{"id":11681,"date":"2012-02-13T06:30:25","date_gmt":"2012-02-12T17:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=11681"},"modified":"2012-02-12T22:13:54","modified_gmt":"2012-02-12T09:13:54","slug":"update-on-the-big-writing-goal-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2012\/02\/13\/update-on-the-big-writing-goal-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Update On The Big Writing Goal 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

From the Residency Desk<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s just on a month now since I posted about my big writing goal for 2012, here<\/a>—namely that: <\/em><\/p>\n

“I would like to try and complete Daughter of Blood<\/strong>, The Wall of Night Book Three<\/strong>, by 31 July of this year\u2013without compromising on the quality of the work.”<\/em><\/p>\n

I should add that 31 July is the end date for my current writer’s-in-residence stint at the University of Canterbury, so that is one reason for aligning my ‘big goal’ to that date.<\/p>\n

I also talked last month about how I thought I might go about achieving the goal, including:<\/p>\n

~ internet free writing time (keeping my residency office at the Uni internet free is the biggest part of that plan)<\/p>\n

~ treating every month like NanoWriMo, ie aiming for a monthly target of 50,000 words on paper<\/p>\n

So here’s the data for ‘month the first’ :<\/p>\n

Overall word count for the month:<\/strong> 26,786 words<\/p>\n

Chapters completed:<\/strong> 5, with the 6th well in train.<\/p>\n

Highest New Word Count Per Day:<\/strong> 3200<\/p>\n

Average New Word Count Per Day:<\/strong> 1100<\/p>\n

(I almost always revise the previous day’s work and then write forward from there, so ‘new word count’ means on top of any revision done.)<\/p>\n

Clearly 26,786 words is a long way from 50,000—but I am also very mindful that it’s not just about the quantity of words. It’s also, to paraphrase Coleridge, about getting “the right words in the right order.” So 1100 ‘right’ words in their ‘right order’ can be as valuable, if not more so, than 3000, or 5000, or 10,000 that need to be totally rewritten.<\/p>\n

Having said that, getting words on the page at all, no matter their quality, is absolutely vital—as even having something (whether 100, 1000, or 10,000 words) that must be totally revised is still 100% further along the track than an empty page. A set word target can really help with that process—but it has to be a means<\/em> to an end, not an end in itself.<\/p>\n

Another reminder that consciously embarking on the big writing goal has brought home, is that the project can’t all<\/span> be about getting to the destination, ie the finished book. Completion is very important, certainly, and so too is getting one’s writing out there—but a big part of being a writer<\/em> has to be enjoying and feeling rewarded by the actual process of writing and creating the work. An undue concern with word counts per day could potentially mitigate against that: a lot, in fact.<\/p>\n

As always it’s about creative tension, walking that highwire between getting a book written at all and writing it right. This point seems “obvious”, a truism even as I post these words now. But the great thing about writing books is that with each one I am starting afresh as well as ‘making it new’—and the early stages, with all those blank pages still stretching ahead, is a very different place than the final reworking of a completed draft. And a good place to remind myself about what’s really<\/em> important in the process.<\/p>\n

So that’s it from month-the-first: close on 27,000 words and 5-6 chapters. Having said that, I’m pretty sure that one of the first things I’m going to be doing this next writing month is tearing up one of those chapters and if not starting again from scratch, at least rewriting it substantially. And the whole “no internet” thing—def<\/em>initely part of the solution!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s just on a month now since I posted about my big writing goal for 2012, here—namely that: “I would like to try and complete Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Book Three, by 31 July of this year\u2013without compromising on the quality of the work.” I should add that 31 July is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books","category-about-what-im-doing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11681"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11721,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11681\/revisions\/11721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}