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word count

Day two in the author’s house…

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Let me start by saying I’m not planning to spend every day from now on recording the minutiae of writing a novel. I wanted to hold myself accountable through this blog and that’s the purpose of this post.

A week ago I posted my regimented writing plan. If I stick to that plan, I’m certain to complete at least one draft of 100,000 words in four weeks of writing. If I’m writing…

As I always do when I finish a contract, I wrote up a to do list. A list of all the things I’ve not had time for during the contract. There is always a conflict between what I want to do, what I need to do and what I feel I have to do.

On top of family and work related responsibilities, I spent a large part of Tuesday and Wednesday finishing off a final edit and format of the print edition of Fallen Warriors

Yesterday evening, after two days where I imagined I might plot out two novels – and managed only to begin that process, I put that dream on hold and started writing. This morning I continued writing, reasoning that I might need to explore the characters’ stories further before the overall plot of the book becomes clear.

I wasn’t up this morning as sharp as I wanted though and haven’t kept to my regimented plan. Today I’ve been working on preparing for a meet the author event I’m going to be part of in September. Tomorrow I may have to switch off my phone!

On the positive though, I went for a short run today, my first attempt at exercise in over a month. I wrote 2047 words in 225 minutes spread over the whole day. I’ve developed a new character, well, three of them actually for a story that may run across both sequels.

I’ve failed to meet my target word count, but there’s always tomorrow and each day I write is one day closer to realising my goal of publishing a sequel to Fallen Warriors!

A regimented writing plan

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How am I going to do this, write two first drafts in two months?

It’s going to be very practical…

I’ll get up, probably at 6am.

I’ll write for an hour and then have some breakfast – say 15mins.

Then write for another hour which will take me to 8:15.

I plan to then go out for a short run. Get the blood flowing again. Shower.

Back at my desk by 9am.

Write for an hour and half.

Short fifteen minute break.

Write for another hour and a half.

That will have been five hours writing with 1 hour and 15 min breaks, start at 6, finish at 12:15.

Regimented…

I’m not sure I’ve ever been that disciplined in my life!

Well, it’s a plan. They say no plan survives the start of the battle intact. That’s okay. The aim is to spend the rest of the day with my family. Unless they are away, in which case I will spend some time on admin stuff – marketing my existing books, blogging etc. Or maybe even tackle the household to do list…

I’m still planning to blog daily, though may modify exactly how I do that. If I’m writing 5,000 words a day towards my novel, I’m not going to feel the same commitment to writing a blog post daily. Instead, I may do what I’ve actually done for this week – write the week’s posts in advance and schedule them all at the same time. I’ll let you know.

If you’ve ever written a sequel (or a first novel) in a month, how did you go about it?

How much can you write in a day?

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How much can you write in a day? This is a question that I keep returning to as I plan to write the sequel to Fallen Warriors. I wrote the first draft of The Great Scottish Land Grab in a month, writing an average of 2,300 words a day for 22 days in November 2011. It took me two and a half hours each day to write that.

But, then I ended up ditching half of that novel – easily 25,000 words – as I rewrote and edited the final version.

In theory I know I can write 5,000 words a day, but what is the point if I then need to discard half of that?

Well, on the plus side, you never know exactly what will work until you try. It is sometimes only during the writing that the story becomes clear, that the characters start to live. We change as writers as we become more experienced. The fact is that both for Land Grab and Fallen Warriors, during the rewrite, I added new scenes and extended existing scenes, essentially writing a new first draft that was actually good enough to become the final draft.

The hope is that having set up the background in Fallen Warriors Season One, having a pre-existing backstory and characters, that writing the sequel will be less work.

I will have child care responsibilities during the summer so am planning to get up at Six each morning, write for five hours plus a one hour break, and then leave the writing for the rest of the day.

My plan is to write 1,000 words an hour.

I expect I will take a couple of weeks off during the nine weeks that make up July and August, so I will only have seven weeks available to write.

Five thousand times five days times seven weeks = 175000 words…

Okay, I’m actually planning to write first drafts of both novels, Season Two and Season Three this summer.

Is it achievable?

I won’t know until I try, but in theory it should be.

The real benefit though is that it allows me to ensure that both plots are consistent, that there is an overall story arc connecting the three seasons and gives me more flexibility to end Season Two at an appropriate stage that will hopefully satisfy readers and leave them hooked for Season Three.

Anyway, that’s my plan for writing the sequel to Fallen Warriors and an estimate of how many words I’m planning to write each day. How much can you write in a day?