Ten pages. It has begun!
I truly am the happiest when I’m drafting. The story is there, ready for me to just live it, and living it is the best part. Got through ten pages today pretty easily. Ten again tomorrow is the goal, and ten more after that, and so on till it’s done. We’re home for a good stretch, and I’m going to use that to just knock this book out. I know that will make my co-writer happy, and it will make ME happy. I’m still on track to finish two books this year, for the first time ever.
I was curious today about how many words per page I’ve averaged over the four books that I’ve written so far. 257. And in the process of figuring that out, I realized I’ve written and published just over 500,000 words. The rule of thumb is that your first million words are figuring out how to write, and after that you’re in good shape to get published. I don’t exactly take that as a rule—I don’t at all, really—but I do feel like I’m going to be a much better writer in another 500,000 words, and I am interested in traditional publishing; that is to say a publishing deal with one of the major houses. I don’t want to just be an indie, I think. We’ll see how it goes…but I’m really excited to write and publish my next half-million words, see how much better I can get at this thing in that time. I’m definitely getting faster, too. That’s exciting, too. If I were to write 5 pages a day—which is nothing to me, now—I could write somewhere between 5 and 6 books in a year. Kind of a wild fact. Granted, the work to write that many books would truly be if I could figure out how to outline that fast. The pages themselves have become the easy part. It’s the outlining, figuring out the story, that’s the heavy lift. But, we’ll see. I know there’s a lot of room for improvement in that regard. I know I can go faster with it and still be just as detailed. More, even.
It was a good day work-wise, too. Busy. Been busy lately, but that’s good. I could use a slow day this week, maybe two of them, but overall I always prefer it busy than slow. Slow stresses me out. Lots of ads coming in right now, working on those the most. Have a few of them to send off tomorrow.
Liz and I are doing a Harrison Ford watch right now, which is SUPER fun. We finished The Fugitive tonight. It was awesome. And then we just started The Witness, which is another one of his hits we’ve never seen. It’s already super good. 80s and 90s for the win! Really, it’s Harrison Ford for the win. He’s so good. In everything.
Night night.