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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on July 27, 2008, 06:13:19 AM
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Well, today was actually my second most, by raw wordcount: 8400 words first draft, writing from about 16.30 in the afternoon to about 1.30 in the morning, with I'd guess somewhere under an hour's break for dinner. (This may or may not seem less good contexted with hardware problems that mean I essentially have not been able to write for three weeks).
My all-time record is 10,500 words, June 20/21 of 2004, Saturday lunchtime to 9.30, going out to see a show that didn't happen after waiting around for it for an hour, getting home furious just after midnight, and writing for three more hours. (I count that as a day. YMMV.)
So what was your most productive individual day ?
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Nice. I think my most productive day was like 5 pages. Don't recall how many words that is...2000 or something?
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Nice. I think my most productive day was like 5 pages. Don't recall how many words that is...2000 or something?
I don't count pages; software's not consistent on it, and most markets note their preferences in terms of word count.
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I count by pages for my own purposes. I know I can get x number of words into so-and-so many number of pages, so it keeps me from checking Word Count constantly.
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That's a nice haul on word count! I can hit that when I'm cruising, but it wakes up my hand/wrist injuries. Lately, I've had the luxury of keeping a 2-3k pace per day, which I like quite a bit.
My record is 13k after a night of prescription stimulants, Fruity Pebbles, and no sleep. I was crazy by the time it was over. I will never do that again. Never. Again. Don't do it, guys. No, I'm serious. DON'T.
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That's a nice haul on word count! I can hit that when I'm cruising, but it wakes up my hand/wrist injuries. Lately, I've had the luxury of keeping a 2-3k pace per day, which I like quite a bit.
My record is 13k after a night of prescription stimulants, Fruity Pebbles, and no sleep. I was crazy by the time it was over. I will never do that again. Never. Again. Don't do it, guys. No, I'm serious. DON'T.
Fruity Pebbles and prescription stimulants? Does it warn you in the Drug Interactions to avoid Fruity Pebbles??
And I will take your advice to heart! (Since I don't eat Fruity Pebbles this really isn't as difficult a thing to avoid as one would think.)
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Fruity Pebbles and prescription stimulants? Does it warn you in the Drug Interactions to avoid Fruity Pebbles??
And I will take your advice to heart! (Since I don't eat Fruity Pebbles this really isn't as difficult a thing to avoid as one would think.)
Likewise, it is a really bad idea, when you are used to absently nibbling chocolate-covered raisins out of a bowl and actually putting away a fair few of them over a few hours' working, to have a bowl of chocolate-covered espresso beans in a place where you might do that with them.
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Those beans are hard core. The first time I ate them I munched half a box, thinking "Oh man these are tasty." without thinking about the fact that they are caffiene incarnate. That was a long evening.
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Likewise, it is a really bad idea, when you are used to absently nibbling chocolate-covered raisins out of a bowl and actually putting away a fair few of them over a few hours' working, to have a bowl of chocolate-covered espresso beans in a place where you might do that with them.
...ouch.
My only comparable story is the time I absently ate an entire bag of Skittles while watching Seven (Se7en? The one with Brad Pitt--yeah IMDB says Se7en...) and even though it was a movie theatre size, I usually don't finish a bag in one sitting. I'm not much of a sugar person. I was soooo hyper then nauseated, it wasn't fun. And no, it wasn't from the grotesqueries in the movie, as I am not bothered by that sort of stuff.
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Stop this talk of delicious sugary food. I'm dieting.
Oh my god. Chocolate espresso beans...chocolate anything...
*drools*
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I seem to write in small bits and spurts. Sometimes only a few hundred words in a shot. It works, but slowly. I am currently rewriting a 60,000 word draft into an 80,000 word manuscript. I am learning to consider sucess in terms of context than quantity. I do think its important to be consistant with the time I spend though, even if its only a little bit each day.
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So what was your most productive individual day ?
I don't actually rate my productiveness (is that even a word?) in terms of wordcount; I base it on getting through a difficult scene, solving a continuity problem, or closing a plot loophole you can drive a truck through, but my typical output for one session is 5-6 pages double spaced, 10 point Courier.
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Considering I'm Greener than the Hulk when it comes to writing, I've not had most experiences. I thank God and several other deities that I've had the chance to write. But my best sofar was for my Advanced writing course. I had a chapter of my Novella to finish and I did roughly 5-6 pages, single spaced, in a span of 4 or so hours. Afterwards, I promptly had my aneurysm, regrouped, cleaned the blood from my nose and read to see if it was legible and coherent.
