Tag Archives: word counts

Morning Pages Entry – May 14, 2014

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Going to see how quickly I can do this this morning. I have to leave for the boat in 23 minutes or around 6:30, so let’s get this done. Today, is launch day for the boat, and the good news this early, is that the weather looks pretty good for it. That’s nice. I set the alarm for 6am this morning, but the damn birds outside our open bedroom window, decided that 4am was a more appropriate time. I was able to put the off for another hour and fell back to sleep, but when they got me awake at 5am, there was no going back to sleep. Well, it’s a good thing, that I don’t need much sleep these days. So I laid in bed for an hour awake this morning, being annoyed with myself, for not getting more novels out there in a decent amount of time. That’s never a productive thing. I don’t know, why it is those first little bit of waking time when I’m not quite full up, that my mind messes with me so much. It’s like the lizard brain takes over, and fills me with worry and regret. Need to work on that. It would be so nice, if that brain had positive things to fixate on. Things like a healthy number of book sales or something. I need to create more positive things in my life for it to think about. The more I think about splitting my novel up, the more I like it, but the more I worry about how exactly to do it. I think the best I can really do, is two novels of two hundred pages or 50K words each. Right now, I’m sitting at around 75,000 words or 300 pages. Given that I told my editor, that I was onlyi going to be 75K words, I think the most I could go over that would be another 25K words, which would give her 100K to deal with. If that was 2 books, and I published those next month, you could make one free, and have the 3rd one out for July. That’s doable I believe. I can write and clean up another 25K words, before June 9th for my editor, then book another date with her for early July for the next book, and write 50K words for her. That would give me 3 novels still before the summer gets into full swing. Then, if the series is going well, and I still want to proceed with it, then I can go back to 75K for the 4th book. Or hell, maybe we go with around the 200 page book, and make it that much easier to hit my monthly deadlines. There’s nothing wrong with that. I still need to incorporate the weekly books as well. Certainly, if I’m doing 200 page books, instead of 300 page books, then that has to be easier. An extra 2000 pages per day with a first pass edit would be pretty sweet, as a serial to keep readers interested. Even, if they’re just side stories, or perhaps another different series altogether. Not suer how to go with that. The point to it all, is becoming as prolific as possible, and making up for a lot of lost time. If you did that starting in July, then by the time you hauled the boat out, you could have 4 full length novels on the market, and 12 or so short stories in the wind. That should be a pretty good place to be. At some point, you could take the short stories, and just bundle them all up. That could likely give you another 2 or 3 full length stories in the marketplace. If you can’t make money, with that many stories floating around, then chances are it’s time to go work at McDonalds. I can’t imagine that ever happening. At that point, it would likely make more sense to push the marketing of things up a bit. At that point, you would have basically two series working for you, with 2 permaFree books to promote. That should make for a better Christmas this year, and a better winter overall. Not to mention, a nicer boat come next spring. After that, it’s hard to imagine how nice things could be for me and those around me, but it would be fun to try. I just need to be more prolific and write like a man on fire. That’s what this summer is going to be like.

TIGERBLOOD: yep DAILYMOOD: busy LOCATION: home office WORDSWRITTEN: editing PUSHUPS: 3:30 wall sits TODO: launch boat, edit TV: 70s show, madmen, californication BOOK: none GAME: none EXERCISE: none WEIGHT: 170 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs LUNCH: big ass salad DINNER: salmon fish patty SNACKS: orange, grapes, 3 lara bars ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 11:30 AWAKE: 4am, 5am, 6am

 

Morning Pages – May 12, 2014

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It’s time to get things moving again. End of last week, bogged down a bit with going to the boat, and getting distracted with the Ray Bradbury ideas. Yes, I do think it is a good idea to write more. And yes, an additional short story a week would be good. Something that could translate into a bigger novel, when it got to enough words. A short story every week, would retain focus on your writers name, and give people plenty of books to comment on. Plus, it would keep the Amazon marketing machine that gives a boost to new books a chance to keep you in the spotlight. So, yes, I do believe there is importance in writing prolificially. There is something inside of me, that does have a desire to write and write and write. I don’t think, it’s really had a voice to get out yet. Probably the week I cranked out 25K words was the closest I came, but still, even then it was more about proving that I could just hit the numbers. Going forward, I think I need to come up with more of those internal little inspirations, to keep the stories going. You have things to say, you have ideas in your head, about how things work, or how you think things work, or about fears you want to express, or about just whatever you feel like. What you need, is to get those ideas out. I need to feed a good stream of reading material, that is interesting in terms of life and the world around us. A reading source, that has psychology, and science, and nature, and medicine, and disease, and all kinds of factual things about the world around us, and how humans interact into that world. The kind of stuff that you can use as fodder to twist and turn into stories, or elements of stories. Fact based information. Real life stuff. Sometimes it could be stuff that is immediately needed in your stories, but a lot of the time, I think it should just be interesting stuff and research about the world and animals and people and discoveries and history that could fill in the gaps of things happening in your stories. You should use your intellect for more then just becoming a better writer, but for learning more about the world and those that inhabit it. That’s the kind of stuff you can use in your stories. That’s what could set your stories apart. People can actually learn things from your stories. I do like that. You can learn things as well. So, get back on track to the point, where you just write and write. Where writing is a form of therapy, and you need to do it everyday, kind of like these journals. I couldn’t imagine, not sitting down and writing in the journals. It’s just a part of my everyday, to record what’s going on in my head. Your writing for public consumption needs to be the same. You need for it to become a need for you . . . like breathing. That’s what I’m looking for here. To just publish and publish and publish. You have a voice inside of you with plenty of ideas you just want to put out into the world, and the world needs to hear it. At least, I need the world to hear it. So, start writing and reading and editing more. Start writing, so that you don’t need so much editing as well. I was reading through the first few chapters of my novel, and found it a bit choppy. Maybe it was just the mood I was in, but I do need to have a bit more flow in the writing. Don’t edit everything down to the bare essentials. You also need to mix up the sentence length a bit more I think. Right now, they all felt short and choppy. Try and mix long and short sentences. Which is what I would normally do, naturally. I think during the editing, I went overboard, with cutting back on the wordiness. Sometimes, you want to be wordy, and sometimes you don’t. It’s the variety that really makes a difference. So, get out there, read . . . write . . . edit. Do the work, and let the work consume you. Then the rest of what you need from it will flow from there. And, get your butt in gear. Remember, you have a deadline with an editor to meet.

TIGERBLOOD: yep DAILYMOOD: busy LOCATION: home office WORDSWRITTEN: none PUSHUPS: none TODO: write, edit, read TV: That 70s Show BOOK: none GAME: none EXERCISE: none WEIGHT: 170 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs LUNCH: salad, chicken, brocolli DINNER: steak, salad SNACKS: orange, grapes, apple, 4 lara bars ALCOHOL: 1 glass wine BEDTIME: 11:30 AWAKE: 6:45