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500 words a day
Jan. 30th, 2007 05:51 pmAwhile back, I started this YA novel. (One of many.) I got farther along on it than any of my other attempts, though, except for the utterly execrable 500-page fantasy/romance that I wrote in high school.
Anyway, I'm working on the YA novel again ... I spent all of yesterday evening and most of today doing revisions before realizing that I'm simply going to have to FINISH the damn thing before I can revise it successfully. The thing is, I started it with no idea whatsoever of where it was going, resulting in a disorganized mess of different plot threads until it finally shapes up starting in about chapter 4.
At this point, I have about 45,000 words on it, and I'm aiming for 60-70K words. After that I'm going to try to trim out about 10K words of deadweight, leaving me with a nice YA-length novel (where, I understand, 40-60K words is considered optimally publishable length).
My goal from now 'till I finish is to write 500 words a day, come hell or high water. That number is chosen because it's about a page in Appleworks and I have done the "write a page a day" thing before and found that it was do-able. If I actually can do that, I'll be able to finish by early March. I may have to revise that number downwards, though, considering that I'm concurrently working on the Freebird and HM graphic novels and the ongoing Freebird strips.
Anyway, I'm working on the YA novel again ... I spent all of yesterday evening and most of today doing revisions before realizing that I'm simply going to have to FINISH the damn thing before I can revise it successfully. The thing is, I started it with no idea whatsoever of where it was going, resulting in a disorganized mess of different plot threads until it finally shapes up starting in about chapter 4.
At this point, I have about 45,000 words on it, and I'm aiming for 60-70K words. After that I'm going to try to trim out about 10K words of deadweight, leaving me with a nice YA-length novel (where, I understand, 40-60K words is considered optimally publishable length).
My goal from now 'till I finish is to write 500 words a day, come hell or high water. That number is chosen because it's about a page in Appleworks and I have done the "write a page a day" thing before and found that it was do-able. If I actually can do that, I'll be able to finish by early March. I may have to revise that number downwards, though, considering that I'm concurrently working on the Freebird and HM graphic novels and the ongoing Freebird strips.