Another Milestone Achieved, Another Magic Number Reached

by
Scott D. Parker

Sometimes it’s perfectly acceptable to tout an accomplishment, and today I am.

As of Wednesday, 5 April, I have written over 200,000 words of fiction. I’m not sure of your output, but for me, a writer with a day job, that’s a nice chunk of words. And 5 April is the 95th day of 2017 so I achieved 200,000 words in less than 100 days.

Math. It all adds up over time.

For my novels—specifically these westerns—I have two magic numbers. One is 10,000. It means I’ve commented that number of words to the new story and I should have a pretty good idea of how it’s going. The other is 50,000. Westerns are shorter and if I’ve reached that number or thereabouts, I should be fine.

One interesting note: I hit 100,000 words for 2017 on Day 50. I hit 200,000 forty-five days later. The second 100K consisted of the latter half of February’s book, all of March’s, and the first week of April’s. One could make the case that writing constantly and deliberately makes the writing more efficient. For the most part, I’d agree. If I hadn’t had some sub-1000-word days in March as I wrestled that book to the finish line, I’d have reached 200,000 sooner.

For some of y’all, 200,000 may seem like a huge number. It is! Please don’t think it isn’t a substantial number. You may not think you could ever get there. Well, you can’t over night. That much is sure. But you can get there in 95 days, or 200 days, or 400 days, or whatever. But you CAN get there.

All you have to do is commit to it. Once you do that and stick with it, the numbers add up and one day you’ll realize you’ve passed your magic number. Then you’ll type “The End,” and that’s one of the best feelings in the world.

What’s your magic number(s)?

Writing With Circles - Two Great Resources

By
Scott D. Parker

This was a great week for writing advice.

First up was the latest episode of Rocking Self Publishing, one of the essential podcasts if you want to learn what's going in the world of independent publishing. Host Simon Whistler interviewed author Jacqueline Garlick. Over the course of the hourlong discussion, two things emerged.

One was her increase in writing speed. She took inspiration from Chris Fox’s 21-day novel challenge. She attempted the fear and ended up with a first draft in about 15 days. She knew the manuscript would be reworked over subsequent drafts, but getting the story out of her head in a short amount of time was eye opening. She ended up completing 10 manuscripts in various genres last year.

Impressive. Most impressive.

Ever a student of the writing process, Garlick attended multiple conferences and met lots of other writers. She also taught writing. After sifting through all of this information, she conceived the idea of a plot laid out on a clock. The opening is up to 3pm, the middle is from 3 to 9 (with the midpoint naturally at 6pm), the climax from 9 to 11, and the final denouement from 11 to 12. It’s a neat way to visualize a story that was new to me.

If Garlick’s interview solidified some of my own thinking regarding writing pace, then an article Joe Lansdale write really drove home some key points in the writing process. Published in The Strand, Joe’s “The Rules of Being a Professional Writer” proved to be quite the peek behind the curtain. The obvious rule of reading a lot and writing a lot is again reiterated for the thousandth time. It's in the rest of the guidelines that true sneaks out.

Again, an obvious one: be excited about what you write. If you're not dying to get to the next scene, neither will your readers. Keep your day job until you know you can make it as a writer. That one hits home with me, a day job holder who writes at 4:30 am.

The second circular analogy about writing came from this article. Lansdale writes thus: “I don’t plot, at least not consciously. I go to bed, and my subconscious works on it. When I awake, the work is there, and when I finish for the day, I know from experience my subconscious will fill me up with the next day’s work. Now and again it lets me down, but that is rare. For me, working this way, I get to enjoy the creation of a story from soup to nuts, and the passion that goes with it. Some writers need a road map, some a compass. I’m the latter.”

This year, to date, I have not plotted out the two novels I’ve worked on. That's new for me...and fun! I have a general idea of the ending, but I’ve been experiencing the story alongside my main character. Sure, there may be a moment when I know that my hero is going to discover something, but more often than not, my creative voice just landed something on the story I didn’t see coming. My hero is surprised. I just have a big goofy grin on my face and marvel at how great it is to be a writer.

Lansdale's piece just landed itself on my all-time best writing advice list. 

Here are the two links. Enjoy and learn.

http://rockingselfpublishing.com/garlick2/

https://strandmag.com/the-rules-of-being-a-professional-writer/

Writing Lessons from Frank Gruber

By
Scott D. Parker

Earlier this week, I review THE PULP JUNGLE by Frank Gruber. Reading through all the true struggles he endured to bust through and actually make it in 1934, I realized that I, in 2017, with a full-time day job, have it pretty good as I work at my writing craft and pursue my own goals.
But Gruber’s odyssey as a writer can also speak to us writers today. What follows are some facts and quotes I took away from his book.

From August 1932 (when he arrived in New York) until June 1934 (when he sold the story that enabled him to break big in the pulp fiction market), Gruber wrote 174 “pieces” which totaled 620,000 words, all on a Remington manual typewriter. He called himself a sloppy writer, so he had to retype everything after he corrected the manuscript. The fiction spanned the gamut: Sunday School stories, detective stories, love stories, spicy stories, sports stories, etc. Those words were not solely fiction. He wrote tons of articles often on topics he had to learn on the fly. In the book, Gruber lists the dollar amounts he earned for various pieces. Even in 1932 dollars, those meager sales didn’t add up to a living wage. My takeaway: Yeah, he had it bad, real bad. I don’t. Not really.

The Big Break came in 1934 in one of those great true tales you hear. Gruber gets a call on Friday afternoon. Operator #5 was going to press the next day but was a story short. Could Gruber write a 5500-word story overnight? In his retelling, he started at 8pm and had a character. Two hours later, he had his leading lady. By 3:30am, he had his big finale…but still needed a plot thread to weave it all together. He got it, and delivered the 18 pages by 9am. He didn’t hear back for a few days. He started to worry, so he called on the editor. Oh, he was told, we pay on Friday. Pay? Yup, the story was purchased. And then he was asked for another. According to Gruber, “I was ‘in.’” My takeaway: sometimes, your best work can emerge out of your brain and through your fingers in whole cloth. Don’t be afraid of going with it.

His income in 1934 was less than $400 ($7,200 in 2017 money). In 1935, he made $10,000 ($176,511). My takeaway: Yikes!

Even after his Big Break, Gruber worked steadily and for higher paying markets. The key factor here was that Gruber never stopped working. Yes he had made it, but in those days, a writer was only as good as the next sale. So he kept working on stories, then branched out into novels, both detective stories as well as westerns. All the contacts he had made during the lean years paid dividends later on, including when he moved to Hollywood. My takeaway: always keep learning and always maintain your contacts when you make them. You never know what will happen and with whom.

