I wrote 1,067 words today, which is certainly below a 3K day…but damn, these words were so much better. SO much better.
I might, indeed, not be a dictator. Wait…that doesn’t sound right. OR DOES IT? Dictation might not be my thing. I might need to work a little slower to really live inside a scene, to be able to sit myself down next to those characters and see things the way they’re seeing it. And here’s the thing: nobody needs to do their writing through dictation. The majority of writers in history, even the majority of successful indie authors right now, do not write that way. They type.
BUT…I’m not willing to make that statement quite yet. I will not be giving up on the idea of using dictation quite yet. I don’t think I’ve satisfied my curiosity or determination quite yet to give it more time and practice…but I *do* think in the meantime it’s going to be PRACTICE, and not writing my actual novel(s). But hey, even that may change. I reserve the right to change up whatever I need to keep moving forward.
So, moving forward I am.
I was reminded today by another writer that I’m friends with on Facebook (though certainly not actual friends – I have yet to meet him in person) of the power of deadlines. He was talking about cranking out a finished draft to go off to his editor today, talking about how mush his mind was, but how happy he was to have done so much work in so little time…and THAT right there, folks, is the power of a deadline: it forces us to finish.
I realized I need to set myself some deadlines for these two books, or they are quite simply, most likely, not going to be finished when I want them to be finished. That means hiring my editor for the next two books. So…I’m going to crank out a timeline tomorrow, one that I know I can stick to (at least with SOME reliability…I’ve at least been through the whole process once before now), and I’m going to reach out to a copy editor that I passed on for this first book and opted to go with someone who had a bit of a beefier resume. This other editor also has the benefit of being half the price 😛
But, yeah…I’m going to do that shit. Set that hard deadline and thereby force myself to meet it. It also makes me think about the fact that I should line up an audio book narrator for the first book in the trilogy. I don’t know if I’m going to do audio books for the other two, not until I see if there’s enough interest to do so…but we’ll see. Depends on how much an audiobook narrator costs.
Anywho…what I’m focusing on right now is the writing. That’s always got to be priority number one. And it felt GREAT writing today. I love writing. Love, love, LOVE the first drafting process. It’s by far my favorite. It’s pure creation. It’s living in the moment with these characters that I’ve come to love so much. It’s the best.
That’s all for tonight. More tomorrow 😉