Wednesday, November 9
A good night - 15k for real!
Tonight was one of those good nights, great nights even, when all's going well and there's plenty of time to write and it goes well and easy and fast and I think, wow, maybe I DO have talent for this and yes, this IS what I was put on this planet at this time to do, and and and and now it's nearly three hours later and I've just tacked on a good 4,300 (!) or so words to the total and I'm woofed and ready to sleep but so jazzed about progress -- developments in the story, and a tweak to the process that just worked perfectly and just sheer honest-to-goodness good old fashioned stellar word count -- that I can tell I won't be sleeping anytime soon and I'll be up late reading.
Oh, man, it feels good. (How does it feel? To be on your own? Like a complete unknown? Like a rolling stone? -- I quote because this is the Dylan song I'm strumming these days as the computer boots and logs on....)
It feels good. So if my math is correct, I'm now sitting at 15, 732 words. Yes -- I did make it to 15,000 words today after all. Pushing 16,000 even. Did I pass Jared today? I don't know. Did I catch up to the pace I should be setting -- 1667 words per day to make 50k by the end of the month, I think maybe yes I did. Did I skip the weekly meeting of my fellow Greeley-based WriMos? Indeed -- sorry folks. Maybe next Wednesday I'll catch up with you guys.
So, related to story development: I'm writing about this guy Les Dempsey who leads what he thinks is the perfect life, a model 21st century American single male life, but he's bombarded with messages from the world at all times, and he senses something is up, but can't quite figure out what it is...(while on the other reality based level he meets two women and struggles to choose which one to hang out with) anyway, he hears voices in his head, as I discovered earlier this week, and tonight I think one of the voices he hears might actually be the narrator of the story. So I'm going to watch that closely and see what happens: it might even be interesting and let in some sort of meta-stuff that I always tend to like.
Second, about the process: Usually I just sit and refer to my outline and start typing where I left off, which often leads to long word-heavy passages that allow me to get up to speed and in the groove and whatnot, but which passages are usually whacked out when I start editing. So tonight, instead of doing that, I just started at the beginning of my story and started reading it, and adding words and sentences here and there that seemed to fit, that seemed to add to the story and the character development, fixing typos and so on, and with the reading and tweaking I got into the groove/mood pretty quickly, and by only adding a bit here and there, I was making it better and finding my voice (and Les's voice) too. I liked what I did a lot -- always dangerous, I know, but at least it was fun. And then, I scrolled down to the bottom of the story and picked up where I left off at the coffee shop last night and rolled through a couple three thousand words piece of cake.
So I'm feeling good now. I'm on pace, the story is rolling, I'm liking these voices in his head and I'm excited about what might be a new process for me, which I'll try bright and shiny tomorrow morning, if I can get to sleep early enough to get up super early, or perhaps tomorrow night.
I wish I could capture this feeling and unleash it tomorrow when I'll need it again. But tonight I won't worry about it: Off to read Rick Moody.
And, oh, hey, while I'm thinking of it, a book review I wrote was published recently on
Oh, man, it feels good. (How does it feel? To be on your own? Like a complete unknown? Like a rolling stone? -- I quote because this is the Dylan song I'm strumming these days as the computer boots and logs on....)
It feels good. So if my math is correct, I'm now sitting at 15, 732 words. Yes -- I did make it to 15,000 words today after all. Pushing 16,000 even. Did I pass Jared today? I don't know. Did I catch up to the pace I should be setting -- 1667 words per day to make 50k by the end of the month, I think maybe yes I did. Did I skip the weekly meeting of my fellow Greeley-based WriMos? Indeed -- sorry folks. Maybe next Wednesday I'll catch up with you guys.
So, related to story development: I'm writing about this guy Les Dempsey who leads what he thinks is the perfect life, a model 21st century American single male life, but he's bombarded with messages from the world at all times, and he senses something is up, but can't quite figure out what it is...(while on the other reality based level he meets two women and struggles to choose which one to hang out with) anyway, he hears voices in his head, as I discovered earlier this week, and tonight I think one of the voices he hears might actually be the narrator of the story. So I'm going to watch that closely and see what happens: it might even be interesting and let in some sort of meta-stuff that I always tend to like.
Second, about the process: Usually I just sit and refer to my outline and start typing where I left off, which often leads to long word-heavy passages that allow me to get up to speed and in the groove and whatnot, but which passages are usually whacked out when I start editing. So tonight, instead of doing that, I just started at the beginning of my story and started reading it, and adding words and sentences here and there that seemed to fit, that seemed to add to the story and the character development, fixing typos and so on, and with the reading and tweaking I got into the groove/mood pretty quickly, and by only adding a bit here and there, I was making it better and finding my voice (and Les's voice) too. I liked what I did a lot -- always dangerous, I know, but at least it was fun. And then, I scrolled down to the bottom of the story and picked up where I left off at the coffee shop last night and rolled through a couple three thousand words piece of cake.
So I'm feeling good now. I'm on pace, the story is rolling, I'm liking these voices in his head and I'm excited about what might be a new process for me, which I'll try bright and shiny tomorrow morning, if I can get to sleep early enough to get up super early, or perhaps tomorrow night.
I wish I could capture this feeling and unleash it tomorrow when I'll need it again. But tonight I won't worry about it: Off to read Rick Moody.
And, oh, hey, while I'm thinking of it, a book review I wrote was published recently on
