Thursday 20 December 2012

Writing Update - Six months

I didn't post an update on November 20th (five months since the Great Reboot) mostly because around that time I had some computer issues and frustrations were getting the better of me.  Unfortunately I've had a similar problem this month to go with lots of formatting issues with older work, so this month is the first I haven't actually hit my monthly target.  In any case, here's a stats update on what I've written since June 20th this year.



Name Type Word Count Status
1 The Ship Short Story 3793 Finished - to edit
2 Take me Back with You Short Story 2528 WIP
3 Take me Back with You Novel 35303 WIP
4 The Lost Train Short Story 4352 WIP
5 The Other Set of Feet Short Story 3749 Finished - to edit
6 The Hunter Novella 18783 WIP
7 Once We Were Children Short Story 2513 Finished - to edit
8 The Assignment Short Story 8802 Finished - to edit
9 Never Give Up Short Story 5111 Finished - to edit
10 Clones Short Story 1323 Edited
11 Beat Down 1 - Clones Serial Novella 19233 Published
12 Sunfall Short Story 1271 WIP
13 The Tube Riders: Exile Novel 90629 WIP
14 Beat Down 2 - The Heist Serial Novella 18533 Published
15 Beat Down 3 - Badassaur Serial Novella 19699 Finished - to edit
16 NaNoWriMo 2012 Novel 3714 WIP
17 Beat Down 4 - The Sneevla Serial Novella 4015 WIP
18 Undelivered Short Story 358 WIP
Started June 21st Word Count 243709
Pages (300w/pg) 812
6 month target (Dec 20th) (183 days) 250000
Ahead -6291
Total Month
One month tally: 33598 33598
Two month tally: 62217 28619
Three month tally: 119253 57036
Four month tally: 180097 60844
Five month tally: 217500 37403
Six month tally: 243709 26209



It could certainly be worse.  I missed my six-month target but 243k in six months is pretty solid going.  However, in October I had been hoping to break 300k by now.

The biggest problem I have had is with flash drives.  I learned the hard way to make sure I back up my work after breaking a flash drive in November.  However that was just the start.  I actually saved that one, but since then I've had two fail on me and while I've been backing them up more regularly I still lost a bunch of words both times, most notably on my effort at NaNo, which I lost TWICE.  In hindsight, taking on an entirely new project for NaNo was a huge mistake, because I overestimated the amount of writing time I would have, plus I tried to push my boundaries by writing in a genre I wasn't familiar with.  While this in itself was not a big deal, I spent a lot more time writing it than I spent on more familiar projects.  It all started well, then I lost six thousand words.  I rewrote it, then lost it again.  That kind of bummed me out so I abandoned it, although the whole experience left me feeling a little burned out and it took time to get back the motivation I had previously had.

Then there was the formatting issues I had with the paperback for The Man Who Built the World.  I struggled with it for weeks before finally outsourcing it and paying someone else to do it for me, which I should have done in the first place.  The sum result was that I failed to get the paperback ready for Christmas, although it should be available shortly.

In other writing, I'm plot-knotted again in Tube Riders, although I'm working through it now.  My novella series, Beat Down, suffered from the flash drive failures and I had to rewrite roughly 5000 words on part three, something that was very frustrating because it is very creatively spontaneous and I think a bit of the humour was lost in the rewrite.

Overall, though, I'm pretty happy with what I've got over the last six months.  In addition, after reading a blog by a pretty successful writer which encouraged us to get as much product out there as possible because you never knew what would strike a chord with the reader, I went back and took a look at a really old novel, one called Possession, which I wrote when I was 19.  It's little more than a straightforward horror story and I have never so much as reread it, but I found it was a lot better than most of the stuff I've read by indie writers so with a couple of solid edits it might be serviceable.  So I've started to work on that as well as the edit for a book called Head of Words, which is a (very) black comedy/horror/thriller/thing.

Right, back to it.  Have a good Christmas everyone, and I'd be happy to see any comments below.  And just a reminder that Tube Riders is currently free, until the 22nd of Dec.  Click the links in the sidebar and grab a copy.

CW
21st Dec 2012

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