2009
In 2009, I wrote 25,061 words of fiction.
25,061 words = 1 novelette, 1 novel chapter (abandoned work), 1 flash piece, 1 short story; 3 finished manuscripts.
That’s a good total, but it was mostly the result of only one piece I’m fairly satisfied with, and another which I’ve revised to death in an attempt to make it publishable. The flash piece was a school Creative Writing II assignment, which I’m not happy with, and the single-chapter novel beginning was trash — a mere exercise to recharge my fiction-writing batteries.
This stuff was a challenge to do for one reason: I’d been taking a break from writing. At 13, I wrote a 209-page manuscript in less than 2 months. From then on, I didn’t finish anything. Started two or three novels, abandoned them. Along the way, I created some characters, some worlds, some ideas that are still dancing about in my head — one such tale became my first Writers of the Future entry, for Quarter 2 of 2010. The results of that quarter have yet to be announced, but I have a hunch that I’ll be lucky to get an Honorable Mention. It was fun to write, and I love the damned thing, but it’s just not up to par with some of the stuff I’ve read in those anthologies. Why kid myself?
2010
On February 23, 2010, I made my first-ever manuscript submission for publication to Weird Tales, the short story I’d been working to death since, say, October ’09. It was, months later following a query, rejected.
Since then, I’ve been rejected a total of 19 times.
19 rejections in roughly a four-month period. I need to increase my output. If I can write a story a week, or even a story at least every two weeks — hell, occasionally two stories a week would be possible, but I’m sure the quality would suffer as a result.
Rejections make you want more, for editors to see your name more frequently. So you write more to compensate, and thereby increase your chances of success. If you can combat your fears of failure — irrational fears, born of myth and nay-sayers — then there’s no reason why a person can’t write like hell and eventually succeed. How much is a lot of writing, what is quality writing, and how easy success comes is both a matter of luck and subjectivity. There’s no way to really quantify it. Eventually, persistence prevails.
So far in 2010, I’ve written 30,573 words of fiction. That’s for half the year. These figures, admittedly, are slightly inaccurate due to the sole fact that the novelette listed as a 2009 piece was in fact finished in 2010, across November-January, little by little.
30,573 words = 5 short stories, 1 finished novelette, 1 abandoned longer work (probably will be eventually redrafted as a novella or novel, in the future); 6 finished manuscripts
The good news is this: by next week, my “Race Score” should be at 9; nine submissions, nine different manuscripts at nine different paying speculative fiction markets.
The bad news is this: I wasted a lot of time the last few months, as a result of the stress caused by school. College. Ugh…terrible.
My goal, then, shall be to have 40 manuscripts on the market by 2011. That could be somewhere around 200,000 words. That’s as much as two whole novels. Perhaps I shall even write a novel or two before I finish college, then; I’ve got two whole years left. Why the hell not? I’ve got nothing to lose, but everything to gain. If things go as well as they have been, school will go fine. My first semester, I ended up with something like a 3.6 GPA; the best I’ve had since, I’d say, eighth grade.
200,000 words? Can it be done? Hard to tell. Already I’ve written a fair amount, but the year’s half over. It’s going to require effort, discipline, and routine — writing must become habit. Not just ambition, the here-and-there dabbling of the unpublished amateur. I have to work toward success if I ever expect to achieve it.
If I’m going to limit myself to a goal of a measley 40 manuscripts — all for the sake of not killing myself once school starts up again — then I’m going to make sure I push myself in the direction of novella- and novel-length work at least at some point in the near future. I’m sitting on a lot of worldbuilding, a lot of ideas, but I need to hone my skills, practice the craft, and work towards mastery before I attempt the first serious novel project. It ain’t Jr. High no more, sadly. Henceforth, this is serious.
200,000 words for 2010. If it comes easily, maybe I’ll double it for 2011. Again — who knows?
I’ve decided that I’m going to set aside the How-to-Write books and obsessive online networking, et cetera, in favor of the two things that truly matter: reading and writing. My blog, therefore, is going to lean towards documenting 1) my writing progress, any successes, and how close I am to achieving my goals, and 2) writing book reviews, because I think that sort of thing is very helpful to those who may be in need of a good reading experience.
