Re: Adjusting for Reality

jen.e.moore
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 17:41:09 -0600

Like Katherine, I can write about 1,000 words an hour - but I absolutely cannot do it for more than two hours a day. It exhausts me and leaves my brain feeling like rubber. (After the kickoff night write-in where I did manage it for three hours, I felt drunk. It was kinda cool. Haven't been able to do it again.) And if I've been doing other intellectually challenging things that day, like, oh, work, I can't even manage that. So I've stopped expecting myself to pull that 2k a day and gone back down to the minimum word count.

I haven't slipped away from my notes, and I think that's the only thing saving me right now: I know exactly what I have to write next. Unfortunately, my notes were not as detailed as I thought they were, and what I thought was going to be a 3,000-word scene is turning out to be a 10,000-word sub-plot, which I'm kind of feeling my way through blindly. But I have an end point to reach for, which helps beyond the telling.

(I'm positive my story will not be done in 50,000 words, but I'm also determined to have the bones of the story down by the end of November, including the end. So if that means turning one sub-plot into a detailed outline so I can write my way through this one, that's what I'm gonna have to do. Sorry, minor characters.)