David R. Michael's Blog, page 9

Typing THE END is Such Sweet Sorrow…

 
Woot! First draft of Gunwitch2 (tentatively titled The Witch Rose) is now complete at just over 104K words.

Oddly enough, writing “The End” always seems so … anticlimatic … but I always enjoy getting there.
 
-David
 
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Marching to a MillionA Scenic Outlook on the Evolving Road MapA Word From Our Sponsor: The Journal 6 is Now Available!

Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, September 10, 2012.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


Gunwitch2


1052




Tuesday


Gunwitch2


708




Wednesday


Gunwitch2


2294




Thursday


Gunwitch2


1005




Friday


Gunwitch2


1727




Saturday








Sunday


















Total



6786




YTD Total: 98540
Project Total: 100916
 
Reading List

Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night edited by James Patterson.

 
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Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, September 3, 2012.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


Gunwitch2


1041




Tuesday


Gunwitch2


1031




Wednesday


Gunwitch2


1656




Thursday


Gunwitch2


1865




Friday


Gunwitch2
Edited/updated Gunwitch2 outline.


1346




Saturday


Gunwitch2
Edited/updated Gunwitch2 outline.
GoSH2 brainstorming.


263




Sunday


Gunwitch2


650














Total



7852




YTD Total: 91754
Project Total: 94130
 
Reading List

Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey.

 
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Unintentional Streaking

 
I didn’t mean to do it, officer! I promise.
 
Today is now day 10 of my current writing streak. I didn’t mean to start a streak. Or rather, to keep a streak going past last Friday. I planned to take the weekend “off” from writing. I just, well, didn’t. Wrote some on Saturday, because I had a bit of time. Then some more on Sunday. Now it’s Wednesday and I’ve been writing 10 days in a row. And I’m thinking I may just keep the streak going until I reach “THE END” of Gunwitch2.
 
Gunwitch2 rolled past 90K words today (90,006 to be precise), which is exciting. I’m estimating I have about 10K-15K words left in the novel. I might be finished by next Friday (which was my goal), but it’s hard to predict. I have only 6 chapters left, but I don’t really know how long those chapters will be.
 
Still, I’m excited to be this close to done. Even if (or maybe, especially because) this novel took about 3X as long to write as I thought it would. So it goes, sometimes.
 
Let us streak! Streak away!
 
-David
 
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Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, August 27, 2012.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


Gunwitch2


1021




Tuesday


Gunwitch2


1042




Wednesday


Gunwitch2


1695




Thursday


Gunwitch2


1567




Friday


Gunwitch2


1034




Saturday


Gunwitch2


313




Sunday


Gunwitch2


559














Total



7231




YTD Total: 83902
Project Total: 86278
 
Reading List

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich.
Grim Repo by Mark Fassett.

 
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Marching Slowly with a Bit of Looking Back and Forward

 
I am still Marching to a Million. I’m just not as far along as I expected to be. I hope to pick up the pace this week.
 
Comic writing of one sort or the other has been in the back of mind for a while now, so I’ve been reading up on comic story structure lately.
 
The Comedy Bible by Judy Carter was my first stop. That’s a great how-to book for creating stand-up comedy material–and Ms. Carter is quite convinced that all paths in comedy begin with stand-up–but it barely touches on more story-oriented approaches. I learned a lot, and I plan to use a number of the exercises in the book. But I’m more interested in writing comic novels like the comic horror of Christopher Moore (e.g., A Dirty Job, or Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story) or even, someday, somehow, the comic sci-fi of Douglas Adams (e.g., The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy).
 
My next bit of reading turned out to be a real gold mine of information: The Comic Toolbox by John Vorhaus. In fact, I think this book is a great book about writing in general, not just comic writing. I love this book and I’m glad I bought a new copy of it to keep handy. The focus of the book is on story-oriented comedy, especially sitcoms and comedy movies, and delves into creating comic characters and comic story structures.
 
Back in Nanowrimo 2010, my project was a comic horror novel that I abandoned at about 30K words for reasons that made sense at the time–but that I couldn’t recall when I re-read the manuscript last week. I always expected I would come back to the novel someday, fix the story and characters, and finish it. After reading what I had last week, “someday” is going to come much sooner. And armed with what I’ve learned in my recent reading, I think I can fix the flaws that are there. I’m almost impatient to get re-started.
 
