The Novel Diary: Week 2
Word counts: 3,792 (Chapter 1); 7,754 (total).
Tonight was a surprisingly productive night. I wrote mostly dialogue, which does not lend itself to impressive nightly word counts, but I put down 421 words. I was shocked. It was more than I wrote last night in a mostly descriptive, summary driven effort.
I guess the productive theme for the past two weeks has been surprise. Maybe it has to do with the fact I have written so little of substance in the past year or so; I am probably just readjusting to the daily routine.
Of course, not every day is productive or meaningful to the project at large. For the first draft, I am targeting something around 120,000 words. However, that will need to be whittled down to 80,000 or 90,000, the ideal average word count for a first novel. Publishing companies have apparently decided that range is prefect for balancing the financial risks of publishing a rookie effort: a book of that length is not too large to blow up the cost of production, and not too short as to be priced too low so they cannot recoup expenses. They are capitalist pigs masquerading as enablers of art, but back to my point: I will need to do a shitload of cutting. Whole nights, potentially, will fall victim to the delete key. Which nights I will never know, but it is somewhat sad to think the work I did tonight could be sacrificed later.
Tonight was a surprisingly productive night. I wrote mostly dialogue, which does not lend itself to impressive nightly word counts, but I put down 421 words. I was shocked. It was more than I wrote last night in a mostly descriptive, summary driven effort.
I guess the productive theme for the past two weeks has been surprise. Maybe it has to do with the fact I have written so little of substance in the past year or so; I am probably just readjusting to the daily routine.
Of course, not every day is productive or meaningful to the project at large. For the first draft, I am targeting something around 120,000 words. However, that will need to be whittled down to 80,000 or 90,000, the ideal average word count for a first novel. Publishing companies have apparently decided that range is prefect for balancing the financial risks of publishing a rookie effort: a book of that length is not too large to blow up the cost of production, and not too short as to be priced too low so they cannot recoup expenses. They are capitalist pigs masquerading as enablers of art, but back to my point: I will need to do a shitload of cutting. Whole nights, potentially, will fall victim to the delete key. Which nights I will never know, but it is somewhat sad to think the work I did tonight could be sacrificed later.
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