Frederick Faust, the real man behind the famous pen name “Max Brand,” trained himself to write 14 pages every day, year after year. It added up to 1,500,000 words of fiction per year. It took him 2 hours each day. Then he would often drink. My takeaway: Constant writing and constant production will produce material you can sell. Keep at it. We may not all type as fast as Faust and we may not all have 2 hours in our days, but we do have an hour or so. The words will come, and they will come faster and easier the more you do it.

"There is equality of opportunity. There is no equality of talent." Gruber said that about the days of yore. With independent writer opportunities, the field is even more wide open.


The story of Frank Gruber’s professional life suggests that hard work, determination, and perseverance will enable a writer to hone the skills necessary to become a full-time writer. It also demonstrates that writers must recognize and seize opportunities when they present themselves. Don’t think you could write a story overnight (Insert Your Own Personal Challenge)? Perhaps Gruber didn’t think he could do it either…until he said “yes” and then he delivered and discovered that he could. Then he did it over and over again.

Writing a Novel in a “Week”

By
Scott D. Parker

I finished my first book of 2017 this past Thursday and it only took me a week…and 26 days.

Confused? Don’t be. Let me explain.

Those of us who work a typical day job work 40 hours a week. We go to work around 8:00am and leave at 5:00pm. We get an hour for lunch and end up working 8 hours a day. If we work a typical Monday through Friday, we work 40 hours a week.

Now, I’m not sure about your job, but mine is pretty specific. I show up at 7:00am (I actually work a 9/80 schedule where I get every other Friday off, but I have to work 9-hour days) and I’m expected to work. I don’t have time for “I don’t feel like it” or “I’m having writer’s block on this technical manual.” Within five minutes or so of me walking in the door, I’m working. And I’m working for five days on most weeks.

Somewhere along the line, we fiction writers got it in our heads that making stuff up for a living is not a real job. It most certainly is. And I discovered a little about myself over the first 26 days of January.
On New Year’s Day, I started writing my first book of the year. I have a title: CALVIN CARTER AND THE EMPTY COFFINS. It’s a 65,000-word (pre-edit) western/mystery novel, first in a new series. Anyway, whenever I sat down to write, I literally clocked in using the HoursTracker app on my phone. I wrote about tracking your writing time a couple weeks back. It’s also good to see the numbers add up over time.

One of my columns was “Time (cumulative)” where each day’s hours spent writing are totaled. If you look at it one way, it’s simply a column with an ascending series of numbers. Here is the data for the first six days in January: 2.35; 4.43; 5.43; 6.78; 7.83; 8.65. This column’s number go all the way up to 36.03 hours, which I hit on Thursday morning.

But if you stop and look at this column from another point of view, you see something completely different. If you imagine your day job 8-hour day, then when you hit 8 total hours, you’ve worked a “Monday.” When you reach 16 hours, you’ve worked through “Tuesday.” The math works all the way up to “Friday” and 40 hours.

By examining the data in this manner, I imagined what it would be like to have fiction writing as a full-time job…and realized that I could write a book in a week! That’s only 8 hours a day, time off for lunch, and no working the weekends. (Side note: I worked every day from 1 Jan to 26 Jan but that’s because fiction writing is not my full-time job.)

A big caveat: words written per hour. I have only one hour a day to write on weekdays, a tad more on weekends. I absolutely must be efficient in my writing time. Chances are that my overall word-count-per-hour would decrease if I truly worked eight hours straight, but when it’s an hour at a time, I can fly, especially when the guns are blazing and Carter has to get out of scraps. But even if my word count dropped to 1,000 words per hour, I could still work out a 40,000-word novel—enough for the  westerns back in the day—in a week. Anything higher than that is gravy.

It’s not difficult to project forward the idea of working as a full-time fiction writer and the output that could be achieved if the constraints of another day job were not in the way. A book a week pace is crazy! I know. Not only would the physical aspect take a toll but the mental gymnastics to come up with a new book every week might prove too much. But some do it. Robert Randisi, in an interview published just this week, lays out his working day. It’s incredible, but he does it, day in and day out.

Just like a real job.

Go figure.

Because writing IS a real job.

Some have the opportunity to do it full time. Others, like myself, have to bide our time, all the while training up for success. For one month in January 2017, I realized I could write a book in a month, and maybe, just maybe, given the opportunity--or a deadline--I could do it in a week.

Erle Stanley Gardner: Independent Author?

By

Scott D Parker

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was talking shop with my friend David, the graphic designer who helped design the cover of ALL CHICKENS MUST DIE, the latest Benjamin Wade book. I gave him a list of books that helped me along. The books that I mentioned was one that doesn’t usually show up when we talk about famous writing books. It’s called The Secrets of the World’s Best–Selling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner by Francis L and Roberta B Fugate. The book was published in 1980. It’s the story of how Gardner went from merely a lawyer to, at the time of his death in 1970, the world’s best-selling writer. It is a fascinating book. When I first discovered it a few years ago, I checked it out from the Houston Public Library and read through it very quickly. I took copious notes. I mean a lot of notes. I ended up reading it a second time and now, I’m reading it through for a third time. There is little about Gardner’s personal life; instead, this is a “biography” of how writer practiced, honed his skills, and ultimately, was successful.

The Erle Stanley Gardner papers are housed at the University of Texas at Austin at the Harry Ransom Center. When I attended school there, I never knew it and, let’s be honest, I had never read any of Gardner’s books. The two Fugates scoured through all of Gardner’s papers and pulled out a wonderful history — complete with many of Gardner’s own notes — of the steps he took to become the writer he became. The appendices are wonderful and there are even a few photographs of Gardner’s own handwritten notebooks complete with descriptions, timelines, and all the other things he needed to craft his mystery books. A particularly neat thing is the transcription of a lecture he gave to the writers of the Perry Mason TV show back in 1959. And when I say transcription, I’m talking about an 8 to 10 page block quote. He basically summed up everything you needed to know about how he wrote all his books in this single transcription.

So how do the writings of Gardner and independent authors collide?

As independent authors in 2016, we are urged to publish regularly and frequently. This helps us build up an audience as quick as possible and, if one can maintain a certain writing production, it will give our readers a constant flow of our work. There are many different definitions of “publish regularly and frequently.” I’ve seen estimates that can range from two books a year to four books a year or more. If you think about it, even a moderately paced writing schedule of 1000 words a day can yield, more or less, four books a year that you can then publish. Anything more is gravy (or flooding the market, depending on your mindset).

The reason I bring up Earl Stanley Gardner when talking about independent publishing is his publishing schedule. Now, for the purposes of this discussion, I’m only talking about his novels. He honed his skill as a pulp writer in the 20s and early 30s, writing short stories, novelettes, and novellas. I seem to remember one statistic from the book which stated that he wrote up to 1 million words a year. I know some modern-day writers who can achieve this feat — James Reasoner being one of them — but the mere fact of writing a million words a year is incredibly staggering. But with the writing and publication of Gardner’s first Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, Gardner turned toward writing more books and fewer short stories.

