So Many Words, So Little Time
I have come to judge how good a day was by how many ideas I get onto my little voice recorder or how many words I put on the page. If given time, I can sit down at the computer and crank out thousands of words in a session. Words and ideas are not the problem. Time is the enemy. Thankfully, we are past the holidays now. Christmas is a fading memory in our rear-view mirrors. The trash bins on our curbs are full of empty boxes and crumpled wrapping paper. I hope that each and every one of you had a wonderful time with your families and friends.
That being said… Bah Humbug! I can’t help but wish for the time back that I spent shopping and wading through the seas of people. We are like sheep being herded around on a mission to buy a bauble for everyone we know. Hell, I could have written another novel in the amount of time I spent standing in lines and spending money that, I’m sure, like many of you, didn’t have or need to spend. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my drift. Such is life, though. If you don’t get something for everyone or forget somebody you are the Grinch. Wow, I feel much better getting that off my chest. On with the blog!
Last night I looked up on the wall in my little nook I call my office and saw the tote board on which I keep a loose word count for all my projects. Having passed the 65,000 mark on the current project, Prepared, I realized that I am well past a quarter of a million words if you total all my projects. I read somewhere that a writer doesn’t really know what he or she is doing or get good until they have put down a million words. Hmmm, that means I have about five more novels to go before I can say that I have grip on this writing thing. I personally believe that is a load of horse shit. Everyone is different and making an arbitrary statement like that is just talking to hear your head rattle as my mother would say. I believe my newest stuff is better than my older stuff, that’s for sure. That is the natural progression of things. It is to be expected. One does not go out and hit a three-hundred-yard drive on the golf course the first time out.
The great thing is that I have at least that many more books rattling around in my head. In fact, I have one in there that is screaming at me to write it, but I have to be patient and finish the current project before going down that rabbit hole. One of the biggest failures of want to be authors like me is that so many of them don’t finish what they start. Can’t sell a book if you don’t finish a book. As I close in on the finish line of my third book, I don’t see that being a problem for me. I enjoy the process too much. Even the book I am writing now, which I intended to be a stand-alone novel, has presented a cool way to do a sequel with someone other than the main character as the protagonist. That’s the way these things happen, though. You just have to be receptive to it when it comes. When the idea for the sequel smacked me in the brain, my first thought was, “Fuck, I don’t have time to write that. I have so many other projects that I want to do first.” So that one will go into the notes program on the laptop where it will stay until I am ready. Kind of weird to be upset that I got a good idea, but I’m a complicated man.
An example of time getting away from me is the fact that I am behind on my self imposed deadlines from my last blog. I am still on track for most of it but the final edit on Shiva’s eye will bleed into the new year instead of being done by January 1st. Oh well, I’ll adjust and it will get done, just a little later than planned. No biggie.
I just wasted half an hour writing this blog!
As I always say to my team at my real job… Less yak, more attack!
I’ll talk at ya later.