Tied to Word Count

The other day I complained about not getting enough words written for my second chapter. My husband, ever practical and always supportive, suggested I not tie myself to word count.

"Just write the story," he said.

Problem is, that's what I did with "Bloodsisters," and wound up spending two years rewriting the book almost from scratch, including six months of adding 10,000 words to beef up the word count to an acceptable length.

Now that I'm a veteran of writing one book, I think I might be more of a planner than a pantser. For "Wanderlust" I came up with the story first, including the minor characters and their backstories and subplots. I used a template to sketch out my beginning, middle, and ending so I don't get off track. And it's working! Now that I know exactly where I need to go - not just with the novel as a whole, but what path I need to take to get there - it's much easier to write with confidence.

But it also means I'm tied to the word count. The WC is how I know how much time to spend in each scene, each chapter, each of the three sections of the plot. Word count helps me pace myself, something I found nearly impossible with "Bloodsisters."

My goal is 5K words per week, and so far I'm doing that. It's not easy, especially with one less daycare day for the baby per week, and I get most of those 5K done on weekends, but a 5K/week word count goal means forcing myself to write through the blocks and keep going, even when I don't fully feel it. Five thousand words a week means my first draft will take six months instead of over a year.

So, word count. Writing by WC means forcing myself to stick to the plot and flesh out details now rather than filling them in later just to bump up my numbers. And that means a better story from the very first draft.

My Writing "Holy Grail"

Since I discovered it in 2000, I've not only loved the magazine Fantasy & Science Fiction, but it's been a goal of mine to get published in it's lofty pages.

A tough goal, for sure, but one I think worth pursuing. It's my own personal Holy Grail. More than getting a novel published, more than getting published anywhere else, I simply must get into F&SF someday, even if that day is years and years from now.

Back in 2000 when I was young and fresh and didn't know much about the craft of writing and getting published -- I only knew that I loved writing stories -- I sent a lot of really bad work to F&SF. Really bad. I'm amazed I got any response at all, much less the kind, personalized rejections I received.

Then life happened and I stopped writing short stories for a while, and then I stopped working on my novel for a while.

Now I'm back, and I'm a little more seasoned. I've been in critique groups and have partners and mentors helping me with the mechanics of putting a quality story together through tight, thoughtful prose. (At least, I like to think so.)

So I keep going. Keep typing. Keep making stories happen, one word at a time.

It may take my entire lifetime, but I will get a story in that magazine. I owe it to a wide-eyed, naive young 20something writer, full of hope and pride and short on common sense, to see this done.

Happy New Year!

Instead of making New Year's resolutions this year, I am making intentions. I've chosen each aspect of my life -- writing, yoga, marriage, parenting, my emotional health, and my physical health -- and created an intention for making it better over the next 12 months.

I'm pretty good at keeping my New Year's resolutions. The secret is this: I try to be realistic. I don't want to be skinny; skinny is not me. It's never been me. Even as a teenager with the metabolism of a hummingbird, I've never been skinny. But, I can make the intention to get off my butt and exercise more, starting slowly and working my way up to a regular daily workout. And yoga: I'd love to be able to do a headstand but I doubt that's ever going to happen. What I can do is make the intention to do a fuller practice once a week rather than my daily 10-minute back stretches.

When it comes to writing I am also trying to be realistic in my intentions. It took me two years to write my first novel. That is unacceptable for my second novel. I'll never get anything accomplished if it always takes me two years to write 85,000 words. However, I can make the intention to create a more thorough outline first so I can be more efficient with the little writing time I have, especially now that we've cut out one of the baby's daycare days from our weekly budget.

Knowing my limits means not resolving to write three books this year. That's setting myself up for failure. Instead, my writing intention for 2013 is to finish a first draft of my second novel, finish a full first revision, and write two additional short stories. That, I think, is realistic enough to accomplish while also giving me something to truly work towards and challenge myself with.

Do any other writers make writing resolutions, or intentions?