Category Archives: Mostly Me

Random Thought While Writing: Word Counts

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You can’t edit a blank page. – Jodi Picoult

Twenty-one months into this odd journey, I still write like a journalist. I slap down the words, do a little research, follow up with a little reporting, keep an eye on the clock and aim for the word count.

It’s high pressure, volume-oriented work, and I’m still trying to learn how to enjoy this. It’s supposed to be fun, right, because it sure as hell doesn’t pay anything. (Note to self: Writing fiction is a lot like journalism.)

Lesson 1: Don’t obsess about the word count. (This is a journalism thing, writing to exact word counts or inches of column space.)

I can’t just sit and write. I’m a multi-tasker. But I think it doesn’t matter as long as I produce some words every time I sit down expecting to.

And of course I have to force myself to sit down regularly.

Lesson #2: Worry about word count. You have to finish the damned thing so you can start another, or go back and revise an earlier manuscript.

For the first 10,000 to 20,000 words, I worry about how I will ever reach 75,000. Around 20,000 words, I wonder how I will ever stop.

What a long, strange road it’s been. – “Truckin’,” The Grateful Dead

Priorities: Writing vs. Social Media

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An old reporter once told me about writing a newspaper column (a primitive version of a blog). It’s like being married and having a mistress. You no more finish with one and you have start immediately over with the other.

Typewriter keys

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Writing fiction and staying in touch on social media (blogging, for instance) represents that kind of unending challenge. I note that a number of published authors I follow online face the same dilemma.

I figure I can either write fiction or keep up with social media, but not both.

So I’ve been converting The Passenger into a graphic novel and rewriting (for the umpteenth time) Black Orchid Demon and Return of the Black Orchid Spider. And I have a backlog of stories that need some editing attention as well.

Next week, I’m heading into v. 6 of Black Orchid Demon to incorporate six pages of feedback I received from a tough editor I hired to critique my work.

So I’ll be sticking with the wife (fiction) and neglecting the mistress (social media).

But do keep in touch. I do email all the time. (No handy sexual reference available unless you believe in puns.)

Hiatus, Defined

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A hiatus is:

  • a break or interruption in the continuity of a work, series, action, etc.
  • a missing part; gap or lacunaHiatus

September was a hiatus for this blog as I finished turning a novella (The Passenger) into a graphic novel for a comic book publisher who might be interested and I rewrote, for the fourth time, the first in a series of supernatural thrillers (Black Demon Orchid) and sent it off to a professional editor for her critique.

Truth be told, I don’t believe in writing a blog post without having something to say.

As we write in police procedurals, “Nothing to see here, folks. Move on.”