Get a load of the statistics. In 1933, he published two Perry Mason novels. In 1934, he published three. In 1935 and 1936, he published two each. So that’s nine books and four years. Starting in 1937, things get more interesting. In 1937, he published three novels, two Perry Mason’s and one of his Doug Selby, DA, series. In 1938, same thing: two Perry Mason books and one DA book. Now comes 1939. We get two Perry Mason books, one DA book, and the debut of the Cool and Lam series. That’s four books in one year! He tops himself in 1940: two Cool and Lam books, two Perry Mason books, and one DA book. So, if you do the math, in the first eight years of his novel writing career, Erle Stanley Gardner published 24 books in three different series.

So yeah, Erle Stanley Gardner pretty much published like an independent author. The only difference between him and what we do in 2016 is that he had a traditional publisher. And it was the 1930s, so things were different. And he was able to devote all his time to writing. And he dictated everything. Famously, he dictated the first Perry Mason book in three days. He said it took him a half a day to come up with the plot and 2 1/2 days to dictate the entire book. Wow. I’m majorly impressed.

And if you want one more little tidbit from the mind of Erle Stanley Gardner regarding how he thought about his readers and the editors of the pulp magazines in the 1920s, there is this: “My own approach to the question is different from that of the critic. I am a writer. I serve the reading public. The reading public is my master.” And, according to the Fugates, “After that, he became an outspoken exponent of the idea the publisher of the magazine was simply acting as a middleman in purveying merchandise — story supplied by writers — to readers, the ultimate consumers.”

Erle Stanley Gardner. He acted like an independent author when such a thing rarely existed. Now it does. I wonder how many authors can replicate his success over the nearly 40 years of his novel-writing career? I have my own answer. I aim to try.

BTW, the book is now available as an ebook.

Finishing a Manuscript and Asking Why Not?

By

Scott D. Parker

On Tuesday afternoon, during one of my five-minute breaks at my day job, I put the final period on the first draft of my latest manuscript. On my iPod Touch. Again, as I’ve written about before, I still can’t believe how productive I can be writing a first draft on an iPod. I realized that I was close during my 5am writing session but wasn’t able to finish at home. But that was just as well since…between 40-50% of the first draft was written on my iPod. I went home and copied the new text into Scrivener and then printed it. There it is on the left.

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on saying it: if you want to write, there are ways to write when you’re just about anywhere. I celebrated by going to rehearsal that night and then chilling later that evening with a glass of pinot grigio. As only writers can attest, there’s nothing like finishing a novel. This one clocked in at 59,000 so it’s officially a short novel. 

I'm not the only one, either. There's a post over at The Digital Reader about writing on smartphones. 

And the next day, in order to keep my writing streak alive (every day since 1 May), I started the next one. But it’s low-key because I have other things to do with my spare time. What, pray tell, are they? Astute readers will likely have drawn a conclusion to many of my side comments in my posts these past few weeks so it’s time to let the cat out of the bag. I am starting my own independent publishing company to publish my own ebooks starting in 2015.

Probably the first question you may have is why? My short answer is Why Not? My longer answer is more nuanced and I’ll write about it in the coming weeks.

You’ve been reading about my productivity in completing manuscripts since May 2013. In that time, I’ve written six manuscripts of varying length, eight if you count a couple of short stories. And you will have the chance to read them come 2015.  So stay tuned.

But back to the iPod (or smartphone or whatever device you carry around): Always Be Writing. You can do it. Modern technology makes it unbelievably simple. You only have to want to. And I do.

Do you?

Plotting Via the Capri Method

By
Scott D. Parker

If the two camps of writers consist of pantsers and plotters, call me more of a capri.

Back in 2005, I got asked a question by a co-worker/aspiring writer: “Will you read chapters of my book?” My answer was simple: “Sure, if you read mine.”

Crap. Now I had to produce. I had nothing on paper and needed a direction. Knowing nothing really about writing other than what it took to write my thesis, I bought a comp book, different color pens, and a stack of note cards. I then proceeded to brainstorm about the story I wanted to write. I had in mind a single scene, but I didn’t know where it went. I knew it wasn’t first, so I wrote a bunch of scenes that lead up to it (it was a big reveal) and then the outro from it. Each card was a scene, color-coded per POV character, and, after I had the whole story outlined, I started writing.

What was good about that process is that each night at 10pm—the only time I had to write—I picked up the next card and wrote just that scene. Since I knew where I came from and where the story was going, I could foreshadow or refer back to other things. The only stumbling block I got was from my critique group: “Hey, what are the other bad guys doing during all of this?” I told them and they said to write it down and put it in the book. I did and I finished my first novel using the outline/plotter way.

So, the next seven years, I tried NOT doing it that way. I finished nothing.

Lesson learned. Last year, after I wrote a novella—my first finished piece of any length; you’ll see it in 2015—I needed something else to continued my writing streak. I picked up an unfinished novel and wrote the next chapter. Liking the story again, I sat down and remembered how well the index card method worked for me back in 2005. You know, you dance with them that brung ya. Thus, before writing another word, I outlined the story. Granted, I didn’t get to the end. I only outlined to the midpoint, but I had my road map. Boom, I was off like a flash. Once I got to said midpoint, taking a few deviations along the way, I outlined the rest of the story.

Again, a few deviations were met with pauses and more outlining, but basically I realized that, for me, an outline/scene breakdown/roadmap is the way I write best.

Proof? I finished that novel.

Then wrote another novel (starting the very next day) with the same method.

Then wrote another novella (longer this time, 34,000 words) with the same method.

Then wrote another novella of 29,000 words with the same method.

Then wrote a short novel (approximately 60,000 words) with the same method that I’ll finish this weekend or next week.

Lesson learned: I am a plotter. With the caveat that I freely let myself drift off course if the story dictates it. But here’s the key factor for me: If I drift, I still plot. Let me explain.

I have a bunch of scenes mapped out, either to the end or some point before the end. Doesn’t matter. In the course of the actual storytelling, characters start to get some of their own personality and not just be cardboard cutouts being moved by me. When the story takes a turn I didn’t foresee, I take a step into that new path. But only a step. I then stop and ponder the new direction in light of what I’ve already written, what I’ve already planned, and then decide if the new path is worth taking. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

This process, while it may sound clean, can be rather messy. But it seems to work for me. When I do action scenes, I actually have to choreograph the scene and break it down into smaller chunks. But I get there.

For an example of how this works for me, here’s a shot of the current WIP’s index cards/post-it notes, etc. in my writing room.

