Good Weekend

Just a very brief update on Friday's post (the one below this one)...then: 3,500 words in the first draft of the Xander book. Now: 17,500.

Good weekend. Of course it's just raw draft, but then, that's the hard part. I love rewriting—it's the payoff for me, the fun part of the craft of writing.

Back to regular programming....

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

-et-: "Since you brought up the subject again, albeit briefly, I cannot resist a few comments that I was too busy (and also too lazy) to make on Friday. First, in my opinion you write well, regardless of your subject matter at any given time. That is one reason I make a habit of coming here—and I enjoy almost every article, regardless of the subject matter. Personally, I can enjoy a well-written article on almost any subject, but have trouble making it through poorly written articles on subjects which are normally of great interest to me.

"Second, I strongly disagree with Michael Shaw's comment that your words about Xander should not have appeared here. Personally, I found them interesting and well worth reading, but if I had not, that is not a reason to say that you should not have written them. It would take a miracle for every article to appeal to every reader, and the solution is just for the reader to skip anything that is not of interest—which is what I do when an esoteric discussion of view cameras appears.

"Third, you are hardly unique when it comes to the compulsion to write. In one (or perhaps both!) of his autobiographies, Isaac Asimov wrote that he had to write at least 2,000 words a day. His addiction to writing was so strong that he carried a typewriter on the train with him on vacation rather than suffer withdrawal symptoms."

Mike replies: I heard that Asimov (1920–1992) preferred IBM Selectric typewriters, and that he had six of them so he'd have backups in case any of them needed repair—despite which, whenever one of them did need to go in for repair, he would fret and worry until it was returned to him.

As for me, I set up a second workstation upstairs in my bedroom, one free of distractions and off the Internet. I resisted the temptation to buy anything new, but got my old 27" iMac out of the basement and dusted it off (literally) instead. I found to my surprise that, what with backup keyboards and mice (plural of "mouse," right?) and extra mousepads and outboard hard drives, I already had everything I needed. PLUS, after today's session I'm up to an even 20,000 words. (Book-length is usually considered to be 80–120k words, John Camp tells me.) I'm starting to think the first draft might even go quickly, although rewriting is usually slow.

Carl: "As I recall from Asimov's multi-volume autobiography, the reason for the six IBM typewriters was so he could work on half a dozen books at once. Each 'workstation' (not called that back then) was set up with the Selectric, a ream of onion-skin typing paper, and stacks of research materials related to each project."

Andrew: "84 days down—bravo!"

Comments

[FrankB]

Good job. Don't fall into the trap of laying off because you had such a good weekend. Be sure to touch it every day.

[David Bateman]

Great work Mike.
For us whom are clueless on writing, ok maybe I am just clueless, how many words are in an average book. Or more on point, what is your target word count so I can get an idea.
Thank you,
David

[John tells me publishers expect novels to be 80–120k words long, with 100k being good to shoot for. Reason: readers like a sense of accomplishment when they finish a book. I hear mysteries are often shorter, more like 50-70k words. IANAE. --Mike]

[Eolake]

Funny; I’ve written two novels and lots of articles and stories, and I’ve never rewritten anything. One draft, a litght edit, that’s it.

[Eolake]

Sometimes even just comments could need a “ligtht edit” of course.

[James Weekes]

Sounds to me like J. Camp scared you a little. Word is that he doesn’t go to his left that well.

[Roger Bradbury]

Well done Mike; you applied the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. I do like the idea of a second place free of distractions. I get distracted very easily...

[-et-]

"For us whom are clueless on writing, ok maybe I am just clueless, how many words are in an average book. Or more on point, what is your target word count so I can get an idea.
Thank you,
David"

"[John tells me publishers expect novels to be 80–120k words long, with 100k being good to shoot for. Reason: readers like a sense of accomplishment when they finish a book. I hear mysteries are often shorter, more like 50-70k words. IANAE. --Mike]"

As Einstein said, "All things are relative."

In recent years there has been a movement among some of the authors of science fiction to write looooongggg novels. As an example, the paperback version of the 19th book in one of David Weber's series of SF novels clocks in at 1168 pages.

On the other hand, the paperback version of John Scalzi's debut (2005) novel "Old Man's War" runs only 311 pages.

As a comparison, the paperback version of "Deep Freeze", the latest book in John Sandford's "Virgil Flowers" series, runs 511 pages.

- Tom -

[MikeR]

Good goin', Mike. Stick with that old stick-to-it-iveness.

[Lubo]

I feel the same as others about your writing and enjoying and valuing most of your posts (a lot).

Wonderful start on your draft. Two tips, take them or leave them:

One. Work in time blocks called “pomodoros” (named in Italian after a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato). You set aside 25 minutes. Write down your goal for this time. Work on one thing (your book draft) only, not doing anything else (checking emails, etc.). If something else comes to mind you think you need to do you jot it down on a separate page to remember later, and go right back to your one task. To enhance this: promise yourself a small reward for when you are done with the timed-blocked activity (and give it to yourself). Apparently when we start doing something we are resistant to or don’t like to do (this may not be your case), a pain centre in the brain activates… however, if you get started this goes away after a few moments, so starting is key. The reward helps as well.

Two. From the book Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith, whose “client list is a who’s who of global CEOs”: create a form with daily questions each of which you score yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 each night. If you are not interested in other daily things to track (he’s got some great suggestions for some standard ones in addition to those of your own choosing), you could create a form for 360 days in which you would simply rate yourself from 1 to 10 on today’s writing, or perhaps just write down the daily word count. The awareness during the day that you will put down a numeric bit of feedback tonight is what he finds helps people stay consistent week in week out.

[Miserere]

To those who dislike your non-photography posts, just remind them that, despite the name of this blog, it's not about Photography—it's about a guy who runs a Photography blog.

One of my fellow blog readers posted this in a comment once, and I found it a most astute, and correct, observation.

[David Bateman]

Thank you for the range. Also good work on hitting 1/5 the way mark. Sometimes just sitting down and hammering it out is the best. I wrote my entire Ph.D thesis in one weekend. It was all the time I had as I was taking care of my newborn son. Also gave my wife the time to write her thesis, which took her over 2 months.