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Considering I'm Greener than the Hulk when it comes to writing, I've not had most experiences. I thank God and several other deities that I've had the chance to write. But my best sofar was for my Advanced writing course. I had a chapter of my Novella to finish and I did roughly 5-6 pages, single spaced, in a span of 4 or so hours. Afterwards, I promptly had my aneurysm, regrouped, cleaned the blood from my nose and read to see if it was legible and coherent.
Actually, I just topped myself. 8 pages double spaced, and it's all coherent and makes sense.
Now, excuse me...
/passes out
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I don't actually rate my productiveness (is that even a word?) in terms of wordcount; I base it on getting through a difficult scene, solving a continuity problem, or closing a plot loophole you can drive a truck through, but my typical output for one session is 5-6 pages double spaced, 10 point Courier.
I believe that it is productivity. But close enough.
Ya I base success on getting more than what I had originally planned on written in one sitting.
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The best I've ever done (I don't measure, personally; these were brought to my attention by others) was about 40 pages of my thesis in one weekend. Really, it was about 18 hours of work, because I took breaks, ate, showered, etc. And that was in French. I often wonder how much I could write in English...
The only measure I've ever seen of that (i.e., in English) is the weekend I wrote my application submission for Governor's School for the Arts way the hell ago. More or less the same deal (max of 18 hours of work, about 35 pages). *shrug* Writing comes easily to me.
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The best I've ever done (I don't measure, personally; these were brought to my attention by others) was about 40 pages of my thesis in one weekend. Really, it was about 18 hours of work, because I took breaks, ate, showered, etc. And that was in French. I often wonder how much I could write in English...
The only measure I've ever seen of that (i.e., in English) is the weekend I wrote my application submission for Governor's School for the Arts way the hell ago. More or less the same deal (max of 18 hours of work, about 35 pages). *shrug* Writing comes easily to me.
Thesis writing is a different beast entirely; my 25kword PhD thesis took eight months' full-time effort to write. I hate academic writing.
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Thesis writing is a different beast entirely; my 25kword PhD thesis took eight months' full-time effort to write. I hate academic writing.
It is different for some people, but from a practical perspective for me, there's no difference. All I need for either are:
1) the central idea,
2) supporting materials and
3) a clear concept of where I want to take the idea.
It seems to fall out onto the paper when I have those three... but I HAVE to have those three, or the writing becomes a boggy mess.
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1) the central idea,
2) supporting materials and
3) a clear concept of where I want to take the idea.
and an oxford comma, been listening to Vampire Weekend
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and an oxford comma, been listening to Vampire Weekend
If I ever go to Oxford, I will use the Oxford comma. Until then, I have no shame whatsoever in being an American in the 21st century. :P
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4700 words tonight, and two climactic scenes; only a bit of denouement needing doing, but I need to reread the last 20,000 words before I do that to make sure it all flows, and it's now 2 am, so not tonight.
I've been to Oxford twice. there's at least one nice pub and at least one very nice dessert place there. I intend to go back next time I'm in Hyperborea.
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Let's see...I got 12 pages at one clip last week. In terms of sheer volume, that was one of my most productive days yet. I only stopped when my hands began to cramp up from all the typing.
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I could stop to get the word count... But I prefer to count pages or content as a judge of how productive I am. I'm an abstract random sort of writer, because as soon as I reach a pause in the action, I'll stop to do a quick edit, then check my outline, and make sure I haven't missed anything before moving on, and that gets time consuming. But probably my most productive day was something like fifteen pages, near the very climax of action, and it came out beautifully...
I tend to get lost in the world, and what's happening, and especially if I'm writing for my favorite villian... Everything just picks up steam, and then finally I finish putting all the beauty and drama onto paper... And I'm shocked when I realize I'm on page 7, or 12, or 22.
*pause*
Okay, I just dug through my records, and my best day was 7.6 thousand words, but I usually average 3 to 5 thousand to get a good scene done. If I'm on a good writing day, I can usually get 4K words in two hours.
But I'm also writing with a handicap of having a life that leaves very little time for writing. It took me 6 months to write 225 pages. But I -will- finish... just slow and steady.
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I could stop to get the word count... But I prefer to count pages or content as a judge of how productive I am.
I almost always work in terms of getting a certain scene done, but I assess it by wordcount basically because pagecount is next to meaningless; it varies between programs you could use to write the thing in, and the difference in pagecount between the same book in manuscript, hardcover or paperback is really quite large and not all that predictable depending on decisions about font and so forth that are made at the publishing level and beyond an author's control. Wordcount is at least pretty stable and generalisable.
