{"id":6702,"date":"2011-12-16T22:39:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-17T05:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=6702"},"modified":"2011-12-23T22:55:41","modified_gmt":"2011-12-24T05:55:41","slug":"climbing-the-10k-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/climbing-the-10k-mountain\/","title":{"rendered":"Climbing the 10k mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Many Bothans died to bring you this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I recently read an amazing blog post<\/a> by Rachel Aaron, in which she explains how she went from writing about 2k words per day (about what I’m doing) to routinely breaking 10k.<\/p>\n

This is something I really want to do with my own writing.\u00a0 As I noted a couple of weeks ago, I need to pick up the pace<\/a> if I’m going to keep up with my professional goals.\u00a0 If I could go from 2k to 10k, and make 10k the standard…holy cow, that’s a 500% jump in productivity.\u00a0 Who wouldn’t want that?<\/em><\/p>\n

From Rachel’s blog:<\/p>\n

Drastically increasing your words per day is actually pretty easy, all it takes is a shift in perspective and the ability to be honest with yourself (which is the hardest part). Because I’m a giant nerd, I ended up creating a metric, a triangle with three core requirements: Knowledge, Time, and Enthusiasm. Any one of these can\u00a0noticeably\u00a0boost your daily output, but all three together can turn you into a word machine. I never start writing these days unless I can hit all three.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The point that I probably need to work on the most is time: I tend to start off the day slow, checking Facebook and blogs and other stuff before getting into the writing, then write for a little while before running off and doing some chore or allowing myself to get distracted again.\u00a0 Sometimes, I don’t really buckle down until a couple of hours before I should go to bed, and that’s bad.<\/p>\n

But really, I think the main obstacle is just thinking that writing is difficult.\u00a0 If everything comes together in the right way, there really isn’t any reason why 5k or 6k or even 10k should be too difficult–and yet we naturally think that if 2k is hard, anything more should be that much harder.<\/p>\n

I’m in a weird state of limbo right now between moving and preparing to go overseas, but I’m going to start a daily writing log so that I can figure out what time of day is most productive.\u00a0 You can’t wait for life to settle down before you get to work; you have to roll with what you’re given.\u00a0 Also, I’m going to put a lot more effort into outlining and planning, so that I don’t get hung up by research when I should be writing.\u00a0 Even discovery writers need a little bit of time to ponder things before putting words to the page.<\/p>\n

Also, after considerable thought and effort, I’ve decided to put Star Wanderers<\/strong> on the back burner again.\u00a0 I finished the novelette last week and submitted it to Writers of the Future; I think it’s quite good, and stands a good chance of finding a home in one of the short markets.\u00a0 But the full length novel, for various reasons, just isn’t coming to me.\u00a0 I don’t know if it’s because I lack the life experience to write it, or because I’m too close to it to see what’s broken, but regardless of the reason, I need the break.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure whether to do Edenfall<\/strong> or Stars of Blood and Glory<\/strong> next, but I’m leaning towards Stars of Blood and Glory.<\/strong>\u00a0 This is a novel set in the Gaia Nova universe, with characters from Desert Stars<\/strong>, Bringing Stella Home,<\/strong> and Heart of the Nebula.<\/strong>\u00a0 I’ve been itching to write it since this summer, but never got around to it because other projects got in the way.\u00a0 Well, hopefully now that will change.<\/p>\n

I know from emails and other correspondence that some of you are really looking forward to Edenfall,<\/strong> but don’t worry, I’ll get around to it soon.\u00a0 In order to do it justice, I feel I need to reread Genesis Earth<\/strong> and immerse myself in some Carl Sagan, but right now I’m still running on a sci fi adventure trip.\u00a0 If I can implement some of these metrics and push my daily word count upwards of 10k, it shouldn’t be long before Edenfall<\/strong> gets my attention again.\u00a0 My goal is to finish it before the end of the year, so there’s a very good chance it’ll be published sometime in late 2012.<\/p>\n

As for Star Wanderers<\/strong>, I’ll shop the novelette around after I hear back from Writers of the Future.\u00a0 I think it has a good chance at winning the quarter, but of course I can’t count on it.\u00a0 At this point in my career, I should probably be playing both the traditional markets as well as the indie field.<\/p>\n

That’s just about it.\u00a0 Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to write…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently read an amazing blog post by Rachel Aaron, in which she explains how she went from writing about 2k words per day (about what I’m doing) to routinely breaking 10k. This is something I really want to do with my own writing.\u00a0 As I noted a couple of weeks ago, I need to… Continue reading Climbing the 10k mountain<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[68,44,509,32,857,569],"tags":[89,192,42,46,529,8,73,599,670,251,197],"class_list":["post-6702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bsh","category-ds","category-edenfall","category-ge","category-sw","category-sbg","tag-career-decisions","tag-discovery-writing","tag-frustrations","tag-goals-and-plans","tag-indie-publishing","tag-writing-in-general","tag-planning","tag-thoughts-reflections","tag-traditional-publishing","tag-writing-habits","tag-writing-lifestyle","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1K6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6702"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6763,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6702\/revisions\/6763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}