• A - Initial set of index cards before I went with post-it notes. My goal is to have each corkboard have two separate stores, the one I’m writing and the one that’s coming up next. I’m not there yet.
• B - Post-it notes on large piece of paper. I laid that paper out on a table, drew a line from beginning to end, and started pasting scenes. They’re color-coded but I’m not sure you can see it.
• C - Post-it notes on 11x17 paper. This is just the finale scenes since I wanted to be portable and write elsewhere in the house. Also, that’s my PC (I write on a Mac) where I have my dictation software. When I’m brainstorming the index cards, I’m live on Dragon Naturally Speaking talking…well, to myself and the program records everything. Nifty.
• D - I diagramed one of my favorite novels, breaking it down into scenes, chapters, plots/sub-plots, etc. just to see how it was written. Enlightening.
• E - Current calendar of events as I prepare for 2015. More on this in a future post.
• F - More sheets of paper taped on doors. This is my big list of plot ideas based on series characters.
• G - (far lower left) - That is my shelf of manuscripts. I have them separated by series. That one in particular is the third novella.

I love talking strategy and processes. I use Scrivener exclusively to port most of this stuff into electronic format. As I mentioned in a previous post, I also copy/paste my active WIP into Google Docs so I can write on the go.

What are your favorite techniques?

Going to School with the Self-Publishing Podcast

by

Scott D. Parker

If school teachers were more like Sean, Johnny, and Dave, we’d all make straight A’s.

The three amigos in question are Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant, and David W. Wright. They write an astounding amount of fiction per year (1.5 million words!) in multiple genres but, more important to this discussion, they host a weekly podcast on self-publishing.

I found their podcast via Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn podcast. Hers is a wonderful podcast featuring interviews and updates on Joanna’s career. I’ve been listening to both sets of podcasts in reverse order. Joanna interviewed Johnny in April 2014 and, from there, I discovered his podcast.

The Self-Publishing Podcast is chock full of camaraderie, fun, information, and a palpable zeal for writing in the 21st Century. I listen to their podcasts at the day job--you can see them live on YouTube--and they help me get through my workday. I make notes throughout the day just listening to the three of them talk and banter about the wide world of indie publishing. It’s like a college lecture only with more speed. And laughter. And swearing, so if that’s a thing for you, well, get over it and still listen to the podcast.

The latest episode is #125 so, if you are just discovering them like I am, you have over 100 hours of lessons to learn. But it’s fun learning. They just talk and I absorb. Most of the hour-long episodes start with general chit-chat about the week’s work, maybe a voice mail from a fan, and then an interview with a guest. For the past two weeks, I’ve basically listened to nothing else but the SPP, the Creative Penn, and Ace Frehley’s new album, Space Invader. (Excellent LP, by the way. Dude can write some wicked licks.).

A few highlights:

1. Episode 109 - Cover Design with Jason Gurley 
2. Episode 116 - What We’d Do If We Were Just Starting Out 
3. Any episode with Tucker Max
4. Episode 101 - Selling Your First 1,000 Copies 
5. Episode 71 – Killing Sacred Cows with Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. This is an excellent one 

I’ve learned lots from these three, but if there’s one underlying philosophy, it’s this: write what you want, write it as fast as you can, make sure it’s good, get it out in the world, and then do it again. If you fail, so what? You’ll learn from it and get better.

If there’s such a thing as required listening for tips, tricks, pitfalls, and successes in indie publishing, then the Self-Publishing Podcast is required. To paraphrase their book on publishing, Subscribe. Listen. Learn. Repeat.

Writing with an iPod, Part II

by

Scott D. Parker

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about my new iPod Touch and the new apps that I now could use to help me craft ideas for my stories. I focused on the Index Card app for brainstorming ideas and scenes for stories. It’s a great app and I still use it.

Then I figured out something even more fundamental for writing: actual composing on the iPod. Yes, really.

So, when I’m here at my Mac, I use Scrivener to write fiction. I love this program for its simplicity, ease of use, and its programmability. But there is no iOS version of it. Yes, I always moved a copy of the updated file to Dropbox every time I close a writing session, but there’s no good way to write on *that* file on the fly. It’s only a copy.

What to do?

Well, there is a program and is available on the fly: Google Docs. A little over two weeks ago, it finally dawned on me what I can do: use Google Docs to always have a working copy of the book with me. Scrivener is still the primary, but Google Docs is the wonderful on-the-go solution. Here’s my current, efficient writing schedule for my work week.

I use Scrivener for my 5am writing session. When I am done, I compile the file and copy it to Dropbox. I also copy the current scene/chapter into a Google Docs file. It has *all* the scenes up to that point. There’s a 10,000-word-count limit to Google Docs and my scenes average just under 1,000 words so I have a series of Google Docs files of my book out there. There are three parts now. I’m on Part III.

Here’s where the magic happens. On my iPod Touch, I now carry a working copy of my book in Google Docs. I take a five-minute break every hour at the day job. In that break time, I walk the atrium, basically I do laps, usually around five or so. As soon as I start walking, I have the iPod in my hands, the current Google Docs file open to where I left off that morning. I walk and type *on the iPod* for five minutes. True, I can only get a hundred words or so in five minutes, but I take *seven* breaks per day. That’s about 600-700 new words in little five-minute snippets. The hardest part is when the five minutes are up and I have to return to work.

Let’s do the math. I can get around 600-800 words in the 5 o’clock hour. Then, in my breaks, I can get another 600-700 words written in the working file. That’s over a thousand words per day, which is a personal goal for me. But just under half of that count is written on a little bitty iPod screen with my thumbs.

To close out the day, I copy the material I wrote in Google Docs back into Scrivener and save that updated file. Boom. I’ve just moved the needle forward and moved that much closer to The End. As a bonus, I have my book saved in three places: the Mac (Scrivener), Dropbox (word file of Scrivener export), and Google Docs.

I get some funny looks from colleagues who can’t believe I’m writing on the iPod, but I am. I love this little thing. It’s making my writing days so much more productive.

Does anyone else do this kind of thing? What are the ways y’all write on the fly?

Reaching THE END…Again

by
Scott D. Parker

Well, I did it again.

Now, for someone like me--who wants to write books for sale--to celebrate the ending of another book may seem odd. Well, it might be at this stage in my career, but you have to know where I've been to appreciate where I am now. You see, it took me 2,556 days (from 1 June 2006 to 31 July 2013) to write "The End" on my first and second novels. Between novels two and three, it only took me 72 days. Actually, there was a 73rd day in there, but it was a day in which I didn't write on the novel but finished a short story for publication. Just 72 day and I have another book under my belt. Seriously. Somebody pinch me.

The Stats

Words: 115,000
Pages: 560
Time: 1 August to 12 October 2013
Average words per day: 1,604
Best Day: 4,300 words (the last day)
Worst Day: 1,002 (the first day) Ironic, huh?

This third book is a pseudo sequel to my second. Book 2 features a PI character and what happens to her as she works her first solo case. She works for  a PI firm and her boss is a co-star in Book 2. Book 3, on the other hand, features her boss and the things he has to go through. My lead from Book 2 shows up as do some of the other co-stars from Book 2. I have this idea of writing a series of novels in which different characters take turns leading a mystery story. We'll see how it goes.

