Month: April 2018

I revised a single chapter yesterday.

That’s not much considering what I intended. Saturday’s are notoriously full, usually consuming my entire day, so for what it’s worth, I’m happy to at least have shown up. The problem is, it throws off my groove. I have to get myself back into the game.

On the other hand, I’ve got some new ideas for The Unresting as I near the end of its production.

So I’m extending the number of days I’ll work on The Unresting, and currently plan on finishing revision by Monday. That gives me two days, planning for no interruptions (I should plan for them, but I’m not going to). Mondays are fairly notorious for interruptions. I’ve got around 15k to work through, but there are some significant rewrites ahead.

How About a Sale?

Died for You is $0.99, this week only.

I intended yesterday to split my time between two different projects but ended up not quite getting in the time I needed on project one.

I came close though. within 300 words of editing to hit my goal of 7k. Then I needed to start on another book for 3500 words, but never found the time, as a long shopping trip happened, followed by pizza and movie.

Today is where I want to split my time between three books. I can already tell that’s not going to happen. I’m going to be hard up for much time. I slept in until 5 am, and it’s almost 5:30 now, so I’m an hour and a half behind, and I haven’t started yet. I’ll be working for someone else at 7 for most of the day.

So I’ll get done whatever I can.

My morning routine is interrupted because my Mac is updating, so I’m working on my tablet. I don’t know if that’s pertinent to anything, except that I’m a creature of habit. When I switch machines, there’s a bit of a delay. I googled Mac updates, but I still have no idea what changes are happening. Whatever it is, it’s taking forever.

Anyway.

Yesterday I did somehow get in all of my desired writer-stuff time. The Unresting is progressing nicely, though I won’t be done editing it this week. I’ve given myself 7 days to get through it, requiring a minimum of 7k worth of editing a day. Yesterday was day 3. That doesn’t sound too bad, because it’s already written, right? But I still do major revisions, even though I’m 95% happy with what I wrote the first time.

One thing about revisions is that you as the writer can get a feeling for the emotions that you tried to evoke the first time. Often if you feel like the emotion doesn’t carry long enough, you can expand the scene. You get a feeling for what’s working and what’s not. Maybe it requires an additional scene to really cement in what the character is going through.

I also added a second book into the loop. It’s for a pen name (I guess that means I’m ghost writing for myself), and I’ve already written 10k of a desired 25k. Unfortunately, I wrote it more than a year ago, so I’m going through previously written stuff. My goal with this book is to get through 3500 words a day in 7 days, and yesterday was day 1.

Today I’ll repeat the process with both of those two books, targeting the same numbers. tomorrow, however, I intend to add a third book to the mix, from scratch.

See what I’m doing here? I want to complete three books a week, with a two day interval between them. Though The Unresting is a full-length 50k novel, many of the projects will be 25k, novella length. At least for now. If you ‘ve followed my blog for any amount of time, I chase new ideas all the time.

But, by next week, I want to be pushing through 75k a week, over 10k a day. Wanting and accomplishing rarely go hand in hand, and this goal is not something I’ve ever accomplished in the past. The most I’ve done is ~35k.

I had a full day working yesterday for “the man” but still made it through my editing goal for The Unresting. That goal is a minimum of 7k words.

Today I intend to get through another 7k, plus start on another book. My daily writing goal on that book is 3500 words, and it will also fall under a pen name.

It’s amazing how much I revise my writing. On the second draft, it’s like I have a completely different voice in my head from the words I heard when writing the first time. Writing and editing use different parts of the brain. I read that somewhere.

Writing and editing use different parts of the brain. I read that somewhere. I believe it because of experience, and I really hate editing. I want to be finished with projects and on to something else, and I spend so much time revising other things get bumped. I think my writing brain and my reading brain are the separate entities, though. Because when I reread my first drafts, my brain judges my previous word choices. The question for cleaner word drafts is how can I make myself hear my reading voice on the first pass? That question won’t be answered until I’m knee-deep into new manuscripts. MAybe dictating would beat this?

I’ve been thinking about how I want to up my writing production. I have a tough time just focusing on one project anyway, and as I currently work, I ignore some of the genres that I’ve put under this pen name.

My what-if is this… Can I write around 10k a day (on average) and produce… say… maybe three books a week?

I’m not talking novels, more like novellas. I’d actually be trying more for 75k words a week, not the 70k that the math adds up to. There would be full-length novels, but I’m thinking about going slightly shorter for most books, in the 25k to 30k range.

So… three books a week, but I’m also thinking that I wouldn’t write them all under one pen name, but spreading them out between three different ones. Though this blog just follows the works I do as Garth, I write lots of novellas anyway, and I think I have something like 5 active pen names. For this idea, as long as it lasts, I’d only be focusing on 3.

The other idea is that I would stagger the three books, so I’d be finishing them two days apart each.

My biggest challenge? The time I spend in the revision and second draft phase. I do two, sometimes 3 drafts.

Pulp era writers who maintained a steady output and release of 40k+ a week for their writing career learned to do clean first drafts, only revising at the behest of an editor or publisher. No revising is a writing rule of Heinlein’s. And those guys used typewriters! Obviously it’s a skill that can be learned.

To try and produce a clean first draft, I’ll be writing slower (at first), so I screw up less. I’ll be focusing on the voice while I write so I have to revise fewer sentences afterward. I’ll also do a quick reread after I finish writing each chapter. And, of course, each book will be heavily outlined before I start.

Today I’m only focusing on the revision of The Unresting. It’s going to take most of this week to finish, then I’ll return to my LitRPG project.

I posted this yesterday on my Facebook Page and Twitter…

So there it is… the first teaser for The Unresting. I’m hoping to have edited/revised and have it back from the beta readers by the end of this week.

So let’s say next week.

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I’ve been reading a lot of LitRPG books lately. I wasn’t sure I was going to like the genre at first, but so far I’m finding myself getting really into them. So much in fact that I’ve decided that the next book I write is in this genre.

I started a tabletop RPG in 2012. I worked on it for a few years, on and off, before deciding it wasn’t what I wanted to do. When I began work on my LitRPG title, I dug the old notes out to use as the skeleton rules for my novel. I’ve had to change a few things, like switching to a leveling system like a video game (D&D style), but overall, it’s flowing smoothly.

As I’m trying to up my productivity, I might even try to have it out by the end of this month. I realize that I think this way a lot with my projects, and they don’t come out for months later (the editing/revision phase drags on for a long time), and that is something about myself that I’m working on.

On a similar note, yesterday (Easter) I and my family went to see Ready Player One. I thought it was a fantastic movie, and I admit I haven’t been looking at any of the reviews. My oldest son has read the book and said the movie only loosely followed it, so I’m glad I haven’t read it yet. Stephen Spielberg movies have always frustrated me in this regard (Disney, too). And of course, all of the unforgivable movie adaptations of I am Legend.

April 1st Word Count: 1663

Happy Easter and April Fools!

I’m a guy who likes new beginnings, whether the beginning of a year, week, or month. So I’m taking April 1st to start blogging once more and providing updates on my writing. There’s a lot I’ve been doing, and have been relatively silent about. Up until last month, I’d been writing every day, but then situations derailed it. Since January 1st, I’ve written two and a half novels and two novellas. You’ll see one of those novels this month.

Anyway, it’s Easter, so I have a limited window before the family is up so I’m going to turn my attention to writing and not blogging. I’ve got a handful of projects for April, and I’ll share them each time I’m sure they’re being accomplished.