Starting the New Year Running

I've tried to gear up before the New Year begins. For the past week I've managed a minimum of 500 words (edited) per day. The result was a 1,800 short story which went into the mail this afternoon. That's the first short story I've sent out in over two years. I've written quite a few over those two years, just never bothered to polish them enough to send out. In fact, targeting magazines is something I've never really pushed myelf on, so another goal I'm setting for the new year is to finish, polish and post a story each week. That's going to be tough; it means writing for markets, rather than finding markets for my favoured writing. It's also on top of work commitments, family commitments and writing novel #2 (15,000 words into that BTW). But what the hell, it'll be fun.

I'm making Saturday my deadline for getting something in the post. I actually posted two stories this week, but I'm counting it as one, as only one is new fiction.

It'll be interesting to see if a) I can keep to the plan and b) if this tactic of machine-gun submissions actually works. I'll post any successes as they happen.

One final point to add here. The story I've just sent out - I had no preconceptions of that before I set out writing. I had no idea where it was going. It was totally a case of sitting down, typing and seeing what came out.

How To Eat An Elephant

I've decided to set out some solid working goals for the New Year. I normally set goals anyway when I'm working on a particular project - making sure to sit down for an hour or so every day and get some work done. What I don't do is take the same approach when I don't have something to work on. Sounds fair enough, doesn't it? I mean, if you've got no ideas, why bother opening the laptop?

The answer: because by sitting down and writing any old crap, your mind kicks into gear, ideas form, link, and stories are born. That's exactly how my story Back to the Angel was written. There was no idea or concept before I started writing. So I know the technique works, but I've let things slipped over the past few months by concentrating on revisions and rewrites instead of the fun stuff.

Anyway, I've got things back in gear since being directed to the blog of Dean Wesley Smith. He promotes this same technique that many professional writers use. Basically, it's a numbers game: knocking out a certain amount of words on a regular basis to get through a first draft in as short a time as possible - regardless if you know what you're writing or not!

Example: It takes me about twenty minutes to knock out 500 words (accunting for corrections, backtracking etc). So, if I do just that, and no more, every day, then it will take six months to turn out 90,000 words (your average novel). If I do 1000 words per day, it'll take only three months. That doesn't mean I'll have a finished novel at the end of that time, but it does mean I'll have a draft that I can work on.

There are, however, days when other things get in the way, and I want a goal I can either achieve, or beat, on a regular basis. So I'm going for 5000 words per week. This allows for a comfortable 500 words per night during the week and a bit more work when I have more time at weekends.

So this takes us back to the title. How do you eat an elephant? A bite at a time! The novel is an elephant; an impossible task when you try to plan it in one go. But if you approach it a bite at a time, suddenly it's not so scary.