Why This One Is Special

This third book of my career is a special, but frustrating accomplishment. It was frustrating because of my lesson learned (see below). Book 3 was special for a few reasons. One, I started it the day after I finished Book 2. I figured the secret of success is constantly working so I didn't want to take a day off. So, I didn't. Two, this book was almost literally written from scratch. With Book 2, I had about 13,000 written from last year. I just added 93,000 more this summer. With Book 3, I had a chapter I removed from Book 2 as a starting point and that was it. I wrote 115,000 new words on a project that I had barely conceived of in January and took out of my second book as a needless subplot.

Believe me, I know how this sounds. "Hey, world, I wrote a book using my imagination from beginning to end." Yes, that's what we're supposed to do. But I had only done it twice before, with years in between. One of the main reasons I jumped into Book 3 with no break is that I wanted to make sure the lovely experience with the second book wasn't a fluke. Apparently, it isn't.

Lessons Learned

In short, know your ending. I'm not necessarily saying know your ending before you start. Sometimes you won't. But somewhere along the way--halfway, three quarters, three fifths, whatever--it would be a good idea to know where and how your book is to end. I thought I knew because it was the event I had foreseen. In reality, my ending was really an epilogue. I needed the ending of the story and I had the devil of a time finding it. In fact, I wanted to be done by 1 October, but I had to find my ending. It took me twelve extra days. That bummed me out a little, but I rolled with it and found my ending.

So, next time I write a book, I will at least be in the ballpark with a possible ending. It will make the writing so much easier.

The Streak

As most of y'all know, I started writing everyday since Memorial Day. When I finished Book 3, it was Day 138. The big question was do I intentionally stop the streak just because or maintain it. I am a monogamous writer. I write and think about only one story at a time (but that's changing, as evidenced by this past week; stay tuned for more on this). When I completed my novel last Saturday morning, I was in a quandary: what to write next? I wanted to return to another PI character, this one set in World War II, but I had no story. I gave myself the rest of Saturday off and I started conceiving the plot of the next story on Sunday. It took me all day to work through the ideas, but I did manage to write the first scene.

Streak intact. And it has been all week long. The one streak I did break was my 1,000 words/day streak that I had maintained since July 4. But, for me, the writing streak is more important. This new story is a tad on the slow side--I've only written 4,000 words in a week--but progress is being made. Sometimes the sophomore effort can be the most difficult.


So, there you have it. Another novel completed, another "THE END" typed. The beauty of this type of business is that I'm already looking forward to doing it again.

Finish What You Started

by
Scott D. Parker

Every author can struggle with it and it's one of the two fundamental things any write must do. There are countless blogs about it, our own Joelle Charbonneau wrote about it last week, and there was a link via SF Signal Thursday about.

You simply must finish whatever project you start.

This comes from a guy who spent the past seven years starting and stopping various projects for no good reason. I'll pick laziness as my reason of the day. The struggle to get through a hard spot in a manuscript is the drudges, but it's a learning experience.

I thought of all that again this week as I near the end of book two this year and a plot idea suddenly showed up. As soon as I wrote it, I told myself, "you know, this probably should have gone in an earlier spot in this book." There was a moment, a long moment, when I sat there, fingers over keyboard, thinking if I should abandon forward progress and insert said plot point into the manuscript. Back in 2006, when I wrote my actual first novel, my reading buddies asked a question about a certain set of characters. I rattled off all that they were doing off screen. They said I should put all of that in. Well, I stopped forward momentum and did exactly what they asked for. Nothing wrong with that, really, but it killed the progress.

The decision I came up with this week was, ultimately, an easy one: Not now.

Perhaps my inner editor is right and the point belongs earlier in the book. Fine. Save that for Draft 2. This is the First Draft. And, above all else, it needs to be completed. I'm very close. I made a note and moved forward.

Progress to The End. It is the key to this entire industry. Just. Keep. Going. If I've learned one thing this year, it's that writing every single day without fail will, eventually, get you to The End. If I've learned two things, it's to finish what you started no matter what. You can tweak later. Get it on paper.


Do y'all ever stop midstream and fix something in an earlier section? How does that work out for you?

The Power of Persistence and Distance

by
Scott D. Parker

Another week, another set of days just plugging away. I achieved a milestone last night: I hit 200,000 words written this year. And, considering I didn't start until May and didn't truly start until late May, I consider that achievement something to be proud of. I am. But it all goes back to prove the point I've learned this year: the simplest and most fundamental trait of writing is just to write. Start a streak, get in a groove, and just keep going. After awhile, all those words and pages just start adding up. Before you know it, you'll be done. Viola.

But you have to start. And you have to maintain. Those are key.

Once you've written something, put it away and don't look at it or think about it for a few weeks or months. This week, for the first time since I wrote "The End" back on 2 June, I started reading the first story I wrote this year. It's a little 18,000-word whatever-you-call-it (novella? novelette? long short story?). Since the second of June, I have written two short stories, completed one novel, and nearly completed a second. Plus, I've lived life.

All that is to say when I opened the file folder and started reading, the tale itself was fresh again to me. Sure, I remembered writing some of it, but not all. That freshness enabled me to experience the story more or less as a reader. I saw what I liked then (and still do now), I saw my mistakes and fixed them. I like it. It has a particular voice. Now, I'll pass it around to some beta readers and get their take on the story. Only then will I think about where it can go. Oh, and I'll have to write another two or three stories with that character, make sure he has some legs to stand on and move around. Would hate for him to be a one-and-done guy. I kinda like him.

How much time do y'all usually spend putting distance between "The End" of a story and when you start reading it again for the purposes of rewriting?

Non-Monogamous Writing

by
Scott D. Parker

I celebrated a big accomplishment this past Wednesday: the Consecutive Writing Streak reached 100! I have written every single day since Memorial Day (27 May), amounting to 177,000 words. I think we can all do the mental math to arrive at an average of 1,770 words a day. I don't consider that a bad thing since the bulk of June (24 days) was spent writing less than 1,000 a day, but the bulk of July (28 days) and all of August were spent writing more than 1,000. I'm proud of myself, which is kinda funny. I mean, think about it: a writer is proud that he's written. Big whoop, huh? But I've spent so many years *not* writing that  actual writing seems so joyous.

What had characterized my writing this summer has been the monogamy. When I pick up a project, I write on it until I'm done. It's been a great single-minded approach. It's likely been one of the reasons why the word count was able to flow as easily as it did: I was thinking only of one story.

In the closing days of August, I had to do double duty. I'm firmly in the middle of this second book, but I needed to write and submit a short story for an anthology to be named later. Now, this might have been relatively easy for some folks, but it's a challenge that I've never experienced. Add to that my desire to maintain the novel-writing streak through August and I ended up forcing myself to work on both the novel and the short story on the same days. Novel in the morning, short story in the evening. It worked well enough, and I was able to switch gears with relatively ease. I spent Sunday polishing the short story so much so that I didn't get to the novel. That streak was momentarily broken, but I got back on the wagon the next day.

