Think about it. On a good day where I work my day job for 10-12 hours and then come home and write, I'll put out 1-2K words. On a day when I don't work my day job, if I haven't explicitly taken it off (as I did yesterday), there's just no way I won't hit 6-8K words in a day. No way. If I could do it full-time for a month, that's minimum of 6K words per day, 30 days, for a total of 180K words. That's a novel per month, if you don't consider revising time or publicity time or anything else.
The other good thing about my writing is that I'm finding that the more of it I do, the better the first draft becomes. It's not perfect, certainly, and probably won't ever be. But read back through my first few blog entries when you have time; what I wrote back then was total and absolute crap. I listened, I read, I asked, and I got better. Now, it's just mostly crap. In the writing class I'm taking online right now, I put together a short piece in about 30 minutes, and it survived with very few edits.
Original:
I’d been looking forward to the date all week. It was the office’s annual Christmas party, a grand event at the end of January that had no Christmas theme to speak of. That was fitting, though. Normal companies hold more or less well-appointed get-togethers with participants sipping fermented fruit juices to suit their taste preference or their appearance, whichever is more important. Mine, though, held an absurd ball at an absurd time of the year at which everyone got absurdly intoxicated and did absurd skits and talent shows starring absurdly untalented people. Hey, it was fun.
That night was more than just the annual event, though. I’d finally split from my shrewish wife the previous year, and for months had held myself above the question of who might take her place. It was a stupid question. Everyone at work hated her; every time she dropped by my work it became a dark land of toil and dread. They all had cheered when I announced the separation. No one would take that place, not ever.
In the name of pleasing, and perhaps impressing a bit, my fellows, I’d asked the prettiest woman I knew to accompany me to the ball. It wasn’t meant for romance; I assumed we both knew that. I was only hoping to generate some oohs, and maybe also some ahs.
The night finally arrived, the week prior moving far too slowly for me. I drove across town and picked up the eye candy that would spend the evening perched on my arm. Then I drove back across town and paraded in, met of course by all of the oohs and ahs for which I could have ever wished. I didn’t drink much at all; alcohol wasn’t necessary for intoxication that evening.
Absurd ball, and absurd activities, and absurd numbers of oohs and ahs and parading and—stuff—all done, I drove my friend home. I walked her to her door. I smiled and thanked her for one of the grandest evenings of my life to that point. And then she surprised me. “Let’s go dancing,” she said. She had a friend who didn’t go out much, and she knew I hadn’t been out much, and wouldn’t it be grand, she asked, if we could all go out some?
Of course I agreed. Who would turn down a night of dancing with a good friend and beautiful woman?
Then she introduced me to her friend, and the night’s color changed. My friend went from the prettiest woman I knew to the second prettiest woman I knew, just like that. We danced that night, my friend’s friend and I. We danced swing, and later we danced Latin. We danced into each other’s hearts, and then suddenly we were a couple. My friend’s friend has been my best friend, and later my wife, ever since.
After edits:
I’d been looking forward to the date all week. It was the office’s annual Christmas party, a grand event at the end of January that had no Christmas theme to speak of. That was fitting. Normal companies hold more or less well-appointed get-togethers with participants sipping fermented fruit juices to suit their taste preference or their appearance, whichever is more important. Mine, though, held an absurd ball at an absurd time of the year at which everyone got absurdly intoxicated and did absurd skits and talent shows starring absurdly untalented people. Hey, it was fun.
That night was more than just the annual event, though. I’d finally split from my shrewish wife the previous year, and for months had held myself above the question of who might take her place. It was a stupid question. Everyone at work hated her; every time she dropped by my work it became a dark land of toil and dread. They all had cheered when I announced the separation. No one would take that place, not ever.
In the name of pleasing, and perhaps impressing, my fellows, I’d asked the prettiest woman I knew to accompany me to the ball. It wasn’t meant for romance; I assumed we both knew that. I only hoped to generate some oohs, and maybe also some ahs.
The night finally arrived, the week prior moving far too slowly for me. I drove across town and picked up the eye candy that would spend the evening perched on my arm. I drove back across town, sauntered into the hotel, and paraded us into the ball room, met of course by all of the oohs and ahs for which I could have ever wished. I didn’t drink much at all; alcohol wasn’t necessary for intoxication that evening.
Absurd ball, and absurd activities, and absurd amount of oohs and ahs and parading all done, I drove my friend home. I walked her to her door. I smiled and thanked her for one of the grandest evenings of my life to that point. And then she surprised me.
“Let’s go dancing,” she said. She had a friend who didn’t go out much, and she knew I hadn’t been out much, and wouldn’t it be grand, she asked, if we could all go out some?
Of course I agreed. Who would turn down a night of dancing with a good friend and beautiful woman?
Then she introduced me to her friend, and the night’s color changed. My friend went from being the prettiest woman I knew to the second prettiest woman I knew, just like that. We danced that night, my friend’s friend and I. We danced swing, and later we danced Latin. We danced into each other’s hearts, and then suddenly we were a couple.
See the difference? It's still a transformation of crap to not-crap, but there's a lot less transformation to be had along the way. I'm doing better, which means I can write more and more.
That said, I finished the short I was working on. It's 17K words; once I'm done uncrappifying it, it should be about the same length. I'm really quite happy. I set out to write a science fiction genre short story that had some back story for the novel. What I ended up with was all that and more--a statement on the political system we have today, and farther. I'm pleased, and can't wait for the review process to be done so I can self-pub it.
No comments:
Post a Comment