you for the positivity. The time thing is really a bit artificial but its a goal to shoot towards. If I’m not ready then I won’t force the issue, but i’m hoping.
Aj b33m3R
“Eric-I think you are doing a fantastic job. Just writing consistantly is a major accomplishment!”
What she said. 8)
You don’t know the ending to your stories? I can’t do that. I have to know where I’m going when I write otherwise I’m off on a tangent, going in circles. When I plot out a story, the beginning is what sets me off and comes to fruition first, but then I jump to the ending and do a draft of that second. What I end up getting to when I fill in the middle bits isn’t always the same thing I drafted… HAH! like I’ve ever finished a novel! *)
Eric Swett
My problem is that I start out writing with a very very vague idea of where I want the story to go, but as I get writing I start considering other options, or I have a great idea that would change the way the ending would work. Its all a little ADD. I think part of why that happens is that I work on a couple of different pieces at once so the writing for all of them gets a little more drawn out, making my process a little more prone to the sort of organic changes that come about. I’ve been trying to be better about outlining and plotting ahead, but it never seems to work out.
Aj b33m3R
I have to focus on one story at a time. If another idea comes to me while working on something I just jot down the outline in a keynote file I call creative explorations (cause as writers we have to have fancy names for everything, can’t just call it story ideas or notes, it has to be something pompous! … maybe that’s just me.)
If I work on two things at once I find it harder for me to make the characters across the stories distinct, they tend to coalesce and become too similar.
I have at times completely dropped a story to work on another one that won’t get out of my head . This usually happens with short stories. I have to give my self at least 5 days of no writing to get the first story I was working on completely out of my head…
Eric Swett
For whatever reason I’m generally more comfortable writing multiple things at once. I’ve stopped writing something when I’m just not feeling it or I’ve super focused in on another piece if it is really pulling at me, but I’ve allways got a couple irons in the fire. I don’t hink I have the issue with my lead characters all starting to be the same, but it could be a blind spot of mine that I haven’t noticed and no one has bothered to point out.
If I gave myself five days of no writing I think my head would explode!