For you writers out there who work on multiple projects, do y'all have any challenges you must overcome? Or is it merely a job and you just do it? I assume it's the latter, as it was for me, but I'm just asking around. I found that I enjoyed working on more than one thing at a time, tiring as it ended up being.

Just Showing Up + End of Summer Report

by
Scott D. Parker

I'll admit something: this past week's writing was a struggle. I still managed a thousand words a day, but they were words that I all but had to force out of me. But, here's the thing I learned: they would have stayed inside of me had I not sat down in front of the Mac and wrote.

It goes without saying that the only way to write is to write. Duh. For all the imagineering you do in your head, if you are not writing down words in some form or fashion, you are not writing. Case in point was Tuesday morning. I've settled in on a 5:30am wake up time. That gives me roughly 30 minutes for writing before the rest of the house wakes up. It's not the hour I prefer, but, then again, I also prefer to be awake and alert and healthy. I found that, in nearly two weeks of getting up at 5am, it was catching up with me. Health-wise, I needed the extra time. So, I compromised with myself: wake up at 5:30, get half an hour's worth of writing done. If I hit 1,000, great. If not, I have all day to get to that point.

Tuesday was bad. I was dead tired. It was the day, frankly, where I realized that 5am was too early. The words. Just. Did. Not. Come. Ugh. I clawed and scraped for them, but I got nearly 650 or so. Here's where truth dawned on me. In the past, I would have just shut down. "Oh, the words aren't coming? Well, the book must be crap." Shelve it and move on to the next. That was how I operated up until this summer. And I experienced the same type of progress with this book, too. Excellent pace on the first half, then, the slower middle part (where I am now). I've got 232 pages of this book written, 47,800 words. This time, unlike in the past, I made progress. I put down words and then more words. And the only way I did that was to sit down and do it.

Again, this isn't rocket science nor is it anything new. But, in the Summer of Progress, this Summer of Learning, it was an eye-opener for me. Just get through it. Just show up, and you will make progress. I've already made a good amount of hard-to-see progress. Take this for example. The 47,800 words in this second book have all come in August. That figure beats my June figure (34,000) but not my July pace (73,000). At the 29-day mark of the first book this summer, I had only written 32,560. That's an improvement of just over 15,000 words. It's a combination of factors that have me writing more words. One, I'm simply getting better at typing faster and getting words down. Two, I'm insisting to myself that I write at least 1,000 words per day. Motivation makes Progress. The numbers add up. They start to take hold of you and they propel you forward.

End of Summer Report

What about all those words? When Memorial Day dawned, I made the commitment to write every day. As of this morning, 31 August, I'm up to 97 straight days of writing. In that time, I've written 158,990. By Labor Day, I will have crested the 50,000 word mark in this second book.

My goal for the summer was to write and complete stories. The way I was going to do that was write a story a week. Then, after getting to "the end" on several stories, I was going to tackle a novel again. It didn't work out that way. In fact, it flipped. I completed a novella on 2 June, then another short story seven days later. Then I wrote 93,000 new words on a novel and completed it. I wrote 47,800 on a second novel and expect to complete it within the month. And I will have turned in a short story for an anthology. Not the progress I expected, but I'll take it. In fact, it's been better than I expected.

August Monthly Stats:

    Minimum threshold: 21,700 (700/day for 31 days)
    Total words: 50,901
    Difference: 29,201 words above the minimum
    Average: 1,599/day
    Best day: 2,929 (11 Aug)
    Worst: 1,002 (1 Aug)
    Items worked on: Chapter 1-20 of Book 2; short story for anthology.
    Number of consecutive days writing: 97 day (All summer long!)
        Number of consecutive 1,000-word days: 59

For those of y'all that made summer 2013 goals, did you achieve them?

Writing Under the Morning Stars

By

Scott D. Parker

Here’s a fact you may not know: 5:00am is really early.

My boy returned to school this past Tuesday thus ending my magical summer writing time of 6am. I have been waking up at 6am all summer long to write and it was great. On Mondays—the one day I go into my office—I got to write until 7:15 or so. On the other four workdays when I work from home, I was able to manage nearly two hours of writing time before I was on the clock at 8am.

With my boy returning to school, something had to change. I was faced with only two options: write earlier in the day (5am) or later (9pm or 10pm). Seeing as how I got great writing done in the morning, I tried the 5am wake up call. To help me, I started doing this 7-minute workout. I started Monday to give me a head start.

Yeesh! It’s really early. I was used to writing outside on my deck this summer. It’s nearly completely dark at 5am so that felt a little weird and I moved back inside for the last two days. Most days, I was pretty awake and did pretty well. Just limit the news gathering and the email checking. You see, my son’s alarm goes off at 6:15 so I now have a hard deadline. And if I want to maintain my 1,000 word/day pace, well, there’s very little room for error. Or research. I found that out on Tuesday when I decided to stop forward progress to look up something. Learned the hard way when I had to come back later in the day to top 1,000. From now on: make notes for research and just write.

There’s also the aspect of sleep and health. I can function well on six hours. In the summer, that meant to bed by midnight and up at six. Well, if I’m waking at 5am, that means I have to get to bed by 11pm. That didn’t work but one day this week. It was rough. So, yesterday, I tried something different: get up at 5:30, push the exercise until later in the day, and just bang out words for 45 minutes. That went pretty well, actually. That might be my new standard. I didn’t quite get to 1,000 so I had to make it up later in the day, but that was okay.

And, chances are, I’ll still tweak the writing time as the school year goes on, making up some lost time on the weekends. But the good news is that I still managed to crank out just over 8,000 words this week writing primarily (i.e., 95%) in the mornings. That isn’t too bad considering I wrote 8,800 words last work-week.

It’s all a process. Today is the 90th consecutive day of writing. Last Sunday was the day I topped 150,000 new words. I also started writing a short story I’m on the hook for this week. That was kind of odd as it was the first multi-story day this summer. Had to recalibrate the brain, but in a good way.

I’ll have more updates next week on the story’s progress—I’m rapidly approaching the part of the story where I have no notes so we’ll see what happens then. How are all y’all’s writing projects going?

Bat-Thoughts

I’m a huge Batman fan. The news that Ben Affleck is going to don the cape and cowl surprised me. He was certainly not my first choice, but I will withhold judgment on how well he does until…15 July 2015, the day the movie premieres. I can’t help but think of 1988 when I learned “Beetlejuice is Batman?” and that turned out okay. And again in 2007: “Ledger’s Joker?!” That turned out great. I have full confidence that Affleck will do well with Batman and that he’ll be different than Bale. I don’t want a Bale clone. I want a new interpretation. Heck, for all the love the “Bat God” gets nowadays (so named because, in the past twentysomething years, Batman has morphed from a dude in a cape to a dude with a ‘super’ brain who is ten steps ahead of everyone), I’m game for something different. Heck, I expect it. Bring it on.

