Oh, the loneliness! The loneliness!
Nov. 7th, 2006 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceIt's Tuesday, noon-ish, and I have decided: race or no race, the midday posting of total week's wordage will continue.
The trouble is, of course, that after a month's hectic head-to-head, driving each other furiously on, I am suddenly faced with this last lap to run alone, with no one to pace me. I have slackened. Not slacked, exactly - I have been away during this week, and yesterday was set up from the start to be a lost cause workwise - but nevertheless. It's taken a mad surge this morning to get me past 10,000 words for the week.
Here are the numbers: I've actually written 10,136 words this week, or 34 pages, which gives us
Or, in my preferred page-count mode:
Which only goes to prove how very, very bad I am at estimating how long a book is going to be. I may have mentioned this before; we live by Brenchley's Rules in this house, and Brenchley's First Rule of Everything is that Everything Takes Longer.
Still'n'all, the good news is that this last canter, the home straight is actually briefer than I'd anticipated. Maybe I'm skimping; someone else will have to tell me. I have nothing left to write now but the post-climax recovery, and the twist. I could do all that today. I might yet. I might not; I have to go to the theatre this evening, which might disrupt the afternoon. Either way, I don't really care. We're there, or thereabouts. Just a few hours' work remaining.
I had vaguely hoped to go apeshit in September, and write a novel in a month (3000 words a day, for thirty days - that's where the 90,000 target came from). As it went, I didn't really get started till mid-September, and the bulk of the work was done in October, and it still didn't get finished till now or nowabouts. Still, a couple of months' work is not bad, for a novel. The real question is whether it is conspicuously worse than those books I've sweated over for a year or more. Again, that'll be someone else's judgement. Me, I just blow the wind through the trombone. And other inappropriate metaphors.
The trouble is, of course, that after a month's hectic head-to-head, driving each other furiously on, I am suddenly faced with this last lap to run alone, with no one to pace me. I have slackened. Not slacked, exactly - I have been away during this week, and yesterday was set up from the start to be a lost cause workwise - but nevertheless. It's taken a mad surge this morning to get me past 10,000 words for the week.
Here are the numbers: I've actually written 10,136 words this week, or 34 pages, which gives us
| |
112,132 / 90,000 (124.6%) |
Or, in my preferred page-count mode:
| |
350 / 300 (116.7%) |
Which only goes to prove how very, very bad I am at estimating how long a book is going to be. I may have mentioned this before; we live by Brenchley's Rules in this house, and Brenchley's First Rule of Everything is that Everything Takes Longer.
Still'n'all, the good news is that this last canter, the home straight is actually briefer than I'd anticipated. Maybe I'm skimping; someone else will have to tell me. I have nothing left to write now but the post-climax recovery, and the twist. I could do all that today. I might yet. I might not; I have to go to the theatre this evening, which might disrupt the afternoon. Either way, I don't really care. We're there, or thereabouts. Just a few hours' work remaining.
I had vaguely hoped to go apeshit in September, and write a novel in a month (3000 words a day, for thirty days - that's where the 90,000 target came from). As it went, I didn't really get started till mid-September, and the bulk of the work was done in October, and it still didn't get finished till now or nowabouts. Still, a couple of months' work is not bad, for a novel. The real question is whether it is conspicuously worse than those books I've sweated over for a year or more. Again, that'll be someone else's judgement. Me, I just blow the wind through the trombone. And other inappropriate metaphors.
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Re: Brenchley's First Rule of Everything
Date: 2006-11-07 04:18 pm (UTC)My original plan for this book said 80,000 words. It's going to be much, much closer to 120,000. That's fifty per cent over original budget, 33% over revised & extended budget - which latter had budgeted for one month, where in fact it took two. Etc.
Brenchley's Second Law of Everything, of course, states that Nothing Is As Good. QED.