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Well, I'm feeling a sense of accomplishment today -- not that it was an especially productive day in terms of volume, but I finally finished the first draft of my first novel. Ten and a half months (no, I wasn't writing full-time, or even every day, not by a long shot) and 150,000 words, give or take a couple hundred.
It's REALLY rough in places, and requires more research and some serious revision before I'd even think of showing it to anyone for critique, but to get this far on any writing project is a major step for me.
I think I'm going to take Stephen King's advice from On Writing and put it away for a few weeks to gain some perspective while I block out the sequel and begin researching the business end of writing, before I buckle down and begin the long process of revision.
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Well, I'm feeling a sense of accomplishment today -- not that it was an especially productive day in terms of volume, but I finally finished the first draft of my first novel. Ten and a half months (no, I wasn't writing full-time, or even every day, not by a long shot) and 150,000 words, give or take a couple hundred.
Well done.
I think I'm going to take Stephen King's advice from On Writing and put it away for a few weeks to gain some perspective while I block out the sequel and begin researching the business end of writing, before I buckle down and begin the long process of revision.
Fwiw, one of the things that I think is most effective because most honest in On Writing is how much King shows how how he writes links to who he is. I can entirely agree with his notion of putting things aside to revise them, but I cannot imagine a few weeks being long enough; and he is pretty clear in that book about having a bad memory in ways such that putting something aside for a few weeks for him may well be the same as putting something aside for six months for someone else.
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I started my week's vacation with 2500 and an 8 page outline. One week later, I'm at 12500 and most of it isn't crap, well at least it doesn't stink, ahh heck I'll end up editing out about 4,000 minimum eventually. Thank you AZ and sunshine!
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I started my week's vacation with 2500 and an 8 page outline. One week later, I'm at 12500 and most of it isn't crap, well at least it doesn't stink, ahh heck I'll end up editing out about 4,000 minimum eventually. Thank you AZ and sunshine!
Well done.
I am at that point in the current WiP where the initial rush is past and I'm not quite to the next major plot point, and ideas for how to fix other projects are starting to get aggressive. (Though it did not help that I got nothing done last weekend; spending most of it on the phone to credit card companies and travel agents kind of shot my concentration.)
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I was actually hoping to get something done the other day, and was typing up all my character notes and such, and the program froze on me. Now when I open the file, it's a blank window. Good thing is that I have at least 5 different copies saved on disc, paper, and handwritten.
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I was actually hoping to get something done the other day, and was typing up all my character notes and such, and the program froze on me. Now when I open the file, it's a blank window. Good thing is that I have at least 5 different copies saved on disc, paper, and handwritten.
Good good; hope the restore goes smoothly. One of the things I've been displacing with this past couple of weeks is collating everything on all my major projects and making additional backups on a couple of flash cards, with the intention of getting my brother to keep a copy when I am in Ireland, for yet another level of backup redundancy.
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Good good; hope the restore goes smoothly. One of the things I've been displacing with this past couple of weeks is collating everything on all my major projects and making additional backups on a couple of flash cards, with the intention of getting my brother to keep a copy when I am in Ireland, for yet another level of backup redundancy.
It should go pretty well; the only problem is that I think I'm going to have to downgrade the program to the previous working release to be able to add in all my notes without having the same problem again. I'm gonna have to find my mouse to make copying and pasting easier.
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It should go pretty well; the only problem is that I think I'm going to have to downgrade the program to the previous working release to be able to add in all my notes without having the same problem again. I'm gonna have to find my mouse to make copying and pasting easier.
I should add this to my list of reasons for choosing which program to use as your novel-writing environment, actually. I have projects I have been working on off and on since 1996; if I were willing to work with something like Word, how many upgrade cycles would I have been locked into paying for in order to keep my older work readable to me at all ? Whereas plain text files worked on in emacs are as legible now as they were then.
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I should add this to my list of reasons for choosing which program to use as your novel-writing environment, actually. I have projects I have been working on off and on since 1996; if I were willing to work with something like Word, how many upgrade cycles would I have been locked into paying for in order to keep my older work readable to me at all ? Whereas plain text files worked on in emacs are as legible now as they were then.
Probably a good reason. I only just started using this program sometime last year, and the problem was more me upgrading to the most recent update instead of reading the forums to find out if it was completely stable. I stopped using Word after my b/f found this one. It's shareware, so it doesn't have to be paid for, though it does pop up a window everytime it's opened to ask for a donation. The good thing with the program is that I was able to export the actual text of the story into a txt file, and just copy and paste from that. I'm just annoyed I'll have to retype all the character notes, cause that's the part of the program that messed up.