Do you realize how utterly awesome 2015 is turning out to be? Star Wars VII. Superman and Batman on screen together. Avengers 2. There’s probably more, but that’s more than enough. We may not have the hoverboards Marty McFly had when he went to 2015, but we’ll have nerdvana. 

Lessons Learned For Book #2

by
Scott D. Parker

Most of y’all know that I passed a major milestone the last day of July: I finally completed my second novel. It took me so long between the first and the second—-seven years—that I never thought I would finish. As the years slogged on, I kept trying to recapture the magic of the time where I managed to do something for the first time. That first time is always something, isn’t it? You don’t really know what you’re doing but you just keep plugging away at the book until you reach The End.

For years, whenever I got stuck, I kept returning to the ways I got that first book finished. I mapped out the entire thing and then wrote it. Since I had success that way, I kept telling myself that that way was the only way.

The years of half completed novels proved otherwise. I finally came to a realization: if you got to The End one way and can’t seem to repeat the feat, create a new way of writing a novel and getting to The End.

Here are the lessons I learned this summer while writing and completing my second novel.

TELL NO ONE

For each abandoned novel laying fallow on my Mac, I had extensive notes and an outline of sorts. I spent hours writing about writing the books and never actually doing the fictioneering. Moreover, I would brain dump on my wife. This always ended in disaster. There would be so much back story that she needed to know that I’d get “that look” that not only told me she lost me but that the story was probably too complicated or not good.

This summer, I told no one the plot of the story. I barely even acknowledged to the people I see everyday that I was writing a book—save the wife and child. Y’all regular readers of Do Some Damage knew more than just about anyone else. I think I had one or two Facebook posts, but that was it. If someone asked what I was writing, I’d say as little as possible. “A mystery.” “A PI story.” “My second novel.” Very rarely did I divulge the elevator pitch.

By keeping walls up, I was able to go at my own pace, think my own thoughts, and not be influenced by any outside forces. In the past, talking too much let out some of the air of my narrative. Those blinder/barriers kept me focused on one thing only: get to The End.

KEEP ANALYTICS

In just about every post this summer I dropped my writing statistics. The science fiction writer, Jamie Todd Rubin, actually spurred me on to this. I read on his blog where he had set up automatic word counting scripts. He showed a screen shot of one of his spreadsheets and I liked it and decided to give it a go. I don’t code, so I entered all my data manually.

There is something very powerful about adding up the daily writing. I was especially surprised when I had a good day and made great progress in the narrative and it ended up clocking in north of two grand. It was like a bonus, and that bonus spurred me on to try and match or top it the next day. It’s one of the reasons why, in the last month of writing, I ended on a 28-day streak of writing more than 1,000 words per day. One day I did it, the next day I repeated it, and so on. Then it became a thing.

My main analytic was consecutive days writing. Just write something every day. Period. I needed and gave myself a minimum of 500 words. Other than one day, I did. But even on that day (10 June), I wrote, so my then tentative 14-day streak remained alive. That day of sub-500 words was Day 15, officially more than two weeks. Writing on that night when I was dead tired put me over the hump of two consecutive weeks of writing.

The metrics I keep are this: date, what written, number of words, cumulative number of words, pace (i.e., 500 words minimum), amount off pace (i.e., if I write more/fewer words, what is the difference), novel accumulation (how many words written the book), and monthly accumulation. The latter two I added later as I wanted to see just how much I was pouring out of me. In my spreadsheet, if I match or exceed my daily pace, I get to highlight the difference in green. I have only one red entry, and the rest are green. I did bump the pace to 600 starting in July. Each day, entering the numbers was my reward. It was a powerful motivator and one I’m still using.

JUST WRITE. DON’T EDIT

This may come as a shock but I have not read through my novel. Oh, I may have re-read the last paragraph from the day before, but I rarely did that. When I sat down to write, I had the scene more or less complete in my mind and I just wrote it down. I moved forward. I did not look back. I mentioned that to Joelle and she said she likes to edit a book only after it’s done because only then she knows the ending. I like that idea and it’s one that got me through. Yes, there were times when, in a later chapter, I wrote something that I knew contradicted something I’d already written. I made a note about it—mainly to see which version I might like better—but did not go back and fix the earlier section. That is, or will be, for later. Just get the words on the page. Just write. Don’t edit.

THE BIGGEST SURPRISE

One of the things I didn’t do very much of when writing this novel was outlining. Well, not like the first time when I had all the scenes on color-coded notecards. It really surprised me how easily scenes flowed. There was a moment, in the dead middle, where I did map out the next dozen scenes to get me through that mushy part. Once I got past it, however, I just went with the flow so much so that, as soon as I reached the end of the big action sequence, I suddenly realized I had only three scenes left. That, my friends, was an awesome feeling. What lesson is that? It’s okay to keep it fast and loose.

ROUTINE

Whatever it is, find it and stick to it. My daily routine of the summer was getting up at 6am, feeding the cat, getting dressed as quietly as possible so as not to wake the wife and boy, fill the cup full of coffee, and start writing. I can usually get an hour or so banged out before I have to go work and usually hit the thousand-word mark. It’s a nice feeling knowing I have achieved my writing goal at the start of the day. Every now and then I have to have a second session to get to a grand, but not usually. The school year will bring changes so I’ll have to see how to adjust.


Those are the main lessons I’ve taken from writing my second novel. And bear this in mind: all of this worked for me. I never would have thought of these things before this summer. What worked for me may not work for you. Find that thing that works for you and keep at it.

Reaching THE END

by
Scott D. Parker

For those of y’all following my progress this summer as I kickstart my writing back into gear, the last day of July 2013 brought not only the end of the month’s writing but also the completion of my second novel.

Yes! I reached THE END.

Here are the monthly stats for July 2013

• Minimum threshold: 18,600 (600/day for 31 days) Up from 500 in June
• Total words: 72,361
• Difference: 53,761 words above the minimum
• Average: 2,334/day (I topped 1,000 words for 27 straight days starting 4 July)
• Best day: 6,108 (21 July)
• Worst: 864 (2 July)
• Items worked on: chapters 19-48 of the current book. And Finished!
• Number of consecutive days writing: 66 (as of Wednesday; 68 as of today)

In the month of July, all 72,361 words went into that novel. Adding to the number I wrote in June (21,254) and the number I started with (approx. 13,000), my final word count is 106,800. It’s bloated because I have not re-read a single page, so the final word count will shrink, but that’s where I stand with draft one. The amount of new words to the book is 93,615.

Here’s another number: 2,556. That is the total number of days since I last wrote THE END on a novel. 1 June 2006 to be exact. That was the date I finished my first book. It now shares space with 31 July 2013. It is a glorious feeling.

