![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
What has been, and is to come . . .
Warning: long rambly personal writer-ly ponderations under the cut.
At this point, I’ve been writing for almost exactly three years, since I suddenly discovered the Writing Fairy, who I thought had entirely skipped my cradle, had actually left her gift in time-release capsule form. In three years, I’ve completed three novels, two novellas, a short story and a basket of short pieces: drabbles, vignettes, smutlets. It’s close to a quarter of a million words all told (based on reliable word counters, not the ff.net rubbish).
I look at that word count and part of me says ‘zomg wow’ and part of me, the part that knows more about the world, says ‘pretty good start’. 100,000 words is the standard length for a published novel in most markets, although anything of 50,000 words or more meets the official definition.
And at the moment, for the first time since May of 2009, I’m between projects.
I actually wrote the first notes on what eventually turned into Reverb somewhere like two years ago; it was a pure visual, my thoughts on what I’d like to see in the opening shots of a MacGyver movie. I had the camera zooming in on the mountains, the woods, the off-grid cabin, the interior shot of Mac’s living space – hockey gear, widgetry, photos of a larger family – and an older Mac at a computer. Contemporary, but still himself. Then I set it aside, because what was I supposed to do with the scene?
A year ago May, I wrote the first chapter of Reverb, and the first chapter of what became Revision. The former had to be set aside while I finished the latter, because I had to explore Mac and Sam’s relationship in its early stages before I could move almost twenty years into the future and explore where it had gotten to by then.
My writing pace has been slower through this last year and a half than it had been before; it never stopped, but I was generally finishing a chapter a month instead of a chapter every 10 days or so. I remain deeply grateful that my readers are so patient – hell, I remain deeply astonished that I have readers.
It’s been not quite a week since I finished Reverb, and I’m already badly twitchy about not having an active project. I do have nascent ideas for the next, but it will be very different:
I’m going to try to write my next project for professional submission. As in, write a novel and try to sell it.
This also causes a ‘zomg’ response in me, followed by ‘eeeep wtfbbq eeeeep’. *clutches flist*
All you folks who want to come along on the cross-country trip journal? You’ll probably end up on the crossing-to-submission-for-publication journey as well, since I’m likely to move this kind of ponderation over there so as not to clutter up teh LOLs. But it’s time.
One major bummer is that this means I don’t get to write another MacGyver novel next. Ack! And I don’t really want to be without Mac, so . . . well, I may end up writing more short pieces, just to keep him occupied and around, so to speak. I might very well write more smut. What a hardship.
One thing I had not intended was to write a freaking novel in this post, so I think I'd better shut up now. For the moment.
'Beth
October 2010
At this point, I’ve been writing for almost exactly three years, since I suddenly discovered the Writing Fairy, who I thought had entirely skipped my cradle, had actually left her gift in time-release capsule form. In three years, I’ve completed three novels, two novellas, a short story and a basket of short pieces: drabbles, vignettes, smutlets. It’s close to a quarter of a million words all told (based on reliable word counters, not the ff.net rubbish).
I look at that word count and part of me says ‘zomg wow’ and part of me, the part that knows more about the world, says ‘pretty good start’. 100,000 words is the standard length for a published novel in most markets, although anything of 50,000 words or more meets the official definition.
And at the moment, for the first time since May of 2009, I’m between projects.
I actually wrote the first notes on what eventually turned into Reverb somewhere like two years ago; it was a pure visual, my thoughts on what I’d like to see in the opening shots of a MacGyver movie. I had the camera zooming in on the mountains, the woods, the off-grid cabin, the interior shot of Mac’s living space – hockey gear, widgetry, photos of a larger family – and an older Mac at a computer. Contemporary, but still himself. Then I set it aside, because what was I supposed to do with the scene?
A year ago May, I wrote the first chapter of Reverb, and the first chapter of what became Revision. The former had to be set aside while I finished the latter, because I had to explore Mac and Sam’s relationship in its early stages before I could move almost twenty years into the future and explore where it had gotten to by then.
My writing pace has been slower through this last year and a half than it had been before; it never stopped, but I was generally finishing a chapter a month instead of a chapter every 10 days or so. I remain deeply grateful that my readers are so patient – hell, I remain deeply astonished that I have readers.
It’s been not quite a week since I finished Reverb, and I’m already badly twitchy about not having an active project. I do have nascent ideas for the next, but it will be very different:
I’m going to try to write my next project for professional submission. As in, write a novel and try to sell it.
This also causes a ‘zomg’ response in me, followed by ‘eeeep wtfbbq eeeeep’. *clutches flist*
All you folks who want to come along on the cross-country trip journal? You’ll probably end up on the crossing-to-submission-for-publication journey as well, since I’m likely to move this kind of ponderation over there so as not to clutter up teh LOLs. But it’s time.
One major bummer is that this means I don’t get to write another MacGyver novel next. Ack! And I don’t really want to be without Mac, so . . . well, I may end up writing more short pieces, just to keep him occupied and around, so to speak. I might very well write more smut. What a hardship.
One thing I had not intended was to write a freaking novel in this post, so I think I'd better shut up now. For the moment.
'Beth
October 2010
just watch me use my toe fu