Arting Harder at the Pen Monkey Toiling Pit (Celebrate Them Pages Pt III)

[The Deposed King]

116k - AI part 2



The Deposed King

[The Deposed King]

120k - AI part 2



The Deposed King

[Lanodantheon]

I just finished my second feature length screenplay or the first first draft of one.


165 pages I didn't have before.


Hazzah...

[Snowleopard]

Congrats, Land, screenplays are a whole nuther ball of wax from writing prose.
Good on you for getting 'black on white' to borrow a line.

[The Deposed King]

Way to go on the screen draft.  Keep after it.


140k - AI part 2

Rough Draft Completed! I pulled a 15k all day/all nighter and got it done!



The Deposed King

[pcpoet]

I am impressed. the most I can do in a day is about 3,000words

[Snowleopard]

We all work at our own speed.
Don't judge yourself by anyone else pcpoet, that never works out well.

[pcpoet]

not judging myself but I am still impressed

[The Deposed King]

I can do a little over 1k an hour when I'm motivated.  If I have an outline on paper and clear image of what I want to write inmy head I can burn through it.  For the 15k day I did 8k in 5-6 hours sitting at McDonalds where I switched out 3 fresh batteries in my laptop and for the remaining seven it took me something like 12 hours as I sat on the couch and just ground on it on the couch at home refusing to go to sleep until it was done.

Frankly with outlines I have two factors.  One I 'can' write faster when its there.  Two my motivation to write goes down because I know pretty much exactly what's going to happen so my fun level as a reader/writer goes down.

I figure that if you treat writing like a full time job and pull 1k per hour for 6-8hours every day then 6k+ per day is reasonable so long as its all plotted out before hand.  So I set my target for 5k as reasonable to achieve.  But if you're just putting a couple hours of serious work in every day then 2k per day is easy to accomplish.  Again if you know what you need to write about before hand and give it the same focus as you would the day job for that time.

Writing gives you back what you put into it and its great cause at 2k per day x 360 days you'd get 720k words written in a year and at 80k-120k for a book that's a minimum of 6 books you could write in a year, just working part time 2 hours/2k every day without fail.  With fail for weekends and holidays maybe 4 books.

It all depends on how many stories you've got ready and free time etc.

Best of luck with everything,



The Deposed King

[The Deposed King]

FYI - the most I've ever heard written in one day was from John Ringo who said he once sat down and wrote 25k before stopping.

I've never done that.

FYI 2 -And I know Chris Nuttal writes about 8k a day every day without stop until the book is done. Then he takes two weeks to plot out his next book and rinses and repeats.  (40 odd books up on amazon and more every month)

Haven't done that either.


So like snowleapord said, don't judge yourself by others.  Figure out what you can and what you want to do, then go out and try to do it.  I can't run marathons and I haven't run 5 miles in a day but that doesn't mean the mile or two I have done is anything to sneeze at.   The same goes for writing.




The Deposed King

[pcpoet]

I just started writing last January. I spent the last year teaching myself to tell a story. I have had three false starts in writing a book because my skill at telling a story changed so drastically that I decided to start fresh. I am just happy to be at 11,000 word and not ready to start from scratch. I final am not embarrassed to show my work to others while my grammar skills need to improve. I have story flow and structure down. my writing so far has been free form no story board but I have decided that I got to sit down and outline my story so that I have belter structure to the writing.

[pcpoet]

at the moment  I am trying to get 1,000 words a day for me that is about 4 hours of writing.

[The Deposed King]

Typing speed can be a big issue.  Also as for story telling, I've found that running a D&D campaign and having to react to characters who without fail want to roam around outside of the campaign manuels to be excellent training.  As is telling stories to my children where they can be the characters.  It started with little red riding hood, my oldest son only hadto hear the story a couple times before he wasn't going up the stairs to see grama but wanted me to finish telling him the story all the same.  Then all original stories with him as the star.

Other than that reading thousands of sci-fi/fantasy books.  Practice practice practice.

I spent about 8-10 years never getting more than 10k in a story down and was asked if english was my second language.  Then my life was falling apart and I decided I would either write a book or stop the dream.  I sat down and even though my story skipped between 1st person and 3rd person and it stank so bad my brother and I had to do multiple rewrites, I didn't stop.  Its a heck of a lot easier to edit a bad story than it is to write one.

My advice don't give up, don't stop, don't go back and rewrite.  Just type until its done.  Then go back and spend a couple weeks fixing it up nice and pretty.  You'd be amazed.




The Deposed King

[Snowleopard]

I have a book by Jon Winokur called - Writers on Writing.
It's all quotes by writers on the craft, the process, and their fellow writers.  (There are some zingers in that section.)
One of the ones I like goes like this - "Get Black on White!"
Just like the Deposed King says - just keep on plugging at it.

[pcpoet]

thanks for the advice on writing. I no the key is to just write. I myself decided to write because. my life sucked I suffer from bipolar illness and have been on disability for years when ever I have tried to work or go to school my illness would get in the way. Last year I was so tired of being sick and tired. I decided to take up writing and to treat it as a full time job. it feels good to do this because if anyone asks me how I spend my days I now tell them that I am writing a book.