As the years dragged on for me as I struggled with completing that sophomore book, I developed a saying: “It has taken me longer NOT to write the second book than it did to write the first.” [BTW, actual writing time for Book 1: 10 months.] Now, since the number of new words I wrote to finish the book (93,615) is basically novel-length, I’m adding a new sentence: “It actually took me LESS time to write my second novel than it did to write my first.” Since I first picked up the novel again on 9 June, I have wrote on it everyday (minus one) for 52 straight days. So, basically, I wrote a book in 52 days.

Wow.

On Wednesday night, I perused some of my old comp books where I laid out, in pen and ink, all my frustrations over the year, most of that pain seems so distant, but I can still remember it. I can still remember all the struggles, all the anguish.

But something happened this summer. All that stuff from the past few years just sloughed off and, somewhere inside of me, I decided I wanted to finish the book. I set my mind to it, and did it. Timing is everything, and this summer there were two main things that influenced me from the outside. Coincidentally, they both came on the same day. Joelle’s 7 July post, “I am the world’s worst writer,” had a nice list of 5 things writers can use to get to THE END. Two of them really struck home with me at just the right time: #2 and #3. You can read them yourself, but they boil down to this: Don’t show anyone your pages until you have reached THE END; and, like a mantra, keep repeating “I will get to THE END.” It was a great boost. In the comments on that same post, Dana King wrote something so obvious that I never even thought of it: “Writers are often terrible judges of their own work, if only because they are the only person who knows what they wanted the book to be; everyone else takes the book at face value.” Boom! Daylight burst into my eyes and I saw the light. To Joelle and Dana, thanks for the boost.

Speaking of seeing the light, the talent I have is God-given, and I thank Him everyday for it.

So, I have reached the end of my second novel. It was a long time coming, but more the sweeter because of it. On Wednesday morning, I wrote the final two scenes, heart and stomach all a’flutter. It was fantastic. That night, my wife and I started a new celebration: we popped the cork on a bottle of champagne and toasted to the completed novel. There they are up in the picture.

Then, Thursday morning, I did the thing I need to do to prove that this second novel wasn’t a blessed fluke: I started my third.

The Significance of 100,000 Words

by

Scott D. Parker

On Tuesday evening, as I finished my daily writing with 2,419 words for that day, I entered that figure in my spreadsheet. Once the formulas did their thing, I realized I crossed the 100,000-word mark in this renewed writing initiative.

For someone who has barely put together 10,000 words over a year, to see the numbers add up to 100, 919 on that was a great experience for me. For readers who have followed my progress since May, that’s still only 3 total stories: 2 shorter pieces and the 1 novel. As for the novel and it’s “new word” count (I had a few chapters already written when I picked it up again in June), Tuesday also marked the day I crossed 75,000 new words on the novel. And Sunday marked my highest one-day writing total: 6,108.

Why do I focus so much on numbers when I’m writing words? Because they feed on each other. They are daily reminders of Progress Being Made. The more I’ve focused on that spreadsheet each day, the more pride I have in my writing and in myself as a writer. I love seeing my May monthly total (13,017) stacked up to my June total (34,000) and my to-date July total (57,381). I love seeing, in numbers, what I am capable of doing after so many years of self doubt and self denial. It’s exhilarating and a little intoxicating.

In fact, I’ve been telling another writer friend of mine to keep a spreadsheet of his daily totals, too. He’s taking baby steps after a bunch of things got in his way, too. As much as I extol the virtues of keeping a spreadsheet, I got an assist by another source this week.Back in June, Nik Morton published Write a Western in 30 Days: With Plenty of Bullet-Points and I downloaded it and read through it. In there, he also tells prospective writers to keep a spreadsheet of daily writing. The only difference with his version is he does it by subtracting the daily word count from the total number of words for a typical western (45,000). Yes, you can get down to zero, but I love the addition version where you can go as high as you want. Like last Sunday. I knew I had written a lot, but I was very proud of myself for laying down 6,100 words. It’s like a last little gift at the end of the day.

So, after years--Years!--of not writing, I’ve managed to write more words in less time than ever before. I say that not to be immodest, but as encouragement to those of y’all out there who read this blog, see most of us getting published, and wished you could do it. I’m here to say that the writing part is doable.That's the significance of 100,000 words for me this week. A tangible, positive reminder that yes! I can do this. Here's how it's worked for me.

1. Decide to do it.  ←- The hardest part and the part that gave me the most trouble for YEARS!

2. Start.

3. Keep Track. 

Do any of you keep track of daily word counts? 

The Ebbs and Flows of Daily Writing

by

Scott D. Parker

I wrote last week about momentum and immediately followed it up with two 3,000-word days for a 6,000-word weekend output. Momentum was moving. Monday was back to a basic grand, but Tuesday was a personal best: over 4,000. And that was a workday. Man, the words were flowing and the story was just chugging along nicely.

So, I thought to myself, if I can keep this up, I can easily have this thing finished in August. True, 4,000 words is a prodigious output for a working guy like me, but I got it done. I went to bed on Tuesday with visions of grandeur.

The Wednesday hit and it was like I was going in slow motion. The. Words. Just. Did. Not. Flow. It was like pulling teeth. For the first time in days, existing books on my bookshelf started to look more interesting than the scene I was writing. The iPad was there...did I have any plays on Scrabble? What’s the latest news on …well, anything? I turned aside all distractions andI managed nearly 2,500 words, but it was a slog. I opted for writing a number of smaller scenes versus one larger one. It enabled me to keep making progress.

More than anything, the Easy Tuesday 4,000/Difficult Wednesday 2,500 was a reminder that each day is a new writing session complete with obstacles to overcome or smooth sailing to ride. Those visions of grandeur was, on Wednesday, turned to delusions. This writing thing can be as easy as or as hard as it wants to be.

The key for me was to keep moving forward. Keep writing. And I kept the words of Joelle’s post from last Sunday in my mind as well, especially her third point: Repeat this phrase—“I will get to THE END.” And frequent commenter, Dana King, also made an incredibly salient point [my italics]: "Woody Allen once said 80% of success is just showing. In writing, that means finishing the book. Writers are often terrible judges of their own work, if only because they are the only person who knows what they wanted the book to be; everyone else takes the book at face value." That is an incredibly obvious point but one that I've missed way too often.

I showed up this week, in the easy times and the not-so-easy times and, by Friday, I was rewarded not only with 17,000 new words on this novel-in-progress, but I have achieved a 9-day streak of writing more than 1,000 words a day. Most importantly, however, is not the streak of 9 but the streak of 47. That is the number of consecutive days I’ve now written. (It’ll be 48 by the time this post goes live.)

I have a paperweight on my growing manuscript that has an inscription by Benjamin Disraeli: The secret of success is constancy to purpose. I’ve had the weight for years and only now, in the summer of 2013, am I really understanding what it means with writing.

The progress continues...

How are y’all doing with your writing projects?