Another thing I find useful is 'bouncing' ideas off people... start talking about something, even for a laugh then see where it goes. It can be easy or hard to do. But writing things down, random things, even drawing stick figures are good too.
when i start writing i can get about 1000 words or more in an hour or so, and during the first couple of chapters i burn them off without too much problem. but when i start to develop the story, like getting to a problem arising etc. i tend to get writers block and manage 100 words an hour if i'm lucky. i am writing something at the moment and i have been working on it the past week now, only about an hour if that a day, but i was proud to be reaching the 4500 mark, lmaoo. Heather
I can't just write at any time. I have to be well rested, and in a creative mood (and as an insomniac, that's not often) so it takes me a while. The novel I've been working on took me about three or four months to write (142,000 words) but it's editing that's the real killer for me. I'm a slow reader.
Editing is a pain. I loathe it. For some reason I find I churn out good work when I'm tired??? Some nights it's late and I'll be sitting there and I can just write page after page. I think it's a little strange. But whenever I try and write during the day I find myself all hyped up and alert and I just can't produce good passages.
Well that just goes to show that there's no standard formula for writing. What works for one person won't necessarily work for another.
Took me about a six years to write the first 250,000 words in my novel, and four years or so to rewrite it completely.
Been down the rewrite path myself. It took three years to write the 75,000 damn awful words of my novel, but as I said above, I rewrote it in much less time. Urgh *shudders* that first version was so bad that thinking about it makes me sick.
Six years!!!! Argh!! I simply cannot imagine giving six years of my life to a novel and then getting a rejection letter. You are made of tough stuff if you send that in. I'd bury it as a sacred duty. PS. I'm nearly at the 60k mark on my new manuscript - but January is flying by and I only managed about 30 words tonight!
I don't know, how fast can the computer pickup on how fast I am writing. I believe that is the question at stake here.
in the real world [beyond nanowhatsis], it's only how well you write that matters, not how fast!... unless you're a journalist with deadlines, that is... as for me, i think up my 'writing' faster than i can type, most of the time...
I've already sent it in once. I wish I'd gotten a nicer rejection letter, like a personally signed one, or at least one that wasn't such a bad mimeographed copy, but I'll probably frame it anyway. Congrats on the 60k mark!
Dear Mr. name Sorry but this thread's client book is full at the moment. We didn't read your post, and we wouldn't care to unless you are a 'b'-list celebrity or a retired athlete. Regards, The management. ps. I'm at about 80k now...longer than Philosophers stone, a bit short of Chamber of Secrets...
I can write pretty quickly (I have a daily output of ~5k words) but if you consider the fact that I've been working on this concept for about 6 years now, that's a different thing entirely.
After just reading that The Philosopher's Stone is less than 80k it's given me a lot of confidence. I can easily get up to that without losing the reader's interest and still have a story to tell (or so I hope). Thanks for the comparison Onoria!
That would have been an awesome rejection letter to get. I would have scanned it in and used it in my sig or something.
Jesus. You all write so fast and for so long. I can only write for 30 minutes a day. And I only manage 800 words My depression cripples me.
Depends. How quickly do you want your book finished? I'd love to finish mine in a month but it takes me forever.
I'm a distracted writer...unless it's NaNo. I wrote some stuff that was pretty decent [on my scale of standards, anyway] at a pace of 2,000 words a day for most of the month. The rest of the year, I am sloooow, because there's no motivation. I don't have to write every day, so I think 'well, let me think about it and turn the story over in my mind' and then the story doesn't go anywhere.
I always feel like I'm going so slow when writing. I was wondering whether I'm just paranoid or slow.
Depends. I've hit around 2500 words in an hour (of what I thought was good content), and I've stared at the screen and not typed a single word in an hour
I know that feeling... sometimes your fingers cant type or write as fast as your brain can think. It's not paranoia - I'd like to think of it as just matter of fact. Im pretty sure a lot of people can't write real fast.
