![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/2011q3wordcounts.jpg\" "\\"2011q3wordcounts\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis is a graph of my word count totals for the past quarter.\u00a0 The red line shows how many words I wrote each day, while the blue line shows a running seven day total.\u00a0 I include substantive revisions in the totals, but if all I’m doing is proofreading or running through copy edits, I don’t count it.<\/p>\n
For the first half of July, I was finishing up the third draft of Desert Stars<\/em> while working 40 hours per week.\u00a0 I wasn’t writing as much as I’d have liked, but still managed to keep some good momentum.<\/p>\n The HUGE peak at the end of the month represents my first draft of Sholpan<\/em>, which I finished in only a week.\u00a0 I spent the next week in a weird writerly limbo, not sure what else to work on, then picked it up again and made some substantial changes before sending it to my editor in in mid-August.\u00a0 Then Worldcon happened, and I didn’t get any writing done while I was out at that.\u00a0 Should have, but oh well.<\/p>\n After Worldcon, I had maybe three or four different projects I wanted to do, but since I wanted to do the final draft of Desert Stars<\/em> in October, I wasn’t sure which project to pick up.\u00a0 After several false starts, I ended up writing the first part of Star Wanderers,<\/em> which is that hump you see at the beginning of September.\u00a0 The second hump is the second draft; my writing took a dip in between because I didn’t know what else to do with only a couple weeks before October.<\/p>\n Overall, though, my personal word counts were a lot lower than I’d like.\u00a0 Part of that was due to the effort I put into publishing Sholpan<\/em> (it takes a lot of time and energy to publish something, which can eat into your writing if you aren’t careful); part of it was because the project I was most excited about was Desert Stars,<\/em> and I had to wait until October to hear back from my first readers; but another major part was that I was trying to balance a 40 hour job on top of everything.<\/p>\n This is the dilemma: I want to build up my writing career to the point where I can support myself on it, but to do that I have to work a day job to make ends meet, which makes it very difficult to work on the writing career.\u00a0 When I was in school, I used to think a 9-5 job would make things easy, since I wouldn’t have any homework or papers to bring home.\u00a0 Now, though, I think school was easier, because I was only in the classroom 15 to 20 hours per week, and could allocate the rest of my time as I saw fit.\u00a0 Working full time is a lot harder, because half of your waking time doesn’t belong to you.<\/p>\n What I’d really like to find is a part time job, maybe 30 hours per week, where I earn just enough to get by but don’t feel drained when the workday is over.\u00a0 A lot of TEFL jobs are only about 20 hours or so per week, so I’m thinking very seriously about doing that.\u00a0 Then again, all the attendant difficulties of adjusting to a new culture might be even more draining than grunt labor.<\/p>\n I guess there’s only one way to find out…<\/p>\n In any case, now that October is here, I’m back to work on Desert Stars,<\/em> hopefully the final draft before publication.\u00a0 I know I said I’d finish Star Wanderers,<\/em> but since I’m going to come back to it anyway after I get the feedback from my first readers, I figure it will be better to finish Desert Stars<\/em> and move on.\u00a0 Also, I can revise a lot faster than I can write new material, so it makes a lot more sense to get the revisions out of the way instead of pushing a rough draft harder than it wants to come.<\/p>\n And after that?\u00a0 Who knows!\u00a0 I’ve so many half-finished novels and projects I want to start, all I can really say is I’d better throw this up on the blog and get back to writing.\u00a0 So on that note<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"