Tired, tired but feeling accomplished

[erastes]

Rediscovering the love of my current WIP.("I Knew Him")

I behaved like one of those mythical ostriches last year and stuck my head in the sand when I realised how complicated it was going to be to write and said "wah! I can't do it!" but now I've pushed forward a couple of thousand words over the last week and the Protag has taken back over, it's flowing better.  But I do think that I'm going to be the only person who loves Harry.

Trouble is, I'm heading for 70k already, so I have no clue how long it will be. I don't want to run the risk of skipping over the final third and get people tell me I rushed it. I know it's a cheat, but if I can finish "I Knew Him" this year AND a 30k novella I'll be satisfied for my year's output.

But it is easy to get intimidated by other writers. One of my Twitter friends said (to someone else) that they wrote THREE novellas a MONTH.
*spork*

Comments

[tiggothy.livejournal.com]

Don't forget you do have an incredibly demanding (and doubtless majorly underpaid) full-time job as well as writing!

...and you'll still have me going "finish? a novel?? Wow, how awesome would that be!" for quite a while yet ;-)

Yay for getting re-enthused about your WIP! Sometimes things just need a break, don't they :-)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Paid!? LOL - the money just about covers my petrol back and forth. it's ludicrous.

and you can do it! what's stopping you??

[tiggothy.livejournal.com]

what's stopping you??
in a word: me.
too many things going on & going round in my head. characters have woken up again (and a blog post elsewhere resolved a major plot weakness for me a couple of days ago) though, so really I should just sit down and focus.

I'll get there :-D

[lawless523.livejournal.com]

People write at different speeds. I know I can't write quickly like other people can. Some of it is because the words just don't come and I write carefully; it's easier in the long run to structure a story closer to the way it'll be in the end than to rewrite and have to fit pieces together. Some of it is due to physical limitations; even if I could think them up, I can't sit down and bang out thousands of words a day. Don't beat yourself up about it.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It's hard, because I'm in communication (via various social networks) with so many writers who literally do book after book after book -I had a look at one person's Goodreads page and he had about 50 titles in a few years! It's hard to think "I'm as good" when your readers have to hang on a year or more for the next one. But you've cheered me up!

[lawless523.livejournal.com]

Meaning no disparagement, but what kind of book it is may also have some bearing on it. It's easier to write a book that follows a well-trodden path or well-known tropes than it is to write something that diverges from, challenges, or doesn't hew to them.

[countrygirlxxoo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and McDonald's serves a million hamburgers a year versus the carefully (but not instantaneously) prepared, delicious meal you get from your favorite hole in the wall restaurant. Guess which one I prefer? I'll take quality over quantity any day.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

aw - thank you. :D

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

I can't do it either but am so glad you can. :) This is why I am knitting. LOL

But I do have a cunning plan *morphs into Balderick*

[erastes.livejournal.com]

YOU CAN. and I feel really horrible that I may have been the cause of you stopping. Try tiny goals?

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

Omg....no you weren't!!! It had been coming for a long time.

I can haz surprise for you. Hehe.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

TELL ME

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

It will arrive when you least expect it. *evOl cackle*

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

And yes, tiny goals are a good idea. Baldrick speaks to me...

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

I don't write fast either, and if I were doing the job you are, I don't know if I could write at all.

Finally finished MM over Mediawest (it was at the table, so was I...) and I didn't find the ending rushed at all. It ended where it should have, and there was a postscript of sorts. Different strokes.

And.. I'm willing to bet the twitter-friend doesn't write historicals.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I managed about 200 words today, but that was actually with a good, but rather active - he didn't sit still today! - day. I think the worst of it is that I am finding it hard to get deep into POV, really deep into it, like I like to do with first person, because I'm jolted out every few minutes. and right now, i need to be very deep into the pov because Harry is experiencing an almost orgasmic amount of anticipation. chortles.

I'm very happy you liked it. assuming you did, and pleased at your reaction to the ending. I was a little concerned - because I felt it WAS a little sped up... not quite a Benny Hill Chase (Oh dear, now I can see it all happening to the theme tune) but still...

and no, no they don't. :D

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

Oh, lord, if you knew a couple of re-enactors who could do the high points of the story in a speeded-up video, you would make the NYT bestseller list. That would be fanTAStic.

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

Different people write at different speeds, and have different degrees of other stuff to get done as well.

I set myself perfectly reasonable targets and am glad when I go past them, because it encourages me to keep going much better than setting higher targets and then missing.