The stack of projects I need to get to has begun to take on imposing, almost looming, proportions. I’m not entirely sure where I’ll work in the re-start, except that it will be after my current project. And probably after the one planned after that. From where I’m sitting right now, not counting Gunwitch2, I have 7-8 novels planned (some more planned than others). And as I write those, I’m sure I’ll add more to the list, and probably rearrange the order I write them. In addition, there are shorter stories I want to write in various worlds/situations I’ve already created, like Dragons of the Stars, Effie Two-Five and the Gray Angel.
 
Which means that even as my March to a Million reaches its finish line, I have another million or so words at least waiting for me. And then, I’m sure, another million after that. And then again…and again…
 
I’ll just stop there. I don’t want to scare myself too much.
 
-David
 
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Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, August 20, 2012.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday








Tuesday


Gunwitch2


598




Wednesday


Gunwitch2


1025




Thursday








Friday


Gunwitch2


1156




Saturday








Sunday


















Total



2779




YTD Total: 76671
Project Total: 79047
 
Reading List

The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If You’re Not by John Vorhaus.

 
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Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, August 13, 2012.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


Gunwitch2


1035




Tuesday


Gunwitch2


1038




Wednesday


Gunwitch2


1046




Thursday


Gunwitch2


430




Friday


Gunwitch2


837




Saturday








Sunday


















Total



4386




YTD Total: 73792
Project Total: 76168
 
Reading List

Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception by Pamela Meyer.
The Comedy Bible: From Stand-up to Sitcom–The Comedy Writer’s Ultimate How-To Guide by Judy Carter.
Trigger City by Sean Chercover.

 
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Marching to a Million

 
Today, with an output of just over 1000 words, I launched “Project Finish Gunwitch2″. I estimate I have 30K-40K words left on that project, depending on how long the last 8-9 chapters choose to be. I obviously don’t do “deadlines” very well, but I’m hoping to type “THE END” for Gunwitch2 before 14 September.
 
Why 14 September? Because that’s the 2-year anniversary of my first indie-published title, “Nostalgia”. It would be a nice celebration, I think. Symbolic, maybe.
 
I plan to continue writing after I finish Gunwitch2, of course. My plans for the “after” had been a bit loose, though, until this past weekend when I realized that with the completion of Gunwitch2, I would have a “lifetime total” word count of about 875,000. Which suddenly seemed very close to 1 million. Close enough that I immediately created a new project which encompasses “Project Finish Gunwitch2″ and what comes after. I call it “Marching to a Million”, with a fuzzy deadline of somewhere around 31 December of this year.
 
It’s a somewhat aggressive goal, requiring that I write about 125K words in the last 3 months of the year, after finishing Gunwitch2, but I think I can do it.
 
By “lifetime total”, BTW, I only mean since I started tracking my word production in 2003. I wrote quite a bit before 2003, but not in an easily counted form (much of it typed, using a typewriter, on typing paper). There was also a huge amount of what might be considered “fictive writing” in the form of role-playing game world design, campaigns and scenarios. I’ve never come up with a good scenario-design-to-story word count conversion function, so I choose to just not count them. Not really. Nor any of the short stories I wrote before 2003 (some of which were rewritten far too many times). And not the novel I worked on as a teenager (seeing which, much less reading, I expect would cause extreme pain of embarrassment, possibly death by horrified mortification). I talk more about that here.
 
So far, in 2012, I’ve written just over 70,000 words, which means my current lifetime total is about 846,000 words. Which only seems like a lot to beginners/amateurs.
 
-David
 
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Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, August 6, 2012.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday








Tuesday


Edited “Trikes & Aliens”.
Created ebook cover for “Trikes & Aliens”.
Created base ebook document for “Trikes & Aliens”.
Formatted “Trikes & Aliens” for KDP, PubIt, SW.







Wednesday








Thursday








Friday








Saturday








Sunday


















Total








 








Publishing/Marketing




Monday





Tuesday


Uploaded “Trikes & Aliens” to KDP, PubIt, SW.




Wednesday


Announced “Trikes & Aliens” on blog, FB.




Thursday





Friday





Saturday





Sunday





 
Reading List

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson with Lou Aronica.

 
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