It’s late, but I really need to write something of my recent thoughts on this blog, so this is going to be a stream-of-consciousness word-vomit sort of post. \u00a0But please keep reading, it probably won’t be uninteresting.<\/p>\n
I haven’t been posting much on this blog recently, but I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing recently–specifically, the practicalities of trying to make this my career, getting serious about it, etc. \u00a0<\/p>\n
In fact, for the past three weeks, it’s been just about the only thing on my mind. \u00a0I’ve been listening and re-listening to just about every episode of writing excuses, the LTUE mp3s that I recorded, the old English 318 mp3s from last year, and various other talks and speeches on the subject of writing as a career.<\/p>\n
I don’t have the time to really explain all my thoughts on the subject, but to sum it up, I’ve been angsting over it quite a bit. \u00a0Will I be able to break into publishing in the relatively near future, or does my writing need years and years more work? \u00a0Am I making a mistake to spend my summer just working on my writing? \u00a0Am I making a mistake to be pursuing this so vigorously as my primary career path? and a whole lot of irrational angsting besides all that. \u00a0You get the picture.<\/p>\n
Well, I’ve gotten sick of doing all this thinking and now I think it’s time to just do it. \u00a0I heard back last week from the agency in New York–turns out they already have someone, so I won’t be going there for the internship–but that’s actually alright, because it means I can take the summer to really focus on improving my writing.<\/p>\n
Of course, if I’m not doing anything else, I need to be treating this like my full time career. \u00a0The standard thing I keep hearing, at least from the professionals in the local scene, is that the average per-day wordcount is 4k. \u00a0Depending on deadlines and other projects, that may increase, but the average daily wordcount is 4k. \u00a0Since I plan on making writing my focus this summer, that’s my goal: 4k a day.<\/p>\n
Last week, my wordcount was above 10k, but that’s actually a bit misleading. \u00a0I wasn’t writing 10k words of new material each day, I was doing a quick mid-draft revision to add in a few crucial characters and scenes that I didn’t know I needed until I got midway through the book. \u00a0It wasn’t even much of a revision; \u00a0when I saw places where my writing really needed work, I made a note for later and kept on skimming. \u00a0I only stopped to rewrite the sections that needed major changes in order to set things up correctly for later.<\/p>\n
As a result, I feel that I’ve lost a degree of momentum. \u00a0Now that I’m through all the old stuff, I’m writing entirely new material, and it’s very hard. \u00a0I’ve only been skimming the last few chapters and scenes; as a result, when I picked things up this morning, I had difficulty getting into the story again.<\/p>\n
I did 3,248 words today–that’s 3.2k words of new material–and by the end, I felt like the momentum was building and I was \u00a0starting to get back into the story. \u00a0A couple of weeks ago, when I was still angsting uselessly over the whole writing career thing, I kept feeling like this novel I’m writing is just crap. \u00a0Now, however, I’m starting to see my faith in it return.<\/p>\n
Writing is like that sometimes: the further you are from your story, the worse it seems, while the more you get into the story, the more faith you’re able to have in it. \u00a0If you don’t have faith in the story you’re trying to tell, you just won’t be able to write it.<\/p>\n
I could say more about what I’ve learned from my experience these past few weeks, but this post is getting long. \u00a0To sum it up, that’s my new goal for this summer: 4k a day, as if I’m doing this full time. \u00a0<\/p>\n
At that rate, I’ll probably finish this novel sometime before the BYU writer’s conference (which I will be attending, at least the afternoon sessions–just registered yesterday). \u00a0The personal deadline I set was June 15th, after the conference, but I think I can get it in early.<\/p>\n
Okay, enough word vomiting. \u00a0Time to get some sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s late, but I really need to write something of my recent thoughts on this blog, so this is going to be a stream-of-consciousness word-vomit sort of post. \u00a0But please keep reading, it probably won’t be uninteresting. I haven’t been posting much on this blog recently, but I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing… Continue reading 4k a day<\/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":[],"tags":[141,144,89,88,46,95,8,119,599],"class_list":["post-685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bic-hoc","tag-byu-writing-and-illustrating-for-young-readers-2009","tag-career-decisions","tag-doubts-and-fears","tag-goals-and-plans","tag-lack-of-sleep","tag-writing-in-general","tag-summer-2009","tag-thoughts-reflections","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-b3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685","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=685"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":687,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions\/687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}