Those are great goals, Alex
You can totally get to 40 by the end of the year (I assume by manuscripts you mean short stories mostly, yes?). I’ve been doing a writing streak, ie making time to write at least something (even if just a couple hundred words) every day. It’s pretty helpful so far.
And the more you write and practice, the better you’ll get
Doing two short stories in a week might eventually look easy!
Yeah, I wanted to be both realistic and ambitious about this first full year of continuous writing. 2009 was a year for dipping my feet back in the water, so to speak, and I enjoy it now more than ever, now that I feel I’m reaching a point where I can potentially start becoming the sort of writer I want to be and I’m submitting everything.
I’m going to try to go back to the method I used when I wrote my Quarter 2 novelette, which seemed to produce higher-quality prose. Then, rather than pump out page after page in a handful of days, then relying on revision to clean it up, I actually did the first draft a little bit at a time. I used King’s daily quota as my own, shooting for 2,000 words a day, then stopping. I think 1,000 words/day is a bit closer to my own personal optimum word count, because when I get “tired” of writing for the day, I get lazier, less editorial/thoughtful with my writing…and I end up with something I’m not happy with.
My main concern is making writing, both often and well, a habit. I want to produce quality prose, in impressive quantities. Until some level of success is achieved, there’s no reason to slack off. Only hard work is going to get me where I want to be.
A lot of great goals here — especially the one about limiting online activity. I wish I’d taken goal-setting more seriously when I was your age.
One thing you might consider when you get back to school and the stress starts up is to set a minimum DAILY word count. Don’t change ANYTHING until you get back to school — and don’t be quick to change when you do get back to school. I’m simply offering this as something to keep in the back of your mind as an alternative goal if things get too much.
There’s a SF writer named James Van Pelt who writes a minimum of 200 words a day. Once he hits 200 words, he’s free to stop. Now here’s the thing. He hasn’t missed a day in something like 11 years and had close to 100 short-story credits to his name, and has published three short-story collections and a novel.
The 200 words/day grew out of necessity. As a high-school teacher, swim coach, husband, father, etc, to expect more than 200 words a regular basis was too much. So on busy days, it’s 200 words and out. On free days, it can be 1000 or 2000 words.
But he always hits 200 words. For 11 years. Amazing.
Check out his blog — lots of writing stuff there — and read his stuff, you won’t be sorry on either count.
http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/
Hello, I’m dropping by from Critters. I looked at your blog once before but decided it would be rude not to say “hi.”
You’ve got quite a set of goals ahead of you, and I commend you for them. I wish I’d enacted more self-discipline earlier (I got my degree in 2007) but, like you, 2010 is my first full year of consistent writing. I wish you luck with it.
Personally, I tend to set time goals rather than word count. An absolute minimum is 15 minutes each day, although I usually do quite a bit longer–but I won’t give myself “credit” for writing unless I actually “write” (not stare at my keyboard wondering where to take the story next) for 15 minutes. And on some days, with a toddler, a house, a high-maintenance yard, and all of life’s other little obligations, that’s all I can do before tromping off to bed–but I’ve found that once I’ve started a streak, I really don’t want to break it, and I work better and longer. In fact, I envy you your ambitious goals, and I hope you reach them. I like the idea of James Van Pelt’s minimum though, and I may have to adopt it.
One thing you might want to consider when pushing yourself to write longer works is that novellas are hard to publish. A lot of markets don’t accept them, so you can run dry fast (especially of the paying markets.) A lot of my own writing tends to run long, so I’ve noticed this trend affect my work.
I invite you to stop by Science Fiction Mommy (http://sciencefictionmommy.blogspot.com/) sometime and take a look around. I blog about parenting as well, but I spend about half my time there on writing and reading related subjects.
Keep writing!
I’ve got 13 pro-paying markets on my list for my sci/fi novella, and I expect it would/will take at least two or three years to get through those markets. So my advice is if you like writing stories in the 9-20k range, do it
There are a surprising number of markets for fiction out there, especially if you think a little outside the box and target some general fiction markets as well as the genre ones.