Lists and Motivation
Spent all afternoon not writing because I was scrubbing my hard drive of a nasty virus. Very frustrating. Fortunately, I seem to have obliterated it. Whew. Nothing is scary like thinking about trying to type five novels on a netbook screen. Seriously.
Spent another chunk of today brainstorming titles (I like to have a working title for any project, it helps gel it in my head) and looking around at what is out there already. I also secured three website domains for my pen names after making sure the names weren’t anything famous already. Don’t have a YA pen name yet, but not actually sure I can write YA type stuff, so screw it. I’ll cross the bridge when I get there.
I did some maths. Cause I like maths. I find doing simple math like finance spreadsheets and word count goals relaxing. (I also find watching friends shoot zombies relaxing, I’m weird.) In order to complete things on a schedule I feel comfortable with, I need to be writing about 105ppw (pages per week). That’s an average of six hours of typing each weekday, five if I’m really on a role. Over 5k words a day. Possible. I think I might add a weekend day to this though, just a couple of hours. And I’m allowing in this page goal 25-30ppw for a short story, because if all I work on is novels I will go crazy from lack of completion. Especially working on five novels. I’m not structuring it beyond this. Whichever novel is dominating my thoughts when I sit down to write will get the pages for that day.
My goal is to have all the novels done by September, along with at least 17 short stories. I say 17 and not 25 because I’m giving myself room to take days and weeks off if needed. 105ppw puts me at completion of novels by about 17 and a half weeks in. So I’m leaving wiggle room. It would be stupid not to. Life happens.
But I’m poor. Poor is a great motivator to write and submit things. My dad always used to say he liked it when his kids were broke, because it meant we’d be practically begging to do farm work for cash. And every time I’m tempted to throw my hands in the air and not write cause I don’t feel like it, well, I’ll keep in mind that this sure as hell beats 70 hour weeks and having to deal with stupid people or drunk people or dead people or things on fire. Just in case that wasn’t enough motivation, Final Fantasy XIII comes out tomorrow. And I’m not allowing myself to have it until these five novels are all done and in the mail. I’ve been waiting for that game for years now. YEARS. Sooner I get this stuff done, sooner I get to disappear for two months into video game heaven. Yesh. Will…be…Mine! (I’m 4 years old inside, seriously).
Oh, I promised lists!
What’s out:
20 short stories.
1 novel (to five editors and an agent).
To be done list:
The City is Still Hungry, 90-100k words
Hunting Delilah, 90-100k words
To Honor and Obey, 60-80k words
The Weapons Master, 60-75k words
Menagerie, 30-50k words
Write 17 new short stories and get them out to markets.
Continue to keep existing stories out to markets.
~350,000 words stand between me and Final Fantasy XIII. I will be … victorious.
