J. Mark Miller | A Writer's Fantasy |

One of the most exciting aspects of writing, for me, is the process of discovery. I’ve found myriad layers of discovery from finding what’s in my imagination, discovering the motivations and personality traits of my characters, and most important, self-discovery.

As I’ve made the commitment to be more intentional about my writing over the last year, I’ve been learning what does and doesn’t work for me in the writing process. My first completed novel was one I had been working on half-heartedly for nearly ten years. I finally decided about a year ago to buckle down and finish it, spending a month rewriting and re-charting the 60,000 some-odd words I’d already produced, then finishing the first draft in about a month or so.

What was interesting about the process was how I unconsciously chose to approach the manual aspect of writing—good old paper and pencil. I purchased a five-subject spiral notebook, and went to work a few hours each day writing the remaining manuscript by hand, finishing it sometime in early October.

There’s a point to this story, so hang with me. The remainder of October was spent typing the hand-written manuscript into my computer, and though it was the extra step, it really became something of a blessing. During the transcription process, I was able to essentially do the first round of editing, so in the long run the time was not wasted.

When November came around, I was done with the transcription, and NaNoWriMo was under way. I had downloaded the trial version of Scrivener, determined to give it a real run for the money since I could purchase it at half price after winning NaNo. So here I was, suddenly shifting from writing a first draft by hand to writing on my laptop. Granted, I didn’t know if I could keep the minimum pace necessary to complete 50,000 words in 30 days writing my hand, but I suspect in hindsight I would have.

In fact, I now have suspicions I would have well exceeded the word count.

You see, I’ve since completed that NaNo novel, and as I’ve been going back to do a first round of revision, I’m finding I don’t like the voice of the novel as well as my hand-written one. Even after NaNo was over, and the pressure to produce a minimum word count was gone, I continued forging ahead on the laptop. I fell in love with Scrivener and used it daily to complete the first draft.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve taken up plotting a new novel, and a short story as well. Without thinking about it, I’ve found myself with pencil and paper in hand, writing out the plots and notes to these stories by hand. I’m enjoying the process so much more than when sitting on the couch with my laptop, and I’m finding myself much less easily distracted. The whole experience feels more organic and natural to me, and I know I’m producing a better first draft.

NaNo is approaching, and I’m considering doing it by hand. Since I can enter a word count number of my own without using the official word counter, I’m thinking I can just figure out how many words per hand-written page I average and use that as a guide for my daily goal and word count. Sure, I’ll have to type it all up later, but I think I’ll come out with a much tighter manuscript in the end.

I’ve been a bad boy lately. Remember that post from just a few days ago about goals and stuff?

Yeah. I’m not even close.

I’m finding the editing/revision process to be much tougher than I’d anticipated. This is the first time I’ve ever sat down and started working hard on revisions for a completed novel. It’s taking up far more time than I’d planned on, and is harder in every way than I’d expected.

Add to all this, my family and I have decided to get off our rears and get in shape. We bought P90X last week, and are just a few days into it. I’ve lost some weight already, and feel much better, but it kind of saps my desire to do any serious thinking afterward. I’m hoping once I get into the groove of working out I’ll be able to get back to concentrating better.

To top it all off, I finally got around to reading John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series. What a fun ride. I can hardly put the books down, and would rather read them than revise my novel. Kudos and curses on you Mr. Scalzi for writing such good stuff.

Happy writing!

I’ve already made mention of how good I think James Scott Bell’s The Art of War for Writers is, but I’d like to put one of its recommendations into practice. To do so, I’m putting this up for public record.

Chapter 4 of the book talks about discipline as the first step toward victory. One area of discipline is to set writing goals and stick to them. I’ve already discovered this for myself, but in terms of writing there is a further piece of advice which Bell learned from Anthony Trollope.

Write a quota of words every week.

Rather than shoehorning a daily writing goal into a schedule which doesn’t always work out as planned, set a weekly quota based on six days of writing per week. That way, if writing one day goes awry, you can make it up on another day, plus have an extra day for making it up if absolutely necessary.

I still keep a daily record of the number of words I write, but my goal has shifted to a weekly rather than daily quota. Here are the quotas I’m setting for myself, broken up into two separate sets of circumstances.

While Working on Revisions:

• Weekly word quota: 8,000 words (average 1,333 words per day, six days a week)
• Weekly revision quota: 6 chapters (average 1 chapter per day, six days a week)
• Weekly reading quota: 6 chapters (average 1 chapter per day, six days a week; these are writing improvement books, not reading for pleasure)
• Weekly blogging quota: 3 posts per week minimum

While Not Working on Revisions:

• Weekly word quota: 9,000 words (average 1,500 words per day, six days a week)
• Weekly revision quota: 6 chapters (average 1 chapter per day, six days a week)
• Weekly reading quota: 6 chapters (average 1 chapter per day, six days a week)
• Weekly blogging quota: 3 posts per week minimum

Observations

1. The pace of writing new content is only slightly reduced during revision work times. I’ll admit the revision/editing process is one I’ve not fully experienced before, so I may have to come back and adjust some quotas there. I finished my first novel just before NaNoWriMo started, and I set it aside until I finished my second novel just over this last weekend. I now have two 150,000+ word novels ready for revisions.
2. I won’t beat myself up if I don’t reach the daily average. I used to feel bad about not making the daily goal, but since switching to this method, I’m finding myself surpassing the weekly quota by one to two thousands words fairly easily.
3. I wonder if this method will work during NaNoWriMo? At first glance, it looks like it would, making the weekly goal 11,667 words per week. The pace during NaNo is frenzied anyway, but spreading it out over a week makes it seem more manageable. I’m concerned, however, that it takes away one of the largest motivating factors of the event—the daily pressure to produce.
4. How does the brainstorming and planning of new stories work into all this? I’ve always wondered how other authors deal with the planning stages of their works? Are they still writing something everyday in addition to brainstorming, or do they count whatever notes they put down as counting toward a word count? Can anyone comment on this?

How do you set quotas for yourself? What methods or advice can you share that has helped you reach your writing goals.

READING: Soldiers Live (Chronicles of The Black Company)

Confession time. This blog hasn’t really been around for twenty-one days. After reading on several literary agent’s blogs that modern writers often need a pre-existing online presence to be successful in the business, I figured I’d better get started. I created the blog a few days ago, and began writing reports on my NaNoWriMo progress as if it had been written that very day. It’s been a pretty fun exercise, both from a writing standpoint, and in doing a quick review of what’s been written so far.

To be fair, this is not my first blog, and I’m kind of well known in the blogging circles in another realm entirely, but those credentials really don’t mean anything for my desired goal becoming a published author. I’m not trying to hide the other side of my life, I will usually just make it a point to not bring it up unless it is relevant in some way

If you happen to stumble across this blog in the future, welcome to the dream. As of this writing I’m sure the only people who have read any of my posts are myself and my wife, and I doubt she has or will read most of them in the future.

What are my plans? Until the end of NaNoWriMo, not much beyond the daily report. I do have an idea to share some really great resources I’ve found in the last month or so. In the future, you can count on periodic reviews of whatever I might have finished reading, and reports on where I’m at in terms of writing, editing, revising, searching for and agent, and hopefully getting published.

After NaNoWriMo, I’ll also start writing either short story series or one-shots. I found this really great book at the recycled book store called The Daily Writer. I plan to start using it on a regular basis as a source of writing prompts for free writing exercises.

I’m glad you found me, and I’m thankful for any and all input you can provide as we journey together to get me published.