Category: Novel Progress

What’s what

Well, haven’t posted in a long while.  No readers anyway, this is mostly just a way to chart my progress and muse.  If it comes to anything, maybe some other aspiring writer can benefit.

I did do a bit of writing through about the end of January, got up to about 30,000 words and some outline of other chapters.  But at the same time, I started to do some reading on writing.  What I found since I’m so new to writing, my style was changing as I read about how to write.  So I thought I would take a break and put in some time to gather some information and read more on  basic writing.

I went to the bookstore and acquired some more books, so that now I have the following.  I’m not saying these are the best, but they are the ones I’ve chosen:

  1. The Elements of Style, Strunk, White.  The basic rules of writing, grammar, style, etc.  Generally accepted as a ‘must have’ book.
  2. Word Painting, Rebecca McClanahan.  How to write descriptively.  A good set of tips ranging from grammar to style to descriptive passages, and more.
  3. Plot Perfect, Paula Munier.  A methodology for contemplating and capturing basic plot elements: theme, plot, subplot, scenes, pacing, etc.
  4. Make A Scene, Jordan Rosenfeld.  A guide to building scenes, one at a time.
  5. On Writing, Stephen King.  I’ve owned this for a while, but frankly haven’t gotten to it yet.  On lots of ‘must have’ book lists for writers.

I’ve read the first three (I’d read # 1 a while back).  I also outlined # 2 and # 3, and will outline # 4.  I am a bit of a list-oriented learner, so have an outline (as opposed to highlighting passages) seems to work best for me.

I read some reviews and # 2, # 3, and # 4, and there are some detractors.  Most of the detractors I read seemed to be established writers who thought the books either too basic or too formulistic.  As a novice writer, these criticisms didn’t bother me too much.  So far, I’ve found them to be informative and well structured.

I decided on individual books for certain elements: grammar, plot, scenes, descriptions – as a ‘best of breed’ approach instead of an all-in-one writing book.   I subscribe to the ‘find an expert’ approach – better to have a plumber doing plumbing and an electrician doing electrical than a general handyman doing a mediocre job.

As I outline # 4, I think I will start to do some ‘plotting’.  As for what I’ve written so far, it is just a hodgepodge of styles and subplots that I may just retain a few ideas but move on to something new.  This time, I intend on working out some of the theme and plot more formally before diving into the actual writing.

Writing progress

Well, the answer to the title is: not much since last post.  The holidays do seem to suck up a lot of time; fortunately, for me, because it is time that is centered on family and friends.  So, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

I did do some thinking on the structure and story line.  I’ll expand more on this later, but my style is generally less structured than I’ve seen described in the writing ‘how-to’ books.  It remains to be seen if this is good or bad, but it is what I do.  Since I’m not under any sort of time pressure, I can afford to be a little less rigid in planning and execution.  My primary goal at this point is to get a completed novel.  I don’t have any expectations on quality other than I want to do the best I can, and see the results.  The ultimate gauge is the reader and their enjoyment.

Btw: I’m using the OpenOffice word processor.  It is free, although you can tell it is community-developed.  A bit confusing and not so user-friendly, but did I mention it is free?  I would recommend it for a low cost approach – it seems fully functional so far, and as with any software, has a learning curve.

Hopefully I’ll have a bit more time to write in the next week, and maybe add some more thoughts on AI, my novel idea, and what I’ve discovered about writing.  At the least, this will serve as my own personal diary on this journey.  Maybe it will serve others by pointing out the pitfalls I’m likely to fall in to.

Let the Writing Begin! Novel Progress to Date.

I have a confession right out of the gate.  I started writing my artificial intelligence novel before I started this blog.  In fact, here are a few facts about my initial novel progress to date:

  1. I have about 17,000 words of a rough draft.
  2. With my current formatting – I have no idea if it is close to book format – is about 40 pages.
  3. I’ve kept track of time spent so far: about 36 hours of writing.
  4. I also spent about 4 hours on this blog so far, most of that in setting up the website, configuring WordPress, etc.

I will continue to track time spent both on the book and here on the blog.  Since I’m a numbers guy, it helps to see how much I’ve put in, and how that translates to progress.  When I don’t track some sort of data, I tend to just start puttering around.

I did a small bit of research on how long a novel should be, and of course found a wide range of answers.  First thing I found out is that your work is not tracked by pages, since they are so dependent on the format.  Instead, you count words.  Fortunately, since I’m using OpenOffice Writer (part of the free OpenOffice suite) I can use the word count feature.

It seems that the type of book (e.g. fiction or nonfiction), final format (printed or ebook), and pricing have a lot to do with the expected number of words.  Non-fiction books and ebooks seem to be shorter – as low as 15,000 to 50,000 or more.  Novels seem to be in the 80,000 – 120,000 range, unless you’re Stephen King, and then its just under a billion.  It seems that ebooks can more readily be marketed and sold as short books and novellas, hence the smaller range.  Additionally, they can be priced to match the smaller size, down to $1 for a shorter novella-length book.  Some authors trying to break into writing will do a series of books with a common theme/characters.  That way, they can offer the first installment or two for free or a very low price, to get readers interested in the story.

As always, if anyone has better or more detailed information, please feel free to comment.  I would love comments!  It really is one of the main reasons I’m doing this blog – more on that in a coming blog entry.

Here are a couple of resources I used to get an introduction to how to get a book written, published / self-published, and marketed.  Again, I am amazed at how many people are willing to take the time and energy to develop websites that help people, with all sorts of projects.  I hope to follow in their giving path.

http://nicholaserik.com/writing-career-blueprint/

http://nicholaserik.com/write-to-market-failure-lessons/

https://www.janefriedman.com/self-publish-your-book/