There’s a Writing Rule that says “Write every day, no matter what.” You hear people tout this rule, just like every other Writing Rule, and since I’m dragging myself back into the swing of things after what amounts to a five month hiatus, I thought I’d address it. Obviously it’s terrible advice. I mean, yes, if you can write every day, that’s awesome. That’s great! Go for it! Have fun! Write every day! God knows I do when I can. But the idea that you must is as crippling as…
I find writing when there’s music on to be very difficult, but two things are now working against me: One, at the moment, I’m huddled in my office working while the landlord and Ted deal with Manly Things (ie, moving heavy objects, cleaning drains, building sheds, etc), and I have the cats locked in here with me. They are slightly less demanding to be LET OUT NOOOOOOOW if there’s music on, possibly because it makes it harder for them to hear the Interesting Things going on outside the office. Two,…
I have discovered a new way to make writing less onerous. If one closes one’s eyes while one types, one becomes less concerned about the page count because one can’t see it. This does, mind you, require a pretty flawless ability to touch-type, but that’s one of my L33T SK1LZ, so it’s working out for me. I am not writing fast–the book won’t be finished tomorrow–but I’m doing a chapter a day, which is enough. I’m also spending way too much time going “well if I wrote 3500 words a…
I have spent the entire morning doing fiddly busy work that is not anything like the actual revision work I *should* be doing. It’s good stuff to be doing–arranging the covers for issues 4 & 5 of Chance, interview stuff, a few cemurphy.net updates (still haven’t emailed the FPI guy, the DCC guy, or my letterer; need to do those, though not *this morning*), that kind of thing. But mostly what I’m doing is avoiding revisions. Which is stupid. They’re not especially hard revisions. They’re mostly rearranging a few sentences,…
A question from /comments which allows me to spend a little more time not working on the manuscript right now (I’ve done 100 pages so far today. I have to do at least 50 more. Another 100 would be good, because it would leave me with a bearable amount to do tomorrow, but either way I’ll finish the first revision pass tomorrow): Though, now I’m curious — is there an average number of times that a manuscript will pass between your agent, editor and self? I never really thought about…