Fanatical Pupil

I can’t believe I forgot to post about this when I actually did it. I gave a little bit of a Yattai! when I totalled it up. I topped 20,000 words in The Nine Mothers! Now it actually feels like I can make it! I am not sure about making to to 100K, but I’m pretty sure (judging by what’s happened in the first 20K) that there will be at least 75K before this story has been told.

As of this writing, I’m at 20,253 words total (I have a spreadsheet which does some simple addition since there are two threads to the story which I keep in separate OpenOffice documents).

Fiction Writing This Week: 2,260
Non-Fiction Writing This Week: A bunch

I believe that’s the first time (since I’ve been keeping track) that I’ve topped 2,000 words in a week! I was inspired! I’ve been writing some somewhat tough scenes, too, in that, I already know what happens before and after the scene, but I’m filling in what actually happens so that readers don’t have to make spectacular jumps of logic to follow the story. And in doing so, I am now only 517 words away from 20,000 in The Nine Mothers of White Home. With a goal of 90-100,000 that puts me at 20% done! That actually seems like a decent number.

Now, I didn’t do WCW last week because I was on a schooner, sailing around islands in Maine. I should have been writing (well, at least, I should have been writing more), but instead I read Stephen King’s The Gunslinger. I did at least get through the whole book. And in the mean time (over the past 2 weeks), I wrote 414 words of fiction (for The Nine Mothers). I also got a lot of thinking and note-taking in as well.

And to make this post a little more interesting, here’s a picture I lomo-ized from the trip:

6/18: 187
6/19: 0
6/20: 229
6/21: 0
6/22: 0
6/23: 10
6/24: 290

Last week I mostly had positive comments about the writing… this week, while I got over 700 words, but each of those days when I actually did some writing (not counting the 23rd), the time was spent on a different project. So, despite getting over 100 words a day (hey, it’s something), really each project is only getting 34 words per day. Which means that to get any of them to 90,000 words, it will take me 7.25 years. And since I’m working on all 3 simultaneously, that puts the end date about 21 years away. I’m fairly certain this is my subconscious way of continuing my normal mode of operation; that being: start doing something, don’t finish (or only work hard enough to get somewhat decent at a skill), and move on.

First, let me pat myself on the back by saying that I’m up to 13,791 words (or 350,000 in manuscript words) for Hear the Grass Grow.

Now, let me take myself back down that peg, and a couple more for good measure, by saying that I am 207 words behind my average daily goal. And considering I started keeping track on February 18th, that is almost 2.5 months worth of 200 words a day, or… 15,000 words.

Next, on to the actual point of the post: Change. I’m almost 14,000 words into a story that I’m fairly happy with so far (and I’m not quitting on yet!) but I’m contemplating a change that would move the whole time line of the story back 40-50 years. If this were my Space Opera “The Nine Mothers” then 40-50 years would be nothing since the entire universe there is a complete fabrication. But HtGG is set in the “near-future” – currently 100 years in the future.

If we compare 2008 to 1908, obviously a lot has changed, but really, the biggest societal change that I see is the invention of TV. And Hear the Grass Grow is more about society than science (at least I hope it is). So now the real point of the post: I don’t want to have to make up some fresh, new idea about what technology is going to be like 100 years from now. I want to dabble in that a bit, because it’s fun, but the story is more about the characters and how their lives are affected by the events that take place in the story, more than how the technology of the time has changed, or how that new technology affects them.

I believe it’s a good thing that I’m writing my story/novella/novel/whatever in this manner, because most of the guidelines for submission to SFF magazines specify that they prefer character-driven stories.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to create worlds that are completely different from (yet somehow so similar to) our own; I want to dream up fascinating new technology; I want to be innovative. I just don’t think this is the story in which I want to – and perhaps can not – do that.

And from the standpoint of a still-aspiring author, having gleaned what knowledge and wisdom I can from the actually-published authors whom I read on a daily basis, changing it is good. I think the general advice goes: You’re most likely going to end up rewriting most of what you’re currently writing anyway. So if a key set piece or setting date needs changing, it’s better to do it at 14,000 words than at 50,000 words. Now, back to contemplating my spreadsheet with the new dates…

And yes, the comment about TV is meant to be somewhat inflammatory, but also thought-provoking, and perhaps even comment-worthy.