Its a big 0 for me! Started a bunch, wrote really extensive plans, got bored after 20-30 pages, made them short stories. And whenever people criticise me I make them read Prelude and At The Bay by Katherine Mansfield and then I don't feel so bad. (And neither do they cuz they get to read Mansfield, and who doesn't love Masnfield. Besides, like, the douchebags at high school who can't get over the occasional feminism).
Started and completed two novels. Both right now are out of the slush pile and awaiting a decision by the executive editors. Have started and completed 12 short stories so far. Finished the first draft of the thirteenth about 20 minutes ago. Eight have either been published or have been accepted for publication. That's it for fiction. The trick is to finish what you start to the best of your ability and submit and then move on to the next project. Terry
Working on my first, but it's been an up and down process. Last night went great, but tonight I'll be lucky to type a couple paragraphs. I'm about 35,000 words in right now out of what I expect to be close to 100,000. It's a nice start, but I have lots left before I can celebrate anything.
Man, as a writer of what I guess would be deemed lit fiction (though the mantle of "literature" is pretty daunting to me...), its interesting to note the difference in anticipated word count for first novels by writers here. Personally, I don't think I could write more than 50k without at least some of it being filler or otherwise unnecessary material....but it seems like people here who write fantasy and scifi aim for as much as twice that in one novel. Just wondering whether this really is the case for genre fiction in general...?
I'm personally writing fantasy, and I'm basing my predicted word count on what I believe is typical for a first novel in that genre. Whether I can pull it off or not is a different story, but based on where I'm at in the plot, it seems somewhat reasonable. I know the expectation on general fiction can be substantially lower, sometimes around 70,000 words.
Yeah, I guess it depends...I mean Ulysses is obviously a mammoth word count, but then something like Less than Zero or South of the Border, West of the Sun and they seem really short. Hmm!
One fantasy, one teen thriller (in the Alex Rider mould). The fantasy novel has been completed twice before and is in its 11th incarnation thanks to constantly seeing new ideas that could improve it. In the past I've started a young fantasy novel (I'm never going back to it. Ever), a teen lit novel (imagine Skins, only focused around gigs) and I've just put a 'hard' SF novel about black holes on the back burner.
1 novel published (if Mills & Boon counts), 1 still in the drawer. Lots of short stories, I'd go crazy without them...
I'm working on my 4th. I've also written over 30 stories, but a lot of those are 1000 words only, flash fiction. I've been writing short stories for a while, but I just started writing novels 8 months ago. Since then I have almost finished editing the first novel. That is such a pain for me. I will have the 4th novel completed and a screenplay in less than 4 months, perhaps even novel 5. That will be 5 novels in a year and a screenplay plus a few short stories. That's my goal. I realized that my novels are a longer than I thought they were. I was using Word to get a word count before, but that is not how editors do it. So now I format them properly and multiply 250 by the number of pages. First YA novel is 81,000 words. I might have to cut down that one. Second novel is 65,000. This was a YA novel experiment that I am not happy with. I tried to tell too much story. I will split it into two stories. One a screenplay and the other a novel. Third novel is 92,000. The two MC's are 17, but I consider it an adult novel. It is a sci-fi and I might need to lengthen it a bit. Forth novel is a contemporary romance, which I am still working on. 30k so far.
Three - all thrillers. The first is in a drawer, far far away - the second is out looking for an agent, while the third is in first draft but developing rapidly. I'm also a playwright, but that's another story altogether.
